The Beverly Hills Hotel is part of the Dorchester Collection, a luxury chain owned by the Sultan of Brunei. This week, the tiny, oil-rich southeast Asian country set off a storm of celebrity protests and boycotts by introducing Islamic laws that include death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers.
Over the past several days, 20 events have been canceled at the Beverly Hills property–a loss of about $2 million in revenue for the hotel, according to Dorchester. Local politicians and celebrities are also boycotting the nearby Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles, the hotel’s more subdued sister property.
British billionaire Richard Branson took to Twitter over the weekend to declare that no Virgin employee or Branson family member will stay at Dorchester hotel “until the Sultan abides by basic human rights.”
Big names like Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres are urging boycotts, and the Beverly Hills mayor and council are calling for Dorchester to sell the famed hotel.
Dorchester, which runs 10 hotels world-wide, is looking to expand globally and has said it is seeking to acquire a luxury property in New York. Hotel analysts say the publicity surrounding protests against the company could complicate efforts to operate a Manhattan hotel, where there is also opposition to the new law.
The participation of Hollywood’s A-list in the boycott has been painful because the hotel has long been a see-and-be-seen spot to eat, sleep and fundraise. The hotel’s Polo Lounge restaurant is one of this city’s prime power-lunch spots. One event earlier this year attracted stars including Will Smith and Sandra Bullock.
Coming events like a “Women in Entertainment” breakfast thrown by the Hollywood Reporter in December, and a “Night Before the Oscars” fundraiser held by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, have been moved from the hotel.
Dorchester’s London-based chief executive, Christopher Cowdray–who has been in Los Angeles this week to speak to hotel employees and customers and to try to quell the political backlash–said that Dorchester hotels is a big employer, pays taxes and “abides by the laws of the countries in which we operate.” He added that the Brunei Investment Agency, the government investment vehicle that owns Dorchester, is a “long-term investor” and that a sale of the Los Angeles-area properties was “unlikely.”
On Tuesday night, the Beverly Hills city council unanimously approved a resolution condemning Brunei for its new laws, and urging Brunei to sell its Beverly Hills property.
A satanic black mass reenactment is scheduled to take place at the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall at Harvard University on May 12, with the mass performed by The Satanic Temple, which is being hosted for the event by the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club.
A non-consecrated communion host will be used in the reenactment, according to Lucien Greaves, spokesman for The Satanic Temple.
“While Black Masses are supposed to utilize a consecrated host, ours is merely representative of a consecrated host,” Greaves told CNSNews.com. “It is not consecrated. We neither believe in nor invoke the supernatural.”
“To us, the Black Mass is an amalgamation that developed through time based on witch-hunting fears and later adopted by some as a declaration of personal Independence against what they felt to be the stifling authority of the church,” said Greaves.
He further said that during the black mass reenactment, representatives of The Satanic Temple will provide narration on the academic and historical aspects of a satanic mass.
A flyer with an image of a goat-headed, satanic figure standing on an altar surrounded by damned souls was posted at the Harvard campus announcing the event. It states that the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is hosting “a reenactment of a satanic black mass performed by The Satanic Temple ** with commentary and historical context **.
The flyer further says the mass will occur on May 12 at 8:30PM in the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall, and that admission is free.
The “official response” states, “An independent student organization, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, plans to host a controversial student event involving a historical reenactment of a black mass ceremony that has a narrator providing historical context and background.
“Harvard Extension School does not endorse the views or activities of any independent student organization. But we do support the rights of our students and faculty to speak and assemble freely.
“In this case, we understand that this independent student organization, the Cultural Studies Club, is hosting a series of events—including a Shinto tea ceremony, a Shaker exhibition, and a Buddhist presentation on meditation—as part of a student-led effort to explore different cultures.”
The Queen’s Head Pub is in Memorial Hall, which is at “the heart of Harvard’s campus” and was “dedicated in 1878 as a monument to Harvard alumni who died during the Civil War,” it states on its Facebook page. The Hall was completed in 1876, and the Queen’s Head Pub was built in the Hall’s basement in 2007. The pub is 12,000 square feet and can accommodate up to 450 guests.
Harvard University was launched in 1639 through a financial gift from the Protestant clergyman John Harvard. In its early decades, Harvard trained many Protestant ministers who went on to serve the various Christian churches of New England.
The Satanic Temple, which is scheduled to perform the reenactment black mass, is the same group that is trying to have a statue of satan (depicted as “Baphomet”) installed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol.
Concerning the “child-friendly” satan statue, Greaves told CNSNews.com, “Our monument will stand in honor of those unjustly accused, the slandered minority, the maligned out-groups, so that we might pay respect to their memory and celebrate our progress as a pluralistic nation founded on secular law.”
Americans now are being blasted as “racist” for the simple act of waving an American flag.
It happened Monday in California to a small group of protesters who waved U.S. flags in front of a school where officials had banned the practice to avoid violence threatened by Hispanic students celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
The controversy developed in 2010, when school officials ordered students not to wear U.S. flag-themed shirts on the Mexican holiday. The ban has been upheld by a federal appeals court.
The controversy brought a small group of protesters out Monday, and the community reacted immediately.
“What’s wrong with these white people holding up American flags in Morgan hill??? Racist a–holes,” wrote Gia Lee in a feed monitored by Twitchy.
The report also noted the school superintendent was confirming that students wearing American flag-themed shirts on Monday “won’t be kicked out.”
“Read that sentence again and then cringe at the fact that had to be said in the United States,” the Twitchy report said.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported a group called Gilroy-Morgan Hill Patriots stood in front of Live Oak High School for about an hour waving American flags.
The protest followed the decision earlier this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that school officials, in a dispute four years ago, were right to suspend the First Amendment rights of students who wanted to wear U.S. flag-themed shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
Mexican students allegedly had threatened violence because of the shirts, and school officials, consequently, suspended the right of other students to wear Old Glory.
This weekend, a shadowy US leftist group named Democracy Alliance will meet in Chicago to figure out a way to thwart conservative rivals.
As the adage goes, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
While top liberal organizations blast the right for accepting dark money, the Alliance’s entire business model is based on maintaining secrecy akin to the Illuminati.
“Like a lot of elite groups, we fly beneath the radar,” Oakland lawyer and Alliance donor Guy Saperstein told the Washington Post in 2006, a year after the group was formed. “We are not so stupid though (to) deny our existence.”
The group requires some hefty financial backing. It costs $25,000 just to join, yearly dues of $30,000 and an additional $200,000 donation to Alliance causes. Donation recipients must sign confidentiality agreements, the Post reported.
The Alliance was founded by a group of billionaires, including George Soros and philanthropist Peter B. Lewis, as a result of George W. Bush’s re-election. Its goal was to fund think tanks and media organizations to move societal change toward a more socialist agenda. But the focus changed to funding political endeavors after Vice President Joe Biden asked for help in 2011 for the upcoming election.
Obama’s campaign and his umbrella activist group Organizing for Action have received millions from Democracy Alliance members.
This caused Lewis to quit because the group had become too partisan and wasn’t concentrating on infrastructure, according to media reports.
Lewis, who died last year, hasn’t been the only high-profile defector.
OBAMA’S SUPPORT GROUP: The Democracy Alliance seeks to employ the president’s agenda
One Alliance member who owns a cell phone company turned on Obama last year over a scandal involving telephone surveillance of ordinary American citizens.
CREDO Mobile’s Michael Kieschnick told CNN Money he was “deeply disturbed” at Obama’s “growing record of executive power grabs at the expense of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties.”
Neither Kieschnick nor Democracy Alliance responded to requests for comment.
The left’s biggest mouthpiece for bashing the right over dark money and civil liberties issues has been the Center for Media and Democracy, also funded by Soros. CMD has been at the forefront of cheering on a secret investigation into dozens of conservative organizations, led by a Democrat district attorney. The prosecutors’ theory, questioned by the investigation’s own presiding judge, is that the groups illegally coordinated with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign during the state’s Democrat-driven recall elections.
The investigation issued more than 100 subpoenas last year to conservative individuals and organizations as part of the probe, which, sources have told Watchdog.org, included “paramilitary-style” pre-dawn raids at the homes and offices of conservative targets. CMD, however, was on a public crusade to unseat Walker.
One target was the consumer-advocacy group Club for Growth, which CMD claimed “was at the center of a tangled web of undisclosed dark money in 2011, raking in millions from out-of-state secret donors and shuffling it to other nonprofits that in turn spent millions on the 2011 and 2012 elections.”
When asked about CMD’s own finances, its director, Lisa Graves said, “The question of conservative funders versus liberal funders, I think, is a matter of false equivalency.”
After Lewis left, the Alliance apparently dropped groups that didn’t agree with its new stance. Favored organizations that have remained include two Soros-funded groups: think tank Center for American Progress and Media Matters, a self-appointed media police for “monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation.”
Each year, the Alliance holds an annual meeting where high-profile politicians and their donors meet to raise money and plan a progressive agenda. In keeping with its secrecy, the Alliance’s website has no mention of its annual conference starting Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago.
But both Politico and the Chicago Tribune saw agendas listing powerful Clinton and Obama allies along with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.
Besides focusing on mid-term and 2016 elections, panel discussions will include issues such as climate change, income inequality, abortion and the death penalty.
This week near Dover, Delaware, US, a viral video appears to show another instance of black-on-white violence among high school students.
[Editor’s Note: YouTube has deleted the video originally embedded in this article. Should users navigate to the video’s URL, a message states: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy prohibiting content designed to harass, bully or threaten.”]
The shaky cell phone video shows a group of black teenage boys punching, knocking down, and kicking a white teenage boy, leaving him dazed and confused on the school bus floor.
The victim of the attack had been riding home from Parkway Academy School near Dover when the assault reportedly began. The video shows him sitting alone, facing front, when the attack begins from the rear – and continues from the side and the front of the school bus. “I didn’t do nothing,” he protests.
The student’s uncle found out about the incident and spread the word on Facebook.
“This is a video of my nephew Alec being beaten by a group of teens on his bus ride home from school yesterday,” wrote Jonathan Guessford. “He was able to get off the bus at the next stop, 14 miles from his home. He went to the Magnolia Fire Hall and called the police.
“The bus driver failed to intervene AT ALL,” Guessford continued. “She didn’t stop the bus while the beating occurred. She didn’t call the police and file a report. She didn’t inform the administration that the beating occurred. Apparently, the bus driver called the school and stated that Alec left the bus early for no reason, according to the administrator that called my brother yesterday.”
The attack is part of a pattern of racial violence I have documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.
Knicks executive and former player Larry Johnson had a strong reaction to the racial remarks Clippers owner Donald Sterling is alleged to have made.
On Saturday night, Johnson tweeted: “Black people your Focusing on the wrong thing. We should be focusing on having our own, Own team own League! To For Self!!’’
The initial indication was Johnson was calling for an all-African-American league complete with black ownership. It wasn’t the first time Johnson, who is black, concerned himself with the fact the NBA’s ownership is mostly white while its players are mostly black.
During the 1999 NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs, Johnson caused a stir by saying: “We’ve got a lot of rebellious slaves on this [Knicks] team.”
When asked at the time why he referred to his teammates as slaves, Johnson said: “I’ve got to explain that to you? We don’t go with the mainstream.’’
Johnson was hired by the Knicks two years ago and serves many roles as a basketball and business operations representative.
When Donald Sterling’s comments surfaced this week, they caused an uproar. The basketball franchise owner is also a Jew. Sterling attempted to justify his racism by invoking Israel.
“DS: It’s the world! You go to Israel, the blacks are just treated like dogs.
V: So do you have to treat them like that too?
DS: The white Jews, there’s white Jews and black Jews, do you understand?
V: And are the black Jews less than the white Jews?
DS: A hundred percent, fifty, a hundred percent.
V: And is that right?
DS: It isn’t a question – we don’t evaluate what’s right and wrong, we live in a society. We live in a culture. We have to live within that culture.”
(via Deadspin)
After a string of local break ins, the Pennsylvania chapter of the Ku Klux Klan established a neighborhood watch to monitor criminal activity in Fairview Township, Pennsylvania. According to the imperial wizard, Frank Ancona, the task force was developed to complement existing police efforts, and people in the town have purportedly called on the KKK to do what local authorities aren’t.
“It’s just like any neighborhood watch program. It’s not targeting any specific ethnicity. We would report anything we see to law enforcement,” Ancona explained. “We don’t hate people. We are an organization who looks out for our race. We believe in racial separation. God created each species after its kind and saw that it was good.”
According to Think Progress, in the past two months there have been more than nine alleged vehicle break ins, including a few at a local FedEx. A burglar also attempted to steal from a home in the area.
KKK members have passed out fliers to promote the new endeavor and to draw attention to their group’s efforts. One flier assures Fairview Township residents that they can sleep soundly knowing that the KKK is wide awake.
A public university in Washington state is looking for advice on how to rid itself of white people.
According to Campus Reform,Western Washington University included a survey in its daily newsletter that read: How do we make sure that in future years “we are not as white as we are today?”
Several links offering additional information are listed below the question, including a link to a blog post from Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard, who believes the school will have “failed” if the number of white students remains constant in the years ahead.
Campus Reform included a quote from a 2012 Shepard address:
“Every year, from this stage and at this time, you have heard me say that, if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as university.”
The obsession with skin color is on full display in Shepard’s blog post.
“In the decades ahead, should we be as white as we are today, we will be relentlessly driven toward mediocrity; or, become a sad shadow of our current self,” he wrote in explaining his position.
It’s enough to make one wonder if white students walk around campus with their heads hung in shame, apologizing for bringing failure upon the school. How is it possible for a student not be judged by the color of their skin in an environment where their value is directly attributed to their skin pigmentation?
Pointing to the “rapidly decreasing” number of high school graduates the school has “traditionally drawn upon” — code for white people? — Shepard insists ”it’s not about keeping whites out.”
“It is about whether we will have the wisdom, the culture, the commitment, to be able to attract a sufficient number of students from diverse backgrounds,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the marginalization of white people to correct the marginalization of people of color continues unabated on college campuses across America. But then, isn’t that what critical race theory is all about?
Perhaps Western Washington University should just hang a sign it’s door that reads “whites need not apply.”
American senator, Republican John McCain, who is currently on a visit to Estonia, has urged to “provide weapons to Ukraine” speaking at a live show of one of the local TV channels.
“We should provide weapons to Ukraine so that it could defend itself,” the 77-year-old senator from Arizona said.
John McCain, the ex-presidential candidate from the Republicans on 2008 elections, believes that Russia threatens its neighbor. “Russia is provoking the West by staging actions in Ukraine’s East. Maybe, it wants to increase its influence on the South as well,” the senator suggested.
An advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the United States may decide to send arms to eastern Ukraine as tensions continue to worsen there between pro-Russian protesters and supporters of the country’s interim government.
Reuters reported on Monday that US State Department Counselor Thomas Shannon — a senior diplomat and member of Sec. Kerry’s inner circle — said the possibility of providing arms to Ukrainian forces is indeed currently on the table.
Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president of Ukraine, has since asked for the UN to conduct a joint “anti-terrorist operation” in that region as activity intensifies.
Seven weeks after the right-wing coup in Ukraine, evidence is mounting that the Western-backed opposition at the time was responsible for the lethal shootings in Independence Square on February 20. This was suggested by a report on the German public television programme “Monitor” last Thursday evening, and which is available online in German.
“According to research it appears unlikely that the shots on demonstrators came exclusively from the side of the old regime,” stated a press release made available prior to the program. In its report, “Monitor” raised the question, “Did radical oppositionists end up shooting in order to produce chaos and place the blame on Yanukovitch?” The presented videos, interviews and sound recordings suggest precisely this!
“Monitor” presented an extract of radio traffic from alleged sharp-shooters of the Yanukovitch regime, who were positioned on various rooftops in the centre of Kiev on February 20. The discussion was picked up by a Ukrainian radio amateur. One of the snipers can be heard asking his colleagues, “Hey guys, they are over there, on the right of the hotel Ukrayina. Who is shooting? Our people don’t shoot at unarmed civilians.” Then he calls, “Guys, there is a sniper who is aiming at me. Who is he aiming at from the corner? Look out.” A short time later someone else says, “Someone shot him. But not us. Are there more snipers over there? And who are they?”
On other videos, activists who marched along Institutska Street on February 20, can be seen being shot not only from the front, that is, from the direction of government buildings, but also from behind. Nikola, an eyewitness who is visible on several videos, confirmed, “Yes, on the 20th [February] we were shot from behind, from the Hotel Ukrayina, from the eighth or ninth floor. People were standing up there and shooting at us and we were also shot from the other direction.”
Responding to the question as to who had shot them from the Hotel Ukrayina, he answered, “I don’t know. They were soldiers, certainly professionals.”
On the day of the shootings, the Hotel Ukrayina was firmly under the control of the opposition and was heavily guarded. Numerous witnesses, journalists and oppositionists confirmed this to “Monitor”. On the morning of February 20, the opposition even introduced entry controls. Only those with a room key or identification were allowed into the hotel. The “Monitor” reporters come to the conclusion, “Therefore it would have been very difficult for a sniper to sneak in.”
In addition, the reporters reviewed pictures from Russian television, which allegedly show armed oppositionists firing at demonstrators. “Precisely who is shooting at whom is not possible to confirm,” However, it was determined that “the recording was definitely made in the Hotel Ukrayina.” It was also confirmed that “not only oppositionists, but also the government militias were shot at. And perhaps this was also by the same people.”
A doctor, who treated victims on both sides, confirmed this in an interview. “The injured who we treated had the same type of bullet wounds. I’m speaking about the type of bullets we took out of the bodies in operations. They were identical. I can’t say any more”, he stated.
The explosive report concurs with the intercepted telephone call between Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet and the foreign policy head of the EU, Catherine Ashton, at the beginning of March. Paet also based himself on information from doctors and stated that “the same snipers shot people on both sides.” He warned that “the conclusion that not Yanukovitch, but members of the new coalition were behind the shootings is increasingly reinforced.”
Since then, the transitional government in Kiev and its Western allies have desperately sought to cover up the true course of events. Only last week, Ukrainian general state prosecutor Oleg Machnizki of the fascist Svoboda, arrested 12 members of the now dissolved special Berkut unit and presented them as the main suspects in the shootings.
“Monitor” cites a high-ranking member of the investigative committee, who calls the version of events from the state prosecutor into doubt. “My investigation results do not agree with those presented by the state prosecutor at the press conference,” said the investigator, who wished to remain anonymous, in an interview.
A lawyer for the victims suggested that the entire investigation was a deliberate ploy by the transitional government to bury their own crimes. “None of us are getting any information on the investigation”, he complained. “And if you ask me, there is one simple reason for this: it is not being investigated properly. As a lawyer of the victims I am saying to you that the state prosecutor is not investigating properly. They are covering for their own people. They are as partisan as before.”
NATO is creating a naval battle group outside Russian borders, a Russian military source told Interfax news agency.
On April, 3, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of violating the Montreux Convention, which regulates the number ships that can enter the Black Sea, saying that “US warships have extended their deployment beyond the set terms a couple of times lately.”
According to the treaty, warships from non-Black Sea states can only stay in the basin for up to 21 days consecutively. USS Taylor spent 11 more than that in the region in February and March.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed “bemusement” over the move.
“Turkey [which administers the treaty] did not inform us about the overstay. We have expressed our concern to the Turkish and US side in a verbal note,” said a statement on the ministry website.
A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday.
Officials said the Russian Fencer made 12 passes, and flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level.
The U.S. warship, equipped with the powerful Aegis missile defense system and carrying helicopters, issued several radio queries using international emergency circuits. A Russian Navy ship, a frigate, has been shadowing the U.S. warship, remaining within visual distance.
U.S. military officials have said the deployment is part of an effort to “reassure” allies and partners in the region. A second U.S. Navy warship – a frigate from the Navy’s Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea – is also heading to the Black Sea.
It appears however that no official communication or protests by the U.S. to the Russians about incident have been made. It is also not clear how an American military build-up in the region could be reassuring, as it increases the likelyhood of conflict.
Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote that democracy and freedom require an independent and aggressive media, an independent and aggressive judiciary, and an independent and aggressive Congress. He said the US had none of the above.
The US media consistently lies for the government. Reuters continues to report, falsely, that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. The Washington Post ran an obviously false story planted on the paper by the Obama regime that the massive protests in former Russian territories of Ukraine are “rent-a-mobs” instigated by the Russian government.
The CIA director has been sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression of the Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine.
Washington’s plan to grab Ukraine overlooked that the Russian and Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not likely to go along with their insertion into the EU and NATO while submitting to the persecution of Russian speaking peoples, Roberts said.
Self-determination will not be recognized by the UN as the UN is essentially a Washington-financed organization, and will follow Washington’s orders. Roberts warned that money is more important to European politicians than humanity’s survival, and Washington pays them well.
A resident of Donetsk has posted a photo of soldiers on a social networking service site. The soldiers, outside a local military enlistment office, were armed with sub-machineguns and light-weight machineguns and spoke English. They wore the uniform that was obviously not Ukrainian.
The coordinator of the Self-Defence of Donbass united organization of the activists of Donetsk told reporters earlier that a plane with 200 foreign mercenaries had landed at Donetsk airport. According to him, the legionnaires speak neither Russian, nor Ukrainian.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 7th that Kiev is amassing Interior Ministry troops and Ukraine’s National Guards, as well as fighters of the ‘Right Sector’ illegal armed group, in the southeast of Ukraine, including in Donetsk. The Russian Foreign Ministry points out that it is especially concerned over the fact that taking part in the forthcoming operation are some 150 US experts from the Greystone private military organization, dressed in the uniform of the Sokol (Falcon) police task force.
The White House has refuted the report, insisting in its Tuesday’s statement with reference to a Greystone official that US mercenaries are not involved in suppressing unrest in the south-east of Ukraine, Interfax reports.
The Foreign Ministers of Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU are due to meet for talks on Ukraine next week, according to the press service of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
Peace initiatives do in no way prevent the US from beefing up its military presence off Ukraine’s coast. Another US naval ship, USS Donald Cook, has entered the Black Sea, according to Rossiya-24 TV channel.
According to The Daily Telegraph British newspaper, the objective of the ship, armed with an air defence system and Tomahawk cruise missiles is to show support for Kiev. Another US naval ship has been in the area since March this year.
Russia is not conducting any unusual or unplanned military activities on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“The US and Ukraine have no reasons for concerns. Russia has said many times that it is not conducting any unusual or unplanned activities significant in terms of military issues on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary posted on its website.
“The daily activities by the Russian troops on its national territory do not threaten the security of the US and other OSCE countries. The attempts to accuse Russia of beefing up its armed forces are groundless,” the ministry said.
Washington employs thousands private military contractors (PMCs). They’re mercenaries. They’re hired guns.
Peter Dale Scott once said they’re “authorized to commit violence in the the name of their employers.” They’re “predatory bandits.”
They operate extrajudicially. They’re unrestricted by US, international, or local governments’ laws. They’re free from civil or criminal accountability.
Under Article 47 of the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions:
“A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities:
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of the Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.”
Washington substitutes them for Pentagon forces however. At multiples more in cost. Using them gives US authorities cover for whatever crimes they commit. Doing so avoids accountability.
They’re an integral part of America’s imperial agenda. Apparently they’re operating in Ukraine. Perhaps hundreds will increase to thousands.
Maybe in other Ukrainian cities. Maybe covertly in Crimea. If not now, maybe later. Expect East/West tensions to escalate. Expect the risk for open conflict to increase.
Black people are the fathers and mothers of civilization, white men are the devil, the Christian God is nothing more than a ghost and only a small percentage of people understand the world.
These are just some of the beliefs behind the bling — the gaudy Five Percent Nation medallions worn by Jay Z and Carmelo Anthony.
Last week, all eyes at the Barclays Center weren’t on Jay Z’s better half, Beyoncé — but on the coaster-size golden pendant swinging from the rapper’s neck as the couple sat courtside. Asked once if the group’s symbol — an eight-point star with the number 7 in the middle — held any meaning to him, the rapper shrugged, “A little bit.”
So what exactly do Five Percenters believe?
“The rationale is that the black man is God and created the universe, and is physically stronger and intellectually stronger and more righteous naturally,” says Michael Muhammad Knight, an author of two books on the radical group.
“Whiteness is weak and wicked and inferior — basically just an errant child who needs to be corrected.”
The group was founded in 1964 in Harlem by Clarence Smith, who later changed his name to Allah, a former student of Malcolm X who disagreed with the Nation of Islam over the nature of God.
Smith rejected the notion of a supernatural deity and instead believed that all black men had God in them and that black women were “earths” who took on a complementary yet subordinate role to their gods.
The idea is empowering, Knight says.
“Anytime someone is saying you have to accept your conditions of oppression and slavery and pray to an unseen god — that kind of god is just being used to keep people down and to keep people from looking to themselves as a solution to their problems,” he notes. “If there is a problem, no one will fix it for you, except yourself.”
Five Percenters don’t consider themselves Muslim, but their name comes from the Nation of Islam’s belief that 5 percent of humanity are “poor righteous teachers” who exist to enlighten the masses about the truth of existence.
Members will sometimes refer to themselves as “scientists” to drive home the search for truth. And they face a tall task, because under their belief system, 10 percent of the world’s population controls the other 85 percent by spreading the belief in a “mystery God.”
To show followers the way, members must learn the Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabet — powerful tools to decipher the meaning of the universe. In both, each letter and number represents a concept, for example, 1 is knowledge, 2 is wisdom, while A is Allah and B is be, or born. The number 7 on Jay Z’s pendant stands for God.
Caucasians, meanwhile, don’t enjoy an exalted status in the narrative of the Five Percenters.
“The first lesson I learned from the Five Percent was simple: F–k white people. Seriously. White people are devils,” Knight, 36, who is white and converted to Islam as a teenager, once wrote.
Watch the white middle class of Chicago vanish before your eyes.
It shows the demise of the foundation of an American city.
Watch as the grey squares, which illustrate the middle class that dominated the most of the city’s neighborhoods in 1970s, quickly vanish over 40 years.
The poor, represented by the orange and red colors, explode across the map.
And watch what happens in the green areas representing the upper middle class and wealthy. Not surprisingly, it spreads from downtown to the north side, but not with the same ferocity as the reds and oranges.
Especially in 2000, the greens-the color of money–grow much darker. It seems the rich simply got richer. In later years, the wealthy pushed the poor out of the near West Side. It appears that area bypassed the middle.
For the first time in American history, non-whites will make up half or more of the next generation, likely pushing Washington toward a bigger government — and the GOP better tone down their anti-government rhetoric if they want to win them, according to a top polling outfit.
At a briefing for congressional aides hosted by the moderate Republican Ripon Society, Pew Research Vice President Michael Dimock said that the trend among younger Americans is support for government programs and acceptance of Democratic Party policies.
“Their tendency is more liberal, their tendency is bigger government,” he said of so-called “millennials” born between 1979 and 1995. They will likely set the trend for the still-unnamed next generation.
“This is a generation that is 41 percent non-white; the generation behind it is likely to be close to 50 if not more than 50 percent non-white, and the anti-government kind of tone is one that really doesn’t resonate with that non-white sector in particular,” said Dimock at the Ripon retreat.
His advice to the GOP: “Try to take as much of the anti-government rhetoric out.”
Ripon provided Secrets with a video of his recent presentation. In it, he said that younger voters are both pro-government and pro-business, split over gun control, back abortion and believe welfare does more good than harm. What’s more, they are not angry voters and are still politically diverse.
“I think he confirmed what a lot of Republicans already know, that the party has a lot of work to do with younger Americans, who view the GOP as politically rigid and ideologically out of step. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that millennials are increasingly untethered to either party, which means there’s a chance for Republicans to win them back,” said Ripon’s Lou Zickar.
Pollster John Zogby, who has dubbed millennials First Globals in his new book, said those born after 1979 already number 75 million and will grow to become bigger than the 78-million strong Baby Boom generation, and that should be good for Democrats.
We asked him about Dimock’s prediction and characterization of the current and coming generation.
Said Zogby, who does our weekly report card on President Obama: “The 41 percent non-white figure is right on the money and so is the projection. There is a strong libertarian streak, but they largely do not hate government if it can prove to be a problem-solver. They have no patience for loud debates and for bureaucratic entropy, favoring quick and streamlined forms of problem-solving and decision-making — just as they have learned in video games. There is also an upside to their all having received a trophy: They are great believers and practitioners in teamwork. This is potentially great news for Democrats and liberals (34 percent call themselves such), but mainly it is worse news for the GOP, who have no meaningful outreach or connectivity with them.”
According to The New York Times, Japan will announce on Monday that it will turn over to Washington more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and a large quantity of highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear fuel being turned over to the United States, which is of American and British origin, is a fraction of Japan’s overall stockpile. Japan has more than nine tons of plutonium stored in various locations and it is scheduled to open in the fall a new nuclear fuel plant that could produce many tons more every year.
American officials have been quietly pressing Japan to abandon the program, arguing that the material is insufficiently protected even though much of it is in a form that would be significantly more difficult to use in a weapon than the supplies being sent to the United States.
The explosions at Fukushima were chemical hydrogen explosions and were not nuclear explosions however. The exposed core reacts with the high pressure steam at about 2000°C to form zirconium and hydrogen. What we DO have is effectively three dirty bombs, ejecting radioactive isotopes in the form of dust particles into the atmosphere.
It takes a dosage of 4 Sieverts to kill 50% of the population, one Sievert would kill 5% of the population. Background level is 1-2 mS/y, smokers inhale an additional 5-10mS/y. 30 milliSieverts/year is regarded as the maximum occupational danger level (airline pilots, etc get about 5-9 mS/y). Some areas in Japan may get that level, Europe almost certainly will not.
Using Bequerels instead of Sieverts: Background level here for foodstuffs is about 40 Bequerels/kilogramm, warning levels for foods after Chernobyl were set at 800 B/Kg. Cancer patients sometimes have a scintigramm at 4 MEGA-Bequerels = 47 THOUSAND Bequerels/kilogramm without any negative effects.
Most of the fallout cloud should go out over the Pacific where it will be washed out of the sky by rain. Each component of the fallout has a different duration depending on which isotope it is. Each isotope has a so-called half-life. This means that half its radiation is gone after this half-life. Since 210 =1,000 and 220 = 1,000,000 it takes 10 respectively 20 half-lives for that isotope’s radiation to fall to 1 thousandth resp. one millionth of its initial value.
The dangerous elements which accumulate in the body are iodine, cesium and plutonium. The reactor Fukushima #3 is a MOX reactor.
Iodine 131 has a half-life of 8 days. It is a β and γ emitter. Iodine congregates in the thyroid gland. You can take non-radioactive I127 pills to saturate your thyroid preemptively, so that it doesn’t take up any I131.
Cesium137 has a half-life of about 33 years, β and γ emitter. The body treats cesium like potassium, so it is eventually excreted. but can cause many different types of cancer, particularly in the excretion filters, liver and kidneys.
Plutonium239 has a half-life of about 24,000 years, so it doesn’t go away. It is an α and γ emitter which congregates in the bone marrow where the α particles can do serious damage quickly.
Don’t eat any Kobe beef, imported Sushi or Pacific fish unless it has been officially checked for radiation first.
Source: VoR
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The Beverly Hills Hotel is part of the Dorchester Collection, a luxury chain owned by the Sultan of Brunei. This week, the tiny, oil-rich southeast Asian country set off a storm of celebrity protests and boycotts by introducing Islamic laws that include death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers.
