French Court Overturns 75 Percent Upper Tax Rate As Unconstitutional

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PARIS – France’s highest court on Saturday blocked President Francois Hollande’s plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair.

In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande’s flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional. It was intended to hit annual incomes of more than 1 million euros, or $1.3 million.

The largely symbolic measure would have only hit a tiny number of taxpayers and brought in an estimated 100 million euros to 300 million euros – an insignificant amount in the context of France’s multi-billion euro deficit.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was quick to respond, saying in a statement following the decision the government would resubmit the measure to take the court’s concerns into account.

The court’s ruling took issue not with the size of the tax, but with the way it discriminated between households depending on how incomes were distributed among its members. A household with two earners each making under euro1 million would be exempt from the tax, while one with one earner making 1.2 million euros would have to pay.

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Christian Priests Imprisoned For Baptizing Islamic Convert

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Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir has tossed two priests into prison for baptizing a woman convert to Christianity.

Agence France Presse reports from say Sudan the convert was a woman of Arab origin and that the government leaped into action when Muslims threatened violence.

“A little-known group calling itself al-Qaida in the Nilien States sent a statement to Sudanese journalists on Tuesday threatening violence against Copts unless the woman who converted and was kidnapped by the Christians is returned,” reports said.

Christian Solidarity International USA President John Eibner says that the decision to jail the priest may be the result of party rivalries.

“What we do know, however, is that the various Islamist forces, including Bashir’s party are competing with each other to show that they adhere to Shariah norms,” he said.

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Yasser Arafat’s Widow Admits Palestinian Terror Campaign in 2000 Was Premeditated (+video)

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Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, admitted in a TV interview earlier this month that the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel launched in 2000 was a premeditated act orchestrated by her husband, not a spontaneous “intifada,” or uprising, as many have claimed.

“Yasser Arafat had made a decision to launch the intifada,” she told Dubai TV on Dec. 16, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return. … Camp David has failed, and he said to me: ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said: ‘Because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.’”

In a summit convened by President Bill Clinton at Camp David in July 2000, Arafat rejected an offer by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack to create a Palestinian state in the equivalent of roughly 97 percent of the West Bank, including land swaps, and all of the Gaza Strip, according to an account by America’s chief Middle East negotiator at the time, Dennis Ross. East Jerusalem was to be the Palestinian capital.

Though then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan reportedly told Arafat that if he rejected the generous offer he would be committing a “crime” against the Palestinian people, Arafat did just that by walking away from the deal.

See interview:

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U.S. Taxpayers Will Continue to Pay More Than One-Fifth of U.N. Budget

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(CNSNews.com) – In one of its last actions of the year, the United Nations General Assembly on Christmas Eve agreed to extend for another three years the formula that has U.S. taxpayers contributing more than one-fifth of the world body’s regular budget.

No member-state called for a recorded vote, and the resolution confirming the contributions that each country will make for the 2013-2015 period was summarily adopted. The assembly also approved a two-year U.N. budget of $5.4 billion.

The U.S. has accounted for 22 percent of the total regular budget every year since 2000, and will now continue to do so for the next three years.

The U.S. representative for U.N. management and reform, Joseph Torsella, expressed satisfaction that the U.S. contribution had not been raised above that level.

“The United States is very pleased to have maintained the critical 22 percent ceiling for U.S. contributions to the U.N. regular budget, protecting U.S. taxpayers from the additional bills – estimated to be at least $300 million annually in both the regular and peacekeeping budgets – that would have resulted from an increase in the U.S. ceiling level,” he said.

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Russia’s Pravda: ‘Americans, Never Give Up Your Guns!’

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photo credit: gre.ceres

These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lieing guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

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Red Line? Your Move, Mr. President!

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The head of Syria’s military police defected to the opposition, accusing the Assad regime of systematic “murder” and claiming that reports of chemical weapons being used against rebels in the restive city of Homs were true.

Maj-Gen Abdul-Aziz Jassim al-Shallal became one of the highest ranking Syrian military officers to throw their support behind the rebels, accusing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of turning their weapons on innocent civilians in the now 22-month-long civil war.

“I declare my defection from the army because of its deviation from its fundamental mission to protect the nation and [its] transformation into gangs of murder and destruction,” he said in a video message posted online, reportedly from the Turkish border.

He accused the military of “destroying cities and villages and committing massacres against our innocent people who came out to demand freedom.” General Shallal suggested in his message that he had been working with the opposition for some time before he formally defected to the rebel cause.

He becomes the latest in a string of leading military advisers to abandon the government and join the disparate rebels. But it is his claim that chemical weapons were used in Homs during a deadly attack on Christmas Eve that is likely to be of greater interest to the Syrian opposition and their foreign backers.

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Saudi Bank Warning: U.S. Debt Ratio Same As Italy’s

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ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia has warned the financial community of a decline of the U.S. dollar.

Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank said the debt burden of the United States has reached the same ratio of Italy, deemed a default risk. In a report, the Jedda-based bank warned that the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating from triple A status would reduce energy demand and prices, a move expected to harm the Saudi kingdom.

“Foreign central banks maintain a large share of their foreign currencyreserv es in U.S. treasuries because it is the deepest and most liquid bond market,” the report said. “But, international funds that limit their investments to AAA-rated bonds may dump the U.S. holdings, causing the U.S. dollar to depreciate. Yet, mutual fund investment guidelines do retain some flexibility regarding the handling of such matters.”

The report, titled “The Standard and Poor’s Downgrade of U.S. and Its Implications on the Saudi Economy,” however, said the Gulf Cooperation Council state could withstand the decline of the U.S. dollar. NCB said Saudi Arabia wielded a large reserve to ensure government programs over the next few years.

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Germany Accused of ‘Deporting’ Its Elderly: Rising Numbers Moved to Asia and Eastern Europe Because of Sky-High Care Costs

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German pensioners are being sent to care homes in Eastern Europe and Asia in what has been described as an ‘inhumane deportation’. Rising numbers of the elderly and sick are moved overseas for long-term care because of sky-high costs at home.

Some private healthcare providers are even building homes overseas, while state insurers are also investigating whether they can care for their clients abroad.

Experts describe a time bomb’ of increasing numbers unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes. And they say the situation should be a warning to Britain, where rising numbers of pensioners are forced to sell their homes to pay for care.

The Sozialverband Deutschland (VdK), a socio-political advisory group, said the fact that many Germans were unable to afford the costs of a retirement home in their own country was a huge ‘alarm signal’.

‘We simply cannot let those people, who built Germany up to be what it is, be deported,’ VdK’s president Ulrike Mascher told The Guardian. ‘It is inhumane.’

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Federal Report Lambasts China for Breaches of Trade Rules

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China is still flouting World Trade Organisation rules 11 years after it first joined, misusing the complaints machinery for tit-for-tat retaliation, said US Trade Repesentative Ron Kirk.

“China’s trade policies and practices in several specific areas cause particular concern for the United States,” said Mr Kirk in his year-end report to Congress.

“China’s regulatory authorities at times seem to pursue anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations and impose duties for the purpose of striking back at trading partners that have exercised their WTO rights in a way that displeases China,” said the report.

A range of policies raised “increasing concerns that China has not yet fully embraced the key WTO principles of market access, non-discrimination and transparency. China’s incomplete adoption of the rule of law has exacerbated this situation.”

The report accused Chinese officials of running rough-shod over foreign firms, forcing them to give up trade secrets in clear violation of WTO rules.

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Obama Gives Cold Shoulder to Egypt’s Secular Democrats

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Last July when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Egypt she was met with widespread protest from Coptic Christians and secular activists objecting to what they all believed was the Obama administration’s role in helping the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ascend to power in Egypt.

The secretary had requested to meet with ten Christian leaders, myself included. All of those invited refused to meet with her and boycotted her visit. Most of us had been both publicly and privately warning members of Congress and the administration of the danger the Muslims Brotherhood poses and about their desire to turn Egypt into a theocratic Islamic fascist country. Yet we were ignored.

Going back to April 2007, Democrats made special efforts to link up with the MB when visiting then-House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., met with Dr. Saad el-Katatni, the MB’s parliamentary leader, at former U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone’s home, at a time when then-Secretary Condoleezza Rice has publicly refused to meet with the Brotherhood.

Mr. Ricciardone, who I can call a friend, once told me that his friendship with another MB leader, Essam El- Erain, extended for close to 30 years. Perhaps that was the catalyst for this meeting and subsequent meetings that took place at his residency.

A stream of meetings as well as public and private contacts followed between current U.S. Ambassador Ann Paterson and members of the Brotherhood since her arrival to Egypt shortly after the revolution. The ambassador seemed to favor the Brotherhood and the hardliner Salafis over the rest of the secular players in Egypt.

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