North Korean and South Korean news agencies are reporting that North Korean Kim Jong-Il is dead.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.
Kim’s death was announced Monday by the state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media. The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.
The Communist dictator who has kept his people in near starvation poverty while he has lived in luxury was 69-years-old. He is said to have been grooming his son, Kim Jong-Un as his successor. The question is whether or not Kim Jong-Un will be a more benevolent dictator than his father. What does Kim Jong-Il’s death mean for the rest of the world?
So I guess if you want to ride the train for free all you have to do is act like a douche, be willing to hold up everyone else who is obeying the rules, resist authority and act like a douche (I already said that, I know!).
It seems that a 19-year-old young MAN was riding the ScotRails commuter train out of Edinburgh the other day. The man, Sam Main, didn’t have a ticket. He had been out drinking with friends allegedly celebrating having finished an exam with some friends. When the ScotRail guard asked Main for his ticket, he produced a one-way ticket TO Edinburgh. When the guard said that wasn’t the proper ticket for the train, Main began cussing the guard and refused to leave his seat, apparently willing to hold up everyone on the train while he pitched a tantrum claiming he’d paid for a ticket even though he was unable to prove it.
The other passengers on the commuter train from Edinburgh included a woman with several small children and commuters just trying to get home from a long days work. One of the other passengers was a 35-year-old banker named Alan Pollock, on his way home after a 12-hour work day. Pollock is a rather large man, standing over 6 feet tall and heavy set. After the tete-a-tete had gone on for a few minutes between Sam Main and the ScotRail guard, Pollock stood up and asked the guard if he wanted Main off the train and offered his assistance. He then proceeded to take Main off the train and prevent him from getting back on the train. The other passengers applauded Alan Pollock. Someone yelled out ‘Cheers, Big Man.’
Naturally someone got the whole thing on their cell phone and uploaded it to YouTube, as is the way of things in our modern world. Now Pollock is known as ‘Big Man’ on the internet and some are hailing him a hero. Unfortunately others are saying he’s a bully. Now there are threats to sue him for assault and the possibility of losing his job all because he stepped in to help with a spoiled brat when no one else would.
You be the judge ….
Amid a volley of foul-mouthed abuse directed by the young passenger at the elderly ticket inspector, the train is delayed at a station with its doors open, for several minutes.
Other passengers mutter and fume as the young man in a knitted hat — later identified as 19-year-old student Sam Main — fails to produce a valid ticket.
‘You can sit here all night if you want — I’m getting paid for this,’ the ticket inspector tells the student, who refuses to leave the train and insists he has paid the correct fare but been given the wrong ticket by ScotRail.
Main, who had been out drinking after finishing an exam, is heard cursing as he insists he’s paid the correct money, and will not get off.
As other passengers watch, including a mother with a group of young children, the student is heard repeating to the inspector that he has shown him his ‘f****** ticket’ and again refuses to get off.
In a loud voice, the inspector then warns the student that other passengers will not be happy unless he pays or gets off the train, allowing the journey to continue.
The guard repeats: ‘I’ll sit here all night, pal. I’m getting paid for this but they (the passengers) will start moaning. You’re off now. Other folk will start (to get unhappy). Why should they pay and you not?’
Clearly angry, Main retorts: ‘But I have paid — I will sit here all night.’
Sitting further down the carriage, Alan Pollock, 35, has listened to every word.
As the minutes tick by, and the train remains stationary, he decides he’s had enough.
On film, Pollock, more than 6ft tall and heavy set, can be seen approaching the inspector and asking: ‘Right? Off now?’
The inspector says ‘yes’ and Mr Pollock moves in, pulling the student to his feet by his jacket and shouting: ‘Off!’
The banker — wearing a rugby top and casual jacket having changed at work — is then seen pushing the student out the train door.
Main falls to the ground and is then blocked by Mr Pollock from getting back on.
As the train pulls away, a few passengers clap and cheer Mr Pollock and one passenger shouts: ‘Cheers, Big Man.’
But that’s not the end of the story. Sam Main’s father, Lenny Main, has jumped to his son’s defense, infantalizing the 19-year-old student by calling him a ‘young boy’ who was ‘thrown off the train face first’ by a ‘bully’ who was much bigger than him. The father seems to overlook his son’s disrespectful and inappropriate behavior all together and has said he’ll hire an attorney and file assault charges against Alan Pollock. Meanwhile, Sam Main is whining about having a boo-boo and having his picture made with a scratch on his cheek.
Seriously, I thought the Scottish were tougher than this. Since when was a 19-year-old a ‘young boy’. We have 19-year-old MEN in war zones and consider them MEN, not ‘young boys’. They fight al-Qaeda and other enemies of our country and certainly deserve to be called men. They don’t cuss train guards, refuse to pay their tickets and sit there in petulance while everyone else is inconvenienced. Then stamp their little feet when they are shown the door and get their face scratched when they resist being put off the train and kept from re-entering the train (dispute their attempts to do so).
I find it disturbing that there are people who are commenting on these videos that Alan Pollock is the ‘bully’ – completely overlooking the behavior of the ‘young boy’ Sam Main. He was repeatedly told to get off the train, but refused to do so, cussed the conductor and sat there acting like an over-grown baby. Do these people live in the real world? Does Lenny Main live in the real world? Since when is it okay to not pay for your ticket and have people jump to your defense when you are willing to inconvenience everyone while you pitch a tantrum.
I was raised, and raised my children, to respect authority. I remember a time when children were expected to behave properly and the parents would deal with them when they didn’t. It seems that we’ve gone in the opposite direction now. Now parents jump in to defend even obnoxious and inappropriate behavior of their children and hire lawyers to perpetuate the bad behavior. The good Sumerians are punished and the whiners are forgiven their trespasses as being within their rights. What happened to working together as a community and being expected to be civil to one another?
It’s like the world’s value systems have all been turned up-side down. I really don’t know how we’ll get things back into line.
You can see the Scottish train scuffle video below. You be the judge as to who was out of control and who wasn’t. Who was at fault and who wasn’t? Who was the bad-guy and who was the good-guy? If Sam Main and his father win this battle, then we should all ride the ScotRail for free.
It looks like the Germans are getting tired of having to hold the EU up by themselves. Leaked memos from the German foreign ministry expose a secret German plan to kill of the British pound and force the British to convert their currency to the Euro. Needless to say, the British find this ‘German bullying … deeply unpleasant’.
In a chilling threat to UK sovereignty, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble predicted that all Europe would one day use the single currency. “It will happen perhaps faster than some in the British Isles currently believe,” he said.
His sinister warning followed the emergence of a secret German plan to build a powerful new economic government for the eurozone and block an EU referendum in Britain.
A leaked German foreign ministry memo detailed plans for a new European Monetary Fund. It also claimed the EU’s treaty could be altered to centralise more power without triggering a vote.
In a further sign of growing German supremacy within the EU, David Cameron was yesterday rebuffed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in talks over how to tackle the euro crisis.
Last night British opponents of the EU were horrified by the bellicose threat to Britain’s economic independence.
Tory MP Peter Bone said: “I would be happy to have a bet with the German finance minister that the euro will disappear before the pound. It is a completely absurd suggestion that will never happen.”
Fellow Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell said: “It is a tragedy that a continent of millions of hard-working people is run by clowns like this.”
And UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said: “This German bullying is deeply unpleasant and the sooner we leave the EU the better.”
Dr Schauble, who has used a wheelchair since being shot in an assassination attempt in 1990, is nicknamed “Dr Strangelove” in diplomatic circles.
In his astonishing outburst yesterday, he insisted he “respected” Britain’s decision to remain outside the euro. But he claimed that the UK would ultimately not be able to resist the tide of history.
Relations between Germany and the United Kingdom seem to be circling the drain.
His warning came amid a furious outpouring of anti-British sentiment in Berlin. Top-selling newspaper Bild asked: “What is England still doing in the EU?” while another paper branded Britain “the sick empire”.
Dr Schauble’s remarks came before the frosty meeting between Mr Cameron and Mrs Merkel in Berlin yesterday.
The German Chancellor rejected outright Mr Cameron’s opposition to a new EU-wide financial tax that would have a devastating impact on the City of London.
And she refused to be persuaded by his call for the European Central Bank to support the euro. Money markets took a dip after their failure to agree.
Despite smiles and protestations about their close “friendship”, their awkward body language at a news conference betrayed bitter differences.
Last night a YouGov poll for Prospect magazine showed 51 per cent of Britons would vote to leave the EU in a referendum while only 32 per cent would vote to stay in.
Another embarrassing Obama moment covered up by the main stream media. Normally when a world leader is over-heard saying something embarrassing into an open mic, the main stream media would be all over it. It would be front page news and broadcast far and wide for the world to hear. Not so when it is one of Barack Obama’s numerous gaffs over the years. So a catty conversation between Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy would naturally be kept on quiet by the ever compliant media.
Even though the media has remained mum on the open mic presidential bad-mouthing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one small French paper did let the cat out of the bag. It seems Obama was a little miffed that he didn’t get a heads-up from Sarkozy that the French were going to back the Palestinian Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO. But that only led to a rather embarrassing exchange between the two world leaders about their mutual disdain for Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.
The French President said he ‘couldn’t stand’ Netanyahu and called him a liar. Obama responded by saying, ‘You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!’
According to a Monday report in the French website “Arret sur Images,” after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day…
The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”…
The communication faux pas went unnoticed for several minutes, during which the conversation between the two heads of state – which quickly reverted to other matters – was all but open to members the press, who were still in possession of headsets provided by the Elysée for the sake of simultaneous translation during the G20 press conference…
The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that reporters present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the subject of the embarrassing comments.
Naturally Obama and his allies in the press wouldn’t want that comment to come out a year before he hopes to be re-elected. It could risk the Jewish vote. After the election it won’t matter any more.
We’ve told you before about the imprisonment in Iran of Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. He has been in prison in Iran since 2009 and under threat of execution for refusing to convert to Islam. Now Iran is moving closer to executing Pastor Nadarkhani after offering him another chance to convert. Read about it below.
Under Shari’a Islamic law, a Christian must be offered three opportunities to convert to Islam before he is executed for apostasy. It seems the clock is ticking for the 34-year-old Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.
Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to Nadarkhani, Fox News said. He is in prison Rasht on the Caspian Sea coast.
The Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion,” according to the report.
Fox cited “sources close to the case.”
David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday the new development is “very troubling.”
There need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him,” Parsons said. He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the threeattempts rule.
Iran “is going through the motions” and “trying to do it in a very public way for the Muslim world and maybe, in their mind, thinking they can placate the West. It is outrageous,” said Parsons, who is a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition.
The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” he said. “They should know what Islam teaches in terms of ‘inferior religions’ like Judaism and Christianity.”
Fox News wrote that it secured “a digital copy of the book given to Nadarkhani, a 300-page compilation entitled Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, meaning ‘Message of the Two Eras,’ referring to the New and Old Testaments. Through various narratives, the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam.”
Parsons said it “needs to be a priority to hold the Iranian regime accountable.
Governments, even Muslim governments, should not be allowing this. How can anyone find this acceptable this day?” Present Truth Ministries has campaigned since 2009 for Nadarkhani’s release and works to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East. “We cannot wait another moment, we have to contact our elected officials,” the USbased organization urges on its website in connection with Nadarkhani.
Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an authority on minority groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the Post by phone from Berlin on Sunday that the book given to Nadarkhani, Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, is “religious indoctrination.”
There is “no freedom of opinion or religion in Iran,” he said. The Iranian regime has been closing newspapers and “there is no freedom of conscience” in the Islamic Republic.
The book argues against the Judaism and Christianity, as well as against Bahais and Zoroastrians, Wahdat-Hagh, a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, wrote in a followup e-mail.
“The fact that Mr. Nadarkhani was given this book makes clear that it does not deal with freedom of conscience, which does not exist in Iran, rather it deals with propaganda…,” he said.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader in Iran, has reacted to pressure regarding Nadarkhani’s case, and Khamenei has the authority to vacate the death penalty sentence against the pastor, Wahdat-Hagh added.
“This case shows that Iran does not seek dialogue with Christians, rather it wants to convince Christians of the correctness of converting to Islam,” he said.
Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is scheduled to be executed in Iran as early as Wednesday for converting to Christianity.
Iranian Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is scheduled to be put to death in Iran as early as Wednesday, September 28, 2011 after being convicted of apostasy under Iran’s Shariah law. That is, he was a muslim and converted to Christianity and refused to convert back to Islam. The courts demanded he ‘repent’ and he responded that he couldn’t do that.
When asked to “repent” by the Judges, Youcef stated, “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judges replied, “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” To which he replied, “I cannot.”
By the Shariah law of Iran he will be brought to court two more times and ordered to renounce Christianity. If he continues to refuse, he will be executed.
A close personal friend reports on the case on the Jordan Sekulow Show here.
A North Korean electronic attack downed a U.S. military plane during military exercises in March, it is now being reported. It sounds like Kim Jong-Il is playing with his war games again.
Kim Jong-Il has never shied away from exhibiting his military prowess, mostly for the benefit of people who are pathetically ignorant of the world outside of anything the hermit communist nation of North Korea tells them.
Most recently the petite tyrant forced down a U.S. military plane during military exercises by jamming the GPS system. The North Korean electronic attack happened in March and is just now being reported.
SEOUL – A US military reconnaissance plane came under electronic attack from North Korea and had to make an emergency landing during a major military exercise in March, a political aide said Friday.
The aide said the plane suffered disturbance to its GPS system due to jamming signals from the North’s southwestern cities of Haeju and Kaesong as it was taking part in the annual US-South Korea drill, Key Resolve.
The incident was disclosed in a report that Seoul’s defense ministry submitted to Ahn Kyu-baek of parliament’s defense committee, the aide to Ahn said.
Spokesmen for the defense ministry and US Forces Korea declined to comment.
Jamming signals — sent at intervals of five to 10 minutes on the afternoon of March 4 — forced the plane to make an emergency landing 45 minutes after it took off, the aide quoted the report as saying.
The signals also affected South Korean naval patrol boats and speedboats, as well as several civilian flights near Seoul’s Gimpo area, according to the report.
Seoul mobile users also complained of bad connections, and the military reported GPS device malfunctions as the South and the US were staging the drill, which was harshly criticized by the North.
The Communist state has about 20 types of jamming devices, mostly imported from Russia, and has been developing a new device with a range of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) near the heavily-fortified border, the Yonhap news agency has said.
This is the type of thing that happens when no one in the world is scared of us any more.
Engelandvaarders, also known as English Voyagers, recently reenacted their great WWII escape from Nazi-occupied Holland. Prince Harry along with their families were there to welcome the re-enactors as they arrived at Sizewell beach, Suffolk after their grueling 40-hour kayaking voyage.
The trip is a tribute to 32 Dutchmen who escaped their homeland 70 years ago. Only eight survived the journey to land on the English beach.
The original Engelandvaarders, or England voyagers, faced constant danger including heavily mined North Sea waters.
When the survivors reached shore they were initially afraid to land due to fear of mines.
The modern-day crews got a taste of the tough conditions they faced. Four Britons – Alex Greenwell, Ed Cooper, Harry Franks and Olly Hicks – began the journey on Monday night. They were joined by Dutch brothers Henri and William Peteri.
A group of men from Britain and Holland have recreated this voyage for the past 70-years in memory of the original men who made the trip in a kayak through mine-invested waters in 1941.
The effort is endured to raise money for the Suffolk Foundation and Combat Stress which is a mental welfare society for former military men and women. It is one of Prince Harry’s charities.
You can read more about the the Engelandvaarders (English Voyagers) and their escape from WWII Nazi-occupied Holland here.
