Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others — “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
China Flight Tests New Multiple-Warhead Missile
DF-41 launch comes amid heightened tensions over S. China Sea
April 19, 2016 5:00 am
China conducted another flight test of its newest and longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile last week amid growing tensions with the United States over the South China Sea.
Pentagon officials told the Free Beacon the flight test of the new road-mobile DF-41 missile took place Tuesday with two multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, that were monitored in flight by U.S. military satellites and other regional sensors.
Officials did not say where the test took place. Past DF-41 launches were carried out from the Wuzhai Missile and Space Test Center in central China.
The latest flight test followed an earlier, rail-based canister ejection test of a DF-41 on Dec. 5.
U.S. Strategic Command commander Adm. Cecil Haney said Jan. 22 that China’s multiple warhead missiles are part of a significant investment in both nuclear and conventional forces.
“China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads,” Haney said in a speech.
The flight test came around the same time that a high-ranking Chinese general made an unusual visit to a disputed South China Sea island. Also, the missile test occurred three days before Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the aircraft carrier USS Stennis as it sailed in the South China Sea.
Pentagon officials said the visit to Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands by Gen. Fan Changlong was timed to the Carter visit to the region. Fan is vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the most powerful military organ under the ruling Communist Party of China.
The Pentagon has said China is covertly building military bases on disputed islands in the sea. Beijing has accused Washington of militarizing the sea by deploying warships and bolstering regional alliances.
Disclosure of the DF-41 test follows a newsletter report last month that stated China is nearing deployment of the new ICBM.
Kanwa Asian Defense reported last month that the new ICBM is in the final testing phase, and its expected deployment area will be near Xinyang in Henan province, in central China.
From that location, the missile would be capable of striking the United States in around 30 minutes, either through a polar trajectory or over the Pacific.
PRINCE TREATED FOR DRUG OVERDOSE DAYS BEFORE DEATH
Prince was treated for a drug overdose 6 days before his death … multiple sources tell TMZ.
We broke the story … Prince’s private jet made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois last Friday, hours after he performed in Atlanta. At the time his reps said he was battling the flu … something we questioned because his plane was only 48 minutes from home before the unscheduled landing.
Multiple sources in Moline tell us, Prince was rushed to a hospital and doctors gave him a “save shot” … typically administered to counteract the effects of an opiate.
Our sources further say doctors advised Prince to stay in the hospital for 24 hours. His people demanded a private room, and when they were told that wasn’t possible … Prince and co. decided to bail. The singer was released 3 hours after arriving and flew home.
We’re told when Prince left he “was not doing well.”
We know authorities in Minnesota are trying to get the hospital records from Moline to help determine cause of death.
We have made more than a dozen attempts to reach Prince’s reps for comment, but they went radio silent.
Saudi Arabia threatens economic ‘turmoil’ over 9/11 bill | New York Post
Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell $750 billion in American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow 9/11 victims to hold the kingdom legally responsible for the terrorist attacks, a report said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warned the Obama administration and congressional leaders last month that the kingdom would sell treasury securities and other assets if Congress didn’t yank the bill, The New York Times reported.
A Saudi sale could, in theory, destabilize the dollar and create global market turmoil, although some economists believe it is an empty threat.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, would remove immunity given to a foreign nations if the country’s government is found responsible for a terrorist attack on US soil — which could make the Saudi government vulnerable to a federal lawsuit by the families of 9/11 victims.
The threat comes before President Obama’s trip to the oil-rich nation for meetings with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud on Wednesday.
How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11 | New York Post
In its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom.
That’s quite an understatement.
Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.
Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.
Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”
Those sources say the pages missing from the 9/11 congressional inquiry report — which comprise the entire final chapter dealing with “foreign support for the September 11 hijackers” — details “incontrovertible evidence” gathered from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.
Some information has leaked from the redacted section, including a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transfer of some $130,000 from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.
Dow Industrials Close Above 18000 for First Time Since July 20
The Wall Street Journal reports…
U.S. stocks rose Monday, propelling the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 18000 for the first time since July.
The blue-chip index has gained nearly 15% since mid-February, as early-year fears about the U.S. economy faded, oil prices rebounded and the Federal Reserve signaled a cautious approach to raising rates. With Monday’s advance, the Dow is up 3.3% for the year.
The Dow industrials rose 107 points, or 0.6%, to 18004, closing above 18000 for the first time since July 20. The S&P 500 added 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.4%.
Prophet must be in the zone…
The Washington Post: Hillary’s new star turn: heroine of children’s books
In a presidential election year, there will, of course, be political biographies. But political biographies for children? This month three children’s books about one candidate — Hillary Clinton — hit the shelves. Aimed at a variety of age groups, the books deliver a similar message of female strength, though admittedly one likely to go down easier in Democratic-leaning households.
Jonah Winter’s picture book “Hillary” (Schwartz & Wade, ages 4 to 8) begins with a slightly tongue-in-cheek overview of history’s notably strong women: Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc (“she was . . . kind of intense”), Rosie the Riveter, “and now there is . . . Hillary.” The first image, rendered delicately in watercolor, colored pencils and lithograph crayon by Raul Colón, shows young Hillary in a baseball cap, surrounded by tall boys, pointing assertively. “She was scrappy,” Winter writes. The tale that unfolds will be familiar to parental readers — Hillary graduating from law school, becoming a mother and first lady. There’s even a summary of her work for health care reform. In simple terms, Winter offers younger readers a portrait of someone who learns all she can and draws on her experience in tough situations. As secretary of state, “she was the hardest of workers, getting up earlier and staying up later than anyone, reading countless reports filled with important information, making decisions that might save lives or cost lives.”There is little subtlety to Winter’s depiction, and his author’s note says it most plainly: “By becoming president, she would demonstrate that a girl can grow up to be the most powerful person in the world. That’s the world where I want to live. And this is a story I am thrilled to tell.”
Temple of Baal Arch Canceled for New York City — Charisma News
The Temple of Baal is not coming to Times Square in New York City next month. This is great news, and it represents an incredible victory for Christians in the United States.
As you will see below, the New York Times, Snopes and a whole host of other mainstream news sources reported last month that everything was on track for reproductions of the giant 48-foot-tall arch that stood in front of the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria, to be put up simultaneously in Times Square in New York City and Trafalgar Square in London during the month of April. But now that will not be happening.
The only arch that will be going up will be in Trafalgar Square, and it won’t be the one from the Temple of Baal. Instead, the Institute for Digital Archaeology has changed plans and will be putting up a reproduction of the Arch of Triumph which the Romans originally built in Palmyra and that has nothing to do with Baal. So why has there been such a dramatic change in plans?
On Friday, I received an urgent message from a contact that has been investigating this, and she told me that she had talked directly to someone from the Institute for Digital Archaeology and that she had been informed that no arch was going up in New York during the month of April.
I pressed her for confirmation, because every mainstream source that I could find said that the arch from the Temple of Baal was indeed going up next month. So her information would definitely change everything, but I needed to be able to confirm this.
Well, confirmation came in the form of an article from the Telegraph, which is one of the most important news sources in the United Kingdom. On Friday, they reported that the original plan to put up the arch from the Temple of Baal in New York and London simultaneously had been scrapped.
When the IDA revealed last December that it was intending to use its data and expertise to build not one but two replica Palmyra arches – to be unveiled simultaneously in Trafalgar Square in London and Times Square in New York – it generated headlines across the world.
Since then there has been some backtracking on the original idea. There will be no simultaneous unveiling in New York – they may transport the London arch there later, or build another one – and the Palmyra arch that is being reconstructed is no longer the entrance to the Temple of Bel (which survived an attempt to blow it up in August 2015) but the Arch of Triumph (partially destroyed in October) formerly located at one end of the Great Colonnade.
As you can see, this report confirms what they were originally planning to do, and this represents a massive change of direction.
Just a few weeks ago, everything appeared to be all set for this arch from the Temple of Baal to go up in Times Square in April. For example, the following is what the New York Times reported on March 19:
NEXT month, the Temple of Baal will come to Times Square. Reproductions of the 50-foot arch that formed the temple’s entrance are to be installed in New York and in London, a tribute to the 2,000-year-old structure that the Islamic State destroyed last year in the Syrian town of Palmyra. The group’s rampage through Palmyra, a city that reached its peak in the second and third century A.D., enraged the world, spurring scholars and conservationists into action.
Of course the New York Times was far from alone in reporting about this. The New York Post had also reported that this was a done deal.
A towering arch of an ancient temple in Palmyra, Syria, that has been mostly destroyed by ISIS terrorists will be recreated by a huge 3-D printer and put on display in New York City this spring, officials said on Monday.
The life-size model of the original 2,000-year-old structure, known as the Arch of the Temple of Bel, will stand approximately 48 feet high and 23 feet wide.
And as I write this article, Snopes is still reporting that the arch from the Temple of Baal is going to go up in New York and London.
While it is true replicas of Palmyra’s Temple of Baal arch are being constructed for temporary display in New York and London, the project solely involves reproducing the structure’s arch and not creating a functional building. Moreover, interest in reproducing the demolished antiquity is archeological in nature, not religious.
The big question is this: Why has there been such a sudden change in plans?
First of all, why is no arch going up in New York next month at all?
Secondly, why has the arch in London been switched to an entirely different arch?
Could it be possible that the alternative media has played a role? Since the original New York Times story last month, a massive firestorm has erupted in the alternative media and this story has gone megaviral all over the Internet.
Could it be possible that they have backtracked because of how much negative attention this story has been receiving?
Of course let us not underestimate the prayers of God’s people. Once this story went viral, Christians all over America started praying against this arch. From personal experience, I know that the prayers of righteous men and women are extremely powerful, and we may never know how much of an impact they had on this situation.
So let us celebrate this victory, but let us also understand that what this country is facing is not going to fundamentally change unless there is true repentance. Because even though a monument to Baal is not going up in New York City next month, we continue to embrace the ways of Baal as a nation.
Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, more than 58 million babies have been murdered in America, and of course this was a key feature of Baal worship in the ancient Middle East. One place where we find this in the Bible is in Jeremiah 19:4-6.
“Because they have forsaken Me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into My mind— therefore, surely the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter” (emphasis added).
Another key feature of Baal worship that we see reflected in modern society that I discussed in a previous article is the public exhibition of sexual acts. In ancient times, there would be crazed bisexual orgies around the altars of Baal, and large crowds would gather around to watch. And of course today we are a nation that is absolutely addicted to watching other people have sex. In fact, it has been estimated that 68 percent of all Christian men watch pornography on a regular basis.
Unless we change our ways, it is inevitable that the judgment of God is going to hit America extremely hard. This is one of the topics that I cover in my new book entitled The Rapture Verdict. God keep calling us to repent, but we keep shaking our fists at Him as a nation.
At some point, time will run out.
For the moment, let us celebrate this victory over the Temple of Baal.
But let us not relax one bit, because there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to try to wake this country up while we still can.
Source: Temple of Baal Arch Canceled for New York City — Charisma News
HOLY BIBLE ON LIST OF ‘CHALLENGED’ BOOKS AT LIBRARIES
NEW YORK (AP) — On the latest list of books most objected to at public schools and libraries, one title has been targeted nationwide, at times for the sex and violence it contains, but mostly for the legal issues it raises.
The Bible.
“You have people who feel that if a school library buys a copy of the Bible, it’s a violation of church and state,” says James LaRue, who directs the Office for Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, which released its annual 10 top snapshot of “challenged” books on Monday, part of the association’s “State of Libraries Report” for 2016.
“And sometimes there’s a retaliatory action, where a religious group has objected to a book and a parent might respond by objecting to the Bible.”
LaRue emphasized that the library association does not oppose having Bibles in public schools. Guidelines for the Office for Intellectual Freedom note that the Bible “does not violate the separation of church and state as long as the library does not endorse or promote the views included in the Bible.” The ALA also favors including a wide range of religious materials, from the Quran to the Bhagavad Gita to the Book of Mormon. LaRue added that the association does hear of complaints about the Quran, but fewer than for the Bible.
The Bible finished sixth on a list topped by John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” which has been cited for “offensive language” and sexual content. The runner-up, challenged for obvious reasons, was E L James’ raunchy romance “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
“I Am Jazz,” a transgender picture book by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, was No. 3, followed by another transgender story, Susan Kuklin’s “Beyond Magenta.” The list also includes Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home,” Craig Thompson’s “Habibi,” Jeanette Winter’s “Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan” and David Leviathan’s “Two Boys Kissing,” with one objection being that it “condones public displays of affection.”
“Many of the books deal with issues of diversity,” LaRue said. “And that often leads to challenges.”
The association bases its list on news reports and on accounts submitted from libraries and defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” Just 275 incidents were compiled by the ALA, down from 311 the year before and one of the lowest on record. The ALA has long believed that for every challenge brought to its attention, four or five others are not reported. LaRue says the association does not have a number for books actually pulled in 2015.
Challenged works in recent years have ranged from the Harry Potter novels to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Discussing recent events, LaRue said he was concerned by legislation that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently vetoed forcing schools to warn parents if their children will be assigned books with sexually explicit content. A Fairfax County mother had protested the use of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved” in her son’s high school senior class. The 1987 novel set in the post-Civil War era includes scenes depicting sex, rape and bestiality and has appeared occasionally on the ALA challenged books list.
“We see the danger of censorship moving from the school library into the English classroom,” LaRue said.
Europe and NATO
I will be leaving shortly for a week in Europe, visiting Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic. After 1989, these former Soviet satellites sought integration with Europe—and, in a sense, salvation—by becoming members of the two major transnational organizations: the European Union and NATO. The former was strictly European, while the latter bound Europe and the United States together.
Recent chaos in the EU and the return of Russian assertiveness has placed these three countries in difficult positions. The Czech Republic is deeply bound economically with Germany. Prague is comfortable with that relationship and shares Berlin’s fate in many ways. When I visit the Czech Republic, I am going to be talking about what I see as Germany’s weakness.Romania has opted to draw closer to the United States. It’s a difficult relationship, but even under communism, the Romanians distrusted the Russians. I have long argued that a close collaboration with the United States is essential to Romania. I will get a chance to hear from Romanians about the progress of our collaboration. The next critical step in the relationship is arranging significant investment from the United States for much-needed development of the Romanian energy sector—in spite of the fact that investing in energy right now is a tough proposition.
My first visit will be to Slovakia, a country that has struggled to keep its relations with Russia intact. Each year there is a conference in Bratislava called Globsec, where people who are focused on Central Europe and Russia gather. National leaders frequently speak, but they rarely say anything new, since they can’t. It is the people a tier or two down, some of whom I’ve known for years, who reveal the most by what they say or don’t say about what really makes them angry or worried. These people are the ones who give you get a sense of what is coming— or at least what they think is coming.
This year, a major topic at Globsec will be NATO. The choice of topic has to do partly with Donald Trump’s statements that Europe isn’t paying its “fair share” and, further, that it would be fine if NATO broke up. Such remarks by US presidential candidates are regarded with great care and concern in Eastern Europe. On a broader scale, Russia and the Middle East both present national security issues for all of Europe. Europe has no integrated military capability except for NATO, and NATO is now, to my mind, a shambles. It is a military alliance, but Europe has allowed its military capability, limited to begin with in the wake of WWII, to weaken dramatically.
As Europeans come to realize that Russia has not gone away and the United States has not actually overreacted to Islamist terrorism, Trump’s words on NATO are raising alarm. The Europeans worry that the US has lost confidence in NATO. I will be speaking on this subject, and what I have to say will not be reassuring. Many Europeans see NATO as the guarantor of their national security. In other words, they depend on the United States… the only NATO member with a global military capability.
From the start, the Europeans wanted NATO to serve as the mechanism for approving and overseeing military operations. They wanted a decisive voice in how NATO members, including the United States, applied their military power. However, their forces were so small that in most cases their participation was little more than symbolic. NATO became less and less a factor in US decision-making, and the Europeans compensated by congratulating themselves for their sophistication compared to the American “cowboys.”
The Europeans celebrated a concept called soft power, which involves the use of sanctions, the mobilization of public opinion, and other strategies that avoid military action. They wanted an option that cost less than becoming a global power costs. Frankly, from my point of view, their embracing soft power was simply a way to evade reality. As the Russians loomed larger and the Middle East spilled over into Europe, the Europeans discovered that soft power was… soft. And that they needed hard power, which the United States had (and to a far lesser extent Britain and France), but no one else did. Suddenly the world seemed out of control to the Europeans, since they lacked the hard power to shape events.
In terms of soft power, NATO began to take on a function it was never designed for. As communism fell, post-communist European states sought membership in NATO, not so much to be defended but to become integrated and Europeanized. Membership in the EU and NATO, it was believed, would turn these former Soviet satellites into Western countries. But NATO is a military alliance. It’s about tanks and planes and war plans. To become a mechanism for socializing new countries into Western Europe was not its purpose. Defending these countries and the rest of Europe was NATO’s function, but that function atrophied as war seemed increasingly irrelevant.
Since the US is a member, the Europeans felt that the United States’ power should be available to them through NATO. From Trump (and from far lesser figures like me), they are now hearing the message that the United States is not prepared to spend a vast amount of money on its military and then allow the Europeans a voice in its use. This is not a new reality, but it is one about which the United States is becoming much less apologetic.
The issue is not NATO itself but the defense relationship between Europe and the United States. NATO is simply the old framework for that relationship, which was established after World War II. At the time, the United States towered over Europe economically and militarily. Europe had little that it could contribute to defense, while the United States had an overriding interest in preventing the Soviets from seizing Western Europe. The US, comfortable with the asymmetrical arrangement, contributed the bulk of the military power to potentially fight a war on European territory, while Europe took the primary risk. That was the foundation of NATO.
That foundation crumbled long ago, most emphatically with the fall of the Soviet Union and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union. The total population of the European Union is just over 508 million people. The population of the United States is about 320 million people. The GDP of the European Union is $18.45 trillion. The GDP of the United States is about $18.3 trillion. In other words, Europe and the United States are equal in wealth, while Europe has almost 200 million people more than the US does.
There is therefore no reason why the Europeans should not have a military capability equal to or even greater than that commanded by the United States. Though Europe was understandably the junior partner in the 1950s, neither demographics nor economics show the continent to be a junior partner now.
Today, a structural problem driven by policy decisions ensures the ongoing asymmetry between the US’s commitment to NATO and Europe’s. The structural problem is that the European Union lacks a defense dimension. European unification is a complex quilt of relationships, and defense rests in the hands of individual sovereign states. The largest state, Germany, which should be devoting the most to a European defense force, devotes little even to its own force. Britain is cutting back its defense expenditures, and while France is raising the issue of increasing defense budgets, it still has a military force with limited capability.
There is an assumption in NATO that each country will devote 2% of its GDP to defense. A few do this, but most do not, and Europe as a whole does not come close. The American contribution to NATO is 2.7% of US GDP. The extraordinary fact is not that Trump pointed out this disparity and made clear that it couldn’t continue, but that it took Trump to make this a major issue.
During the Cold War, NATO’s mission was clear. It was to defend Western Europe from a Soviet attack. Military alliances function best with simple objectives. In this case, the military mission evaporated, but the alliance continued in place. Lacking a clear and present military mission, Europeans became even more reluctant to invest in defense. The need for defense seemed distant from the reality Europe was living in.
Now, the Russians are reasserting their place in history, and the Islamic State is targeting European capitals. It is not clear how the threats they pose are to be countered, but the challenge will demand military force in some capacity. In Europe, the United States has been seen as vastly overreacting to 9/11. A counterargument is that the Europeans simply didn’t believe they would become targets, but they have. Today, the fears fanned by terrorist acts in Europe have less to do with the number killed than with the disconcerting reality that a strike may come at any place and at any time. A state that does not act quickly and decisively to counter terrorism within its borders loses legitimacy and the trust of its public and its allies.
The Europeans must act. For its part, the United States has determined that it will no longer act alone. In the case of Syria, the US is prepared to use air power but will not deploy the multidivisional force needed to bring peace to the country. Instead, the US wants fellow NATO partners to shoulder a much larger part of the burden. And while the US is prepared to play a part, it does not intend to take the leading role.
Europe, however, is incapable of taking that role because it does not have the troops, hardware, or motivation to do so. Thus the Europeans will continue to hope for soft power solutions, so as to avoid the pain of hard power actions. They will not be able to act decisively, even if they wish to do so, for many years. As for Russia and the situation in Ukraine, the US is taking steps in conjunction with Poland and Romania, but geography dictates that it cannot be the primary player there.
The foundations of NATO have dissolved. Europe’s financial commitment to NATO is not credible. The willingness of the US to operate within the constraints of NATO is long gone. A unified strategic outlook is missing. NATO can be repaired, but it is hard to see that there is any unified vision or will to do so. Multinational institutions do not die. They continue to have annual meetings, such as NATO’s upcoming summit in Poland in July. But what is a military alliance without a military or a mission? It is just an anachronism.
I will be saying these things in Europe. My remarks will not be taken well. The Europeans understand the problem but want it to go away because dealing with it is much too hard. The problem will not go away, but the United States will, as the partnership with Europe is largely an illusion. The threats posed by Russian ambitions and terrorist plots will not go away but will simply become increasingly difficult to manage. Good will and conferences cannot solve the problem. I think that the 20th century exhausted Europe’s will to do difficult things, and for more than half a century, the things Europe had to do were relatively simple. That is no longer the case. In Bratislava, we will all agree that something needs to be done. We will also know that nothing will be.
George Friedman
Editor, This Week in Geopolitics
The rise of the orgy in the age of sex positivism | Love & Sex | Lifestyle | The Independent
Guests wander the luxury Mayfair apartment in formal attire, chit-chatting, lounging on sofas and sipping champagne. At midnight a bell is rung and everyone gets naked. Around half an hour later, after the initial awkwardness has worn off, the flat is a sea of writhing bodies.
Heaven Circle, probably the world’s biggest sex party club (it’s the one from that Channel 4 doc Sex Party Secrets you may remember), started out in 2012 as founder Chris Reynolds Gordon and just a handful of friends. Four years later, it has over 20,000 members, with parties taking place in London, Paris, New York, L.A., Vegas, Ibiza, Berlin, Amsterdam and Vienna. They always sell out.
The parties are hugely opulent, a recent one having taken place in a £30 million house in Marylebone. “How do you find the venues?” I ask Gordon. “I live in them,” he tells me, which demonstrates pretty well how lucrative a business it is and the enormity of the world’s sexual appetite.
If you’re going to have sex with a total stranger, you’re probably going to want them to be attractive, so Heaven Circle vets its guests, even operating a tiering system with extra special parties for the sexual elite. A “sex olympics” is currently being planned, where the best performers from parties around the world will come together for a sort of fantasy team orgy. The mix at the parties tends to be mostly swinging couples, with a few single men and women thrown in too.
While the prospect of having so many sexual encounters in one go might frighten some, the organisers believe the parties to be safer than clubs. While the latter are plagued with unwanted gropes, the former is a less ambiguous environment. Everyone knows why they’re there.Consent is also held in paramount importance, with undercover bodyguards at all parties (wearing Y-fronts and bow ties, the best kind of disguise).
“I go to some of the best clubs in London and I find my parties are just friendlier,” Gordon says. “I mean, if you’re about to f*** someone’s wife, you’ve got to be pretty friendly.
“In a normal club people are often a bit hostile, show off-y, they like to keep themselves to themselves. There’s not that kind of ‘Hey, how are you?’ – just randomly chatting to people – that we have.
While Heaven Circle is a secret indulgence for most members, it seems that in an increasingly sex positive age where dating and hook-up apps like Tinder are ubiquitous, this embarassment is fast eroding.“70 or 80 per cent of our members use photos of their face,” Gordon explains, “you would never have got that before. It used to be pictures of, like, an arse bending over, now their photos are all them. They don’t give a f*** – even in the workplace, people will say ‘yeah I went to an orgy’ and the response will be ‘ah, cool.’ It’s not even taboo anymore.
“I remember about 10 years ago when Plenty Of Fish came out people wouldn’t want to talk about it, they felt only ‘weird’ people go on those kinds of services. Now it’s so mainstream, people are screenshotting Tinder and showing their friends.”The company’s next step is Heaven Prive, which will see it facilitate members setting up their own parties, potentially creating an explosion of orgies in countless other towns and cities.
Source: The rise of the orgy in the age of sex positivism | Love & Sex | Lifestyle | The Independent
Michael Savage to Cruz: Renounce Colorado result
Calling the Colorado Republican Party’s decision not to hold a primary popular vote a scandal, talk-radio host Michael Savage declared Sen. Ted Cruz should disavow the move and call for a vote.
“What just happened in Colorado should, frankly, disqualify Cruz, who claims to be a constitutional conservative,” Savage told his listeners Monday.
Savage is a strong supporter of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who has been a regular guest on “The Savage Nation.”Savage said Trump has been “pushed aside by the ‘Republicrat and Demican’ party, which I have told you about since 1994.”
“I told you we don’t have a democracy. It’s how I rose to fame in the radio business. … I position, as I have been all my life, as a total cynic,” he said.
“This is a corrupt, rotten system. It’s a one-party system. It’s demagoguery. There is no two-party system. They are the ones who selected Obama. They are the ones who are selecting Hillary. Make no mistake about it.
”Savage said the “rigged Republican, back-room deal” was “not befitting a free republic” and “something you would expect of Uruguay in the 1940s.”
“How can Mr. Cruz support a rigged election in Colorado and still claim to be a conservative?”
As WND reported, Trump erupted on “Fox & Friends” Monday morning after a weekend that saw Cruz sweep all of Colorado’s 34 delegates without a popular vote.
“I’ve gotten millions … of more votes than Cruz, and I’ve gotten hundreds of delegates more, and we keep fighting, fighting, fighting, and then you have a Colorado where they just get all of these delegates, and it’s not [even] a system,” Trump said. “There was no voting. I didn’t go out there to make a speech or anything. There’s no voting.”His comments came after Cruz won the remaining 13 delegates at the weekend’s convention, bringing his total for the state to 34, an outcome he claimed was unfair and just shy of illegal.The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’“They offer them trips – they offer them all sorts of things, and you’re allowed to do that,” Trump said, of the method by which some woo delegates. “I mean, you’re allowed to offer trips, and you can buy all these votes. What kind of a system is this? Now, I’m an outsider, and I came into the system and I’m winning the votes by millions of votes. But the system is rigged. It’s crooked.
Trump erupts as Cruz sweeps Colorado without votes
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump erupted on Twitter Sunday night after a weekend that saw Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sweep all of Colorado’s 37 delegates without any votes being cast by citizens in a traditional primary process.“How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger – totally unfair!” wrote Trump.He followed it up with a second tweet: “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!”What do YOU think? Should Trump run 3rd party if he doesn’t win GOP nomination? Sound off in today’s WND Poll!It was last August when officials with the Republican Party in Colorado decided they would not let voters take part in the early nomination process.The Denver Post reported Aug. 25: “The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate that wins the caucus vote.”“It takes Colorado completely off the map” in the primary season, Ryan Call, a former state GOP chairman, told the paper.The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’In late February, just before Super Tuesday, the Post published a scathing editorial, saying the party blundered on the 2016 presidential caucus:“GOP leaders have never provided a satisfactory reason for forgoing a presidential preference poll, although party chairman Steve House suggested on radio at one point that too many Republicans would otherwise flock to their local caucus.“Imagine that: party officials fearing that an interesting race might propel thousands of additional citizens to participate. But of course that might dilute the influence of elites and insiders. You can see why that could upset the faint-hearted.”One self-avowed Trump supporter took to YouTube on Sunday to express his displeasure with the process and burned his Republican registration on camera. Watch the video: