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EU dips into rainy day fund as member economies are hit by collapse in investment


RT
Sun, 20 May 2018 15:21 UTC
St. Peter's Basilica
© Alessia Pierdomenico / ReutersSaint Peter's Basilica is seen behind a statue depicting Saint Catherine
Capital investment in 24 of the EU's 28 member states has fallen dramatically over the past ten years, according to data from statistical agency Eurostat.

Investment decreased on average by 2.3 percent, falling to 20.1 percent of GDP last year. It stood at 22.4 percent from 2007 to 2017 period. Countries in Europe's east and south, which were more vulnerable to the crisis, experienced the biggest drops in investment in the years following the crisis, Eurostat reports.

Statistics showed that only three EU countries have seen their investments increase. Those are Sweden (from 23.9 percent of GDP in 2007 to 24.9 percent), Austria by 0.6 percent and Germany by 0.2 percent.
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Info

German broadcaster: Ramadan an older German custom than Oktoberfest

Chris Tomlinson
Breitbart
Fri, 18 May 2018 15:16 UTC
german muslims
© Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk Kulturhas claimed that the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is not only an "old German custom" but that it had been celebrated in the country longer than Oktoberfest.

In an article, journalist Eren Güvercin claims that Ramadan is a thoroughly German holiday and that there is no question that Islam belongs to Germany.

Güvercin maintains that the practice is older the Oktoberfest, also known in Bavaria as Wiesn. While he provides no evidence for his assertion, the earliest Wiesn celebrations are thought to have been held on 12 October 1810 to celebrate the marriage of Prince Ludwig, later King Ludwig I, and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen.

The oldest mosque in Germany, by contrast, was built in Berlin in 1915 and was discovered by an archaeological team in 2015. The mosque, which was made of wood, was thought to have been intended for Muslim prisoners of war as it was built inside a World War One-era prison camp.

"Fasting in the month of Ramadan has long been part of the German religious landscape. It is a German reality. To break the fast in the evening, many people gather in Germany to eat together and to meet each other," Güvercin said.
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Clipboard

Wikipedia's 'front man' revisionist: Philip Cross

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Sun, 20 May 2018 13:58 UTC
UPDATE "Philip Cross" has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. "He" has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That's 1,721 consecutive days of editing.

133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of "Philip Cross" over 14 years. That's over 30 edits per day, seven days a week. And I do not use that figuratively: Wikipedia edits are timed, and if you plot them, the timecard for "Philip Cross's" Wikipedia activity is astonishing is astonishing if it is one individual:

Philip Cross 1
The operation runs like clockwork, seven days a week, every waking hour, without significant variation. If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual, there is no denying he is morbidly obsessed. I am no psychiatrist, but to my entirely inexpert eyes this looks like the behaviour of a deranged psychotic with no regular social activities outside the home, no job (or an incredibly tolerant boss), living his life through a screen. I run what is arguably the most widely read single person political blog in the UK, and I do not spend nearly as much time on the internet as "Philip Cross". My "timecard" would show where I watch football on Saturdays, go drinking on Fridays, go to the supermarket and for a walk or out with the family on Sundays, and generally relax much more and read books in the evenings. Cross does not have the patterns of activity of a normal and properly rounded human being.

Comment: As has been for some time now, Wikipedia is not in the business of promoting factual and impartial information, especially when it comes anything politicized and attacks those that counter their political views. See also:

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Document

Google removes 'Don't Be Evil' phrase from its code of conduct

Kate Conger
Gizmodo
Sun, 20 May 2018 14:41 UTC
Evil Google
© Isaac Lopez and Sarah Feinsmith
Google's unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase "don't be evil." But that's over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show.

"Don't be evil" has been part of the company's corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, "do the right thing." However, Google retained its original "don't be evil" language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google's company culture-so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.
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Bizarro Earth

Sexbot creators now offer robots for women


RT
Sun, 20 May 2018 14:29 UTC
Male sexbot
© Realbotix / Facebook
Sexbot creators, RealBotix, are hoping to stimulate the female market with its latest offering - a 5'11" male sexbot called Henry, who promises not only 'superhuman' sexual performance but also loving companionship.

The hunky robot is being developed to apparently give women what they want - and not just in the bedroom. Henry will be programmed to listen to you talk about your day, remember your hopes and fears, and cuddle you.
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Chalkboard

Climate skeptic professor Peter Ridd was fired for his views by James Cook University

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Fri, 18 May 2018 13:09 UTC
Peter Ridd fund
WUWT readers may recall that WUWT spearheaded an effort to help Ridd's legal fund, earning nearly $100,000 in donations in two days. According to Ridd, in an email to me:
They gave me a set of new allegations a few days after the successful gofundme campaign in February and we have been fighting them ever since. They really hated that gofundme campaign as one would expect.
Ridd wrote then:
I am astonished, very relieved and most importantly incredibly grateful for the support. I would also particularly like to thank Anthony, Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Willie Soon, Benny Peiser and many others for getting the issue up on blogs and spreading the word.
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Laptop

Personal data from millions of Facebook users was available on open web for years

Phil Baker
PJ Media
Thu, 17 May 2018 12:58 UTC
Mark Zuckerberg cardboard cutouts
© Kevin Wolf/AP images for AVAAZWhile Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the Senate, 100 cardboard cutouts of the Facebook founder and CEO stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
We've all heard by now about the massive leak of the personal data of three million Facebook users and friends when a personality app, myPersonality, was used to extract personal information. The data was then used by Cambridge Analytica as part of their election targeting efforts.

Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress, apologized for the breach, and blamed it on the app company that shared the data. His solution was to more carefully screen the thousands of other apps; Facebook recently banned 200 of them.

But, like many times before, this was just the tip of the iceberg. We've just learned that intimate details about these three million users were freely available on the web for anyone to access for years, according to a New Scientist investigation.
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Sun

Dr. Peterson isn't criticizing women when he discusses "agreeableness"

Sean Malone
Foundation for Economic Education
Sun, 20 May 2018 11:33 UTC
And there's nothing inherently good or bad about it.
happy woman
I have a general observation about critics of Jordan Peterson that's been growing for a few months. It seems to me that the most common objections to things that he says (yes, usually taken way out of context and cut into soundbite form) are a product of a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between positive and normative claims, and also often from deep ignorance of psychology and related fields.

Comment:

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Newspaper

700+ get poisoned by wild mushrooms in Iran


RT
Sun, 20 May 2018 11:30 UTC
mushrooms
© Regis Duvignau
More than 700 people have been poisoned after eating wild mushrooms in Iran, the country's emergency services said. At least nine people have died, while dozens more remain in critical condition, local media report.

"The latest emergency statistics show that 721 people have been poisoned by poisonous mushrooms, of which 190 were hospitalized, 523 were cleared, and nine died," Mojtaba Khalidi, an emergency services spokesman, told Iran's ISNA news agency.
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Red Flag

The amazing similarities of the causes and tactics of radical Leftists and Islamists used to create social chaos

Jason Buttrill
The Blaze
Thu, 17 May 2018 11:01 UTC
jerusalem embassy protests
© Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty ImagesLeft-wing demonstrators protest outside the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday. The opening of the U.S. Embassy sparked numerous protests, some violent and resulting in deaths, in Israel this week
Maybe it's simply fortuitous convenience or maybe it's a Tarantino-esque black comedy, but it's amazing how much radical leftists and radical Islamists have in common with each other. It's not a suggestion that the two movements secretly communicate with each other via cipher messages from underground command bunkers, but it's impossible to miss how much their ideology often calls for the same things.

Let's take a cruise through some of these similarities. Leftists want socialism to reign supreme via an all powerful controlling government. Islamists want the exact same thing. Just replace the words "Democratic Socialist president" with "Caliph." Exchange "Socialist Republic" with the word "Caliphate." One uses a distorted and modified Constitution while the other just calls it Sharia Law. Add it all together and you get the same result. A socialist fantasy world under the direction of an oppressive government.

To achieve all this, both Islamists and leftists are willing to weaponize a laundry list of like-minded causes and tactics.
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