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POPSU.K. Economic Contraction Is Longest on Record The British economy has now contracted for six successive quarters, making this the longest downturn since the agency started its data series in 1955. And it is starting to further lag behind the 16-member euro area, where France and Germany are contributing to broad improvements in manufacturing, services and consumer demand. Jean-Michel Six, chief European economist at Standard & Poor’s, said the divergence appeared to stem from the higher level of consumer indebtedness in Britain. “U.K. consumers are coming out of a period of very significant leveraging, and the process of unwinding that is long and painful,” he said. “You would expect savings rates to grow and credit demand to fall, weighing on the economy.” Meanwhile, German business confidence in October rose to its highest level in 13 months, according to the Ifo economic research institute in Munich.
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POPSHungarian French Artist Victor Vasarely Museum Under Threat of Closure Unique architecture suffering from neglect A petition has been set up to ask the French government to step in and save the landmark building from total decline Vasarely was born in Hungary in 1906 and died in Paris in 1997. During his lifetime, his works were honoured with a number of awards including the Guggenheim prize, the French Legion of Honor, the art critics prize at Brussels and the gold medal at the Milan triennale Vasarely’s identity in the art world was based on his experimentations with optical illusion and the use of line, colour toning and size variation Permanent exhibition faces closure Vasarely began a degree in medicine in Budapest before abandoning his studies to pursue his passion for art. He went on to design the official spiral-shaped logo of the Munich Olympic games
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POPS“…I Believe it is Peace for our Time” The Czech government, for its part, was having none of it, and prepared to mobilize its armies. But capable as its military was, it was not prepared to deal with the much larger Wehrmacht…unless some other Western Power (read: Britain or France) should come to help them. But in a bizarre twist, the French and British heads of state did meet…with Germany. Rather than risk warfare, they were willing to allow Adolf Hitler to annex the Sudeten region, but only if he promised that his territorial acquisitions were finished. Mollified by the German dictator’s smooth talking, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed away the Sudetenland by putting his signature to the Munich Agreement in the wee morning hours of September 30, 1938. The French, still in a financial mess and completely unprepared militarily to defend their own country, much less another, could do little but follow suit, and Edouard Daladier signed as well.
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POPSevery postwar olympic stadium... I was recently asked to express an opinion regarding... "Have the olympics become too expensive?" This is an initial bit of some background information I've started collecting.
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POPSGerman real estate company may vote to approve nationalization The interesting thing about this is the difference between American and European perspectives. Actions that are decried as socialism (like buying a 90% stake in a company) here are actually conservative in Europe (Merkel is the leader of the center-right Christian Democrats). Of course, since a wealthy American might lose his stake in the company, I fully expect Fox News to make a lot of hay out of this story.
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POPSProsecutors Formally Charge Demjanjuk Prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk " who was deported from the U.S. in May " of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who spent World War II as a Nazi prisoner of war and never hurt anyone. 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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POPSThe View from Above "Many of us know what it’s like to observe our world from very high in a jet airliner. If you get the chance to fly in a small aircraft, you’ll be amazed at the detail you don’t see when taking a commercial flight. If you can’t easily do that, wander through the photostream of Aerial Photography." - http://www.flickr.com/photos/leidorf/
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POPSHe Doesn't Get It . . . . would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is. In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do. On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That’s some omission. Next, Obama is pressuring Israel to set up a Palestine state " within two years this will exist, swaggers Rahm Emanuel. But everyone knows that as soon as Israel leaves the West Bank, Hamas " or even worse " will take over. The only reason the (also appalling) Abbas is still in Ramallah, enabling Obama to pretend there is a Palestinian interlocutor for peace, is because the Israelis are keeping Hamas at bay.
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POPSFamous prostitute's gravestone deemed too 'slutty'
Maybe provocative or sexy. I wouldn't call it "slutty" though? "But the cemetery officials are not alone in criticising Ungerer’s memorial. Photographer Günther Zint, another friend of Niehoff, told the newspaper, “There was a bit of a debate among her friends whether Tomi needed to emphasise her breasts like that. They were after all a bane of her life.” Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009. Originally from Cologne, Niehoff lived through drugs, child prostitution and desperate attempts to get out of the sex trade. She grew up in an orphanage before slipping into prostitution, when she married a brothel owner, who committed suicide ten years later. She worked as a prostitute in Munich and Hamburg and had her own brothel before she began to push for the legalisation of prostitution in Germany in the 1980s. She then became a social worker to help women to get off the street."
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POPS"No priest, no evil one/Can keep us/From feeling like Hitler’s children." "Clergy were put on government salary, hence subjected to state authority. “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves,” Hitler cackled. “They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.” Following the Jacobin example, the Nazis replaced the traditional Christian calendar. The new year began on January 30 with the Day of the Seizure of Power. Each November the streets of central Munich were dedicated to a Nazi Passion play depicting Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. The martyrdom of Horst Wessel and his “old fighters” replaced Jesus and the apostles. Plays and official histories were rewritten to glorify pagan Aryans bravely fighting against Christianizing foreign armies. Anticipating some feminist pseudo history, witches became martyrs to the bloodthirsty oppression of Christianity."
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POPSLou Reed, Sinead O' Connor and The Pretenders, in Sant Feliu de Guíxols 
Among the great artistic events of the summer in the area of Girona, the Festival of the Ferrada Door, which has been just revealed, confirms a tendency towards the sure values, by inviting personalities with international fame, for the majority discrete these last years. From July 5 to August 22, this festival devoted to the music with the dance and the theatre, invites The Pretenders, in opening, then Lou Reed, on July 10, the Irishwoman Sinead O' Connor, on July 28, the Italian Paolo Conte, on August 7, then the singer of American jazz Dee Dee Bridgewater, on August 16. The festival of Carried Ferrada, created in 1958 and recognized like oldest of Catalonia, is organized in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, on Costa Brava, with this year a budget of crisis, is reduced to 1,5 million euros, which will prevent prestige by no means. Thus, the beautiful share will be also made with the Ballet of Munich, on July 25, with the lifting circus of Beijing, on August 10, then with the Chorus and the orch
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POPS Obama's 'Peace for Our Time' ~ He's A Piece Alright 
Lest anyone doubt Obama's determination to appease Islam, consider the fact that on Monday, the day before his departure, American Islamic convert Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two young military recruiters in Arkansas, murdering Pvt. William Long -- and Obama initially offered no official comment. Contrast that to the killing the previous day of George Tiller, infamous for murdering thousands of babies just prior to birth. Within hours of that incident, Obama served up an official statement of "shock and outrage." Obama's Attorney General also dispatched U.S. Marshals to protect "appropriate people and facilities around the nation." But law enforcement resources have not been dispatched to protect recruiting centers (even though hundreds of those have been attacked in recent years), nor is Obama sending Marshals to protect synagogues, after last month's arrest of four Islamists who planned to bomb Jewish houses of worship in New York.
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POPSGermany denies most evil patent ever There always has to be someone to take the next step. This is yet another way to kill someone on command. A means of controlling a person to do an evil persons (or governments) bidding. I would not be surprised to learn it is in use in Saudi Arabia already as slave control.
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