Patrick Flinders, 17, tells of terrifying ordeal as polar bear rampaged through school group’s camp in Svalbard, Norway A teenager left with horrific facial injuries after being mauled by a polar bear on a school expedition to the Arctic has told how he believed he was going to die during the attack. Patrick Flinders defended himself by lashing out at the animal as it rampaged through a camp of young British explorers trekking across the Norwegian island of Svalbard earlier this month. The 16-year-old’s friend Horatio Chapple was killed during the attack, while three others were seriously injured. Flinders and his 13-strong group from the British Schools Exploring Society were asleep in tents on the remote Von Postbreen glacier near Longyearbyen when the 250kg polar bear entered the camp at around 7.30am on 5 August. He said he heard a scratching outside his tent before it suddenly collapsed. Flinders told the Sunday Mirror: “The fabric of the tent hit my face. I pulled my sleeping bag over my head crumpled into a ball and shut my eyes. I was screaming ‘I don’t want to be here any more.’ “I saw the bear dragging one of the leaders along by his head in the middle of the circle of six tents. I wanted to hide but there was nowhere to go. Then the bear came towards us.” Flinders, from Jersey, added: “I looked up and saw its huge mouth snapping. All around its nose was blood. At that moment I thought I might die. It hit me with its paw and my arm came out of my sleeping bag. Then I felt its teeth around my elbow, biting down on the bone. “Suddenly it had my head in its jaws and I could feel it crunching my skull … I could hear it crack. I heard a growl which was deafening because I was so close up.” Flinders was left with fragments of the bear’s teeth lodged in his head and later needed 20 staples. He was sharing a tent with 17-year-old Eton schoolboy Chapple and another friend, Scott Bennell-Smith from Cornwall. Flinders said he lashed out and tried to punch the bear before the attack came to an end: “I lashed out and waved my arm up to punch the bear in the head, again and again to get it off me. “Scott must have decided to run because it suddenly dropped me and ran after him,” he said. “Scott screamed. Then I heard one shot.” Expedition leader Michael Reid, 29, managed to shoot the bear dead but only after his rifle failed four times. He suffered head and facial injuries during the rampage. Leader Andy Ruck, 27, and Bennell-Smith were also badly mauled. Speaking of his friend’s death, Flinders said: “Horatio had been lying one side of me, Scott on the other. If I had slept where he was I would be dead. I feel guilty it was him and not me.” Arctic Polar regions Norway Animals Europe guardian.co.uk
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Interior ministry troops go into gangster-run areas to end violence which has claimed at least 1,000 lives this year Weeks of violent mayhem that have left more than 1,000 dead in Pakistan’s biggest city culminated on Sunday in troops entering a gangster-run district in an attempt to end the violence. The holy month of Ramadan, supposedly a time of piety, has only increased the slaughter on Karachi’s streets, with beheadings and horrifically mutilated bodies dumped in sacks in gutters, the debris from a war between gangs divided on ethnic lines. Over the weekend, the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, described the violence in Karachi as the country’s “greatest challenge”. In an extraordinary televised press conference on Sunday, a senior official of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party accused the interior minister, Rehman Malik, also of the same party, of culpability in the killings in Karachi. Zulfiqar Mirza, the senior PPP provincial minister, claimed he had proof that Malik was “hand in glove with the killers”. The gang turf war is also a political and financial struggle, about the control of extortion rackets in Karachi known as bata , with three mainstream political parties all drawing support from different ethnic groups and each having a criminal underworld following in the city. The bloodshed has essentially pitted a gang associated with the Pakistan Peoples party of President Asif Zardari against thugs linked to the Muttihida Quami Movement (MQM), headed by Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in London. The MQM has long dominated Karachi but it is being challenged by the PPP and the third main player, the Awami National party (ANP), which represents the huge ethnic Pashtun population of the city, originally from north-west Pakistan. The MQM’s base is provided by the Mohajirs, an ethnic grouping which emigrated from northern India during partition. British diplomats have been active behind the scenes, pressuring all sides to quell the violence, which is crippling Pakistan’s economic heart. The MQM, the ANP and Karachi’s business community have in recent days called for the army to intervene, with at least 1,000 people falling prey to the tit-for-tat killings in the city since the start of the year – easily eclipsing the violence by religious extremists across the rest of the country. However, the PPP is resisting, fearing that deployment of the army could eventually topple its three-year-old government and Pakistan’s latest, western-backed, experiment with democracy. The paramilitary units deployed, the Rangers, come under civilian control. Paramilitary forces found torture chambers and arms caches during raids in the Lyari district on Sunday. One dank basement shown to journalists contained a chair, with handcuffs and padlocks attached. Two earlier attempts to enter Lyari failed. Lyari is the stronghold of the PPP. . The gangs usually fail to capture rival gang members, taking out their anger instead on anyone from the opposite ethnic group, with many victims innocent bystanders abducted or killed. The gangs have added to the public torment by taping the torture sessions and posting them on YouTube, and passing them on from phone to phone. Some of the corpses turning up in sacks have notes pinned to them saying: “Do you want war or peace?” and “Have you had enough or do you want more?” “This is a battle between maniacs. They have no moral values,” said a senior Karachi police officer, Naeem Ahmed Shaikh. “We have received tortured bodies from many areas of Karachi.” Another senior security official in Karachi said: “The MQM doesn’t want to share the cake. But the others want their slice.” Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari Saeed Shah guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media The moment Hurricane Irene was sweeping through New York, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was calling for additional spending cuts before funding disaster relief. The Texas congressman doubled down comments he made Friday that the nation was better off in the 1900s, before the existence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “Congressman, you would really at this point, do away with FEMA and all the things it’s doing to help hundreds of thousands of people along the East Coast?” Fox News Chris Wallace asked Paul. “Have you ever read the reports that came out of New Orleans [after Hurricane Katrina]?” Paul laughed. “It’s a system of bureaucratic central economic planning, which is a policy that is deeply flawed.” “So, no. You don’t get rid of something like that in one day… I propose we save a billion dollars from overseas war mongering, bring half of that home, put it against the deficit and yes, tide people over until we come to our senses and realize that FEMA has been around since 1978. It has one of the worst reputations for a bureaucracy ever.” “I assume if the Obama administration comes and asks for a emergency funding bill for FEMA, you’re a definite no?” Wallace pressed. “Where would the money come from?” Paul said, again laughing. “We don’t have any money… I would consider what I just said. I have precise beliefs in what we should do and I want to transition out of dependency on the federal governent.” “But I would say, ‘Yes, Obama you want a billion dollars? Quit that war in Libya that is undeclared and unconstitutional. Bring those troops home, save two billion dollars. Put a billion against the deficit and tide our people over.’” He continued: “We’ve conditioned our people that FEMA will take care of us and everything will be OK. But you try to make these programs work the best you can. You can’t just keep saying, ‘Oh, they need money.’ We’re out of money. The country is bankrupt.”
Continue reading …Will Rips Irene Hype: Journalism ‘Shouldn’t Contribute to the Manufacture of Synthetic Hysteria’
August 28, 2011 No Comment
With Irene downgraded to a tropical storm, it is clear that this weather event has become another example of America's media hyping every potential crisis into a full-blown calamity before the fact. Observing such was George Will on ABC's “This Week” Sunday who told his fellow panelists, “Whatever else you want to say about journalism, it shouldn’t subtract from the nation’s understanding and it certainly shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria that is so much a part of modern life” (video follows with transcript and commentary): JAKE TAPPER, HOST: George, you think we’re making too big a deal of all this. GEORGE WILL: I have a home on South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast. I know that the Atlantic Ocean generates hurricanes, and they can be dangerous and unpredictable. That said, this too must be said: Florence Nightingale said, “Whatever else you can say about hospitals, they shouldn’t make their patients sicker.” And whatever else you want to say about journalism, it shouldn’t subtract from the nation’s understanding and it certainly shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria that is so much a part of modern life. And I think we may have done so with regard to this tropical storm as it now seems to be. When you think about the unnecessary panic and fear ginned up by the media over what indeed turned into a tropical storm before it hit Manhattan, one has to wonder how much time and money was wasted in preparing for the hyped worst case scenario that fortunately never transpired. Reminds you of 2009's predicted swine flu pandemic. But maybe far more importantly, this event shows us how our current computer models can't accurately predict either the size, strength, or precise location of a hurricane within hours of it making landfall. Yet we're supposed to radically change our entire economy over what computer models are forecasting regarding the impact carbon dioxide theoretically will have on the climate decades out. We've just witnessed how media hype and hysteria concerning weather misleads the nation on events happening in days if not hours. Shouldn't we be extraordinarily dubious about any calamity these same folks predict well into the future?
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Scotland yard film shows officers knocked down by high-speed car in Waltham Forest, north London A second man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after two police officers were hit by a car while chasing looters during the recent riots in England. The 28-year-old was taken to a London police station where he is being kept in custody. Scotland Yard released CCTV footage of the incident, which showed the officers being hit by a green Citroën, which was driven at them at speed in Waltham Forest, north-east London, as they dealt with reports of a group looting a clothing store at about 1am on 8 August. A Scotland Yard spokesman said the car was driven at the policemen, both of whom are both based at Paddington Green police station, in Royston Avenue as they attended the incident at the Aristocrats shop in Chingford Mount Road. The footage shows the car appearing at high speed and knocking two officers to the ground. One suffered knee and leg injuries, and the other received shoulder injuries. They were both taken to hospital and are now recovering at home. The spokesman said one officer was hit so hard that some of his body armour came off and could be seen lying in the middle of the road after the collision. A 31-year-old man has already been arrested and bailed in connection with the incident. UK riots London Police guardian.co.uk
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Sometimes I have to wonder what Florida Gov. Rick Scott is smoking . Maybe it’s time we started drug-testing politicians! TALLAHASSEE — Since the state began testing welfare applicants for drugs in July, about 2 percent have tested positive, preliminary data shows. enlarge Where does Gov. Rick Scott get all his crazy ideas about poor people? Ninety-six percent proved to be drug free — leaving the state on the hook to reimburse the cost of their tests. The initiative may save the state a few dollars anyway, bearing out one of Gov. Rick Scott’s arguments for implementing it. But the low test fail-rate undercuts another of his arguments: that people on welfare are more likely to use drugs. At Scott’s urging, the Legislature implemented the new requirement earlier this year that applicants for temporary cash assistance pass a drug test before collecting any benefits. The law, which took effect July 1, requires applicants to pay for their own drug tests. Those who test drug-free are reimbursed by the state, and those who fail cannot receive benefits for a year. Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free. That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month’s worth of rejected applicants. The savings assume that 20 to 30 people — 2 percent of 1,000 to 1,500 tested — fail the drug test every month. On average, a welfare recipient costs the state $134 in monthly benefits, which the rejected applicants won’t get, saving the state $2,680-$3,350 per month. But since one failed test disqualifies an applicant for a full year’s worth of benefits, the state could save $32,200-$48,200 annually on the applicants rejected in a single month. Net savings to the state — $3,400 to $8,200 annually on one month’s worth of rejected applicants. Over 12 months, the money saved on all rejected applicants would add up to $40,800-$98,400 for the cash assistance program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year. Actual savings will vary, however, since not all of the applicants denied benefits might have actually collected them for the full year. Under certain circumstances, applicants who failed their drug test can reapply for benefits after six months. More than once, Scott has said publicly that people on welfare use drugs at a higher rate than the general population. The 2 percent test fail rate seen by DCF, however, does not bear that out.
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The employees of the company that is a part-owner of NBC and MSNBC are the biggest donors to President Obama's reelection campaign. Chris Moody of Yahoo News reported Friday: Employees at Comcast, the nation's largest Internet provider and the parent company to NBC Universal, donated more money to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fund-raising committee for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, than employees at any other organization, according to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics. Comcast workers donated almost $200,000 this year to the fund, which raised nearly $40 million through the end of June, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. Obama has held two fundraisers hosted by Comcast's top brass in recent months, the first at the home of the company's vice president David Cohen in Philadelphia, and another at Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts' summer home in Martha's Vineyard. As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday: In a convoy of black SUVs, followed by the long tail of the Washington press corps, the vacationing President Obama went out of his way Sunday to stop by the house of a friend on Martha's Vineyard. Obama and close aide Valerie Jarrett were hosted by Brian and Aileen Roberts at their multimillion-dollar North Shore mansion, a property situated off a rutted dirt road in an exclusive neighborhood. Billionaire Dirk Ziff, investment advisor Steven Rattner, and Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post, also have houses there looking out over the gorgeous Vineyard Sound. If you thought the Commander-in-Chief was just on the Vineyard to play golf, think again. But Comcast isn't the only media outlet whose employees are funding the President's reelection campaign. According to Open Secrets, Disney employees – which includes ABC and ESPN – have contributed $84,600. Time Warner employees – which includes Time magazine, TBS, HBO, and CNN – have donated $81.500. Add it all up, and employees of some of America's leading media outlets are giving a huge amount of money to get Barack Obama reelected. Color me astonishingly unsurprised.
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President Cristina Kirchner’s running mate for October’s election uses a Fender Telecaster guitar to get his message across He thunders around Buenos Aires on a Harley-Davidson and likes nothing better than strapping on a Fender Telecaster guitar to jam with famous musicians. Despite appearances, however, Amado Boudou is Argentina’s 47-year-old economy minister – and looks set to be voted the country’s first rock’n’roll vice-president in the general elections this October. The Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, took the country by surprise two months ago when she handpicked Boudou, often criticised for his lifestyle, as her running mate. But the Fernandez-Boudou formula trounced the opposition, taking 50% of the vote in national primaries this month, against a mere 12% for runner-up Ricardo Alfonsin of the Radical party. “Rock helps me communicate directly with the people because rock doesn’t lie, and people are fed up with lying politicians,” said Boudou, whose campaign trail with the famous Argentinian band Mancha de Rolando in tow resembles a rock tour more than election politics. Boudou astonished his free-market colleagues at the conservative Cema economics university where he once taught by espousing the progressive policies introduced in 2003 by the then-president Nestor Kirchner, the current president’s former husband who died suddenly of a heart attack last year. Nestor Kirchner salvaged Argentina from its devastating 2002 financial crisis by boldly increasing government spending while restructuring a gargantuan foreign debt without the help of the IMF. Boudou considers his controversial break with the IMF in 2005 as the key to Argentina’s consumption-based recovery. He likes to accompany that message with crashing guitar chords on his current election tour. “Mister banker, give me back my money!” he sings to the crowds who turn up at his political rallies. “We’re on tour with Amado and he’s a great musician,” said Manuel Quieto, the leader of Mancha de Rolando, a politically aware band that was riding high on a long string of hits before joining Boudou’s campaign. Quieto said he supports Boudou’s brand of progressive economics. “Calm down mini-fascists,” Quieto posted on his Facebook wall recently. “Your property is not at risk!” Boudou scoffs at critics who see the last eight years of uninterrupted growth threatened in the medium term by a 25% inflation rate. “In the medium or long term we’ll all be dead,” Boudou said. “Let’s deal with the problems at hand.” These include improved but still worrying poverty and unemployment indices, for which Kirchner has implemented an ambitious social spending programme. It has been financed in part by the nationalisation of $30bn (£18bn) from private pension funds engineered by Boudou in 2008. Not everyone is pleased by Boudou’s rock’n’roll antics. “We want a minister, not a guitar player. The subsistence of our country is at risk,” once critic wrote in a Twitter message that angered the candidate this month. “You must live in another country, there’s no risk for Argentina,” Boudou tweeted back. How does president Kirchner feel about her sidekick’s guitar-slinging style? “Her husband Nestor Kirchner had a rocker attitude when he took the unexpected course of breaking with the IMF,” said Boudou. “She urges me to be myself.” Argentina Cristina Kirchner Uki Goni guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Israeli activists squat empty Jerusalem buildings to protest over costly housing
August 28, 2011 No Comment
Social justice campaigners unveil ‘People’s House’ in abandoned state-owned building and call for ‘national squatting movement’ Social justice activists have embarked on a series of lightning squats of unoccupied buildings as part of a six-week protest against rising rents and house prices in Israel. The protesters, who aim to “inspire a national squatting movement”, unveiled Jerusalem’s first “People’s House” on Saturday night, occupying an abandoned state-owned building close to prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s official residence, where several thousand demonstrators called for social justice and better living standards. The four storey building in the city centre has been empty for 15 years, say demonstrators. It is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which was established by Zionists more than a century ago to buy up land in Palestine. Plans to turn it into a hotel more than a decade ago never came to fruition. A coalition of activists broke in through a back window on Friday, cleared away rubble and set about transforming the interior in anticipation of Saturday night’s launch. About 200 Israelis came to celebrate the building’s occupation on Saturday night, according to the organisers. The flicker of hundreds of candles lit up poems inspired by the social justice protests which were daubed in white paint on the walls. Esther Witt, one of the activists behind the initiative, said the political statement was designed to put pressure on the government to deal with state-owned buildings that stand empty and encourage the thousands of foreign owners of “ghost apartments” in Israel to rent them out. “We’re trying to make a point – this building could easily house four families but it has stood empty for 15 years,” said Witt, a special needs teaching assistant and mother of two young children. “We want those people who own apartments in Israel but only come to the country for two weeks a year to feel that if they leave their apartment empty, it’ll be squatted, and so it’s in everyone’s interest if they rent them out instead.” The takeover of the building followed two similar “guerrilla occupations” in Tel Aviv. Last Monday, dozens of housing protesters occupied a building owned by the Tel Aviv Municipality before being evicted by police the next morning. And on Friday afternoon, protesters broke into and briefly occupied another mainly empty municipal building in the city, hanging protest signs on its exterior and leaving before police arrived. Discontent with spiralling rents, high house prices, the exorbitant costs of education and raising children, as well as a range of other social issues, has seen a national social justice movement blossom since the first “tent city” protest in Tel Aviv on 14 July. Mass rallies have been held in cities and towns across Israel since then, with an estimated 300,000 people taking to the streets on 6 August in the largest demonstrations over social issues seen in the country. Unimpressed by the government’s establishment of a committee of experts to consider the demands, activists are calling for a “million-man” march in 50 cities next Saturday. However, demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and a handful of other towns and cities on Saturday night saw a markedly lower turnout than in previous protests, with about 20,000 Israelis taking part, according to local media reports. Protests planned for last weekend were cancelled after terrorist attacks hit the south of the country, and an anticipated Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN threatens to eclipse the sizable media coverage and publicity that the demonstrators have garnered so far. Israel Binyamin Netanyahu Protest guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sen. Heller Pretends GOP Doesn’t Want to End Medicare in Weekly Address – Asks Dems to Quit Using ‘Scare Tactics’
August 28, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Once again, the Republicans prove they’re living in upside down land with the remarks in their Weekly Address. This week it was Sen. John Ensign’s replacement in Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller giving their talking points for the week. After rattling off a list of their supposed remedies for “job creation” in the United States – deregulation, a balanced budget amendment, lowering taxes on corporations, attacking unions and card check — Heller asks that the Congressional Democrats quit using “scare tactics” on senior citizens by daring to point out that Republicans would like to get rid of Medicare and Social Security. A charge Heller denies naturally, who claims instead they really want to “save” them for future generations. By saving them he means of course privatizing them and dismantling our social safety nets by putting senior citizens at the mercy of Wall Street and the private insurance industry. You know an attack ad like the ones the Democrats used after the Republicans all voted for Paul Ryan’s budget, showing him throwing grandma off of a cliff, are working when we’ve got Republicans like Heller basically begging them to stop running them as he just did here. The best thing they can do is to ignore his advice and let the public know they plan on defending those programs and strengthening them such as Sen. Bernie Sanders just proposed . Transcript via the LA Times below the fold. Hi, I’m Senator Dean Heller from the great state of Nevada. Americans have had to endure great hardships over the past few years. This recession has robbed millions of people of their jobs, their homes and their sense of security. No state has been hit harder than Nevada. My state has the unfortunate distinction of leading the nation in unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies. There is no question that the status quo of dysfunctional government must end. People from all over the country are struggling just to get by and are desperate for real solutions. Unfortunately, job creation and economic growth has taken a back seat to political posturing and grandstanding in Washington. It is clear that the approach of this administration and its supporters have taken for economic recovery has failed miserably. Out of control spending, a healthcare law that no one can afford, and a seemingly endless…. …stream of regulations are crippling employers, stifling economic growth and killing jobs. Threats of a cap-and-trade bill that will cause energy costs to skyrocket, and efforts to pass card check legislation that would take away American workers’ rights to a secret ballot are more of the same. Instead of fighting for measures that create and protect jobs, this administration has created more government that continues to impede economic growth at every turn. To paraphrase one of the business leaders in my state, this president and his policies have been a big wet blanket on our economy. The American public and businesses alike are waiting on a plan that can plant the Nevada Republican Senator Dean Hellerseeds of economic growth and bolster job creation. I believe our best days are still ahead, but we need to change course now. Let’s pass a balanced budget amendment to force the federal government to live within its means, repeal the president’s small-business-killing healthcare law, open up our country to energy exploration and reverse the regulations that are tying the hands of entrepreneurs across America. We can help hasten an economic recovery by embracing pro-growth policies that place more money in the pockets of Americans. At the same time, we should be assisting those who have lost their jobs and need help. These are all the things that both this administration and Congress could be doing immediately to boost economic recovery. Then we should take the aggressive steps of reforming our tax code, make it simpler for individuals and employers. Cut out the special interest loopholes while reducing the overall tax burden on all Americans. Instead of looking for new ways to tax the American public, we should make our tax code more competitive and provide businesses the stability they need to grow and create jobs. The continual threat of tax increases feeds the uncertainty that serves as an impediment to economic growth. Finally, members of Congress should stop using scare tactics against our nation’s seniors. Let’s stop the lies about who wants to end Medicare or eliminate Social Security and fix both programs now. Every member of Congress knows these programs are unsustainable in their current state. They will not be around for our generation or the next unless Congress takes the necessary steps to strengthen these programs. They can be fixed, but the lies have to stop. Nobody is proposing that we end Medicare or Social Security. If some in Washington would stop campaigning long enough to do their jobs we could fix both and ensure their existence for generations to come. Over the past few weeks I have been traveling around my state, speaking with Nevadans. The message is clear, it is time for both Democrats and Republicans to come together, put our differences aside so that we can solve our nation’s problems, and deliver the solutions the American people are asking for. Let’s give the American people a government that works for them. Removing impediments to job creation will get Americans working again and ensure our children and grandchildren have a brighter future. I’m excited about where we can be in a year, two years, 20years from now, but we must seize this opportunity—this moment— to make a change in the way our government does business. It’s time to turn the power back to the people and jump-start our great country like never before. Thank you for your time. May God continue to bless America.
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