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January 9, 2015

France: Terrorists killed, hostages freed at Paris supermarket and in print shop

Police stormed a kosher supermarket on the eastern edge of Paris on Friday, killing a gunman linked to the killing of a policewoman and a deadly attack on a French satirical newspaper and freeing multiple hostages.

The hours-long standoff ended amid gunshots and an explosion near the supermarket Friday evening in Paris at the same time explosions and smoke rattled a small printing warehouse northeast of the city where the two brothers suspected in the Wednesday shooting of Charlie Hebdo were holed up in a second hostage standoff in France.

The two terrorist brothers — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34 — were also killed in the shootout with police, and the hostage they had taken was freed, police said.

Read more: Gunman killed, hostages freed at Paris supermarket

France: 'Je Suis Charlie' Message Goes Viral After Paris Attack - by Leanne Itallie

Messages of condolence, outrage and defiance over the Paris terrorist attack on a newspaper office spread quickly around the world Wednesday with thousands of people taking to the streets to protest the killings and using the slogan "Je Suis Charlie" on social media.

Many who poured into Place de la Republique in eastern Paris near the site of Wednesday's noontime attack waved papers, pencils and pens. Journalists led the march but most in the crowd weren't from the media world, expressing solidarity and support of freedom of speech.

Similar gatherings, including some silent vigils, took place at London's Trafalgar Square, in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Amsterdam, in Madrid, Brussels, Nice and elsewhere.

"No matter what a journalist or magazine has to say, even if it is not what the majority of people think, they still have the right to say it without feeling in danger, which is the case today," said Alice Blanc, a London student who is originally from Paris and was among those in the London crowd, estimated in the hundreds.

Online, the declaration "Je Suis Charlie," or "I Am Charlie," replaced profile pictures on Facebook while Twitter users showed themselves with the slogan on signs with words of support for the 12 victims who were killed at Charlie Hebdo, a weekly newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

The "Je Suis Charlie" slogan grew into a trending hashtag on Twitter and spread to Instagram, along with an image of a machine gun with the words "Ceci n'est pas une religion," or "This is not a religion."

One user on Instagram sent out a simple black-and-white drawing of the Eiffel Tower with the message: "Pray for Paris." Another wrote: "Islam is a beautiful religion. This is not what we see on TV. Terrorists are not real Muslims. #IamCharlie."

Masked gunmen methodically killed the 12 people, including the newspaper's editor, as they shouted "Allahu akbar!" ? or "Allah is the greatest" ? while firing, then fleeing in a car.

Read more: 'Je Suis Charlie' Message Goes Viral After Paris Attack - ABC News

January 7, 2015

France: Paris massacre - Deranged radical Muslim terrorists - Islamophobia

Killing in the name of Allah
Today's Paris terrorist attack by deranged radical Muslim terrorists will unfortunately only increase Islamophobia in most "Democratic countries" around the world and strengthen nationalistic right-wing politicians like Geert Wilders in Holland, Marie Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in Britain or movements like Pegida in Germany or the US Tea-Party.

This was another sad event for humanity and must be condemned in the strongest terms possible by everyone, including Muslim and Secular leaders, without any if's of but's.

Almere Digest

January 5, 2015

Hungary takes lead in EU with "People Power" street protests - "Power that needs to be copied around Europe"

They say they are demonstrating for democracy and against poverty. Thousands of Hungarians have staged an anti-government rally in Budapest, piling further pressure on Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

His conservative Fidesz party won a new term with a two-thirds majority last year.

But its support has waned amid protests by civic groups. “Everyone is in a difficult situation,” one demonstrator told euronews.

“They could be fired from work, with no contracts for their company and no chance to bid for public contracts.”
Perceived political corruption was denounced by many taking part.“The civil organisations say they don’t want to establish a political party because the parties have discredited themselves,” a woman told us.
“The people do not trust them.”

Accused of authoritarianism and getting too close to Russia, the premier has already been forced to back down from plans to tax Internet use.

 Read more: People power in Hungary as protesters stage huge anti-government rally | euronews, world news

The future of Europe - Navel Staring European Politicians - Mrs Merkel the only exception with vision

Mrs. Merkel - a true European visionary with political skills
An Observer editorial notes: "Seventy years after the founders of modern Europe set out to bring stability, unity and prosperity to a war-ravaged continent, Europe and its principal political manifestation, the European Union, face a renewed, potentially defining struggle against the re-energised forces of internal division and fragmentation and external hostility and encroachment.

The scale of this challenge has yet to be fully appreciated. Its outcome is wholly uncertain. In consequence, 2015 may prove a fateful year for all the peoples of Europe.

The challenge comprises many elements, chief of which is whether the politics of austerity will be replaced by a more flexible, people-friendly economic regimen. Austerity, mainly in the form of public spending cuts and attempted deficit reduction, has wrought huge human and social damage. One key measure of pain is unemployment. In Spain, joblessness stands at around 23%. In Greece, the figure is 25%. In some areas of France and Italy, youth unemployment topped 40% at its highest point. Across the EU in 2013, 26 million people were unemployed, or one in eight of all workers. Many millions more are underemployed.

Austerity has caused tremendous political as well as social strain. The tough line dictated by chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who will arrive in London this week, is increasingly resented and there are clear signs of push-back. France’s new prime minister, Manuel Valls, introduced a €30bn reform package designed to boost business and jobs. His boss, President François Hollande, an old-school socialist, openly reviles Merkel’s “neoliberal” policy and its main underpinning, the European stability pact governing national budgets.

“To reform is to affirm our priorities, while refusing austerity,” Valls declared. Another newcomer, Italian premier Matteo Renzi, described as “Merkel’s most dangerous rival”, also links structural reform to a loosening of EU rules, notably Merkel’s holy grail, the 2012 fiscal pact. In November, both countries won budget reprieves from the European commission.

Still the only European leader who can credibly claim international statesman stature, Merkel, who is coming to London on Wednesday for talks with David Cameron on a range of issues, including the European economy, faces increasing criticism at home, not least from her centre-left vice-chancellor and coalition partner, Sigmar Gabriel. He argues the rise of right- and leftwing populism across Europe can only be checked by rapid economic improvements.


Nor can Merkel count on useful support from the new European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, or, more surprisingly, from Britain’s government, fellow champion of austerity and no friend to Hollande. In more skilful hands, David Cameron’s calls for EU reform might have meshed well with German priorities for sound money and stability, but Cameron has recklessly squandered European alliances and opportunities. In any case, he may soon be out of office.

While recent indicators suggest the worst of the recession is over, the full extent of the political fallout at grassroots level across Europe is only now becoming apparent. Elections this year in Greece, Spain, the UK, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Portugal and Estonia will provide further proof of the fragmentation of postwar consensus politics as erstwhile minority parties come to the fore.

In Britain, Ukip, the Greens and the Scottish Nationalists are aiming to usurp the traditional centre-left and centre-right parties. Likewise in Greece and Spain, it seems the centre cannot hold against a surge in support for the populist, anti-austerity leftwing insurgents of Syriza and Podemos respectively. In Sweden, the two mainstream parties, desperate to keep the far-right Sweden Democrats out of government, conspired to form a Merkel-style grand coalition, thereby effectively denying voters real choice. Finland faces a similar dilemma over its hard-right, anti-immigrant party.

Last year’s European parliament elections revealed unprecedented, pan-European dissatisfaction with politics as usual, but Brussels took scant notice, installing Juncker, a quintessential establishment figure, and creating a centrist coalition in parliament. Out of touch hardly describes such complacent behaviour. The significance of the rise of Europe’s new parties can no longer be denied, nor can they be dismissed as mere, temporary protest movements.

Yet Europe’s new politics, organic in nature and fast evolving, cannot be easily quantified or defined. Some, such as the Pegida demonstrators in Germany, are motivated by racist and anti-Muslim views. Merkel was entirely right last week to condemn them. But a new poll showed one in eight Germans sympathises with Pegida. Such views have a more pernicious, formal presence on Germany’s political stage in the shape of the anti-euro, anti-foreigner Alternative für Deutschland, which is eclipsing the old Free Democrats in the way Ukip may eclipse Britain’s Liberal Democrats.

In each country, new parties produce new imponderables. In Greece, for example, the growth of leftwing radicalism is in part a response to the advancing neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn. In the case of some of Europe’s secessionists, meanwhile, self-determination and economic justice have sometimes been confused with an unattractive, exclusionary nationalism. There is one constant: everywhere, it seems, immigration is an issue of concern.

The overall effect of these powerful and often conflicting currents is plain: in prospect is an unstable landscape of weak and fragile national governments, escalating friction over EU policies, intensifying north-south eurozone strains and a growing inability to present a united European front to the world.

A united front is required more than ever, as Europe faces the triple challenge of mass movements of people, Russian aggression and Islamist extremism. Almost alone among Europe’s leaders, Merkel continues bravely to make the case for accepting refugees from conflict in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. But as the plight of asylum-seekers trapped on the Ezadeen, which arrived in Italy yesterday, again demonstrated, this is an enormous international problem.

Most European states, including Britain, have not begun to face up to their responsibilities in dealing with mass migration and tackling the roots of the religious extremism that often causes displacement.
After Vladimir Putin dismembered a European country by annexing Crimea,

 Europe enters 2015 lacking certainty, for the first time since the cold war, that its borders are secure. It was left to Merkel, again, to point out in November that Putin’s attempt to re-establish Soviet-era spheres of influence affects not only Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, but countries much closer to Europe’s heart, such as Serbia and Bosnia, and EU members Hungary and Slovakia.

Russia’s expansionist and anti-democratic outlook recalls the worst aspects of the legacy Europe fought to overcome after 1945. The struggle for a Europe whole, prosperous and free has now returned with a vengeance."

EU-Digest

January 2, 2015

Genetically Modified Foods could kill you but the culprits have "friends" in high places

There appears to be no question about the fact that the modified crops are designed to “handle” large doses of herbicide.

 Therefore it would only follow the GMO farmers are spraying their crops with more poison to fight off bugs, and the residue of these poisons can follow the food to the market and to your table.

 It’s possible we are all being slowly poisoned by crops that absorb sprayed poisons and may be eaten raw as a vegetable or even survive some cooking methods. One person, a laymen who has studied genetically modified foods a great deal says genetically modified corn causes colon and gastrointestinal problems because the corn sticks to the inside of the body.

One of the major concerns with genetically modified food is the eventual control of the food chain by a company such as Monsanto, who patents every seed modification they make. The implications of this are complex but sobering.

If Monsanto owns the rights to all seeds being planted, then no one can buy, use or plant any seeds without Monsanto’s express consent. The future failure of an entire seed chain could drastically reduce the availability of food and cause even more starvation in underdeveloped countries. There are even a group of conspiracy theorists who think a company like Monsanto could be used to severely limit food supply, resulting in the “culling” of millions of people worldwide.

I am not sure I buy in to this theory but with all that is going on in the world today, my mind is not closed to the “unbelievable” any more. It could even become illegal to use, plant, germinate, grow any seed that is not patented by a company such as Monsanto.

Their lawyer czars may have fashioned legislation that argues any seed not theirs could harm the seed or food chain, could contaminate it and therefore it should be illegal. Now, that may sound a little paranoid but you should pay attention to developments.

Washington and EU  lobbyists have huge capabilities. Regardless of whether modified food is harmful or could turn out to be harmful,  People have a right to know which foods are modified. Is that asking to much? We are supposed to be able to make free choices in this world, and the selection of which foods we eat is one of the most important.

Genetically modified foods are still to new for scientists to provide conclusive evidence of harm to humans. However, there are strong indications and factors that cause many scientists to believe some genetically modified food causes health problems in humans, including cancer.

Genetically modified food leaves a larger footprint in it’s aftermath, meaning the residue, the traces of it stay around in the body long after non-modified food is completely left the body. While genetically modified food must be labelled as such in Europe,

The US Food and Drug Administration in the United States not only does not require labeling, it does not require companies to even provide a list of their modified food, or to announce or send out notice there is a new modified food on the market. The Deputy Commissioner for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is Michael Taylor.

In the 1980’s Taylor was a lawyer for Monsanto and developed their food and drug defense against the government and any others who would question their practices.

For additional Information on GMO click here

The Netherlands: Finding a new job heads up list of Dutch New Year resolutions

Finding a new job is a new entrant in the top five Dutch New Year resolutions, according to research by financial services group ING. Losing weight remains top of the list with 13%, followed by less stress (9%) and doing more sport (7%). Finding a new job is in equal fourth place with taking more exercise – both on 5%.

However, despite the good intentions, just one in four people manage to keep their resolutions for an entire year. In addition, 22% of the 1,300 plus people polled by ING don’t make any New Year resolutions at all.

Almere-Digest
Finding a new job is a new entrant in the top five Dutch New Year resolutions, according to research by financial services group ING. Losing weight remains top of the list with 13%, followed by less stress (9%) and doing more sport (7%). Finding a new job is in equal fourth place with taking more exercise – both on 5%.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Finding a new job enters Dutch New Year resolution list http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/12/finding-a-new-job-is-new-in-top-dutch-new-year-resolution-list.php/