Labour Party proposes a Marxist 50% tax

 

 

Business figures hit out at Labour's 50% tax rate plan

Senior British business figures have launched a strong and united attack on Labour’s pledge to raise the top rate of tax to 50%.

In the strongest criticism so far, the heads of 24 of Britain’s most successful companies warned in a letter to The Telegraph that Ed Miliband’s policy would threaten the recovery and cost jobs.
 

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has been severely criticised by rival politicians, industry figures and some members of his own party since announcing the policy. Balls insisted that his party was “pro-business” but claimed it was needed to close the budget deficit, which is forecast to be £78 billion at the next election reports the UK Telegraph.

The signatories of today’s letter include Sir Stuart Rose, the chairman of Ocado, Sir Ian Cheshire, the chief executive of the DIY giant Kingfisher, and Neil Clifford, the chief executive of the footwear retailer Kurt Geiger.

They warn that the 50% rate “will have the effect of discouraging business investment in the UK” and is a “backward step” that would quickly lead to job losses.

Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, said it would trigger an exodus of investors like that seen in France after President François Hollande increased the top rate of tax to 75 per cent.

“It would be suicidal,” he said. “Business people are against paying tax, just not at such a punitive rate.”

Another signatory is Richard Caring, the owner of Le Caprice and the Ivy restaurants who has an outstanding £2 million loan to the Labour Party.

He said he was “deflated to see this negative political attack on those trying to support the fragile recovery … This is a complete downer and discouragement for entrepreneurs”.

Sir Stuart, who led Marks & Spencer for six years, added: “This will put at risk all the good work that has been done to put the economy back on track.”

Sir Ian, whose company’s stores include B & Q and Screwfix, said: “Raising the rate is bad economics and sends an anti-business message.”

No in-state tuition for undocumented students in North Carolina

Good News

Only actual legal citizens of the state will get in-state

tuition! Amazing that it was even a question.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Students who arrived in the United States illegally cannot get in-state tuition in North Carolina community colleges or universities, even if they have been granted “deferred action” status by the federal government, according to a letter from the North Carolina Department of Justice released Thursday.

Last summer, the federal government announced that certain individuals who came to the United States illegally when they were small children would be able to work toward citizenship. To qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, participants must be under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, and meet other qualifications.

Rep. Marcus Brandon, D-Guilford, wrote to Attorney General Roy Cooper asking if those students would qualify for in-state tuition benefits, particularly if they had graduated from North Carolina high schools. In-state tuition is thousands of dollars cheaper per year than tuition charged to students from other states.

American citizen taxpayers of all races get to pay the
full bill while illegals get a break. 

Tunisia adpots a moderate Constitution with Freedom of Religion, Women's Rights

Interim Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa addresses the media after the new government presentation
ceremony at the presidential palace in Carthage near Tunis.

A Moderate Constitution

Women's Rights and Freedom of Religion make Tunisia

one of the most progressive in the Arab world.

After decades of dictatorship and two years of arguments and compromises, Tunisians on Sunday finally have a new constitution laying the foundations for a new democracy.

The document is groundbreaking as one of the most progressive constitutions in the Arab world — and for the fact that it got written at all. It passed late Sunday by 200 votes out of 216 in the Muslim Mediterranean country that inspired uprisings across the region after overthrowing a dictator in 2011.

"This constitution, without being perfect, is one of consensus," assembly speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar said after the vote. "We had today a new rendezvous with history to build a democracy founded on rights and equality," reports the Associated Press.

The constitution enshrining freedom of religion and women's rights took two years to finish. During that period, the country was battered by high unemployment, protests, terrorist attacks, political assassinations and politicians who seemed more interested in posturing than finishing the charter.

The new constitution sets out to make the North African country of 11 million people a democracy, with a civil state whose laws are not based on Islamic law, unlike many other Arab constitutions. An entire chapter of the document, some 28 articles, is dedicated to protecting citizens' rights, including protection from torture, the right to due process, and freedom of worship. It guarantees equality between men and women before the law and the state commits itself to protecting women's rights.

"This is the real revolution, many democratic constitution don't even have that," said Yahyaoui. "It will have a real impact on the rest of the Arab region, because finally we can say that women's rights are not a Western concept only, but also exist in Tunisia."

Tunisia has always had the most progressive legislation on women's rights in the Arab world and Yahyaoui believes the long period of writing has made people comfortable with its contents.

One of the most hotly debated articles guarantees "freedom of belief and conscience," which would permit atheism and the practice of non-Abrahamic religions frowned upon in other Islamic countries.

It also bans incitement to violence and declaring a Muslim an apostate — a fallen Muslim — which leaves them open to death threats. In response, conservative law makers insisted that "attacks on the sacred" be forbidden, which many see as a threat to freedom of expression.

Constitutional scholar Slim Loghmani said despite some drawbacks, the constitution is an "historic compromise between identity and modernity" that can serve as a model for other countries in the region seeking a balance between an Arab-Islamic heritage and contemporary ideas of human rights and good governance.

"It's a step forward in the nagging question of cultural identity in Arab countries," he said, lauding in particular not just freedom of religion but what he calls the freedom "not to have a religion."



Secular Tunisians protest

 

Secular Tunisian demonstrators wave their national flag during a demonstration
against the country's Islamist-led government in Tunis on August 24, 2013.

Russia moving into Eastern Mediterranean oil bonanza

Follow the Money Trail

• If you thought Comrade Obama was crying in his pillow at night over the little children refugees in Syria then you are a fool.
• In this interesting column the author exposes the real reason for Middle Eastern wars and terrorism - oil.
• When you "follow the money" you need to ask how do these freedom fighters or terrorists manage to obtain very, very expensive weapons and an endless supply of expensive ammo?  The corrupt big shots pony up billions in weapons and cash and then put a "public face" on their war with film of families driven from their homes by the war the elite created. 

By William Engdahl
RT News

The wars for control of Syria, and actually there is more than one going on simultaneously, have a strong background in an undeclared war over who will control the region’s gigantic and newly-discovered oil and gas reserves.

Now, Russia has just secured a major contract with the Syrian government. This comes after they brilliantly handed President Obama a face-saving way out of unwanted direct military action in Syria by brokering a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad to remove the country’s stock of chemical weapons. Regardless of whether Assad remains president, Russia holds exploration and development rights to a major part of Syria’s offshore waters.

On December 25, Syrian Oil Minister Suleiman Abbas on behalf of the Syrian government signed a 25-year deal with the Russian SoyuzNefteGaz company to explore for oil in the Middle Eastern country's territorial waters off the Mediterranean coast. SoyuzNefteGaz is headed by Russia's former energy minister, Yuri Shafranik, and its main shareholder is the Central Bank of Russia. It was founded in 2000 "to enhance economic cooperation with former Soviet countries, the Middle East and North Africa," according to RIA Novosti, the state Russian news agency. It also has projects in Iraq and Uzbekistan.

The Syrian deal is part of Putin’s long-term strategy in the region, in other words.

The new agreement covers an 845-square-mile [2,188 square kilometers] area stretching southward from the government-controlled city of Tartus, where Russia also has its only Naval base in the Mediterranean. The rights extend to Banias, and about 45 miles into the Mediterranean in the Syrian Exclusive Economic Zone. The Russian company has been involved for a number of years in onshore oil projects in Syria.

With the move to develop Syria’s offshore energy potential, Russia is stepping into a hot and rapidly developing scramble for what are estimated to be oil and gas reserves comparable to one or more new Saudi Arabia-size regions. A look at the offshore map of the region would be revealing.

Since it discovered significant gas in its offshore waters in 2010, Israel has become a major player in the development of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, including in Cyprus which has confirmed significant gas fields of its own. Lebanon’s offshore exploration has been disrupted (perhaps conveniently for some rivals) by the war in Syria, as has Syria’s own oil and gas exploration.

In March 2011, Assad signed another gas pipeline deal: this time with arch-Qatar enemy, Iran. Qatar is fundamentalist Sunni and home to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is fundamentalist Shiite Muslim and Iraq is ruled by a Shiite Prime Minister. Both Iran and Iraq back Assad in the current war for control of Syria. The Iranian gas pipeline would extend from its Persian Gulf field through Iraq and through Syria. No sooner was the ink dry on the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline when a full-scale terror war, financed by Qatar to the tune of billions of dollars, exploded across Syria.

Now Russia has stepped in, after the failure of Qatar, the Saudis and Turkey to topple the Assad regime and replace it, either with a fundamentalist Wahabite Saudi regime or a fundamentalist Salafist Muslim Brotherhood, one that would do business with them and not with Russia.

Follow the Money



Smedley Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
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During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler is well known for having later become an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences.
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By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to twice receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
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See more at General Smedley Butler

Snowden - NSA spies on foreign companies not terrorists

Bullshit Exposed

• In a new interview Edward Snowden exposes that the NSA is not that worried about terrorism.  Aside from spying on Americans, the NSA spends its time spying on foreign companies.
• For example, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted as the NSA went after the emails of the state owned oil company.

Berlin (AFP)  -  The US National Security Agency (NSA) sometimes uses data it collects for economic purposes, intelligence leaker Edward Snowden reveals in an extract of an interview with a German television chain to be broadcast Sunday.

"If there is information, for example on Siemens, which is in the national interest, but has nothing to do with national security, they will still use this information," said Snowden, according to the German translation of the interview on public television ARD.

See our article Obama spies on the terrorist hotbed of Brazil.

The interview was carried out by a journalist for NDR, a regional chain belonging to the broadcaster that has analyzed secret documents that Snowden leaked to journalists.

Under top secrecy, the chain this week in Moscow filmed the first interview with Snowden since he left Hong Kong in 2013 to seek refuge in Russia.

On its website, NDR said that Snowden assured he was no longer in possession of any confidential documents, as they had all been handed out to handpicked journalists. The former NSA contractor said he no longer wants to, or is able to, take part in any future revelations.

Other than the consequences of his revelations about NSA surveillance programs, Snowden will also address "his personal path" to leaking the information.

 

Snowden Interview: U.S. Spy On Foreign Companies

SHOCK - I found 'Allah' in my potato

Muslim housewife finds Allah's name while peeling spuds

• In a completely unrelated story, the Associated Press reports that mental illness is much more wide spread than previously thought.

A Scots Muslim woman (try to get your mind around that thought) has found the word "Allah" inside a potato she was peeling.

Mariam Nadeem told the Record: "It's like a special blessing has been sent to us."

Mum-of-two Mariam, 30, of Glenrothes, Fife, discovered the Arabic writing inside the spud as she peeled a batch of potatoes to make samosas reports the Daily Record.

She said: "This particular potato seemed a little bit mouldy so I cut a chunk off to see if the rest was OK.

Holy Spud

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"Then I noticed the brown writing in Arabic against the yellow of the potato.

"I couldn't believe it when I spelled out 'Allah'."

Mariam, who has sons aged five and two, showed the potato to her shopkeeper husband Nadeem Aslam.

"He agreed that the writing looked like 'Allah'," she said. "I showed it to our neighbors and they too were surprised."

Nadeem then took the potato to her local mosque.

She said: "Our imam suggested we could try to dry it and put it on show."

"But I don't want to dry it in case it turns brown so I think we will freeze it or bury it in the garden instead.

"I was very proud when I found it. I think I am very lucky.

"I have heard about messages from Allah on a leaf or an animal, but it is very rare."

Hundreds of Muslims flocked to a small terraced house in West Yorkshire in 1999 to see a tomato with a "message from Allah" inside.

Housewife Shabana Hussain, 27, was making a meal for her family when she cut the tomato in half and found "Bismillah" - or Allah - written in Arabic.

Writing on the other half of the vegetable said "la illaha illala" - or "there is no God but Allah".  Shabana said: "I was shocked."

Sochi Mayor - "There are no Gays in my city"

A Russian Gay Test?

The Mayor of Sochi seems very sure that there

are no Gays in his city.

The mayor of Sochi, host of the Winter Olympics, has said there are no gay people in the city.

Anatoly Pakhomov said homosexuals were welcome at the Games - as long as they "respect Russian law" and "don't impose their habits on others".

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said there were several gay bars in Sochi reports BBC News.

In June 2013, Russia passed a law banning the promotion of "non-traditional" sexuality to under-18s - widely seen as an attack on gay rights.

The controversial new law made providing information on homosexuality to under-18s a crime, punishable by a fine.

Anatoly Pakhomov, a member of President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, told Panorama that gay people would be welcome at the Games.

"Our hospitality will be extended to everyone who respects the laws of the Russian Federation and doesn't impose their habits on others", he said.

But when asked whether gay people had to hide their sexuality in Sochi, the Mayor said: "No, we just say that it is your business, it's your life. But it's not accepted here in the Caucasus where we live. We do not have them in our city."

When challenged, the mayor admitted that he was not certain there were no gay people in Sochi: "I am not sure, but I don't bloody know them."

BBC Panorama reporter John Sweeney visited a gay bar in Sochi the night before he interviewed the mayor.

Most people did not want to be filmed and those that did were cautious about what they said.

Drag queen Madame Zhu-Zha said there was a gay community in the city and in other areas of Russia.

"There are very many clubs for gay people in Moscow - in Sochi we have two gay clubs as well. In some places there's serious prejudice against gay people. In other places it's not as bad."