Society's ChildS


Network

Al Qaeda opens first official Twitter account

Bill Gertz
Free Bacon
Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00 UTC
Move seen as bid to halt division among jihadists over Syrian rebel split

twitter
© AP
An official al Qaeda website that is restricted to members of the terrorist group opened its first Twitter account this week in what U.S. officials say is an effort to resolve a major split over Syria's Islamist rebels.

The Shamukh al-Islam website, used as an official clearing house for al Qaeda members to communicate and issue propaganda statements, started its first Twitter account on Tuesday.

The first posts on the account focused on divisions between two al Qaeda rebel groups in Syria, al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The account, @shomokhalislam, issued 29 tweets, followed one account, and attracted 1,532 followers as of Friday afternoon. U.S. officials said among its followers are several high-profile digital jihadists.

Counterterrorism analysts view the new account as another indicator that terrorist groups are stepping up their use of social media over traditional Internet sites.

The official al Qaeda account also highlights the view among Islamists that Twitter is fast becoming an essential tool for online jihad, or holy war.

"We've seen terrorist groups make increasingly effective use of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, in recent years," said Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism expert. "Not only is this important for propaganda purposes but also recruitment."
Read More...
People 2

Government shutdown is bad news for women, infants and children program

Arthur Delaney
Huffington Post
Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:27 UTC
WIC program
An increasingly likely government shutdown won't affect most of the federal government's safety net, like retirement and health insurance programs, but nutrition support for millions of women and babies could be in trouble.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Saturday that if Congress can't cut a deal to fund government operations past Monday, "No additional federal funds would be available to support the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)'s clinical services, food benefits and administrative costs."

The $6 billion program helps pregnant women and new moms buy healthy food if they're poor and facing "nutrition risk," meaning that they have medical problems or trouble following nutrition guidelines. Although the program that mitigates nutrition risk for 9 million Americans is in jeopardy, the impact of a shutdown would depend on how individual states react and how long the shutdown lasts.

"States can probably shelter families receiving WIC from the effects of a shutdown for a short period, but it could be a real problem if it lasts more than a few days," policy analyst Elizabeth Lower-Basch of the Center for Law and Social Policy said in an email Saturday.

The USDA suggested that some aspects of the program could last through a short shutdown.

Comment: The psychopaths in charge don't see any reason to set aside enough money to insure that children are fed, but they have made sure that the police state programs will keep running.
From NSA spying and VIPR sweeps to domestic drones: A round-up of the police state programs NOT affected by a Government shutdown

Read More...
Chess

McCain's Syrian moderates join al-Qaeda


Press TV
Sun, 29 Sep 2013 00:00 UTC
McCain
© UnknownTerrorist McCain ?
Senator John McCain was just sure he could pick moderates in Syria worth supporting. To prove his point he made a trip to Syria this spring to demonstrate how much the insurgents were just like us, struggling for democracy and equal rights for all.

But his trip was organized by the Syria Emergency Task Force's Mouaz Moustafa, who not long ago headed up the Libyan Council of North America. Both organizations are partly funded by the US State Department through a mirrored wilderness of NGO cutouts. But both have close ties to extremists fighting in each country. (In Libya, for example, Mustafa was with the people who killed US ambassador Stevens.) In McCain's case, the "moderates" he met and was so attracted to in Syria tunred out to be kidnappers and thugs.

Moustafa's key staffer until recently was war lobbyist Elizabeth O'Bagy, whose day job was with the US military contractor funded neoconservative "think tank," the Institute for the Study of War. Shockingly enough, this "think tank" never saw a potential war it did not want to turn into a real one. O'Bagy was the bagman for the State Department, delivering goodies to the Syrian rebels while delivering fantasies of Syrian moderates needing support to Capitol Hill and environs.

She had many customers, including McCain and Secretary of State John Kerry, who were eager to cite her "studies" revealing that the rebels in Syria were by and large all moderates, with a few extremists who could simply be marginalized and ignored.
Read More...
Health

Obamacare vs. Canada: Five key differences

Antonia Maioni
The Globe and Mail
Wed, 02 Oct 2013 11:17 UTC
obamacare
Despite the partisan war in Washington that shut down the federal government this week, President Barack Obama has succeeded in implementing the first major health reform in the United States in nearly 50 years, as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act goes into effect. Even though its most virulent critics raise the spectre of "Canadian-style" health care, "Obamacare" does little to change the enduring differences between the two health care system. What, exactly, does "Obamacare" look like compared to Canada?

Comment: The Obamacare system will continue to benefit BigPharma and the insurance industry at the expense of alternative medicine and the public at large.
Obamacare: A Deception
The Devastating Truth Behind Obamacare
One man's ObamaCare nightmare

Read More...
Dollar

Public banks are key to capitalism

Ellen Brown
The New York Times
Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:01 UTC
Image
© www.a-w-i-p.com
To ask whether public banks would interfere with free markets assumes that we have free markets, which we don't. Banking is heavily subsidized and is monopolized by Wall Street, which has effectively "bought" Congress. Banks have been bailed out by the government, when in a free market they would have gone bankrupt. The Federal Reserve blatantly manipulates interest rates in a way that serves Wall Street, lending trillions at near-zero interest and pushing rates so artificially low that local governments have lost billions in interest-rate swaps.
Banking, money and credit are not market goods but are economic infrastructure, just as roads and bridges are physical infrastructure.
State and municipal governments already have public lending programs, which are generally not seen as distortions of the free market. They exist because private banks are not lending in some sectors that need financing. Montana finances first-time ranchers and farmers; Sonoma County has its Energy Independence Program; and San Francisco has half a dozen mortgage lending and small business programs. Globally, public banks lend countercyclically, providing credit when and where other banks won't. This does not crowd out private banks. Germany and Taiwan, which have strong public banking sectors, are among the most competitive banking markets in the world.
Read More...
Stop

Belgian killed by euthanasia after a botched sex change operation

Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph
Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:41 UTC
Image
© FacebookNathan Verhelst was euthaniused on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering"
A Belgian has been killed by medical euthanasia after pleading for death because a botched sex change operation to turn her into a man had resulted in "a monster".

Mother of sex change Belgian: 'I don't care about his euthanasia death'

Nathan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering" on Monday afternoon.

Wim Distelmans, a cancer specialist who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who late last year gave lethal injections to congenitally deaf twins who were frightened they were also going blind.

"I was the girl that nobody wanted," Mr Verhelst told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper in the hours before her death.

"While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom. 'If only you had been a boy', my mother complained. I was tolerated, nothing more."
Read More...
Chess

Vladimir Putin 'too busy for personal life'

Roland Oliphant
The Telegraph
Wed, 25 Sep 2013 15:18 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesVladimir Putin works so much it is difficult for him to have a personal life
Dmitry Peskov has been forced to deal with rumours Mr Putin wed Alina Kabayeva, a 30-year-old politician and former Olympic gymnast, in a church ceremony last week.

"It's his decision and he's not obliged to talk about his personal life," Mr Peskov told Izvestia. "He works so much I don't know where he finds time for it."

Rumours that he had remarried were started by a Twitter user who claimed last week that the Federal Guards Service had blocked roads around the Iversky monastery in the Valdai Hills because "Putin and Kabayeva are being crowned," a reference to Russian wedding traditions.

It snowballed after being retweeted by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, prompting Mr Peskov to call it "an exercise in boredom."
Read More...
Black Cat 2

Severed cat heads discovered in Ontario town


Brampton Guardian
Thu, 03 Oct 2013 14:04 UTC
Stouffville, - Cat owners in a community north of Toronto are being warned to keep their pets indoors after a number of severed cat heads were found, one of them near a daycare.

York Regional Police said Thursday there have been six recent incidents in Whitchurch-Stouffville where heads and, in one case, other body parts of a dismembered cat were found in public locations.

Investigators don't know what the motive behind the dismemberments could be, said Const. Andy Pattenden.

But he said it's believed the dismemberments were done intentionally, adding the heads were all placed within a one-kilometre area in residential neighbourhoods.

The first incident was reported Aug. 12 when a head and two legs were found near a daycare centre and police were called to the scene.

Five other cat heads were found during the next few weeks, with one being found near a school, and the last incident was reported on Sept. 13, when a homeowner found her cat's head in front of her residence.

In five of the six incidents, just the cat's head was found, usually on or near a curb, Pattenden said. No torsos were found and there was no sign of any blood.
Read More...
Camcorder

13 quotes from George Orwell's 1984 that resonate more than ever


blacklistednews.com
Fri, 30 Aug 2013 06:57 UTC
One of the most influential dystopian novels ever written, 1984 has had a profound effect on the world. Since its publication in 1949 many of its concepts have entered modern day parlance. Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak and Room 101 are all part of Orwell's world. What's more, as a result of the book, Orwellian is now a term to describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past by a totalitarian or authoritarian state. Orwell hoped that by writing 1984 he'd help stop such a state ever coming to pass. Read these thirteen quotes to decide for yourself.

"If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."

Image
Read More...
Eye 1

The real crisis is not the government shutdown

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Thu, 03 Oct 2013 05:58 UTC
The inability of the media and politicians to focus on the real issues never ceases to amaze.

The real crisis is not the "debt ceiling crisis." The government shutdown is merely a result of the Republicans using the debt limit ceiling to attempt to block the implementation of Obamacare. If the shutdown persists and becomes a problem, Obama has enough power under the various "war on terror" rulings to declare a national emergency and raise the debt ceiling by executive order. An executive branch that has the power to inter citizens indefinitely and to murder them without due process of law, can certainly set aside a ceiling on debt that jeopardizes the government.

The real crisis is that jobs offshoring by US corporations has permanently lowered US tax revenues by shifting what would have been consumer income, US GDP, and tax base to China, India, and other countries where wages and the cost of living are relatively low. On the spending side, twelve years of wars have inflated annual expenditures. The consequence is a wide deficit gap between revenues and expenditures.
Read More...