The European Union Times |
- Scott Walker Quits, Shocks Everyone with Call to “Gang Up On Trump”
- UK’s National Health Service on brink of collapse
- British PM Cameron involved in Disgusting “PigGate” Scandal
- Hungary Authorizes Troops to Use Rubber Bullets on Rioting Illegal Immigrants
- Donald Trump Promises to Close the US Borders on his First Day
- Russian Marines Battle ISIS in Syria
- Refugee Tripped by Hungarian Camerawoman is a Terrorist who killed Kurds
- Facebook snoops on people just like NSA – Belgian watchdog to court
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Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:20 AM PDT
 Wisconsin governor, once a frontrunner, encourages 15 remaining candidates for presidential bid to ‘clear the field’ in search of Donald Trump alternative. In a shock announcement that called for a “positive, conservative alternative” to Donald Trump, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker announced on Monday that he was suspending his presidential campaign – once a leading bid for Republicans to recapture the White House. At a news conference in Madison on Monday, less than one week after a limp debate performance failed to revive interest in his candidacy, Walker essentially called on his fellow Republicans to gang up on the real-estate mogul to “clear the field”, which has now shrunk to 15. “Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top,” Walker said. “With this in mind, I am suspending my campaign immediately.” Walker encouraged other candidates to do the same, “so that voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current frontrunner”. The governor said he admired former President Ronald Reagan “because of his eternal optimism” but “sadly, the debate taking place in the Republican party today, is not focused on that optimistic view of America. Instead, it is focused on personal attacks. “We need to get back to the basics of our party,” he said. With four months still to go until the Iowa caucuses, Walker had been struggling to overcome funding shortages and a seeming inability to make a mark in a large Republican field. A CNN/ORC poll released this week following the second Republican debate showed Walker failing to register with even 1% of the vote, instead scoring an asterisk. Walker cancelled multiple appearances after the debate, adding to the notion that his campaign was on a kind of deathwatch. The staunchly conservative governor, who survived a recall election in 2012, sat atop the Iowa polls for six months in the long-haul 2016 campaign – until Trump overtook him in August. The plummet from top to bottom and now out of the nominating contest represents an astounding fall for a candidate who had once been touted as the great conservative hope for retaking the White House – an establishment rightwinger with generous backers and an unflinchingly conservative record. It also showed the staying power of non-career politicians like Trump as well as the surging former technology executive Carly Fiorina and the neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who have stolen headlines and turned voters’ heads in recent weeks. “There are 20 some-odd people running for president – two will be the nominee, and one will win,” said Stuart Stevens, who served as the top strategist for Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012. “It doesn’t mean that the other 19 or 20 who didn’t make it are failures or ran bad campaigns. It just means they lost.” Boosted prospects for establishment candidates Walker departed the race with a show of goodwill from his rivals. “I got to know @ScottWalker well,” Trump tweeted. “[H]e’s a very nice person and has a great future.” Walker is the second major Republican candidate to withdraw from the Republican field. Former Texas governor Rick Perry dropped out 10 days ago after facing significant fundraising woes after he failed to qualify for the party’s first debate. The resignation immediately sent shockwaves through the Republican race for the White House, boosting the prospects of other establishment candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. The trio praised Walker on Monday. “Scott Walker is a good man who has a proven record of fighting for conservative reforms,” Bush tweeted. “I know he’ll continue to do that as Governor.” “Republicans are lucky to have Scott on our team, and I wish the best to him and his family,” tweeted Rubio. “Make no mistake, a strong leader like @ScottWalker has a bright future & is a model for other governors,” tweeted Kasich. “Good luck, Scott! -John” Big money, big swings – and misses As a Republican governor who was thrice elected in a state that reliably votes Democratic in presidential races, Walker was considered that rare candidate who could both toe the conservative line and win. But some donors and Republican insiders had recently expressed their discontent with Walker’s campaign manager, Rick Wiley, raising concerns about the veteran Republican operative’s decision-making. Super-donors such as David Koch, who was quoted in April as saying that Walker “should be” the Republican nominee, had been thought to be positioned to fuel a major national effort on behalf of the candidate. Instead, Walker failed to gain a national profile, overshadowed by the antics of Trump, the much sharper debate performances of rivals such as Fiorina, and the emergence of equally credible conservative standard bearers such as Carson and Senator Ted Cruz. Most famous for stripping public-sector unions in Wisconsin of collective bargaining rights in a fierce showdown that culminated in the recall election, Walker had premised his campaign on his willingness to fight on behalf of conservative causes. When Walker announced his presidential bid, Richard Trumka, head of the powerful AFL-CIO union, issued a statement that “Scott Walker is a national disgrace”. Trumka amended that statement on Monday: “Scott Walker is still a disgrace,” Trumka said, “just no longer national.” Throughout his brief campaign, however, Walker threw increasingly wild swings of policy and pronouncement, as his poll numbers continued to fall. After Trump made waves for calling for an end to birthright citizenship, Walker echoed the call, and then reversed himself, only to reverse himself again. Last month, he was caught on NBC’s Meet the Press saying that building a border wall with a Canada was “a legitimate issue for us to look at”. Earlier this month, Walker promised to destroy the political activities of federal employee unions by blocking their political funding. In the debate last week, Walker was relentlessly on-message, faithful to a reputation developed over years in the public eye. But when he tried for flair, as with a one-liner about the president and the Iranian nuclear deal, Walker elicited crickets instead of cheers. “I’d love to play cards with this guy because Barack Obama folds on everything with Iran,” Walker said. A fade in middle America One early sign of trouble for Walker arrived in March, when he swiftly hired and then fired a digital strategist, Liz Mair. Walker’s campaign was also greatly damaged by the end of the Iowa straw poll. The contest, which traditionally served to winnow the Republican field, rewarded candidates with deep coffers and a strong ground game in Iowa, both of which Walker possessed. The end of that traditional political institution in the state led to an increasing focus on debate performances – a platform where the Wisconsin governor failed to excel. Instead of having to out-organize Trump on the ground in Iowa, he was forced to beat him with one-liners on television. The news that Walker had dropped out after just 70 days came as a surprise to Jeff Kaufmann, the chair of the Republican Party of Iowa, who said he was only recently “in a garage in rural Iowa, listening to a very good stump speech”. “This is suspending his campaign for 2016,” Kaufmann told the Guardian, “but I would be stunned if this was the last we’ve seen of Scott Walker in the political arena.” Mair, the strategist, came under a sustained attack for her past criticism of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus process as well as for holding liberal views on same-sex marriage and immigration reform, on which Walker was also accused of flip-flopping. A number of prominent conservative pundits immediately lambasted Walker for letting go of Mair. His campaign was increasingly perceived as being prone to giving in to political pressure. On Monday he caved to the realities of a faded campaign. Walker’s term as governor runs through 2018. Stevens, the former Romney aide who was sympathetic to Walker, said “it gets harder every cycle” with more and more candidates in the field. “I don’t think until you run for president you have any grasp of how difficult it is on every level,” he said. “If it doesn’t feel right and you don’t think its working, it’s better to realize that early on.” While Walker’s brief withdrawal statement was remarkable for his call to gang up on the frontrunner, Trump, it also revealed how pervasive the mogul’s influence has been on the Republican competition. Midway through his news conference, Walker borrowed Trump’s campaign slogan. Only by returning to the core values of the Republican party, Walker said, can leaders and voters “make America great again”. The phrase – already an echo of a Reagan catchphrase – reverberated outside the Madison hotel where Walker made his brief remarks, without taking questions, to a room packed full of reporters and a smattering of supporters. Colin Komisar, 22, a senior in business at the University of Wisconsin told the Guardian that while he was disappointed by Walker’s decision, he agreed with the candidate’s final wish. “I think he’s doing what’s right,” Komisar said of the governor. “I agree with his last message – that we need to find the right leader to make America great again.” Source           |
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Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:05 AM PDT
 The UK’s former health minister, Norman Lamb.Norman Lamb says the NHS will crash within two years with catastrophic consequences unless the government orders a multibillion pound cash injection. The stark warning comes amid mounting fears among senior NHS officials and local authorities that NHS and care services are approaching breaking point, according to the Guardian. Lamb told the Observer that the conservative government was failing to admit the scale of problems. He said an increasing number of private companies and other organizations contracted to provide care by local authorities are refusing to tender again because cash-starved councils, already hit by budget cuts of more than 40% since 2010, cannot pay enough to let them run adequate services. Lamb says the result is that more elderly people in particular will end up in already overstretched hospitals, worsening the crisis. The former minister noted that the ruling Tories’ promises to provide an additional £8 billion for the health service by 2020, on top of £2 billion extra pledged at the end of last year, are insufficient and too vague to reassure anyone. “If the investment is not made upfront and in the early period of this parliament, you could see serious failures in the system,” he said. “The system will crash. Elderly people won’t get the care they need, and it will be people with mental ill health who suffer most, because that is where the squeeze always comes.” This is while, the body representing more than 2,200 organizations providing home-based care, the United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA), said that many of the biggest providers were considering handing back as much as half of their local authority business, the report added. Source      |
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Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:03 AM PDT
 British Prime Minister David Cameron performed depraved sex acts with a dead pig as part of a college initiation ritual, according to a book written by one of his Oxford peers. The bizarre ritual was part of an induction ceremony into the Piers Gaveston Society, an ultra-exclusive University of Oxford dining club known for its decadent sex and drug-fueled parties. The current UK prime minister’s history of debauchery is outlined in the book, “Call Me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography,” penned by entrepreneur and fellow Oxford colleague Lord Michael Ashcroft. Writing for The Daily Mail, Lord Ashcroft and the co-author of his book, Isabel Oakeshott, profess: A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth. The source — himself an MP — first made the allegation out of the blue at a business dinner in June 2014. Lowering his voice, he claimed to have seen photographic evidence of this disgusting ritual. Ashcroft says the claim was later repeated by the same MP, and then mentioned a third time, where he disclosed further details including the size of the photo showing the alleged “porking” and the name of the person who may possess it. “The pig’s head, he claimed, had been resting on the lap of a Piers Gaveston society member while Cameron performed the act,” Ashcroft writes. The unnamed MP also told Ashcroft he’d considered joining the club, but for the contents of one gathering which left him “walking out in disgust.” “What it basically involved was getting drunk and standing on restaurant tables, shouting about “f***ing plebs”,’ the MP said, according to Ashcroft. “It was all about despising poor people.” Cameron was also profusely fond of smoking marijuana in his college days and may have also dabbled in cocaine depending on who you ask, Ashcroft claims, acts at odds with the sudden anti-drug stance the Conservative party leader embraced once he became prime minister. While Cameron had once considered decriminalization of cannabis and lesser punishments for ecstacy users, and even the implementation of “safe injection rooms” for heroin addicts, his view on drugs sharply changed once he was elected to higher office. “I don’t believe in decriminalizing drugs that are illegal today,” Cameron stated last year, addressing the findings of a report which recommended relaxing drug laws. “I’m a parent with three children; I don’t want to send out a message that somehow taking these drugs is OK or safe.” The book’s author, Lord Ashcroft, is a “self-made businessman from a humble background who made a fortune through sheer bloody hard work,” according to Politico. He’s been described by billionaire contemporaries as “one of the worst people in the world to have as your enemy … and the best person in the world to have as your friend.” Ashcroft says he moved to publish the revelations after Cameron reneged on a promised cabinet position after being elected prime minister. The disturbing account of British elitist hedonism dovetails with stories of debauchery surrounding several American politicians, from the lavish escapades conducted at the clandestine Bohemian Grove to the cringe-inducing Skull and Bones fraternity rites, rumored to include masturbating in a coffin. “[Skull and Bones] Initiates must masturbate in a coffin while recounting their sexual exploits, for which they will be rewarded with a no-strings-attached gift of $15,000,” The Scotsman newspaper reported in 2004. A similar, but fictitious sexual incident involving a UK prime minister and a pig was portrayed in the 2011 British TV series Black Mirror. In the first episode, entitled The National Anthem, a member of the royal family is kidnapped and held for ransom unless the prime minister agrees to have sex with a pig live on national television. A prankster has also created a Twitter account under the handle “Cameron’s Pig” and has been setting the internet ablaze with viral tweets since news of the controversy broke yesterday. Source      |
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Posted: 22 Sep 2015 08:03 AM PDT
 Rubber bullets, stun grenades, flares and net guns to be used to fend off intruding horde. Hungarian MPs have passed a law permitting the country’s troops to use rubber bullets, stun grenades, flares and net guns to prevent thousands of undocumented immigrants from entering the country illegally. The bill passed with 151 votes to 12 against and 27 abstentions in the 199-member parliament. Moments before the passage of the bill, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary needs to protect itself and Europe from the threat of mass migration. “Our borders are under threat, our life based on a respect for laws… and the whole of Europe. We are being run over,” Orban said. “The whole of Hungary and Europe is in danger. They are blitzing us,” he added. “Our borders are in danger. Our way of life where we respect the law is in danger.” “We need to rethink many European inventions, institutions and treaties. But until we do we cannot sit idle. Until the EU states act as one, member states will be forced to go out of their way to fend off this brutal threat,” he said. Last week Hungary made it a criminal offense to breach the border. More than 50,000 immigrants have flooded the Eastern European country this year. “The migration pressure which is falling heavy on Europe has created extraordinary situations in Hungary as well as in Serbia,” Hungarian Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said. “We have devised a solution to this extraordinary situation together, and we attempted to resolve it together.” Opinion polls show the ruling Fidesz party’s approval rating had risen to 48 per cent this month, from 43 per cent in June and 40 per cent in December, according to the Financial Times. Source      |
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Posted: 22 Sep 2015 07:53 AM PDT
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to close US borders on day one of his presidency. “The first thing I’d do in my first day as president is close up our borders so that illegal immigrants cannot come into our country,” Trump said in a Twitter question-and-answer session on Monday from Twitter’s New York office. The billionaire businessman said that people can come into the country but only legally. Trump’s Twitter session was designed to ginger up online interest following similar moves by other presidential candidates, including Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Trump said in the first of a dozen short videos that he would “totally protect Israel” if elected president. He also said he would “take care” of the homeless by focusing on jobs and tackling healthcare affordability as president. Trump’s harsh rhetoric on the subject of illegal immigration has defined his campaign ever since he joined the 2016 race in mid-June, making him a polarizing figure. In addition to his plan to build a towering wall on the US-Mexico border, Trump has also promised to deport all undocumented immigrants from the country. While the strategy may bode well with the more conservative voters, it threatens to alienate an influential and growing bloc of Hispanic voters in the United States. Source      |
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Posted: 22 Sep 2015 03:35 AM PDT
 Russian marines clashed with ISIS near Latakia, Syria, on Sunday, according to Russian media. During the fight the marines allegedly killed several militants and captured others after ISIS attempted to attack an airbase operated by Russian military, reported the Russian newspaper Segodnya. Interestingly, the newspaper also reported the ISIS militants “possessed a detailed plan of the air base and clear satellite imagery with the marked key military installations,” but Russia has only been operating the airbase for the past week or so. That begs the question: who provided ISIS with that kind of intelligence? Russian activity at the airbase ramped up Friday upon the arrival of advanced Russian fighter jets,including four Su-30SM Flankers which are loose equivalents to the U.S. F/A-18F Hornet.  “It is considered one of the most advanced aircraft in Russia’s inventory with updated avionics and a wide array of weapons at its disposal,” Jalopnik.com reported. “Sixty of the jets are planned to be delivered to Russian forces by next year.” Russia has also shipped in tanks, artillery and attack helicopters into Syria and has opened up high-level communications with the U.S. military to ensure that no misunderstandings lead to conflict. Moscow and Washington operated a similar ‘red phone’ hotline during the Cold War, a striking allegory to the current state of tensions between the two countries, especially as neo-conservative thinktanks rattle their sabers at Russia. Right now the Defense Dept. is “reviewing and updating its contingency plans for armed conflict with Russia,” according to Foreign Policy magazine. “After 1991, military plans to deal with Russian aggression fell off the Pentagon’s radar; they sat on the shelf, gathering dust as Russia became increasingly integrated into the West and came to be seen as a potential partner on a range of issues,” FP’s Julia Ioffe reported. “Now, according to several current and former officials in the State and Defense departments, the Pentagon is dusting off those plans and re-evaluating them, updating them to reflect a new, post-Crimea-annexation geopolitical reality in which Russia is no longer a potential partner, but a potential threat.” Source      |
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Posted: 22 Sep 2015 02:57 AM PDT
 Terrorist turned into hero by the handicapped Western media who should be fined out of existence for this, just for having a small fall. They didn’t even had a single bruise from that fall yet the media turned them into some weird victims of supreme oppression.Osama Abdul Mohsen was accused of being a member of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front by the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in a statement released on Friday. “Osama Abdul joined the rebel groups in 2011 and committed crimes against civilian minorities, including Kurds,” the statement says. It adds that “testimonies… of many Kurds alongside with images obtained [from Mohsen’s Facebook page]” provide evidence of his involvement in the Al-Nusra Front’s activities. The PYD also claims that Osama Abdul Mohsen was living in the Syrian town of Tel Abyad and decided to flee ahead of Kurdish forces seizing the city last July “in fear” that his involvement with the militant group would be revealed. Mohsen got widespread support and sympathy from the handicapped leftist-liberal media mostly focused on tabloids, after a video with him went viral causing a wave of public indignation in many countries all over the world. In this video, Osama Abdul Mohsen was filmed being tripped over by a Hungarian camerawoman as he tried to run across the Hungarian border with his 8-year-old son in his hands. After that he was turned into a star, getting VIP treatment everywhere.  The media screamed for weeks and keeps screaming even to this day like paranoid retards just for this junior-high like trip and fall small incident who turned this terrorist invader into a hero!Osama Abdul Mohsen and his family were even met by Cristiano Ronaldo during a Real Madrid game against Granada, to which the famous football player himself invited them. So it seems that these days, the West is so retarded that all you need to do to become a rich famous star, is to just be a Muslim and have someone tripping you only once in your life. Just a simple fall and that’s it you’re now famous! Thank you idiotic liberal media. PYD statement claims that Mohsen was not just a member of Al-Nusra Front but also fought against Kurds near the Syrian towns of Amudeh, Serekaniye and Afrin being involved in crimes against civilians. Additionally, the PYD accuses Mohsen of provoking violence after the football match between al-Fatwa and Qamishlo’s Jihad club back in 2004. The statement says he, who was the coach of al-Fatwa club in Deir ez-Zor between 2004 and 2010, was an instigator of violent clashes that resulted in deaths of 50 Kurds at that time. Source      |
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Posted: 22 Sep 2015 02:39 AM PDT
 Facebook acted like the US’s National Security Agency when spying on the social network’s European users without consent or authority, according to a Belgian data protection watchdog. Earlier, the Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) filed a lawsuit against Facebook, which the BPC said is spying on people in “the very same way” that the US National Security Agency (NSA) does, according to media reports. Speaking at a court hearing, Frederic Debussere, a lawyer representing the BPC, pointed the finger at Facebook, which is accused of breaching EU law and violating the privacy rights of internet users. “When it became known that the NSA was spying on people all around the world, everybody was upset. This actor [Facebook] is doing the very same thing, albeit in a different way,” Debussere said. With the case already being closely watched by privacy watchdogs in other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Debusserre warned against yielding to Facebook intimidations. “Don’t be intimidated by Facebook. They will argue our demands cannot be implemented in Belgium alone. Our demands can be perfectly implemented just in this country,” Debussere said. It was reported that the BPC is currently threatening Facebook with a fine of 250,000 EUR (280,213 USD) per day for failing to respond to its demands. Earlier this year, the BPC released a survey to show Facebook tracking logged-out users as well as non-users who visit sites that use plugins such as the like button; the survey said that the tracking is fulfilled without explicit consent and is out of line with Belgian and European privacy laws. Facebook has more than once rejected these accusations, claiming that the data and conclusions in BPC’s privacy report hold no water. Source     |
