Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says President Barack Obama instructed administration officials to continue to be aggressive in their efforts to deal with Irene and its aftermath. (Aug. 28)
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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says President Barack Obama instructed administration officials to continue to be aggressive in their efforts to deal with Irene and its aftermath. (Aug. 28)
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Weather Channel viewers were blown away when a young fan dropped his shorts during their hurricane coverage. Via The Lead: Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 27/08/2011 22:26 Number of articles : 2
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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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Tour through the empty streets of Manhattan as residents hunker down for Hurricane Irene. (Aug. 28)
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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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BeetleCam is a remote-operated DSLR camera that moves about on a remote control car chassis. British photographers Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas created the device in order to take perilously close up photographs of African wildlife. via PetaPixel photos by Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Laughing Squid Discovery Date : 26/08/2011 19:27 Number of articles : 2
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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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Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When lawmakers in the United States Congress ridiculed and blasted Cuba for assuming the rotating presidency of the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament, it evoked the memory of another standoff in 1962, namely the Cuban Missile Crisis, and another political leader’s verbal tirade. At Cuba’s request, the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles on the island to prevent Washington from launching another armed invasion, like the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack. Cuba also wanted to guard against continued U.S. commando raids, economic sabotage and terrorist attacks. Upon learning of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy…
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