Theresa May HUMILIATED Again
UK - In another blow to Theresa May’s authority, the House of Commons has passed a motion instructing the Government to seek an extension to Article 50, in order to avoid a no deal Brexit. The motion passed by just one vote on its third reading, by 313 MPs to 312, in the face of Government opposition.
It was presented by a cross-party group of MPs, led by Conservative Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour’s Yvette Cooper. It will now proceed to the House of Lords, which is likely to give its approval. Should this take place the motion will become legally binding, significantly reducing the chances of a no deal EU exit. Consequently a no-deal exit could only take place if the EU rejects the Government request for an Article 50 extension.
The motion moved through the House of Commons with unusual speed, passing both its second and third readings in one day. Conservative Brexiteers reacted angrily to the motion during debate. Peter Bone, who opposes any Brexit delay, unsuccessfully urged the Speaker to “make this farce stop” and prevent further votes.
Iain Duncan Smith rages at Theresa May's 'APPALLING' decision
UK - Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith has branded Theresa May’s decision to hold talks with Jeremy Corbyn “appalling”. Speaking to the BBC in the Palace of Westminster’s Central Lobby, the former Tory leader raged: “This is no longer Conservative government policy. This is policy dictated by what I think is a Marxist and rather nasty Labour party. And I simply say that makes all of our lives intolerable out on the ground. I’m absolutely appalled.”
“It’s quite clear that cabinet wasn’t really in favour of this because we have council candidates and people in marginal seats fighting against what is an extremely harsh Labour party run by a marxist whose sole purpose in life is to do real damage to this country. And now the government has reached out and given him the kind of legitimacy that governments can do.”
“If that’s what’s on the table then I do not see how the Conservative party can possibly bring themselves to support a deal that has so reneged on what was in our manifesto and what we all overwhelmingly voted for in the article 50 letter. And what Theresa May said endlessly she would not accept.”
May plan to work with 'known Marxist' Corbyn
UK - Leading Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson have reacted furiously following the Prime Minister’s announcement that the UK will seek to further extend Article 50. Mrs May further angered the Tory backbenchers by stating her intentions to work with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to “try to agree a plan". Mr Rees-Mogg slammed Mrs May’s strategy to work with ”a known Marxist” and insisted the public “did not vote for a Corbyn-May coalition Government”. The European Research Group chairman also warned the Prime Minister that history did not show success for political leaders who tried to get policy through the Commons "on the back of Opposition votes". The leading Brexiteer added this approach is “deeply unsatisfactory” and is “not in the interests of the country”.
Plot to Oust May
UK - Furious Tory MPs are demanding a new secret ballot on Theresa May's leadership today despite party rules protecting her from an official challenge until December. The Prime Minister has enraged her party by abandoning hopes of persuading hardline Brexiteers and the DUP to back her deal and instead offering talks with Jeremy Corbyn on pivoting to a soft Brexit.
A few party members have cut up their membership cards in disgust and she was bombarded by hostile questions from her own side at Prime Minister's Questions today. Nigel Adams, the junior Wales Office minister, became the first to quit over the concessions to Mr Corbyn this morning. Ahead of a meeting of the 1922 Committee at 5pm, Tory MPs are understood to be bombarding chairman Sir Graham Brady with demands for action.
Sir Graham called a formal vote of no confidence in Mrs May's leadership in December, which Mrs May won - a victory which should have protected her for 12 months. But there are fast moving demands for new action this afternoon, MailOnline has been told by a source close to the committee. Despite party rules, the committee could act if demands from MPs continue to mount.
Leave Voters Feel ‘Betrayed’ by Government's Handling of Brexit
UK - More than nine in ten (92 per cent) Leave voters feel ‘betrayed’ by the way the government has handled Brexit, while two-thirds of all voters feel the same. The ComRes poll, commissioned by the ‘Leave Means Leave’ group and published in The Sun on Monday, also found that 60 per cent of all voters, both leave and remain, said that Brexit had damaged their trust in politics. The poll also found that 57 per cent of Britons believe that the UK should be leaving the EU on World Trade Organization (WTO) terms instead of delaying Brexit.
A Third World War Is Gathering in Venezuela
VENEZUELA - At first, the US's aggressive position on Venezuela seemed uncomplicated. Troops were quickly on the mind of the top hawk in DC — White House National Security Adviser John Bolton, the man who, in the first years of the 2000s, played a key role in leading the US into an adventure — the second Iraq war — that proved to be disastrous, and placed American imperial power in a terminal crisis.
The fickle public had forgotten about all that. Bolton, a member of the "old gang" (Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz), could resume the war drumming he loves so much. The press could be expected to amplify it. And old allies would fall into line. Venezuela has oil, a socialist government in turmoil, and pro-American opponents who are ready to exploit the oil and turmoil. What could go wrong with the regional exertion of basic imperial power?
Then the Russians arrived and began supporting the socialist leader that the US wants to oust, Nicolas Maduro. And now a team from the largest standing army in the world, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, have, according to Al-Masdar News, been deployed to a crisis that's becoming more and more dangerous. What this means is that three major nuclear-weapon countries are converging on Venezuela.
‘The Idea that the Body Is Male or Female Is Wrong’
USA - Teen magazine, Teen Vogue, is at it again, diving headlong into contentious politics and calling it “science” — this time with a video titled, “5 Common Misconceptions About Sex and Gender” that proposes that “binary is bulls**t.” The video features a group of speakers telling teenagers that traditional gender roles are not “scientific.” The speakers scoff at the idea that a person with a penis has to be a boy and a person with a vagina is by nature a girl. Some of the sage comments include that of Belgian model Hanne Gaby Odiele, who is seen saying, “I’m here to tell you that binary is bulls**t.” Next up, author Katrina Karkazis sneers at the idea that “sex typically refers to your biological traits.” Another segment warns the young target audience that “This idea that the body is either male or female is totally wrong.”
California’s in an exceptional earthquake drought
USA - California is in an earthquake drought. It has been almost five years since the state experienced its last earthquake of magnitude 6 or stronger — in Napa. Southern California felt its last big quake on Easter Sunday 2010, and that shaker was actually centered across the border, causing the most damage in Mexicali.
Experts know this calm period will eventually end, with destructive results. They just don’t know when this well-documented geological pattern will shift. “Earthquake rates are quite variable: We have a decade or two where we don’t have many earthquakes, and people expect that’s what California is always like,” said Elizabeth Cochran, seismologist with the US Geological Survey. Eventually, “we’re going to dramatically see a change in earthquake rates.”
Scientists have been warning California of seismic dangers, be it the Big One on the San Andreas fault or catastrophes that could come from lesser-known faults, such as Hayward or Newport-Inglewood. “Along the main plate boundary faults, we are in a deficit of earthquakes in the last 100 years,” said Tom Rockwell, a San Diego State paleoseismologist. “At some point, that’s going to change. We’re going to have some big earthquakes.”
Zehut’s Feiglin says build Third Temple right away
ISRAEL - Chairman of far-right party, which is enjoying growing popularity, is a longtime advocate of Jews’ rights on Temple Mount and has called for increased Israeli control over site. The head of the far-right quasi-libertarian Zehut party said Wednesday that he wants to rebuild the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem immediately.
“I don’t want to build a (Third) Temple in one or two years, I want to build it now,” Moshe Feiglin said at a Maariv/Jerusalem Post conference in Tel Aviv, referring to the site that currently houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque and where both Jewish Temples stood in the past. Such a move would be unrealistic in the extreme; suggestions of even small changes to the status quo on the tinderbox holy site, where Jews can currently visit but not pray, have met with vociferous and often violent protests.
Feiglin is a major supporter of building in Jewish settlements and Jews praying on the Temple Mount, and during his tenure as a Likud lawmaker repeatedly visited the contested compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, which is the holiest site in Judaism as well as the third-holiest spot in Islam. “To build the Temple I need support, I can’t do it alone,” he said at the end of his speech. Zehut’s 344-page manifesto calls for measures to move government facilities to the Temple Mount and give the Chief Rabbinate authority over the site.
High Court battle: UK has Already left the EU on March 29
UK - The leader of the English Democrats has launched a High Court battle claiming that the UK has already left the EU. Robin Tilbrook argues that Britain left the union on March 29 as originally planned, saying the PM's extension was not legally valid. The legal bid will be seen as a Brexiteer equivalent to Gina Miller's battle with the Government over triggering Article 50 in 2016. In the judicial review application, the English Democrats argue that Mrs May did not have the power to extend the exit date past March 29. 'Her purported request for an extension of the date of departure and the Government's purported agreement to such an extension is and was unlawful and is and was null and void,' the legal argument reads. ‘The Government's proceeding on the basis that we're still in. We're saying that's not the case. If there's a declaration from the High Court that we're out, the Government's got a new reality to deal with.'
Brussels set to REJECT May's Brexit delay
EUROPE - EU Council chief Donald Tusk this evening urged European leaders to be patient with Theresa May after the Prime Minister requested yet another extension to Brexit – but Brussels is set to reject her plan, Express.co.uk understands.
Speaking from Downing Street, Mrs May suggested she would make any further Brexit delay “as short as possible”. But her request, which contains little detail, is likely to infuriate EU leaders ahead of an emergency summit in Brussels next week. Responding, Mr Tusk promised to listen to the Prime Minister’s latest plan and urged European colleagues to do the same.
The European Council president said: “Even if, after today, we don’t know what the end result will be, let us be patient.” Mrs May vowed not to hold European Parliament elections in the UK in her address to the nation. The British Prime Minister said: "I have always been clear that we could make a success of no deal in the long term but leaving with a deal is the best solution. So we will need a further extension of Article 50 – one that is as short as possible and which ends when we pass a deal."
"And we need to be clear what such an extension is for – to ensure we leave in a timely and orderly way. This debate, this division, cannot drag on much longer." This will limit any extension until May 22, which is the day before Britain would have to participate in the euro ballot.
EU will eventually FAIL
UK - The European Union will “eventually fail” and it is now time for Britain to leave the Brussels bloc on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, the founder and CEO of British company Ebac has said. John Elliott, the founder of the manufacturer of washing machines and dehumidifiers in the UK, has called for Britain to leave the European Union with no deal and “play hard” in order to get a pragmatic response from the Brussels bloc. Speaking to BBC 5 Live’s Emma Barnett, Mr Elliott said: “I think the problem with the EU is it is not a very good organisation – they add nothing but cost and bureaucracy. So, that’s why, I think, the European Union will eventually fail.”
Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks?
USA - If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest. That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve.
These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, and on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs.
That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world — parking them, rather than lending them out. The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as “lender of last resort,” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money.
Pedophilia: Just Another Sexual Orientation
GERMANY - Mirjam Heine, a German medical student at the University of Würzburg in Germany, made some deeply disturbing assertions last week in her TEDxTalk, “Why perception of pedophilia has to change.” She claimed that, according to current research, “pedophilia is an unchangeable sexual orientation just like, for example, heterosexuality. No one chooses to be a pedophile, no one can cease being one.”
In an effort to discover the “research” she was referring to, I located an article about a clinical psychologist who insists a decade of research has led him to conclude pedophilia is a deep-rooted, unchangeable predisposition from birth. The article states that the recidivism rate of child sexual abusers is extremely low, yet pedophiles cannot be “cured.”
According to Cantor, and the young female student in the TEDx video, acceptance of pedophiles’ “orientation” by society will free them to understand they are forever bound by an attraction they will never be able to act out.
Is your head spinning?
Since when has “acceptance” of any sin led a society to refrain from committing that sin?
We knew this day was coming. Didn’t we?
A Volcano That Could Completely Cover Mexico City With Volcanic Ash
MEXICO - The most dangerous volcano in Mexico just erupted 200 times in a 24 hour period, but there has been an almost total blackout about this in the US media. Authorities are saying that the odds of more volcanic activity at Mount Popocatepetl are “immediate to high”, and if a full-blown Plinian eruption were to occur it would be the worst natural disaster in the modern history of North America. Approximately 26 million people live within 60 miles of Popocatepetl’s crater, and so we are talking about the potential for death and destruction on a scale that is difficult to imagine. In ancient times, Mount Popocatepetl buried entire Aztec cities in super-heated mud… What we have witnessed over the last several days has been nothing short of stunning.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
