[Login / Register]

Menu

Forums

error

This forum is not active, and new posts may not be made in it.

Share on Google+

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/19/2012 10:25:50 AM
	Israel to face new condemnation for settlements By By EDITH M. LEDERER and JAMEY KEATEN \| Associated Press – 11 hrs ago Associated Press/Dan Balilty - An Israeli walks near a construction site in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Sholmo, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. An European diplomat says Germany and three other European members of the U.N. Security Council are preparing a statement condemning Israel's latest settlement plans in the West Bank. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty) UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Palestinians said Tuesday that all of the U.N. Security Council members except the United States will condemn Israel's recent announcements of new settlement construction which are making a two-state solution more difficult to achieve. Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour said the 14 other council members will tell reporters after the council's monthly Mideast meeting on Wednesday that continuing settlement activity is illegal and must be stopped. The United States delivered a rare blunt rebuke to Israel, its top Mideast ally, on Tuesday for its new settlement construction, but Mansour said the Obama administration won't approve a Security Council resolution or statement. He said there is near global unanimity against Israel's actions, pointing to the 169-6 vote in the General Assembly Tuesday on a non-binding resolution condemning settlement activities by Israel and demanding their immediate cessation. "Unfortunately, one powerful country with veto power does not want the Security Council to act accordingly," Mansour said. "Therefore, the 14 other countries in the Security Council, in their own creative way, will make their position clear, collectively or separately, to the media outside the chamber on Wednesday." He said the four West European council members — Germany, France, Britain and Portugal — would issue a statement of condemnation, followed by India speaking on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement of mainly developing countries, and other council members likely including South Africa, Russia and China. "Therefore one can say 14 versus 1 is the reality of the Security Council in condemning Israel settlement activity — although the one is also condemning," Mansour said. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to build thousands of homes in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in response to the U.N. General Assembly's decision last month to upgrade the Palestinians' status to a nonmember observer state. On Monday, he said Israel will push forward with plans to build 1,500 apartments in east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland accused Israel of engaging in a "pattern of provocative action" that runs counter to the government's commitment to peace. She said settlement activity only puts the goal of peace "further at risk" and urged both Israel and the Palestinians to halt all provocations and take steps to revive long-stalled peace talks. Her comments came as the United States grows increasingly frustrated with the Israelis, who continue to announce new settlement activity and take other measures to punish the Palestinians for the U.N. vote recognizing the state of Palestine, despite U.S. calls for restraint. British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Tuesday called all Israeli settlements "illegal under international law." He urged Israel to reverse its latest expansion plan in east Jerusalem, warning that if implemented "it would make a negotiated two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, very difficult to achieve." The European Union, Israel's biggest trading partner, has been increasingly vocal in its criticism of new settlements just as Israel is gearing up for general elections next month. In an unprecedented move, a string of European governments summoned their local Israeli ambassadors to lodge protests following the Israeli settlement announcements. Wednesday's expected statement by key European countries on the U.N.'s most powerful body would be a symbolic, but nonetheless high-profile show of displeasure with the Israelis. Israel's Netanyahu has been unshaken by the criticism, and on Tuesday he vowed to continue building in east Jerusalem. "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the state of Israel, and we will continue to build there. A united Jerusalem expresses a wide national agreement," he said in the northern Israeli town of Acre. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the idea of taking action at the United Nations only lowers the chances of renewing peace talks, and he insisted the only way to advance negotiations is "to weigh on the Palestinians and convince them to return to the negotiating table." "Fiddling with U.N. resolutions will take us the opposite way," he added. "So it's their choice to make, a step forward or two steps backward." Despite its vocal frustration, the United States has repeatedly blocked Security Council condemnation of Israeli settlements. Almost exactly a year ago, the four West European nations issued a statement critical of Israeli settlements at the Security Council. They and the other 10 members pointed a finger at the United States for blocking any condemnation of Israel's accelerated settlement construction. That scenario is likely to be repeated on Wednesday. The United States also vetoed a U.N. resolution in February 2011 that would have condemned "illegal" Israeli settlements and urged an immediate halt to all settlement building. The 14 other Security Council members voted in favor of the resolution. The General Assembly decision recognized a Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. That annexation that has not been recognized internationally. Israel rejects a return to the 1967 lines and accused the Palestinians of bypassing negotiations with the U.N. bid. Peace talks have been frozen for four years, in large part because of the settlement issue. The Palestinians refuse to negotiate while Israel expands its settlements, which are now home to more than 500,000 Israelis. Netanyahu has rejected calls to halt settlement construction, saying that a partial freeze he imposed in 2009 and 2010 failed to restart substantive negotiations. He says talks should resume without any preconditions. Israeli officials have brushed off the international criticism as either unfair or by portraying it as a disagreement among friends. But officials say the increasingly frosty relations with Europe are a cause for concern. ___ Keaten reported from Paris. Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Juergen Baetz in Berlin and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+0

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/19/2012 4:12:19 PM
	President backs assault weapons ban, other potential gun measures By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News \| The Ticket – 18 hrs ago President Barack Obama (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)President Barack Obama supports Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's legislation banning assault weapons—signed into law in 1994, it expired in 2004—and other potential gun measures, the White House revealed on Tuesday, after declining to discuss gun control specifics the day before. "He is actively supportive of, for example, Sen. Feinstein's stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban," White House press secretary Jay Carney said at Tuesday's briefing. "He supports and would support legislation that addresses the problem of the gun show loophole, and there are other elements of gun legislation that he could support—people have talked about high-capacity ammunition clips for example, and that is something certainly that he would be interested in looking at." On Monday, Carney declined to offer any specifics on gun control measures Obama might support after Friday's shooting in Newtown, Conn., amid pressure from gun control advocates and others. But Carney stressed Tuesday that the president is actively discussing how to respond to the shooting. "The president yesterday afternoon had discussions with members of his Cabinet, members of his senior staff and the vice president to begin looking at ways for the country to move forward and respond to the tragedy in Newtown," Carney said. He confirmed that the president met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Carney added that the president is "heartened" to hear some pro-gun-rights lawmakers are open to discussing "common-sense gun control measures like the assault weapons ban." He said the president also spoke Tuesday with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin—a Democrat and "A"-rated NRA member who publicly criticized assault weapons on Monday. Carney underscored Tuesday, as he had the day before, that a substantive response to Friday's shooting requires a complex solution that includes not only gun rights, but mental health, law enforcement and other areas. "Gun laws alone would not solve this problem," Carney said.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+0

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/19/2012 4:14:34 PM
	A look at bank scandals since the financial crisis By The Associated Press \| Associated Press – 3 hrs ago Swiss bank UBS AG agreed Wednesday to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international regulatorsfollowing a probe into the rigging of a key global interest rate. The financial industry's image was already badly tarnished by banks' role in the U.S. mortgage meltdown that sparked the global financial crisis and recession. Some have been in the headlines for trading scandals and alleged money-laundering. Here's a look at some of the low points for banking and bankers since the start of the financial crisis. — Swiss bank UBS blames a rogue trader at its London office for a $2.3 billion loss that is Britain's biggest-ever fraud at a bank. Kweku Adoboli, the 32 year old trader, is sentenced to seven years in prison. Britain's financial regulator fines UBS after finding its internal controls were inadequate and allowed Adoboli, a relatively inexperienced trader, to make vast and risky bets. The case has echoes of Societe Generale trader Jerome Kerviel, who hid €5 billion in losses. Kerviel said SocGen turned a blind eye to his colossal positions in late 2007 and early 2008 as long as they made money for the bank. — Wells Fargo Bank agrees to pay at least $175 million to settle U.S. Department of Justice accusations that it discriminated against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers from 2004 through 2009. The department said the bank's discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin. — JPMorgan Chase announces a loss of $2 billion from a trade that was meant to protect the bank if the global economy sharply deteriorated. Later, losses from the bad trade swell to nearly $6 billion and shave much more from the company's stock market value. The episode heightens concerns that the biggest banks still pose risks to the U.S. financial system, less than four years after the financial crisis. — Barclays agrees to pay more than $450 million to U.S. and British regulators to settle charges that it attempted to manipulate a global benchmark interest rate known as LIBOR. The rate indirectly affect the costs of hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans that people pay when they get loans to go to college, purchase a car or buy a house. Numerous other banks are under investigation for similar violations. UBS pays $1.5 billion to settle LIBOR manipulation charges with regulators in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland. The bank says some of its employees tried to rig LIBOR in several currencies. — An independent review finds Kabul Bank spirited some $861 million out of war-torn Afghanistan in a massive fraud based on fake loans to 19 individuals and companies. A bailout of the bank costs the equivalent of 5 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, making it one of world's largest banking failures ever. — HSBC, Europe's largest bank, says it's paying $1.9 billion in penalties to settle a U.S. money laundering probe. The investigation into HSBC focused on the transfer of billions of dollars on behalf of nations such as Iran and the transfer of money from Mexican drug cartels. The bank said its anti-laundering measures were inadequate and said it was "profoundly sorry."
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+0

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/19/2012 4:18:01 PM
	More Chickens May Be Boiled Alive Under USD's New Proposed Rules by Piper Hoffman December 18, 2012 At poultry slaughterhouses, chickens whiz past workers at the rate of 35 per minute per inspector, getting various parts cut off. At one of the early stations their throats are cut, so it wouldn’t seem to make any difference to the chicken how fast the rest of the production line goes, except for this: some of them are still conscious. Now the USDA is preparing to implement a rule that would increase that speed to 175 per minute per inspector. Inspectors would have less time to examine birds, meaning that “plant employees[would] replace federal government inspectors for certain inspection activities.” In other words, slaughterhouses would, to a significant extent, police themselves. United Poultry Concerns describes the slaughter process. Chickens enter the slaughter line when a worker shackles them upside down by the feet (or by one foot; when things move fast it’s hard to be too particular) to a moving belt. Next they are dragged through electrified water. This doesn’t kill or stun them and isn’t meant to. The purpose is to paralyze them so they won’t thrash around for the rest of the process. After that the birds reach the throat-cutting machine or worker. The fastest way to kill them here is to sever both carotid arteries, which leads to unconsciousness in two minutes. That doesn’t always happen. The carotids are buried deep in chickens’ neck muscles, so cutters sometimes miss them and cut one jugular vein instead, which leaves the birds conscious and suffering for eight minutes. The birds are left hanging for 90 seconds to bleed out. The next station is the scalding tank. Chickens are dunked into boiling water to remove their feathers. At this point, many of them are still conscious — they are boiled alive. Some birds twist their heads up and avoid the throat-cutting machine. Slaughterhouse workers call these fully conscious birds “red skins” because they are still full of blood when they hit the boiling water. In one year that the government kept records for, 3,121,617 red skins were dropped into scalding tanks. After this dismemberment begins. Speeding up the process, as the USDA proposes to do, will make it harder to cut both carotid arteries, leaving more birds conscious. If the bleed-out time is shortened, even more birds will feel the boiling water. Whether the new speed is humane is not relevant to the USDA’s decision. There is no federal law that protects chickens during slaughter, leaving the USDA free to make its choice based on money. The agency “estimates that the changes will save taxpayers $90 million over three years and $256 million in production costs annually.” Some believe that reducing the time inspectors have to look at each bird will endanger the food supply. McClatchy writes: Federal poultry inspectors protest that they can’t see bruises, blisters, tumors, pus, broken bones and other signs of tainted birds when carcasses fly by them at a rate of a third of a second. They can’t look inside the birds for bile, partially digested feed or fecal matter, or examine entrails for diseases such as avian leukosis – contaminants that inspectors say can be disgusting at best and dangerous at worst. “The rule continuously talks about how much money per pound the plants are going to save by going into this process,” said Stan Painter, the chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, a union that represents about 6,500 federal inspectors. “Why the hell is an agency concerned about the money that the plant’s going to save? I realize that’s a stakeholder, but our focus should be food safety.” Speeding up the slaughter process appears likely not only to make chickens suffer even more than they do now, but also to increase the possibility that people who eat them will ingest contaminants and become ill. It will also put workers at greater risk of injury. That is why a “coalition of consumer, labor, public health and civil rights groups is calling on the” U.S.D.A. not to pass the rule. According to the coalition, “59 percent of poultry workers had definite or possible carpal tunnel syndrome when line speeds were 70-91 birds per minute.” Those numbers would only increase as lines got faster. Speeding up the lines in chicken slaughterhouses would increase the birds’ suffering, decrease the safety of their meat, and increase the likelihood of injuries to workers. You can tell the USDA not to adopt this rule by signing our petition. Related Stories: Ground Up Alive: Baby Chicks Suffer Consumers Protest Dirty Chicken Outside USDA Study Finds Staph in Half of Supermarket Meat Read more: animal cruelty, animal welfare, chicken, slaughterhouse, speed, usda Photo credit: Hemera Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/more-chickens-may-be-boiled-alive-under-usdas-new-proposed-rule.html#ixzz2FVzQsyag
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+0

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/19/2012 4:24:33 PM
	Cruelty at Pig Farm Considered Humane by Independent Panel by Alicia Graef December 18, 2012 Horrific abuse of pigs has once again been exposed by Mercy for Animals Canada in an undercover investigation of a Puratone Corp. farm in Alborg, Manitoba, which was chosen at random. The footage was obtained by an undercover investigator over a three-month period that began at the end of the summer and shows multiple problems ranging from downer pigs being kicked and pulled by their ears to get them to walk and piglets being slammed into the ground and being left to die slowly to pregnant sows being left with untreated prolapses and open wounds and pressure sores caused by rubbing against the bars of their gestation crates. “Every single day our investigator identified issues of absolutely horrific animal cruelty,” Stéphane Perrais, Mercy for Animals Canada’s director of operations told the Montreal Gazette, who noted that the group believes the problems seen during this investigation are common on farms around the country. Mercy for Animals Canada was established this summer and is a sister organization of the U.S. based Mercy for Animals. The group is now calling on major grocery stores that sell Puratone products, including WalMart, Sobeys, Superstore/Loblaws and Metro food stores, to require their suppliers to phase out gestation crates. “While many of the standard industry practices uncovered at this pig factory farm are needlessly cruel, subjecting animals to a lifetime of confinement in crates so small they are virtually immobilized is perhaps the worst form of institutionalized animal abuse in existence. A growing number of animal welfare experts opposes the use of gestation crates, concluding what common sense should have told us all along: animals with legs should have room to move,” stated the group. Puratone issued a statement saying they are “disturbed by some of the images, shown in the video taken in one of our farming sites, which do not reflect our animal welfare policy and principles” and that they have launched an investigation. The U.S. based Center for Food Integrity had an independent Animal Care Review Panel, comprised of three experts, review the footage at the request of the Canadian pork council. The panel concluded that, “while some of the animal handling practices shown are improper, most of what is seen are widely considered acceptable and humane.” The acceptable standard industry practices depicted include castrating and tail docking piglets without the use of painkillers and using blunt force trauma as a form of euthanasia. Slamming piglets into the ground to kill them is perfectly alright and, by some standards, humane. Mercy for Animals Canada will continue to work to expose cruelty to animals and is also working to remind consumers about the power we have to end animal suffering by making compassionate food choices and passing on animal products. TAKE ACTION! Please sign the petition asking Manitoba Pork to commit to phasing out gestation crates by 2017 Related Stories: Just in Time for Thanksgiving: More Cruelty at Butterball Turkey Farms Cruelty Exposed at Iowa Factory Farm Undercover Investigation Shows Horrors of the Pork Industry Read more: mercy for animals, pigs, pork, puratone, undercover investigation Photo credit: Thinkstock Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/cruelty-at-pig-farm-considered-humane-by-independent-panel.html#ixzz2FW13owaG
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+0

Like us on Facebook!