Friday, January 17, 2014

Vladimir Putin: "We do not have a ban on non-traditional sexual relationships. We have a ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia

January 17, 2014

The Guardian Reports:

Vladimir Putin has said that gay people will be not be subjected to harassment at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, as long as they stay away from children.
Putin is currently in Sochi reviewing preparations for the Games, which begin in three weeks. During a meeting with some of the thousands of volunteers who will work during the Olympics, he was asked why their uniforms were rainbow coloured, given the recent Kremlin anti-gay initiatives.
"We do not have a ban on non-traditional sexual relationships," said Putin in comments reported by Russian agencies. "We have a ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia. I want to underline this. Propaganda among children. These are absolutely different things – a ban on something or a ban on the propaganda of that thing."
Putin also added that Russia was more liberal than some other countries, claiming that in certain US states homosexuality was still punishable by law.
"We are not forbidding anything and nobody is being grabbed off the street, and there is no punishment for such kinds of relations," said Putin. "You can feel relaxed and calm [in Russia], but leave children alone please," said Putin.

Britain: ‘Pedophile Network at the Heart of Government’

January 15th, 2014 Via: Express:
A FORMER female MP was involved in a paedophile network at the heart of government, police have been told.
She is alleged to have forced a boy in care to perform a “vile” sex act at one of a series of drug-fuelled parties in Westminster in the Eighties where boys and girls as young as 13 were allegedly abused.
Last night her alleged victim told the Sunday Express: “I want justice.”
Andrew Ash, now 45, said he has given Scotland Yard the name of the former MP. We cannot name her for legal reasons.
Mr Ash claims he was frequently ferried down to London from the North of England, where he was in care, to take part in sex parties.
He says they were organised by a paedophile ring involving David Smith, Jimmy Savile’s former chauffeur who killed himself last year before he was due to stand trial for sex offences.
He said: “It wasn’t just politicians, there were also a number of celebrities, including Jimmy Savile, who seemed to have a lot of good links to MPs and powerful businessmen.
…
Mr Ash claims officers have footage which shows a senior male MP in the same frame as him, although no abuse takes place on camera. He said he is speaking out now because he is frustrated by the lack of action after being interviewed for 70 hours by the Met Police’s Paedophile Unit.
He says he was abused by the male MP on another occasion too. He said: “I remember being filmed with this MP, who was abusing me in a garage of a very prominent building behind a Rolls-Royce.
“Another politician turned up with a video camera but the man abusing me just smirked and joked, ‘OK, OK, I’ll vote any way you want’ as if he was being blackmailed. What I want to know is why they haven’t arrested him yet if they have this evidence.
Research Credit: noguru

Google Nest Plans A Home Invasion

January 17th, 2014 //http://breakingdeception.com/news/google-nest-plans-home-invasion/
Now The End Begins
After learning how Google is pairing off with the military and even the NSA, one might be tempted to turn off one’s computer and phone

. But what about your thermostat? Google has just acquired Nest for $3.2 billion. Nest had built a thermostat “that adjusts to your living patterns.” It also developed a fire alarm that links to the thermostat. Basically, observers think getting the Nest technology allows Google to learn what we are doing when we are not on the internet.

google-nest-home-invasion-thermostat-mark-beast

We need to examine why Google gaining a foothold into our houses with home automation devices feels creepier than, say, Xfinity providing us with home security

Dan Hanon writes for Wired: It’s not just an acquisition — it’s an annexation. The kind that involves planting a flag. Because now we’re talking physical territory, which is the case as the internet inexorably and increasingly reaches into the real world. Simply put: People invited Nest into their houses. Not Google.
It was one thing when services like AdMob got acquired by Google or Flickr and Tumblr got acquired by Yahoo! It’s another thing when the companies — really, their devices and users — getting acquired are services that have a persistent physical presence in our lives. People have always thought of online places as distinct spaces, but with a sense of place comes a sense of territory, belonging, and community.
That’s why, despite Google and Nest’s statements that Nest would remain separate, Google essentially bought its way into your house — literally so if you’re a Nest user. An annexation indeed

: You didn’t have a choice. You woke up and the new ruler was in town. There was no resistance. There are no good alternatives to Nest (yet). In fact, gaining users this way is the M&A equivalent of the military shock and awe tactic — rapidly dominating through billions of dollars instead of firepower; imposing will upon user communities without consent.
Hanon critiques Google with another term from the war on terror. “And nowhere in this campaign does anyone put effort into winning hearts and minds.” Do we really want them to? If our household utilities are hooked up to the same database that monitors our online activity, how will they use that information?
Still, we need to examine why Google gaining a foothold into our houses with home automation devices feels creepier than, say, Xfinity providing us with home security. Do we actually trust a cable provider

more than we trust Google here — if so, how can that be? I think it’s because Google’s stated mission of organizing the world’s information is in danger of becoming significantly more creepy.
Because there will always be more information to organize. It turns out that “all the information in the world” includes not only streetviews of houses but might even include our heating patterns or when we’re away from home (which, to be fair, Google already knows about because our plane tickets are in Gmail and our searches on its servers). Given the NSA’s known strategy of working with internet companies to get information about people, it would be nice to know exactly what Google was planning to do with their new powers. source – Political Outcast

Police Beat Elderly Deaf Man For ‘Refusing Orders’

folks we got prob's in this country ..big fucking prob's ~Unfortunately, an increasingly violent militarized police force has created a real danger for not only the public, but the country’s countless Constitution-abiding officers.

Police Beat Elderly Deaf Man For ‘Refusing Orders’

by Mikael Thalen
January 14th, 2014
Updated 01/14/2014 a

An elderly deaf Oklahoma man was beat by two highway patrol troopers earlier this month for allegedly refusing to comply during a traffic stop.

Pearlpearson.com

According to reports, 64-year-old Pearl Pearson left the scene of a minor automobile accident before being pulled over by Oklahoma Highway Patrol on January 3.
After issuing several vocal commands from their police vehicle, troopers claim Pearson refused to show his hands. Despite a large placard on his driver’s door stating, “Driver is deaf,” Pearson claims troopers immediately began hitting his face as he attempted to show his ID, which also states that he is hearing-impaired.
After a seven-minute altercation, Pearson was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and leaving the scene of an accident. According to Pearson, he was denied an interpreter for the entire duration of his detainment in and out of jail.
“Not during the booking, hospital, or time at the jail was an interpreter provided, even through Pearl requested one,” a statement reads.
Another statement on PearlPearson.com reveals that Pearson has several family members in law enforcement, making it seem highly unlikely that Pearson would cause issues for police.
“Pearl’s own son is a police officer, as was his son-in-law, who is now a deputy sheriff. He respects law enforcement and knows how to respond when pulled over. There is no reason for someone like Pearl to be hurt like this by those who are meant to protect and serve,” the statement reads.
Sacia Law, Pearson’s next-door neighbor, also agreed that there must have been a major misunderstanding during the traffic stop.
“He’s hearing impaired, you can’t yell at him from behind his car and get a response,” Law told Fox 4. “I know they do dangerous jobs and they put their lives on the line, but that is over the top.”
Despite the obvious misunderstanding, the highway patrol claims they are going forward with the charges while a review of the incident is conducted. The police affidavit made no mention whether or not the troopers realized Pearson was deaf.
Pearson is now receiving financial help

from the Total Source for Hearing-Loss and Access group, an agency which provides assistance to the deaf and hard of hearing. A benefit dinner has been scheduled for Thursday at the Garnett Assembly of God church in Tulsa from 5-7 p.m.
Unfortunately, an increasingly violent militarized police force has created a real danger for not only the public, but the country’s countless Constitution-abiding officers.

How the NSA collects millions of phone texts a day

Dishfire gathers “untargeted” messages, alerts, and phone metadata for search.

by Sean Gallagher - Jan 17 2014,http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/how-the-nsa-collects-millions-of-phone-texts-a-day/

HI NSA HOW R U LOL

On Thursday, another National Security Agency document from the trove obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was published by The Guardian. The new slides from the NSA’s top-secret WebWorld intranet are from a presentation called “Content Extraction Enhancements for Target Analytics: SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit.” Aside from the overuse of colons, the slides include details of a program that collects massive amounts of data from the world’s cellular phone

networks.
The slides were published just after security expert Bruce Schneier met with a group of members of Congress to discuss what was revealed by the Snowden documents about the NSA. The meeting, ironically, could not be held in a secure facility to go over information in documents not yet published—because Schneier doesn’t have clearance.
According to the June 2011 slides, the NSA collects 194 million messages a day—not just SMS messages, but system-generated messages as well: geolocation data, synchronizing address book data (vCards), missed call messages, call roaming data, and other data as well. This trove is collected in Dishfire, an SMS repository system that is much like the XKeyscore Internet monitoring

system. Like XKeyscore, Dishfire captures large volumes of “untargeted” data—messages that aren’t associated with individuals identified for surveillance—based on some basic filtering out to “minimize” data such as messages from US numbers.
A program called "Prefer" allows analysts to query the repository of data based on metadata within Dishfire. That metadata, like the XKeyscore Internet data, can also include keywords and data structures out of SMS data, such as travel information and financial transactions. Unlike with XKeyscore, since SMS messages are relatively small bits of data, the “metadata” created by collecting mobile phone information can contain a much larger percentage of the original content. That means that there is much more identifying data in the “unselected” data within Dishfire—allowing analysts to go hunting through the content of millions of people each day that have no relation to ongoing surveillance operations.

Prefer has been in operation since January 2008, feeding content from the SMS repository into NSA search engines and other analytical databases. Some of this data can be pulled out in near real time to track targets that the NSA has already identified, but it can also be used to identify new targets by searching through connections and processing metadata about the content of text messages—keywords, phrases, or combinations of factors that match a profile of interest to the NSA.
Each day, the NSA uses Prefer to pull out metadata that includes more than 110,000 names and contact data from vCards, 1.6 million border crossings based on roaming data, over 5 million missed call alerts that can be used to “chain” contacts, and over 800,000 financial transactions. It also extracts 76,000 pieces of geolocation data each day, including requests for meetings, addresses, and directions.
While the NSA has screened most US SMS traffic out of the Dishfire repository, its UK counterparts aren’t above using data collected by the NSA on its own citizens. The British intelligence agency GCHQ has used data collected by the NSA to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” users within Britain to bypass legal constraints on their own surveillance.

GMOs VS BRICS: AN UPDATE

January 17, 2014 By Joseph P. Farrell //http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/01/gmos-vs-brics-update/

One of the stories I’ve tried to stay abreast of here is the growing geopolitical implication of GMOs and the backlash against them, and the geopolitical implication of that backlash. As Dr. Scott deHart and I pointed out in Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, and as other researchers have also observed (notably F. William Engdahl), the genesis of GMOs has its origins in studies undertaken and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and other business interests during the 1950s, studies that had as a goal the corporatizing, and hence control of, the world’s food supply.
In short, GMOs can be patented, and royalties charged for them. Heirloom seeds, while they can be sold, cannot be patented and hence controlled.
But with the growing worldwide scrutiny and oppositions to GMOs, from India to Europe and Russia, I have made the prediction that one will eventually see the BRICSA nations making anti-GMO attitudes and policies part of their geopolitical agenda, to the point that they were eventually enter direct competition against the USA and its big agribusiness companies like Mon(ster)santo by selling heirloom seeds on the world market, and eventually, they will attempt to do so in the American market itself.
In that context, I blogged recently about the Chinese government rejecting a a shipment of American GMO corn because it did not meet Chinese regulatory standards.
Now, it seems, there is more going on than meets the eye within the BRICSA group, especially regarding agriculture:
China Rejects US Corn as First Shipment Arrives from The Ukraine
Note this paragraph:

“Genetically modified corn and corn-derived products totaling 601,000 metric tons were rejected in 2013, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. A Panamax-sized shipment of non-genetically modified corn from Ukraine entered the country on Dec. 6, according to a statement dated Dec. 25 on the website of state-owned China National Complete Engineering Corp.”

And this one:

“China continued to reject corn cargoes from the U.S. that contained an unapproved genetically modified variety while accepting a first bulk-carrier shipment of the grain from Ukraine.”

And finally, this one:

“Ukraine may export 18 million tons of corn in 2013-2014, tying it with Argentina as the third-biggest supplier behind the U.S. and Brazil, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast in December.”

There is, I suggest, a subtext here, that is carefully hidden in these three paragraphs, namely, that the BRICSA nations are now taking direct aim at GMO modifications specific to American agricultural products.
And that in turn suggests that we may be a significant step closer to that all-out direct geopolitical confrontation via the GMO-vs-heirloom seed issue between the BRICSA nations and the scientifically corrupted culture of American agribusiness. Intriguingly, this move comes via a country not directly a part of the BRICSA bloc – The Ukraine – but it is important that the Ukraine is predictably falling increasingly back under the orbit of Moscow, and this, one may possibly view this action as being that of a representative of Moscow.
So what might one expect as the next move from the BRICSA bloc in this regard?
I suspect that the next moves will be twofold: first, the increase of such bilateral agreements between China and other BRICSA nations – India – to bypass American GMO exports. This, I suspect, will be accompanied by increasing pressures against GMOs from Argentina (the big test laboratory for big “agribusiness” that gutted Argentina’s once prosperous family ranch and farm business), to Brazil. With Chinese, Indian, and Russian backing, these nations, already fed up with the strong arm tactics and internet snooping of the USA, will be able to mount a more concerted effort. Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect the BRICSA nations will increasingly step up public propaganda efforts against big American GMO corporations

and the corrupted scientific practices they have sponsored.
But make no mistake about it: China’s turn from American to Ukrainian agriculture is a huge step. And it is only the first of many.

China Rejecting U.S. Corn as First Shipment From Ukraine Arrives

By Bloomberg News Jan 6, 2014 //http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-06/china-rejecting-u-s-corn-as-first-shipment-from-ukraine-arrives.html

China continued to reject corn cargoes from the U.S. that contained an unapproved genetically modified variety while accepting a first bulk-carrier shipment of the grain from Ukraine.
Genetically modified corn and corn-derived products totaling 601,000 metric tons were rejected in 2013, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. A Panamax-sized shipment of non-genetically modified corn from Ukraine entered the country on Dec. 6, according to a statement dated Dec. 25 on the website of state-owned China National Complete

Engineering Corp.
The quarantine agency’s newest figure cited by Xinhua was 56,000 tons more than it announced on Dec. 19, showing the government’s continued screening of U.S. corn and and dried distillers’ grains, or DDGS, for the unapproved insect resistanr MIR 162 gene. Net corn sales to China from the U.S. in the seven days through Dec. 26 dropped by 116,000 tons from the previous week, according to a report on the website of U.S. Department of Agriculture.
China National Complete

Engineering carries out overseas engineering projects, often funded by Chinese government, according to its website. It began to market grain from Ukraine last year under a contract that became effective December 2012, according to the Dec. 25 statement.
China’s Ministry of Agriculture said in May 2012 the country agreed to finance

$3 billion worth agriculture projects in Ukraine in exchange for terms including rights to sell Ukrainian farm products.
Ukraine may export 18 million tons of corn in 2013-2014, tying it with Argentina as the third-biggest supplier behind the U.S. and Brazil, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast in December.

Shredding the layers of the ObamaCare onion

Image courtesy of Canada Free Press

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/10362

By Douglas J. Hagmann

17 January 2014: A few days ago, I was given a gift of sorts. It arrived in a plain manila envelope with no return address. Inside was a note that stated that I would know precisely what to do with the information this anonymous source provided. That source was indeed

correct.

According to this benefactor of inside information, the electric bills of certain companies for the next billing cycle and employee overtime costs for the next pay schedule will be particularly high due to the cost of operating shredders

and paying people to use them. Not just for physical shredding, but for the electronic erasure of documents, memos and e-mails pertaining to certain companies who played a supporting role in the establishment and roll-out of “ObamaCare” and the Healthcare.gov website. Moreover, this very task of document destruction is still taking place, which should serve as a red-phone call to congressional investigators who have not been financially enriched in the cronyism of ObamaCare.

Hopefully, those who are engaged in this frenzied shredding operation received their orders in writing and have taken extraordinary steps to safeguard their orders far beyond the company vault. For if history tells us anything, and it should, this menial but criminally significant task is almost always left to the “disposable” kind of employees where the blame always falls and a stint in prison leaves less of public stigma to other certain, high-value executives dictating the orders. It’s plausible deniability in action, or PD, as it is known in the tradecraft.

As always, though, the extent of the lies and corruption is much deeper than meets the eye. It takes a lot of peeling of the onion to get to the truth, and I’ve left a lot of onion skins on the floor by following the leads of my bipartisan, benevolent benefactor to bring forth this information.

It was just announced that the Obama White House is dropping CGI, Inc. next month when its contract with the U.S. federal government expires. Certain journalists and armchair sleuths with a peculiar penchant for political partisanship engaged in a frenzied frolic at the discovery of cronyism related to CGI. News that Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior executive at CGI Federal, was a college classmate of Michelle Obama at Princeton and visited the White House complex on several occasions was sufficient cause for celebration and provided entertaining fodder for the one-dimensional political pundits. CGI Federal ultimately secured a $678 million no-bid contract to build the ObamaCare website, and did so miserably. At least, that’s the government’s story, and they’re sticking to it. Yet that’s just the veneer of a much deeper, more nefarious scheme, especially when you look at its replacement.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare

Services recently announced that a company known as Accenture has been selected to become the lead contractor for HealthCare.gov. Research into CGI’s replacement found very interesting information about just who is rescuing the exchange that should leave everyone reading this less than relieved. You see, Accenture was previously known as Andersen Consulting, a corporate outgrowth of the Chicago-based accounting firm Arthur Andersen, LLP. If that name seems to ring a bell, it should.

Arthur Andersen, LLP became inextricably linked to the Texas-based energy giant Enron, as they provided made-to-order auditing services to Enron. Of course everybody remember Enron’s founder Kenneth Lay, a close friend of the Bush family dynasty and favorite whipping boy of the Progressives. Lay became the Progressive poster-child for graft and crony capitalism, but his knowledge of where the proverbial bodies were buried became cause for concern among those involved in the criminal enterprise, especially those close to the Oval Office.

Lay was ultimately convicted of 10 of the 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges in May of 2006. Before he could be sentenced or offer any information that could mitigate his sentence, however, Lay, age 64, died as a result of… a heart attack. Too many breakfasts of Eggs Benedict, or so we are to believe. A mere “fortuitous happenstance” for some.

Like the proverbial Phoenix, Arthur Andersen, LLP, or the core of the corporation, rose from the ashes of scandal and landed in Dublin, Ireland as Accenture. Of course, there are multiple steps in between, but I’ll spare the reader the task of onion peeling. Nonetheless, one might wonder if a portrait of the late Kenneth Lay bestows their offices, or at least some of the desks of the corporate execs there.

The transfer of responsibilities from CGI to Accenture to clean up the mess is an interesting one indeed

. Perhaps CGI or other contractors and subcontractors could qualify for energy credits to mitigate the cost of their current power consumption. Or, perhaps some of the more informed members of the devout yet disposable support staff of the ObamaCare site should consider picking up a phone before they load more documents into the auto-feed paper tray of the company shredder.

There’s more… much more. But for now, perhaps the elected leaders in whom patriotic constitutionalist adherents to the right-left paradigm place so much of their faith could stop the destruction of documentation instead of merely putting on a useless display of public outrage. After all, such records may be necessary in a criminal trial, ala Enron.

The sooner people understand that ObamaCare has nothing to do with affordable health care

, the better off we’ll all be. It’s all about consolidation and control, and the enrichment of a select few on the path to subjugation. The masks of the players might change, but they are still the same players in the game of ultimate control.

Drug Smuggling DEA calls Marijuana Legalization ‘Reckless and Irresponsible’

by Mikael Thalen
January 16th, 2014
Updated 01/16/2014

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief of operations pleaded with lawmakers during a Senate hearing Wednesday, warning over the alleged dangers of marijuana legalization at the state level.

Image: DEA Drug Money (U.S. Open Borders)

“It scares us,” James L. Capra said according to the Washington Post. “Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again.”
Only one day after court documents revealed the DEA to be smuggling billions in drugs with Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, backing up a 2011 report by the El Paso Times, the federal agency seemed desperate to keep its blood money flowing uninterrupted, calling the growing legalization movement “reckless and irresponsible.”
“This is a bad experiment,” Capra said. “It’s going to cost us in terms of social costs.”
While the social costs are to be debated, it seems unlikely the DEA is concerned over the social cost of incarcerating millions of Americans for purchasing drugs the agency itself helped ship into the country.
Speaking specifically on Colorado, which recently legalized recreational use of marijuana, Capra claimed the agency was dismayed at the state’s decision.
“There are more dispensaries in Denver than there are Starbucks,” Capra said. “The idea somehow people in our country have that this is somehow good for us as a nation is wrong. It’s a bad thing.”
Multiple federal agencies drunk on billions in taxpayer money are in a panic as the general public begins questioning the drug trade’s real source. Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent refusal to prosecute HSBC, a bank caught laundering billions in drug money for Mexican cartels, dealt a major blow to the federal government’s credibility regarding the drug war.
Several years prior in 2011, banking giant Wachovia received no criminal charges after they were found to have laundered 378.6 billion in drug money for the Sinaloa cartel as well.
Incredibly, as cartel money laundering banks are protected by the federal government, the DEA has threatened those same banks with legal action if they store cash for small-time legal marijuana businesses in Washington and Colorado.
Given the DEA’s access to vast data from the NSA, many now question how the agency has not been able to stop such major drug groups. As many have said for years, the DEA at the highest level is nothing more than a smuggling and protection agency for cartels that work with major banks. Unfortunately, the federal government’s relationship with dangerous cartels goes much further than simple protection.
High-ranking Sinaloa member Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla recently admitted that the cartel had received weapons from the United States government for years under Operation Fast and Furious. While the Obama administration claims the operation was to track guns into Mexico, Niebla revealed the weapons to be for war with rival cartels.
Even more ironic, Wednesday’s Senate hearing was focused on drug cultivation in Afghanistan, where the arrival of US troops in 2001 has lead to record level opium production.
In fact, a 2009 report by the New York Times revealed one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug kingpins, the brother of Afghanistan’s president, to be on the CIA’s payroll

.
The United States involvement in Afghanistan’s drug trade became so obvious that several news groups including ABC and FOX ran reports admitting that U.S. troops were ordered to help grow opium, though attempting to paint the practice as necessary.
While there is likely countless well-meaning DEA agents across the country, the bloodshed, hypocrisy and outright treasonous activity by the agency has few taking them serious.

“Despite all this, I still love her!” says Chinese man demembered by wife

No marriage is perfect, we imagine. Sometimes, little things become extremely annoying after years or decades, and other times stuff just happens. Even so, most people try their best to work it out by cutting through the bad to get to the good.
A wife in China, though, took things in the opposite direction. Here’s one story that will surely leave the gentlemen squealing.

Waking up, he noticed something was…uh…”missing”
Our (horror) story take place in China. On May 7, around 8 p.m., a Mr. Han (35) felt grave pain shoot through his body, waking him up. Glancing down, he noticed that he was missing “something.” It had, in fact, been cut off at the base.
The culprit was his six-years-junior wife
A little over 10 minutes after getting the call for help, the police arrived and found Mr. Han collapsed on the floor. They also discovered the weapon in the house.
The “weapon” was actually a pair of sharp, 20-cm-long scissors. Han’s wife used them to cut their child’s cloth diapers

. However, she was not in the house, and the police assumed that she was the culprit.
“I flushed it.”
Shortly thereafter, the wife came home with a doctor in tow. “I thought the ambulance might not be able to find our house, so I went to meet them,” she explained.
The doctor checked Han’s condition. Although he’d been snipped off at the base, the doctor said that if it was found in 6 to 8 hours, it could be reattached. There was still time! When asked where Mr. Han’s penis was, his wife responded in the worst way possible: “I flushed it down the toilet.”
Still in love…
Mr. Han was immediately taken to the hospital. He went into shock due to blood loss, but two days later, he was responsive. He said he bore his wife no ill will and didn’t have any intention of bringing charges against her. Smiling, he explained, “Despite all this, I love my wife, and I think she loves me.”

Bloody history
According to Chinese media, Mr. Han said that he would sacrifice himself for his wife. In fact, it seemed that this wasn’t the first time he’d taken bodily injury for her. He’s missing the tip of his left index finger. After they’d had a fight, she shouted that she was going to “drink pesticide and die,” so he’d cut it off to show his love. “She’s been with me since she was 16. For my wife, I don’t mind sacrificing myself,” he explained.
What was her motive?
Nevertheless, what caused this incident? The wife had the following to say.
“I had a recording on my phone

from an earlier fight. On it, my husband said he was going to divorce me. When I heard that, just then, I got really scared. Someone in our neighborhood got divorced, and the child was beaten by the second wife. If my husband divorced me and got married to another woman, I feared that our child would end up being abused like that child. But if I cut it off, I figured he’d never be able to get remarried.”
A silver lining
Now, Mr. Han suffered a grave injury, but he’s recovered and received urethral reconstructive surgery. However, he’ll have to squat whenever he takes care of business from now. What he lost was by no means small. Still, having his life saved is the silver lining of a VERY dark cloud.
This incident is certainly evidence of his love for his wife. We wish them the best of luck in the future and hope that they will have a happy marriage from here on out.
Images: Wikipedia (Scissors, Statue)
[ Read in Japanese ]

Here’s the Hong Kong that Westerners never see

Investment advisor and photographer Jonathan van Smit is one of the few foreigners who ever sees the dark side of Hong Kong.
The New Zealander tells us by email: “I know some Western expats who never eat Chinese food, and who rarely venture outside their expat communities. They’re here to make money

not to experience a different culture. They live in a largely expat world, their kids go to international schools, their maids do the housework, cooking and shopping. I imagine that the more local parts of Hong Kong are completely alien to many of them.”
The level of inequality can be shocking: “Hong Kong is either heaven or hell depending on who you might ask. It has the [developed] world’s highest Gini score with Singapore 2nd and the USA 3rd. Over in Kowloon you’ll find so-called ‘cage people’, residents living in cages or ultra small dwellings, barely able to make ends meet and end up begging in the busy streets or living off meager social assistance if they can get it. Food and rent are expensive so losing a job can be a matter of life and death.”

Van Smit gave us permission to publish this set of photos from 2012. (See his latest work at his site and Flickr.)