Video shows BSO deputies strike man, slam him to pavement


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How not to make friends and influence people.........

Surveillance video taken at a Deerfield Beach gas station shows two Broward Sheriff's Office deputies striking a man and then slamming him to the ground.

David Gonzalez, 50, admits he was drinking but said he was just using words to defend himself against an allegation that he had stolen some beer at a Texaco station in Deerfield Beach when he was struck twice by a deputy and slammed violently face-first to the pavement.

The two BSO deputies questioning him -- Justin Lambert and Mike Manresa -- claim it was Gonzalez who "raised his hand" at them and then resisted arrest, forcing them to "escort him to the ground."

More with video @ Local 10

Eleven terrorists with links to Al Qaeda have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the disappearance of MH370

 A Malaysian Airlines aircraft takes off from Kuala Lumpur Airport: Questions have been raised after the airline refused to reveal details of 2.3 tonnes of cargo aboard missing jet MH370 that was not listed on its manifest

A group of 11 terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning bomb attacks in Muslim countries.

The interrogations come after international investigators, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the militants, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, odd-job workers, a young widow and business professionals, to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370.

The News IQ Quiz

Via Sister Anne

 http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/pew.jpg

You scored better than 96% of the public, below 1% and the same as 3%.
I missed the number of women in Congress. 10% too high.

CNN: Words of Kiev 'success' in Kramatorsk far from reality

 At least two people were “shot dead by snipers” during the street battles in Kramatorsk on Saturday, the activist also told Rossiya-24. Ten people had been reportedly killed during the storming of the city overnight, according to self-defense.

Kiev authorities argue that the special operation in Kramatorsk was successful and the city released from pro-Russian militias. But CNN correspondent reports that the reality looks quite different:

Ukrainian troops left the city, and not taking it under control and leaving behind angry residents.

More with video @ Russian RT

Russian bombers, fighter jets 'seen over Crimea' : Civil War in Ukraine

 

Several dozen Russian planes including what appeared to be strategic bombers and fighter jets have been spotted in the sky above the Moscow-controlled peninsula of Crimea, witnesses and experts said.

According to Russian media, President Vladimir Putin is poised to visit Crimea on Friday after overseeing the main military parade on Red Square when Russia celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

A local aviation expert told AFP on Sunday that he had sighted a number of planes over the peninsula's main city of Simferopol on Saturday, including supersonic heavy strategic bombers and heavy military transport aircraft. 

The expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had also seen refuelling tankers and MiG-29 jets.

Another expert, Alexei Savich, who was shown footage of the aircraft, said a Sukhoi Su-34 fighter jet could be seen among the planes.

He also identified the tankers and military transport planes.

More @ Yahoo

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Image via  ivakin_alexey

Imprint on the wall of the House of Trade Unions.

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 Civil War in Ukraine (But Please Don't Call it That!)


A civil war is underway in Ukraine. Curiously, no one has labeled it as such even though the Ukrainian government launched an offensive, helicopters were shot down, dozens were killed in the process, and military operations took place in multiple cities.
Two Ukrainian government helicopters were shot down and six people reported to have been killed on Friday morning as state forces launched a military offensive in Slavyansk, the eastern separatist-held city where armed pro-Russia militia fighters are holding several people hostage.

A spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin described the offensive as a “punitive operation”, raising the stakes in Ukraine’s confrontation with pro-Russia rebels and Moscow, after a week that has seen separatists seize control of more government, police and judicial buildings in the country’s east.
Punitive Operation

Let's not call it a war, let's call it a a "punitive operation".

More @ Townhall


Senator Robert Toombs and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy

 

Often overlooked is Senator Robert Toombs 13 November 1860 speech to the Georgia Legislature, in which he reports on the unfavorable progress in conciliating with the Northern States.  His sentiments aptly summarize the position of the Southern States at that time, and in the light of a hostile, sectional and revolutionary party soon taking the reins of government in Washington City.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission

"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

Senator Robert Toombs and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy
 
“GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY: 

I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings. 

We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands. The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom. We need no declaration of independence. 

Above eighty-four years ago our fathers won that by the sword from Great Britain, and above seventy years ago Georgia, with the twelve other confederates, as free, sovereign, and independent States, having perfect governments already in existence, for purposes and objects clearly expressed, and with powers clearly defined, erected a common agent for the attainment of these purposes by the exercise of those powers, and called this agent the United States of America.

The basis, the corner-stone of this Government, was the perfect equality of the free, sovereign, and independent States which made it. They were unequal in population, wealth, and territorial extent - they had great diversities of interests, pursuits, institutions, and laws; but they had common interests, mainly exterior, which they proposed to protect by this common agent - a constitutional united government - without in any degree subjecting their inequalities and diversities to Federal control or action.      
                                                                                                           
The Executive Department of the Federal Government, for forty- eight out of the first sixty years under the present Constitution, was in the hands of Southern Presidents . . . no advantage was ever sought or obtained by them for their section of the Republic. They never sought to use a single one of the powers of the Government for the advancement of the local or peculiar interests of the South, and they all left office without leaving a single law on the statute-book where repeal would have affected injuriously a single industrial pursuit, or the business of a single human being in the South. 

But on the contrary, they had acquiesced in the adoption of a policy in the highest degree beneficial to Northern interests. We can to-day open wide the history of their administrations and point with pride to every act, and challenge the world to point out a single act stained with injustice to the North, or with partiality to their own section. This is our record; let us now examine that of our confederates.

The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pursued that policy to this day. They demanded a monopoly of the business of ship-building, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to citizens of the United States, which exists to this day.

They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get higher freights than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. Congress gave it to them, and they yet hold this monopoly. And now, to-day, if a foreign vessel in Savannah offer[s] to take your rice, cotton, grain or lumber to New-York, or any other American port, for nothing, your laws prohibit it, in order that Northern ship-owners may get enhanced prices for doing your carrying. 

This same shipping interest, with cormorant rapacity, have steadily burrowed their way through your legislative halls, until they have saddled the agricultural classes with a large portion of the legitimate expenses of their own business. We pay a million of dollars per annum for the lights which guide them into and out of your ports. 

The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan . . . in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government. 

No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union . . . by it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor.  Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its . . . most favorable action . . . the treasury [is] a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands.

They will have possession of the Federal executive with its vast power, patronage, prestige of legality, its army, its navy, and its revenue on the fourth of March next. Hitherto it has been on the side of the Constitution and the right; after the fourth of March it will be in the hands of your enemy. 

What more can you get from them under this Government? You have the Constitution - you have its exposition by themselves for seventy years - you have their oaths - they have broken all these, and will break them again. They tell you everywhere, loudly and defiantly, you shall have no power, no security until you give up the right of governing yourselves according to your own will - until you submit to theirs. For this is the meaning of Mr. Lincoln's irrepressible conflict - this is his emphatic declaration to all the world. 

But we are told that secession would destroy the fairest fabric of liberty the world ever saw, and that we are the most prosperous people in the world under it. The arguments of tyranny as well as its acts, always reenact themselves. The arguments I now hear in favor of this Northern connection are identical in substance, and almost in the same words as those which were used in 1775 and 1776 to sustain the British connection. We won liberty, sovereignty, and independence by the American Revolution - we endeavored to secure and perpetuate these blessings by means of our Constitution.
We are said to be a happy and prosperous people. We have been, because we have hitherto maintained our ancient rights and liberties - we will be until we surrender them. They are in danger; come, freemen, to the rescue. Withdraw yourselves from such a confederacy; it is your right to do so - your duty to do so. As for me, I will take any place in the great conflict for rights which you may assign. I will take none in the Federal Government during Mr. Lincoln's administration.”

Kentucky Police Set Up ‘Eating While Driving’ Checkpoints

Via Jeffery "Do we still believe we are not living in a police state?"

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Instead of preventing crime and searching for criminals Kentucky is beginning an arbitrary program of looking out for people that may be eating while they drive. This clear violation of the 4th Amendment will also include checkpoints targeting “distracted drivers,” despite the fact that there is no ban on eating and driving in Kentucky.

More Than Half of Humanity Now Lives in Cities

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VERBATIM

90% would be fine with me.

For the first time in history, more than half of the people on earth live in urban areas, and 51 percent of them — 1.92 billion — reside in urban areas with more than 500,000 residents. 

That's one of the disclosures in the latest edition of Demographia World Urban Areas, which provides data on estimated population, area, and population density for the 922 urban areas with at least 500,000 population.

Demographia defines an “urban area” as a "continually built up land mass of urban development that is within a labor market (metropolitan area)." A metro area also includes economically connected rural land outside the built-up urban area, while an urban area does not.

Of the urban areas with 500,000 residents or more, 56 percent are in Asia, 14 percent in North America, 11 percent in Europe, 10 percent in Africa, 8 percent in South America, and 1 percent in Australasia.

There are now 29 megacities — urban areas with at least 10 million population — including London, which passed the 10 million threshold this year. That’s according to an article on the Demographia report from Newgeography.com written by Wendell Cox, principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm.

Tokyo remains the most populous urban area, as it has been for a half-century, with 37.55 million residents, but its margin over other cities has been narrowing.

Jakarta, Indonesia, is second with 29.95 million, followed by Delhi, India (24.13 million) and Seoul-Incheon, South Korea (22.99 million).

Manila, Philippines, moves up to No. 5 with 22.71 million, passing Shanghai, China (22.65 million). Rounding out the top 10 are Karachi, Pakistan (21.58 million); New York (20.66 million); Mexico City (20.3 million); and Sao Paulo, Brazil (20.27 million).

Los Angeles ranks No. 16 with 15.25 million, and Chicago is No. 35 with 9.23 million. The least populous American urban area on the list of 922 is Toledo, Ohio, at No. 861 with 508,000 population.
In terms of land area, New York is by far the largest urban area with nearly 4,500 square miles, ahead of Tokyo with 3,300 square miles. Several other U.S. urban areas are in the top 10 in land area, including No. 3 Chicago (2,647 square miles), No. 4 Atlanta (2,645), No. 5. Los Angeles (2,432), No. 6 Boston (2,056), No. 7 Dallas-Fort Worth (1,998), No. 8 Philadelphia (1,981), and No. 10 Houston (1,793). Moscow, Russia is No. 9 with 1,800 square miles.

Due to the relatively large land area of U.S. cities, no American urban area is among the world's most densely populated.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, is the most densely populated, with 114,000 people per square mile. Hyderabad, Pakistan (not India), is behind at 105,500, and Mumbai, India, has 83,800.

The most densely populated European urban area doesn’t appear on the list until No. 296 — Genoa, Italy, with 20,800 per square mile.

And to find the most densely populated U.S. urban area, you'll have to go all the way to No. 794 on the list of 922. That's where you'll find Los Angeles, with 6,300 people per square mile.