Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Hollande Offers Hope

Not to the French people, but.... I hope you're happy with this collection:

"French president cheered in Ebola-stricken Guinea" by Michelle Faul, Associated Press  November 29, 2014

CONAKRY, Guinea — President Francois Hollande of France brought a message of hope to Guinea on Friday, where thousands of clapping, drumming, and dancing residents lined the roads to catch a glimpse of the first Western leader to visit a country hard hit by Ebola.

Guinea’s president, Alpha Conde, greeted his French counterpart at the airport and said if Hollande could visit the country, then anybody could.

‘‘There is hope: The hope of those who have been cured. The hope that we can control this epidemic . . . The very fact that hope exists,’’ said Hollande, who, during his roughly eight-hour visit, was set to tour an Ebola treatment center at the capital’s main hospital and meet with French health workers.

At a meeting attended by Conde, Hollande heard updates from aid groups. The room burst out in applause when an Ebola survivor was introduced.

“When you do not have Ebola, you have a life, you have dreams,” survivor Fanta Camara said. “When you have Ebola, you are treated like a dead person, even after you are cured.’’

Ebola survivors have been driven from their villages and fired from their jobs as they carry a huge social stigma.

Ebola has ravaged three West African countries — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — and sickened nearly 16,000 people, making it by far the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

I hate to break it to you; however, the whole damn thing is a complete hoax. Ebola is nothing more than an excuse for martial law at home and occupation of West Africa for its resources abroad, combined with tax loot now being poured into pharmaceuticals so they can again test their vaccines on the guinea pig population of Africa.

This epidemic has presented challenges never seen before, including infecting thousands in cities, where it has whipped around populations faster than doctors have been able to keep up, while also hitting remote areas, where it has been difficult to send help.

This has forced a new kind of response: the use of larger treatment centers along with smaller, stripped-down care centers and rapid-response teams that can be flown into remote areas. The response has been stymied by the task of transporting potentially infectious blood samples long distances on poor roads.

The United Nations’ World Health Organization last week declared the outbreak in Guinea had ‘‘stabilized.’’ It has reported 1,260 deaths from 2,134 cases. Oxfam-France on Thursday, though, said there is little reliable information about the epidemic in rural areas.

Nearly a year after the first patient died in a southeastern village of Guinea, at least 25 villages in the country’s forested and mountainous southeast still refuse to allow entry by health workers who are trying to trace potential cases, according to human rights groups at a seminar this week on the response to Ebola.

The largest caseload in Guinea is currently centered around the southeast town of Macenta, where France helped open a treatment center this month. French Red Cross official Thomas Mauget said the first cured patient left the center Thursday, but the child’s mother is still being treated.

Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Liberia said in a telephone interview Friday that a contract will soon be signed to allow Ebola test samples and perhaps even patients to be flown by helicopter out of remote areas.

The US military has already airlifted rapid-response teams of epidemiologists and health officials into hard-to-reach regions, but it will not be transporting the blood samples, Ambassador Deborah Malac said.

Infection rates are slowing in Liberia, and the country’s government has said it hopes for no new cases by Christmas. Malac cautioned that the disease is unpredictable.

‘‘We’re still getting new cases every day,’’ she said. ‘‘None of us know for sure what will happen. All we can to do is continue to drive toward zero.’’

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RelatedFrench-Mali sweep kills Islamic radical commander

They are calling it terminal sedation.

‘‘The future of Ebola in Mali will depend on the quality of the surveillance of these contacts,’’ said Ibrahima-Soce Fall, Mali’s WHO representative. “If they are rigorously followed, and any subsequent cases are quickly identified and isolated, the battle will be won. But if there are failures in the process, it will lead to further contamination and further problems.’’ Among those placed under quarantine are about 20 members of the UN peacekeeping force who were treated for battlefield wounds at the Bamako hospital where a dead nurse had worked. The peacekeepers are based in the north of the country, where they are trying to stabilize a vast region of which jihadists ruled until a French-led war in 2013. In recent years Mali has suffered a separatist rebel insurgency, a coup that overthrew its longtime leader, and a war against jihadists. Now Ebola threatens to be another source of misery if it is not contained."

Okay: 

"Travelers from Mali will be subject to the same screening and monitoring that was ordered for people arriving from three other Ebola-affected countries, U.S. health officials said Sunday.

Mali is not suffering widespread Ebola illnesses. But federal officials are growing increasingly worried about a new cluster of seven illnesses in Mali that have left health public health workers scrambling to track and monitor at least 450 other people who may have had contact with the seven people and may be at risk.

"At this point we can't be confident that every exposed person has been identified, or that every identified person is being monitored daily," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Starting Monday, anyone arriving in the United States from Mali will undergo the same screening procedures that were ordered last month for travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. That includes taking arriving travelers' temperatures, and questioning them about their health and possible exposure to the Ebola virus. They also will be asked to provide contact information and to agree to — for 21 days — have daily communications with local health officials who will be asking them to take their temperatures twice each day and monitoring them to see if they develop symptoms."

I know what I'm sick of.

"The last Ebola patient being treated in Mali has survived the disease and been released, the Health Ministry said Friday, leaving no known cases in the West African country. Because people are still being monitored and a sick person could cross the border again, the government warned Malians to remain vigilant. Mali has recorded eight cases of Ebola, all of them linked to people who crossed from neighboring Guinea. In the current outbreak, Ebola has made more than 18,200 people sick, the World Health Organization said. Of those, nearly 6,600 have died."

Did you know there is GOLD in blood?

General cites better security in Central African Republic

‘‘Normalization is underway,’’ as the U.N. takes over!

This also gave me hope:

"French lawmakers debate recognizing Palestinian state" by Maïa de la Baume, New York Times  November 29, 2014

PARIS — French lawmakers Friday debated a nonbinding motion to recognize a Palestinian state, after similar moves in other European nations amid increasing criticism and frustration with Israeli policies.

The motion, initiated by the governing Socialist Party, is expected to pass comfortably when it is put to a vote in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday. It invites France to “recognize the state of Palestine” in order to “reinforce our country’s diplomatic action, prevail over hate speeches everywhere, and contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.”

If the motion passes, France would become the fourth European nation to take such a symbolic step in support of Palestinian sovereignty.

In a separate development Friday, an Italian man marching in support of Palestinians in the northern West Bank was shot and seriously wounded by Israeli forces, a Palestinian hospital official said.

Ramallah Hospital director Ahmad Bitawi said 30-year-old Patrick Corsi was shot during a peaceful protest in the village of Kufr Qadom, near Nablus. He described Corsi’s condition as stable.

Village resident Khaldon Ishtawi said Israeli soldiers opened fire without provocation on about 400 protesters from a distance of around 130 feet and shot Corsi in the chest.

The Israeli military said it opened fire on the demonstrators with low caliber bullets after tear gas and other crowd control measures failed to stop them from burning tires and throwing rocks. It said two demonstrators were wounded and evacuated to hospitals.

Last month, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of Sweden said his government had decided to officially recognize a Palestinian state because a two-state solution was the only way to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. 

That explains the recent terror attack in Sweden!

Lofven’s initiative was followed by similar moves in the British and Spanish parliaments, which urged their governments to condemn what many see as aggressive Israeli policies. Also last month, British lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution to give diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian state. 

Looks like the Europeans are fed up with Zionist control.

Elisabeth Guigou, a Socialist lawmaker and president of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the National Assembly, said the vote in France would encourage other European leaders and the European Parliament to recognize a Palestinian state.

France has long fought for a two-state solution, especially under former president François Mitterrand, “who understood since 1982 that we needed two states,” said Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, who heads the Institute of Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Studies, based in Paris.

But a recognition vote would also clarify years of “sometimes unbalanced” foreign policy in the region, Chagnollaud said. After the war in Gaza this summer, French President Francois Hollande drew intense criticism for expressing solidarity with Israel.

He's hopeless.

As French lawmakers debated the vote Friday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told them that France was working with its United Nations partners “to adopt a Security Council resolution to relaunch and conclude talks.”

“A deadline of two years is the one most often mentioned, and the French government can agree with this figure,” he said.

While few across France’s political spectrum oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state, some leading voices of the opposition criticized the timing of the vote and said they would oppose it.

“I will fight for the Palestinians to have their state,” former president Nicolas Sarkozy said at a recent meeting near Paris.

“But unilateral recognition a few days after a deadly attack and when there is no peace process? No,” he said, in reference to an attack this month at a synagogue in West Jerusalem in which five civilians were killed.

“I will not accept that the security of Israel be questioned,” Sarkozy said. 

Related: Sarkozy was ex-Mossad secret agent 

What do you mean ex?

Reacting to the lawmakers’ debate, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that French recognition of a Palestinian state would be “a serious mistake.”

So when is the false flag terror attack planned for France?

“Is it what France should do in this moment when some people behead people across the Middle East?” Netanyahu said, referring to the French recruits who appeared, unmasked, in the prologue of a gruesome Islamic State video leading to the beheading of a US aid worker, Peter Kassig.

That's damn near confirmation of their falsity!

At least one head was saved while 10 more roll.

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RelatedFrance reports rise in anti-Semitism

It's not true, but why let that $poil things?

I suspected some bad press would be in order after that.

"French lawmakers vote to recognize Palestinian state" by Dan Bilefsky and Maïa de la Baume, New York Times  December 03, 2014

PARIS — First it was the British and the Irish. Then the Swedes and the Spanish. And on Tuesday, the French, too, added their weight to the push for recognition of a Palestinian state.

The vote in the French lower house of Parliament favoring such a step was a largely symbolic move. But it was the fifth such gesture in two months — and arguably the most important — in what has amounted to a cascade of support for the Palestinian cause and a widening torrent of criticism against Israeli policy across Europe.

Related: Israel Bombs Gaza

Not a word about it in my Globe.

Though the vote is unlikely to affect France’s foreign policy, it nevertheless carries particular resonance coming from a country that has both the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe.

As such, France itself has become something of a proxy playing field for the Arab-Israeli conflict, which this summer spilled over into the streets of cities around the country with sometimes violent protests during Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.

Similarly, the French vote, and the other moves, accompany a worrying rise in anti-Semitism in Europe that some have linked to intensifying antipathy toward Israel, as well as growing radicalism among young European Muslims who have been lured to jihad in Syria.

The jewspaper is hopeless.

Serge Cwajgenbaum, the secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, an organization in Brussels representing European Jews, played down the political consequences of the vote, calling it toothless. But he said the French vote nevertheless reflected a worrying attitude in some quarters of Europe that threatens to further undermine the faltering Middle East peace process.

Cwajgenbaum said he feared the vote was an attempt by some on the French left to curry favor with Muslim voters.

“Such votes can have negative consequences for the Middle East peace process because it can radicalize people, while pushing Palestinians to abandon the negotiating table in favor of seeking recognitions,” Cwajgenbaum said.

“I can’t exclude the possibility that there can be repercussions of the vote on the Jewish community,” he added, “as criticism of Israel can be construed by some extremists as an excuse for incitement against Jews.”

I'm so sick of the constant whining.

The Israeli Embassy in Paris condemned the vote. It said Israel considered it “an error that sent the wrong message to leaders and people in the region.” It noted that French policy remained unchanged, that only a negotiated solution would bring an end to the conflict.

The European Parliament, the European Union’s only directly elected body, said in a statement last month that it would debate and vote on a resolution on the recognition of Palestinian statehood during its plenary session Dec. 15 in Strasbourg, France.

The French vote urged the government to “recognize the state of Palestine” in order to “reinforce our country’s diplomatic action, prevail over hate speech everywhere and contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.”

The vote is unlikely to result in a change of the French government’s diplomatic support for Israel, because foreign policy is largely determined by the president and the foreign minister.

Like a.... dictatorship?

President François Hollande, who supports Israel, has distanced himself from the vote.

I'm sure that is another reason he is the most-hated president in French history.

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Also seeNavajos buy back artifacts at disputed auction

Maybe there is Hopi for the French after all.

Time for me to unplug.

NEXT DAY UPDATE:

"France orders troop reinforcements after attacks" by Aurelien Breeden and Alan Cowell, New York Times  December 24, 2014

PARIS — After a string of apparently unrelated attacks across France that have heightened concerns about Islamic militancy, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that hundreds of additional military personnel would be ordered onto the streets to reinforce a routine deployment of security forces.

“There is a terrorist threat in France,” Valls told a news conference. “It is undoubtedly the main challenge of our time.”

OMG! 

France is NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW because of the SELF-CREATED BOOGEYMAN of "terror!" 

Maybe if western intelligence agencies stopped creating terrorists there wouldn't be so many. 

Besides that shovelful of shit, the terrorists are now the main challenge of our time. Not domestic tyranny or the banker-serving economy, the environment, and all the other things that more directly effect me and you, dear readers. It's the "terrorists" who stand in the way of empire while providing an excuse for its actions. 

It's time to WAKE UP, folks!!! The "terrorists" are ALL CREATED, FUNDED, and DIRECTED by WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES! They are then staffed with those from our Arab allies -- if they even exist at all. 

And btw, is it NOT ODD that France has been STRUCK by TERRORISM soon after they SUPPORTED a PALESTINIAN STATE?? 

This, like all terror attacks, has the stench of Israel upon it!

Seeking to reassure a jittery nation unsettled by fears of militancy linked to the jihadi campaign in Syria and Iraq, Valls said that between 200 and 300 more military personnel would be deployed, in addition to 780 already on the streets as part of routine year-end precautions. He indicated that the soldiers’ mission would be to guard against copycat attacks inspired by the three assaults.

So what French protest was being planned if they are not out there already? 

As for the French people being full of fear, I don't think so. The French are not fools, and they have beheaded rulers themselves. This is pure, 100% NYT bullish**!

“Vigilance, calm, determination. These are the key points,” Valls said, speaking after successive attacks in the central town of Joué-lès-Tours on Saturday, in Dijon on Sunday, and in Nantes on Monday.

French authorities emphasized that their early investigations have not revealed any direct links to terrorism or radical Islam in two attacks that involved cars plowing into pedestrians.

Well, I told you jwho was behind it and why the investigation will go nowhere.

In Dijon and Nantes, a total of more than 20 people were wounded in those cases, with one of the drivers shouting an Islamic rallying call as he struck the pedestrians. One person was killed. The authorities depicted both drivers as mentally unstable.

Pffffffft!

In Joué-lès-Tours, a 20-year-old man with a concealed knife entered a police station and attacked three officers before another officer shot him dead.

“These three events do not appear to have any link,” President François Hollande said Tuesday during a visit to a group of French islands south of Newfoundland.

But the timing of the attacks on successive days justified “extreme vigilance,” he added.

The violence raised fears that militants acting alone may have decided to stage attacks on French citizens in response to their government’s support for the US-led air campaign against jihadis in Syria and Iraq. The attacks followed bloody episodes ascribed to so-called lone wolf assailants in London last year and in Sydney last week.

Related: Australian Psyop? 

Aren't they all?

Security concerns in France and elsewhere have been heightened by the radicalization of thousands of Europeans who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, which seeks the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. 

So what good is all the data collection and spying then?

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That link there another piece of hopeless shit.