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Canada's double standards

Yves Engler
The Electronic Intifada
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:41 UTC
illegal israeli settlement
© ActiveStills
The Canadian tax system subsidizes Israel's illegal settlements.
Canada's tax system currently subsidizes Israeli settlements that Ottawa deems illegal, however, the Conservative government says there's nothing that can be done about it.

In June of last year, Guelph activist Dan Maitland emailed Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon concerning Canada Park, a Jewish National Fund of Canada initiative built on land Israel occupied after the June 1967 War. Three Palestinian villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) were demolished to make way for the park.

A few weeks ago Maitland received a reply from Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, who refused to discuss the particulars of the case but provided "general information about registered charities and the occupied territories." Ashfield wrote that "the fact that charitable activities take place in the occupied territories is not a barrier to acquiring or maintaining charitable status."

This means Canadian organizations can openly fundraise for settlements Ottawa (officially) deems illegal under international law and get the government to pay up to a third of the cost through tax credits for donations. To justify the government's position, Ashfield cited a September 2002 Federal Court of Appeal case (Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel v. Minister of National Revenue), which reversed the Canadian Revenue Agency's previous position.
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Handcuffs

"Doomsday Seed Vault" - Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don't?

F. William Engdahl
The People's Voice
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:06 UTC
Image
© Unknown
One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can't be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world's richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest 'transparent' private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates' foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations' World Health Organization. So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world's most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

Image
© Unknown
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Gear

Intelligence Briefs or Disinformation? How to Tell the Difference

Philip Brennan
philipbrennan.net
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:56 UTC
intel graphic
© Philip Brennan
With certain people within my circle of contacts being suckered by Sorcha Faal / EU Times articles, I feel it is time to deal with the whole messy subject of intelligence sources.

Before I go into this subject in any great depth, I would first like to deal with Sorcha Faal, otherwise known as David Booth of the CIA. David Booth works within the Central Intelligence Agency in COINTELPRO. Other western intelligence agencies known for using COINTELPRO methods include MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and the think-tank, DEMOS. To be quite blunt, all intelligence agencies have their own COINTELPRO departments.

Sorcha Faal does not exist. There is no "spokesperson" within the GRU named Sorcha Faal. Intelligence agencies rarely make public statements, and when they do, it is always through either someone in the highest echelons of the organisation or a government minister with the correct clearances, and never a mere "spokesperson".

Do leaks ever happen through lesser agents? Yes, but those agents if caught are dealt with very strictly, usually with "Holy Orders" to keep their traps shut. By rights, if "Sorcha Faal" was really working within the GRU, she would have been silenced by now. Permanently.

It appears that David Booth is a major thorn in the side of the Alternative Intelligence Community, as well as the Patriot and Truth Movements. This is a gross understatement. Over the past week or two I have had to take aside many people and let them in on the whole Sorcha Faal thing.
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Radar

Obama to ease travel restrictions to Cuba, allow more U.S. cash to island

Lesley Clark
Miami Herald
Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:13 UTC
Image
© Alan Diaz /Associated Press
Passengers wait in line to check in as they prepare to travel to Cuba at Miami International Airport in Miami
Washington -- The Obama administration Friday said it will allow for more U.S. travel to Cuba, making it easier for schools, churches and cultural groups to visit the island.

A senior Obama official told The Miami Herald the much-expected move to expand cultural, religious and educational travel to Cuba is part of the administration's continuing ''effort to support the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their own future.

President Barack Obama is also restoring the amount of money ($2,000) that can be sent to nonfamily members to the level they were at during part of the Clinton and Bush administrations. There will be a quarterly limit on the amount that any American can send: $500 per quarter to ''support private economic activity.''

The administration also will restore the broader ''people-to-people'' category of travel, which allows ''purposeful'' visits to increase contacts between U.S. and Cuban citizens.
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Cult

Psychopathically Misogynistic Vatican: Ordination of female priests as bad as paedophilia


UK Independent
Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:25 UTC
Image
The Vatican has classified the "attempted ordination" of women as one of the most serious crimes a Catholic priest can commit, putting it on a par with paedophilia, heresy and desecrating the Sacrament.

Anyone found to be ordaining women will be automatically excommunicated under the new rules.

The Vatican also announced new laws to tackle paedophilia, doubling the church's statute of limitations to 20 years and allowing bishops to sack priests without having to resort to a full canonical trial.
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Bad Guys

The New Feudalism


The Daily Bell
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:07 UTC
TSA agent

TSA agent
TSA Pays Off In Breast Exposure Suit ... Texas woman, 24, receives "nominal" settlement ... The woman who sued the Transportation Security Administration after her breasts were exposed during a frisking at a Texas airport will receive a "nominal" payment from the government as part of a legal settlement ... The settlement was disclosed in documents filed last week in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, where Lynsie Murley last year filed a lawsuit accusing the TSA of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress in connection with the May 2008 incident at the Corpus Christi airport. - Smoking Gun

Dominant Social Theme: Fairness is the least that can be expected.

Free-Market Analysis: A new feudalism is being born. It is a quite deliberate effort of the power elite in our view, but people don't notice it - or haven't verbalized it - because it is difficult to analyze something when one is in the middle of it. But the feudal evolution is surely occurring. We can see its signature in the article above but there are many other signs.

Feudalism's "flourishing" or time-span was between ninth and 15th century, apparently. It was not a formal system but a sociopolitical evolution of relationships between various power nexuses. Wikipedia describes feudalism as "a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. There is also a broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), that includes not only warrior nobility but the peasantry bonds of manorialism, sometimes referred to as a 'feudal society.'"

The evolution of the new feudalism can be seen in various ways, including the erosion of property rights for the middle class and the increasing molding of employment around the vast portfolios of the powers-that-be. (Lawyers and accountants are in high-demand.) The Western middle classes - especially in America where they have been the most vital - are under sustained attack. Taxes, inflation and unemployment are signatures of such a society, along with expansive regulations.
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USA

9-Year-Old Boy Has Disney World Trip Ruined After US Immigration Rules Him a Threat


The Telegraph, UK
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:56 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
US President seen inside glass bubble
A nine-year-old boy's dream trip to Disney World was ruined when US immigration officials ruled he was a threat.

Civil servants Kathy and Edward Francis planned to surprise their grandson Micah Strachan with the holiday of a lifetime to Florida in February.

They were only going to tell Micah about it when they took him to the airport on February 19 for the flight to the US.

They had already spent more than £1,500 on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months.

But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US.

They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Micah was born in Britain and has lived in Middlesex all his life with his mum Claudia Lewis.

He holds a South African passport because his grandparents Kathy and Edward, who have lived and worked in Britain since 1990, only got him a South African passport.
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Vader

Genetic Soldiers? Advisory Group Urges Pentagon To Map Genes Of All Personnel

Dan Froomkin
Huffington Post
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:12 UTC
Image
© unknown

It sounds like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel, but it's not.

A new report from a secretive, highly influential group of scientists is urging the Department of Defense to begin collecting and mapping the full genome of all military personnel -- a move that could well give the Pentagon the ability to select for certain genetic predispositions.

Noting the dramatic decrease in the cost of fully mapping individuals' genomes, the report suggests that some traits relevant to war-fighting "are likely to have a strong genetic component, for which better understanding may lead to improved military capabilities."
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Bizarro Earth

US - Obama official: MLK would love our wars!

Justin Elliot
Salon.com
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:03 UTC
Image
© Library of Congress/Defense.gov
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Right: Jeh C. Johnson.
A top Pentagon official says the antiwar civil rights leader would support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

(UPDATED)With Martin Luther King Jr. Day right around the corner, attempts to misuse and/or whitewash his legacy are to be expected, particularly on the right.

But this, from Defense Department general counsel Jeh Johnson, is brazen even in the annals of misappropriations of King:
Washington, Jan. 13, 2011 - If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he understand why the United States is at war?

Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department's general counsel, posed that question at today's Pentagon commemoration of King's legacy.

In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today's wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner's teachings.

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack," he said.
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Handcuffs

Britain's anti-terror control orders condemned as 'trademark of despots'


Uk Guardian
Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:44 UTC
Image
© Leon Neal/AFP
Theresa May, the home secretary, is believed to be sympathetic towards keeping control orders in some form.
Human rights groups across the world attack one of the 'most serious violations' of natural justice in developed democracies

A powerful coalition of human rights groups has intensified pressure on the government to abandon its use of control orders, as ministers continue to wrangle over whether to scrap the controversial counter-terrorism measure.

An international alliance of civil liberties organisations has united to condemn the UK for presiding over one of the "most serious violations" of natural justice in any developed democracy.

Campaigners from the Middle East, North and South America, Africa and Europe - including the UK human rights group Liberty - have signed a statement condemning punishment without charge or trial as an affront to democratic values. Among the signatories are the American Civil Liberties Union, Canadian Civil Liberties Union, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Argentina's Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and South Africa's Legal Resources Centre.
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