Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Snakes in Suits

GOP Senators demand DOJ update on Planned Parenthood fetal tissue probe

girl_plannedparenthood
© Joe Raedle/Getty
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, demanding an update on the investigation into possible violations regarding the sale of aborted fetal tissue by Planned Parenthood and its partners in the biomedical research industry.

According to a press release, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Graham (SC) and his predecessor Grassley (IA), current chairman of the Committee on Finance, wrote to Barr and Wray Tuesday, seeking an update on the federal investigation that was supposedly launched in 2017.

"Preventing the illegal sale of human fetal tissue remains a priority for the Committee," the letter stated. "In furtherance of the Committee's ongoing oversight of this issue, the Committee asks that you answer the following questions no later than July 2, 2019."

Graham and Grassley requested answers to these questions:
  1. Has the FBI taken any action on the criminal referrals submitted by then-Chairman Grassley?
  2. If the FBI has taken action, please provide an update to the Committee.
  3. If the FBI has not taken action, please explain the justification for not doing so.
  4. Are there any other investigative updates related to this matter that the FBI can share with the Committee at this time?"

Radar

London's Gatwick Airport suffers complete failure of air-traffic-control systems

Gatwick Airport
© Tim Ireland/AP
Gatwick Airport
A major air-traffic-control systems failure led to London's Gatwick airport implementing a complete ground stop on Wednesday evening.

At around 5 p.m. London time, the airport suspended all flights as it worked to resolve the issue. A 7 p.m. update from the airport said flights had resumed but suggested that residual delays were expected as the airport worked to bring operations back to normal.

Numerous inbound flights that were already in the air when the failure occurred were seen diverting to other nearby airports in cities such as England's Birmingham and Brighton, based on data shown by the flight-tracking software Flightradar24.

Later flights were shown to be delayed, including departing flights.

In a statement issued at 7 p.m. local time, Gatwick said:
Due to an air traffic control systems issue in Gatwick's control tower, flights were suspended between 17.08 and 19.00. Flights have resumed, but passengers are advised to check the status of their flight with their airline before travelling to the airport as we return to full operations.

Comment: Could there be a connection to this incident? UK police: 'Drone' that shut down Gatwick Airport for days last December 'could see what was happening on runways, was eavesdropping on radio communications'


Megaphone

'Sonic weapons': Sonic devices installed at Philadelphia parks, recreation centers to repel teens

Sonic device at Philadelphia playground
© Kimberly Paynter/WHYY
A sonic device is seen (at top right) at Barrett Playground in Philadelphia. Thirty parks in the city have the devices, which emit a constant, high-pitched noise that only teenagers and young adults can hear.
In Philadelphia, 30 parks and recreation centers are outfitted with a small speaker called the Mosquito. It blares a constant, high-pitched ringing noise all night long — but one that only teenagers and young adults can hear.

Anyone over age 25 is supposed to be immune because, basically, their ear cells have started to die off.

Philadelphia parks officials have been installing the device since 2014, reported WHYY's Billy Penn, intending to shoo rowdy youths from the premises.

And it's not the only U.S. city to do so. Mosquito's Vancouver-based manufacturer Moving Sound Technologies works with roughly 20 parks departments around the country to implement the youth-repellent devices, says president Michael Gibson.

It's intended to prevent loitering and vandalism by teens and young adults at public facilities. But some say this age-based targeting is a form of prejudice.

Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym refers to the devices as "sonic weapons" — and she's working to get them removed.

Comment:




Attention

"Last week was worse than 5 years of war" - conditions in Donbass deteriorating rapidly

water supply damaged Donbass

Exploding shells damaged water pipelines supplying more than 3.2 million people along the Siverski Donets-Donbass channel on June 29, 2019
"Shelling could be happening in the morning, dinner time, at night...There was some certainty before, now shelling can happen any time." Eduard's front door is pierced all the way through by large caliber bullets, his barn is destroyed by 120 mm shells, mirror smashed by bullets is not just a bad omen any more: it's hard to imagine that someone could still be living in these ruins.

Commenting on the current situation in Kominternovo, he remarks, with bitter irony, that last week was worse than all 5 years of the war. Most of Vatutina Street where Eduard lives is destroyed by shelling. The landscape is simply apocalyptic here.


Comment: Ukraine's new president Zelensky had promised movement towards settling the Donbass conflict. Is he in charge, or are the right-wing neonazi crazies the military? It's looking more and more like the crazies.


Blue Planet

Alexander Dugin: Constructing a multipolar world on the basis of cooperation, peace, and justice

Alexander Dugin

Alexander Dugin at Multipolarity: Greater Eurasia vision — Discourse of Thinkers Forum (Beijing 02.07.2019)

Comment: Notes from a talk Alexander Dugin gave at the Discourse of Thinkers Forum in Beijing on 2nd July 2019.


Map of Unipolar world (UPW) is
Map of Unipolar world

Comment: See also:


Star of David

'Imaginary historical reality': How 'archeological settlements' destroy Palestinian homes

Fayyad Abu Rmeleh
© Dareen Jubeh/Al Jazeera
Fayyad Abu Rmeleh shows the cracks and deformations that have formed in his home from Israeli excavations.
Israel is creating an 'imaginary historical reality' with tunnel excavations in occupied East Jerusalem, NGO says.

Fayyad Abu Rmeleh, 60, is afraid the floor and yard of his home will one day collapse. Every day, he says, from morning until late afternoon, the family hears the digging and drilling of tunnels beneath their building.

The excavations conducted by Israeli authorities first began in 2000, but it was not until five years ago that they began to notice damage to their home. "It's putting our lives in danger," Abu Rmeleh told Al Jazeera. "Wherever you turn your head, you find new cracks. We don't know how many tunnels are beneath our house, but we believe there are at least three."

The 50-member Abu Rmeleh family lives in Silwan's Wadi Hilweh neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, which has been marketed as the "City of David" tourist attraction, where some Israelis say King David of the Bible built the "original city of Jerusalem" some 3,000 years ago.

Underneath their home, Israeli authorities have been digging tunnels, searching for traces of the Second Temple era.

Comment: For more on this 'archeological' dig and the controversy surrounding it, see also:
Palestinians slam US envoys' participation in a 'war crime' as they bash open East Jerusalem tunnel


Airplane

Clashes in Leipzig as protesters attempt to stop migrant's deportation

leipzig german police
© Sebastian Willnow / dpa / Global Look Press
Police in Leipzig, Germany.
Protesters clashed with riot police in Leipzig, Germany after they surrounded a patrol car and barricaded a street with furniture, hoping to derail the deportation of a migrant.

Police were scheduled to remove the migrant, who was due to be deported, from his apartment in the city of Leipzig in eastern Germany at 8:30pm local time on Tuesday. There were several dozen protesters at first, but the crowd had grown to around 500 people within a few hours.

Details of the migrant's identity were not immediately available. According to a local lawmaker from the opposition Left Party, Juliane Nagel, who was in contact with the man's family, he was a 20-year-old man being deported to Spain, where he had earlier claimed asylum. A politician from the Green Party, Jurgen Kasek, who was present at the scene, said that the man was likely a Syrian Kurd.

Chanting 'No to deportation' and 'You are stealing our neighbors,' the people blocked the street and staged a sit-in in front of a police car.

Comment: "Faulty asylum laws". Nagel can say that again. But she's wrong about why they're faulty. Germany never should have let so many migrants into the country in the first place. The result has been disastrous for Germans AND migrants.


Handcuffs

'Antifa fighter' Gage Halupowski indicted for assault in Portland violence that savaged man's scalp

Gage Halupowski
© Portland police booking photo / GoFundMe page
Gage Halupowski. Adam Kelly’s injuries.
A 23-year-old Portland man has been indicted by a grand jury over his alleged role in violent altercations during protests in June. The Antifa activist was among those who ganged up on a man and split his scalp open, police said.

Gage Halupowski was arrested along with two other protesters in the wake of clashes in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. On Tuesday, a grand jury indicted him with four criminal charges, including second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, attempted assault of a public safety officer, and interfering with a peace officer, the Oregonian reported.

Comment: Is this the incident that finally turns the tide on Antifa? The optics of beating an old man (Blum), the man who tried to defend him (Kelly), and a respected journalist (Ngo) are not good. How did Antifa become the most powerful force in Portland? Perhaps because mayor Ted Wheeler, while not being a card-carrying SJW snowflake, is a spineless appeaser who managed to make himself police commissioner? Michael James, writing in American Thinker in October 2018:
Portland's Ted Wheeler, mayor of the certifiably craziest and meanest city in America, won't admit that he quietly encourages mob rule in his city. In Portland, the police stand down as thugs run amok.

[...]

Mayor Wheeler, a Democrat, tacitly approves of the protests that regularly agitate Portland. When the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building was "occupied" this summer, Portland police declined to support immigration enforcement officers unless they were in physical danger.

Wheeler, who also holds the title of police commissioner, doesn't really mind videotape of honest citizens being harassed, chased, and tormented by Democratic Party foot soldiers. He promises an "investigation" but fails to promise arrests. You and I know there is not much to investigate unless the mayor officially appointed the persecutors a sort of posse comitatus status. At the very least, they were impersonating police officers and disturbing the peace. If the mayor didn't order the police to stand down and the police commissioner didn't order the police to stand down, who did? Maybe it was the Portland dog-catching commissioner. Personally, I think Wheeler is in way over his head.



Airplane

Boeing falls behind archrival Airbus in plane sales after collapse in deliveries, making its nightmare year even worse

An Airbus A330neo flying past a Boeing sign at the 2019 International Paris Air Show.
© REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
An Airbus A330neo flying past a Boeing sign at the 2019 International Paris Air Show.
In the latest sign of Boeing's nightmare year, the number of commercial jets it's delivered has plummeted in recent months, with the aviation giant now at risk of falling behind its archrival Airbus in the competition to be the world's largest planemaker.

The number of planes delivered by Boeing dropped by more than a third in the first six months of 2019 compared with the same period last year.

This leaves Boeing's status as the world's largest planemaker, a position it has held for eight years, under threat.

Boeing delivered 239 planes in the first six months of the year, according to the company's latest figures, released this week. Airbus, its European rival, delivered 389 planes over the same period.

Boeing delivered 378 planes during the same period in 2018, while Airbus delivered just 303. So while Airbus has seen a 28% increase in deliveries since last year, Boeing has witnessed a 37% fall.

Boeing's deliveries fell by 75% between the first and second quarters of the year.

Heart - Black

'Insult to all who fought Nazis': Russia slams Estonia for plans to bring back SS soldier monument

monument to a soldier dressed in Waffen SS uniform
© Wikipedia
Estonia's plans to bring back a monument to a soldier dressed in Waffen SS uniform is a provocation and affront to the memory of those who died fighting the Nazis, the Russian Embassy has said.

The stela with a bronze bas-relief depicts an armed trooper in Nazi gear, and a tablet reading: "To Estonian men who fought in 1940-1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence." It caused a lot of controversy after being erected at the cemetery in the town of Lihula in August 2004.

The government ordered its removal less than two weeks later, saying that the memorial created unnecessary links between Estonian independence fighters and the German invaders. Nazi sympathizers staged rallies on the spot where the stela once stood. Last year, one such demonstration attracted around 200 people.