Category Archives: Fail!

Behind migrant protests, children live in limbo at Macedonia′s border | Europe | DW.COM | 27.11.2015

“The things some of these kids draw, they’re awful,” said Iro Kofokotsios, 18. “People with guns, war, torture.” Kofkotsios had come with a group of volunteers from the YMCA to the Greek border with Macedonia “We couldn’t bring them shelter or food,” she continued, “but we thought maybe we could bring them smiles.”Here at the refugee camp near the town of Idomeni, Greece, smiles are hard to come by. After the Macedonian government announced last week that it would only allow migrants from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to cross its border, thousands here have been left behind. It’s led to daily protests, with the border at times being closed altogether. On Monday, a group of Iranian men sewed their lips together in desperation.But behind the crowds of angry, screaming men confronting the Greek riot police, in the camp set up by aid agencies, there are an estimated 70 children who are also stranded in this dusty no man’s land. Most are Iranian or Pakistani, with some from Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh and other countries. Many have come with their parents, others have come alone. But with the border now closed to these nationalities, all of them are stuck in refugee limbo.

Source: Behind migrant protests, children live in limbo at Macedonia′s border | Europe | DW.COM | 27.11.2015

Video: Donald Trump Hatefully Mocks NY Times Reporter With Disability : Gothamist

http://www.dailymotion.com/widget/jukebox?list=%2Fplaylist%2Fx40zg8_Gothamist_gothamist-filmsAmbulatory Cheeto Donald Trump has always been a bully with a bad haircut. So we’re completely unsurprised that he reached new lows this week as he desperately struggled to keep his much-debunked NJ 9/11 cheering story alive, stooping to making fun of a NY Times reporter with a disability during a rally in South Carolina.

Source: Video: Donald Trump Hatefully Mocks NY Times Reporter With Disability : Gothamist

A silent coup in Poland? | News | DW.COM | 26.11.2015

The media’s ‘national duty’Now the PiS has set its eyes on the media.Shortly before a Breslau theater was set to premier its staging of Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek’s “Der Tod und Das Mädchen,” newly installed Culture Minister Piotr Glinski urged the performance to be called off amid talk that pornographic scenes would occur on stage. “Government money for culture will not be spent on pornography,” he said.When a television moderator from the channel TVP asked about the legal basis of his threat, Glinski dodged the question before offering threatening TVP in turn: “This program is propaganda, just like the propaganda and manipulation that your channel has been pushing for years,” he said. “That will end soon. Public television is not allowed to function like that.”The journalist was pulled as the program’s moderator and the culture minister soon announced that reform for rules governing the media were already in their “final phase.” It is so far known that state television and radio channels, as well as the Polish press agency PAP, will be cast as “national cultural institutions.” Their current boards will be swiftly replaced with people who in turn could be dismissed at any time.

Source: A silent coup in Poland? | News | DW.COM | 26.11.2015

Turkey jails two journalists over claims Ankara supplied arms to Syrian jihadis | News | DW.COM | 26.11.2015

A court in Istanbul accused Can Dündar (pictured above) and Erdem Gül, two journalists with the opposition daily “Cumhuriyet,” of “divulging state secrets” and “spying in aid of terrorist organizations.”In May 2015, the two journalists had published a video on the newspaper’s website dating back to January 2014 that allegedly showed Turkish police open Syria-bound crates of weapons and ammunition on trucks belonging to Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT.Dündar, 54, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief and a well-known veteran journalist in Turkey, and Gül, the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, have both been taken into custody, as social media users across Turkey voiced their criticism at the recently-elected government’s tough stance on journalists.

Source: Turkey jails two journalists over claims Ankara supplied arms to Syrian jihadis | News | DW.COM | 26.11.2015

Study shows European hospitals miss every other HIV infection | Vaccine News

“Hospitals would be able to diagnose almost twice as many people with HIV if they all adhered to the European guidelines on which people should be offered an HIV test,” Professor Jens Lundgren from the Department of Infectious Diseases at Rigshospitalet and Copenhagen University, said. “This is very unfortunate. When we fail to diagnose those living with HIV in time, they suffer more complications, their life expectancy is shortened and there is a greater risk that they may have transmitted the virus to others. This is why it’s important to diagnose as many people as possible, early on.”

Source: Study shows European hospitals miss every other HIV infection | Vaccine News

Godfather of terror: Saudi Arabia and ′IS′ | World | DW.COM | 25.11.2015

Saudi Arabia exports its version of Sunni Islam with the utmost consequence. In the last 25 years a former US ambassador estimated in a published study in 2007 that the kingdom had invested at least 87 billion dollars in religious propaganda worldwide. This sum, he thinks, may even have increased further due to the high price of oil over an extended period. The funds went towards the construction of mosques, Madrassa Koran schools and religious institutions, and helped finance the training of Imams, publishing houses and Wahhabi text books.A large part of the funds go to economically weak, but populous Islamic countries in south and southeast Asia, such as Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, or Malaysia. Proselytizing for Wahhabism is also done in parts of Africa. For many people in these parts of the world it is the only possibility of getting a school education. There they learn how to read and write and are also given access to the Wahhabi teachings. But there are also Saudi Arabian financed institutions in the West.

Source: Godfather of terror: Saudi Arabia and ′IS′ | World | DW.COM | 25.11.2015

Britain drops controversial plan to cut tax credits for the working poor | News | DW.COM | 25.11.2015 {But not tax on tampons!?!}

The chancellor also used his speech to address the controversial ‘tampon tax’ that is, taxing tampons with VAT (sometimes called sales tax) for what are considered luxury items. Some 300,000 people in Britain signed a petition against the tax, arguing that the products are hygiene necessities, not luxuries.The government had already said that it was charging the lowest tax rate allowed by European law, 5 percent, on womens’ sanitary products.Osborne said in his speech that there was nothing he could do about the tax at this time, but insisted the revenue from the tax would be diverted to womens’ charities.”The first £5 million will be distributed between the Eve Appeal, Safe Lives and Women’s Aid and The Haven – and I invite bids from other such good causes,” Osborne told the House of Commons. The first two are organizations for cancer patients and the latter two focus on domestic violence.

Source: Britain drops controversial plan to cut tax credits for the working poor | News | DW.COM | 25.11.2015

Emirates Secretly Sends Colombian Mercenaries to Fight in Yemen – The New York Times {Reap what you sow?}

“The private military industry is global now,” said Mr. McFate, adding that the United States essentially “legitimized” the industry with its heavy reliance on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan over more than a decade of war. “Latin American mercenaries are a sign of what’s to come,” he said.The Colombian troops now in Yemen, handpicked from a brigade of some 1,800 Latin American soldiers training at an Emirati military base, were woken up in the middle of the night for their deployment to Yemen last month. They were ushered out of their barracks as their bunkmates continued sleeping, and were later issued dog tags and ranks in the Emirati military. Those left behind are now being trained to use grenade launchers and armored vehicles that Emirati troops are currently using in Yemen.

Source: Emirates Secretly Sends Colombian Mercenaries to Fight in Yemen – The New York Times

In Renovation of Golf Club, Donald Trump Also Dressed Up History – The New York Times – Why can’t they just say he is a pathological liar for profit.

historians” had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyThen he said the historians had spoken not to him but to “my people.” But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians’ names.Continue reading the main storyInteractive Graphic: Who’s Winning the Presidential Campaign?“Write your story the way you want to write it,” Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. “You don’t have to talk to anybody. It doesn’t make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.”In its small way, the plaque bears out Mr. Trump’s reputation for being preoccupied with grandeur, superlatives and his own name, but less so with verifiable facts, even when his audience is relatively small.

Source: In Renovation of Golf Club, Donald Trump Also Dressed Up History – The New York Times

A Definitive Debunking of Donald Trump’s 9/11 Claims – The New York Times

Confronted by Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Trump essentially shrugged: “I retweeted somebody that was supposedly an expert, and it was also a radio show.” He has said, variously, that 200,000 or 250,000 Syrian refugees would be coming to the United States; the Obama administration’s actual goal for next year is 10,000, as FactCheck.org reported.Indifferent as Mr. Trump is to facts, in retailing the myth of the dancing Muslims, he could not face a more sober and careful fact-finder than Mr. Farmer.Now a professor of law at Rutgers University, he led the Sept. 11 commission’s investigation of the disarray in the nation’s air defenses on that morning and exposed as fiction claims by the Pentagon that fighter pilots were in hot pursuit of the hijacked airliners. In fact, military officials did not know about three of the four hijacked planes until after they had already crashed. That became the subject of a book by Mr. Farmer, “The Ground Truth,” which was hailed by Jacob Heilbrunn in The New York Times as a “precise and reliable accounting of what happened.”Mr. Farmer said isolating and stigmatizing Muslims now, whatever its short-term political appeal, would spawn more alienated Muslim youth and potential recruits for the Islamic State.“Whatever the message, it is just plain wrong to cite thousands of Muslims dancing in Jersey City or Paterson on 9/11 as support,” Mr. Farmer said. “That simply never happened.”

Source: A Definitive Debunking of Donald Trump’s 9/11 Claims – The New York Times