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Guilting the protesters: French central bank says 'Yellow vest' protests will slow economic growth

france closed shops
© Reuters Photo
A woman walks past a closed shop protected by wood panels near the Opera district during a national day of protest by the "yellow vests" movement in Paris, France, December 8, 2018.
The anti-government protests convulsing France will slow growth to close to a standstill in the final quarter, the central bank said on Monday, complicating President Emmanuel Macron's task of finding concessions to placate the "yellow vest" movement.

The Bank of France on Monday forecast the euro zone's number two economy would eke out growth of only 0.2 percent in the quarter from the previous three months, down from 0.4 percent in a previous estimate.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declined to give an estimate for 2018 growth but forecast the nationwide tumult would trim 0.1 percent of a point off of national output. His deputy projected growth would round out "closer to 1.5 percent".

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Info

Buckingham Palace terror suspect 'attacked police with samurai sword and left suicide note damning Queen to hellfire', jury hears

Mohiussunnath Chowdhury
© Julia Quenzler
Mohiussunnath Chowdhury appearing at the Old Bailey back in June.
An Uber driver drove at cops outside Buckingham Palace then tried to attack them with a samurai sword because he wanted to "be in paradise with Allah", a court heard.

Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 27, wrote a "martyrdom note" to his sister which said "the Queen and her soldiers will all be in hellfire" before his attack around 8.30pm on August 25, 2017, it is alleged.

He then swerved his car through cones outside the palace and as two police officers got out of a passing police van he brandished the sword and shouted "Allahu Akbar", jurors were told.

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Oil Well

Largest fracking induced earthquake in Lancashire, UK, comes just days after suspension lifted

Fracking lancashire earthquake

The exact location of the tremors, according to the British Geological Survey.
A tremor measuring 1.5 magnitude has forced Cuadrilla to halt fracking at the Lancashire site.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded a series of tremors this morning at the controversial fracking site at Preston New Road, Little Plumpton.

Nine tremors were detected at the site within 90 minutes this morning, with the latest tremor measuring a magnitude of 1.5 - three times the legal limit.

According to the BGS database, the 1.5 magnitude tremor is the largest detected at the site since monitoring began. It has been claimed the tremor was felt in the Blackpool area.

The nine tremors recorded today are also the most recorded at the site in a single day.

Comment: The citizens of Lancashire voted against fracking but the vote was overturned by local and national government powers. It remains to be seen what calamity needs to occur before people make a stand or forces the establishment to halt the process. Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: California Wildfires, Climate Change, And The Impossible Brexit


Handcuffs

Synagogue, pipeline were targeted by Ohioans arrested in terror plots, officials say

Damon Joseph, Elizabeth Lecron

Authorities said Damon Joseph, 21, planned to kill worshipers inside a Jewish synagogue in Toledo with an assault rifle. In a second case, Elizabeth Lecron, 23, is accused of purchasing bomb-making materials she intended to use to blow up a pipeline.
A synagogue and a Georgia pipeline were the targets of two Ohio residents arrested by federal authorities in separate investigations, officials said on Monday.

Authorities said Damon Joseph, 21, planned to kill worshipers inside a Jewish synagogue in Toledo with an assault rifle. In a second case, Elizabeth Lecron, 23, is accused of purchasing bomb-making materials she intended to use to blow up a pipeline.

Both arrests followed months long investigations in which clues, such as images of guns or words of support for mass murderers, were posted on social media.

The stark difference in Joseph and Lecron's targets shows the scope of the challenge for investigators, said Justin E. Herdman, US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

"It's not just one threat. It's across the spectrum," Herdman told CNN in an interview on Monday. "It's not just Islamic or anarchist or animal rights terrorism. It's everything."

Bad Guys

Leaked emails from Google employees show they sought to block Breitbart from ads over 'hate speech'

google police
© Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty
Emails leaked exclusively to Breitbart News reveal that a group of Google employees, with encouragement from the tech giant's director of monetization, began plotting the downfall of this website shortly after the 2016 election.

The group sought to strike at Breitbart News' revenue by kicking the site off Google's market-dominating ad services. Although their efforts ultimately failed, the discussion featured senior Google employees speaking frankly about their reasons for targeting the site. These included unfounded allegations of "hate speech" and "fake news."

In the leaked emails, Google employee Richard Zippel advised a fellow employee that Google would act against Breitbart News "at the site level" if sufficient examples of "hate" were found. This kicked off a concerted effort to find evidence of "hate speech" on Breitbart.
Google Breitbart email

NPC

'Trans Tyranny': West Virginian HS teacher fired for not using student's 'preferred pronoun'

Peter Vlaming

Peter Vlaming, fired teacher
The school board for West Point Public Schools voted unanimously on Thursday to approve the termination of a teacher at West Point High School who was at the center of a transgender controversy at the school.

Peter Vlaming, a French teacher at the school, was put on paid administrative leave on Oct. 31 for not using a student's preferred identity pronoun.

Several people, including Vlaming, spoke during the public hearing on Thursday.

Comment: Jordan Peterson has been proven correct yet again. As he testified to the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in 2016:
You may or may not know that I made some videos criticizing Bill C‑16 and a number of the policies surrounding it. I think the most egregious elements of the policies are that it requires compelled speech. The Ontario Human Rights Commission explicitly states that refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun, which are the pronouns I was objecting to, can be interpreted as harassment. That's explicitly defined in the relevant policies. I think that's appalling, first of all, because there hasn't been a piece of legislation that requires Canadians to utter a particular form of address that has particular ideological implications before, and I think it's a line we shouldn't cross.

The definition of identity that's enshrined in the surrounding policies is ill-defined, poorly thought through and also incorrect. It's incorrect in that identity is not and will never be something that people define subjectively because your identity is something you actually have to act out in the world as a set of procedural tools, which most people learn - and I'm being technical about this - between the ages of two and four. It's a fundamental human reality. It's well recognized by the relevant, say, developmental psychological authorities. The idea that identity is something you define purely subjectively is an idea without status as far as I'm concerned.

I also think it's unbelievably dangerous for us to move towards representing a social constructionist view of identity in our legal system. The social constructionist view insists that human identity is nothing but a consequence of socialization, and there's an inordinate amount of scientific evidence suggesting that that happens to not be the case. So the reason that this is being instantiated into law is because the people who are promoting that sort of perspective, or at least in part because the people promoting that sort of perspective, know perfectly well they've lost the battle completely on scientific grounds.
The American Conservative also reports more on Peter Vlaming's termination:
The teacher had been there for seven years. He did not "misgender" the student, as some have said. He simply refused to use a pronoun to refer to the student. He was trying to work around the policy, even calling the kid by the new masculine name the girl now uses. But that wasn't good enough for either the kid or the school.

There will be no compromises. You must comply in every way with this war on reality, or you're out. [...]

Eventually the US Supreme Court is going to have to make some kind of ruling on these transgender claims, which are not only a war on religious liberty, but more fundamentally a war on biological reality. Jordan Peterson, who is not a religious man, came to wide public notice after he refused to knuckle under to his university's transgender pronoun mandate. Unlike an American high school teacher, he had tenure. Maybe one day the Supreme Court will carve out protection for modern Galileos. As awful as he is, I am grateful that we have a president who appoints conservative judges. That's the only chance the Jordan Petersons and Peter Vlamings of the world have.

This is not a minor thing. This has to do with fundamental truth. As recently as a decade ago, if you had told people that the day was soon coming where a high school teacher in Virginia would be fired for refusing to say that a biological female was male, people would have accused you of being a hysteric.



Eye 1

Anti-Semitic material found in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting neighborhood

Hanukkah Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh Jewish semite
© Gene J. Puskar, AP
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers leads a gathering in Hanukkah songs after lighting a menorah outside the Tree of Life Synagogue on the first night of Hanukkah on Sunday in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh officials are investigating anti-Semitic pamphlets in city neighborhoods - including the area where a mass shooter targeted Jewish people in October, according to a Sunday statement.

Authorities said they are taking the pamphlets seriously and only identified Squirrel Hill, a predominately Jewish neighborhood and home to the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue.

"Such hate-filled material will not be tolerated in Pittsburgh - not by residents, City officials nor Law Enforcement," the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department said on Twitter.

Microscope 2

Casual xenophobia: Investor slammed on Twitter after saying Russia is "deadly plague"

plague
© Sputnik / Grigory Sysoev
A theatrical performance about a plague epidemic at Moscow's Kolomenskoye Museum Reserve.
Venture capitalist Matthew Ocko has been heavily criticised on Twitter for a tweet which suggested that anything connected to Russia was like a "deadly plague with no cure," and that it was best to "quarantine it."

A number of people who came across the message accused Ocko of, among other things, "genocidal rhetoric."


Comment: Ocko is just another sorry example of people who, lacking their critical faculties, buy into government propaganda and support some of the most insidious ideologies in the process. It's notable that Twitter are quick in banning commentators on such issues as the proven biological differences in gender, as well as a variety of other well founded viewpoints, and yet drones like Ocko, promoting baseless and quite violent messages, seem to get a free pass.

Also check out SOTT radio's:


Gold Seal

The sweet, sweet irony of Jordan Peterson's rise to fame

Jordan Peterson
© Tyler Anderson / National Post
University of Toronto professor and best-selling author Jordan Peterson is seen at his home in Toronto on May 31, 2017.
It's a no-contest, call-off-the-fight race for the ineluctable choice of Canadian book of the year. It has to be 12 Rules for Life

Who doesn't love a good origin story (Book of Genesis, A Brief History of Time, Batman Begins)?

Two years ago, almost to the day, a child was born in the little town of ... Sorry, my mistake, let me start again. It's those damn far-too-early Christmas carols.

Two years ago, almost to the day (Nov. 29, 2017), the University of Toronto's Varsity newspaper carried the bold, not to say ominous, headline: "Hundreds sign open letter to U of T admin calling for Jordan Peterson's termination."

The story underneath bristled with comminations of Peterson's "gross misconduct," his "efforts at agitation ... inflammatory denunciations ... evident connections to white supremacists ... disruptive behaviour." U of T's administration had acknowledged the "danger he posed both to students and faculty" it claimed, and if he didn't comply with "the law, the Ontario Human Rights Code and university policy" (I paraphrase) his academic goose was cooked, his copybook irredeemably blotted, and his career as a professor would soon be as one with the fates of the Norwegian Blue, the great auk, the dodo and (among the unsophisticated) red wine with fish.

Quenelle - Golden

Australia requesting more oversight over Facebook and Google's powers, cite major 'transparency' issues

Google and Facebook carnival float
© Reuters / Ina Fassbender
A carnival float with a papier-mache caricature representing Google and Facebook at a parade in Dusseldorf Germany
Regulators in Australia are proposing 11 measures to fight Facebook and Google's market-stranglehold, transparency issues and controversial social impact.

As criticism mounts against the massive digital platforms over privacy concerns, political bias and snooping on rivals, Canberra is preparing to strike back. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is pushing ahead with 11 wide-ranging recommendations aimed at regulating massive tech companies.

That includes the creation of a watchdog tasked with monitoring large digital platforms. The draft report delivered to the government also noted 8 areas it is looking into "for further analysis and assessment."

The 378-page document was released Monday following months of public hearings, discussions with the companies and input from experts.

The proposed monitoring group would be tasked with overseeing how the major digital platforms rank and display news and advertisements, given concerns that the businesses are operating with a lack of transparency.

Comment: Indeed the world is becoming wise to the legal and moral transgressions of Facebook and Google. But given these companies' strong ties to the 'global security' apparatus (among other reasons) - these behemoths will not be regulated or have their Orwellian policies suppressed without a knock-down drag-out fight - with 'the powers that be' in their corner.

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