So much news collected while I was gone that I can hardly make sense of it. There are a record 194 news items in tonight’s feed.
The most interesting story that caught my eye is about a young woman in Australia who was denied entrance at a swimming pool because she was wearing a dress and not a bathing suit. She was told that exceptions to the no-dresses rules were only made for Muslim women and girls.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, LS, RR, Takuan Seiyo, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Balancing the Budget? Or Adding a National Sales Tax to the Income Tax?
The stated purpose of Compact for America, Inc. is to get a balanced budget amendment (BBA) ratified. Here is their proposed BBA. State Legislators recently introduced it in Arizona.[1]
The gap between what this BBA pretends to do — and what it actually does — is enormous. It has nothing to do with “balancing the budget” — it is about slipping in a new national sales tax or value-added tax in addition to the existing federal income tax.
We have become so shallow that we look no further than a name — if it sounds good, we are all for it. We hear, “balanced budget amendment”, and think, “I have to balance my budget; they should have to balance theirs.” So we don’t read the amendment, we just assume they will have to balance theirs the same way we balance ours — by cutting spending.
But that is not what the BBA does. In effect, it redefines “balancing the budget” to mean spending no more than your income plus the additional debt you incur to finance your spending. To illustrate: If your income is $100,000 a year; but you spend $175,000 a year, you “balance” your budget by borrowing the additional $75,000. See?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Economy and Crime Spur New Puerto Rican Exodus
Puerto Rico’s slow-motion economic crisis skidded to a new low last week when both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s downgraded its debt to junk status, brushing aside a series of austerity measures taken by the new governor, including increasing taxes and rebalancing pensions. But that is only the latest in a sharp decline leading to widespread fears about Puerto Rico’s future.
In the past eight years, Puerto Rico’s ticker tape of woes has stretched unabated: $70 billion in debt, a 15.4 percent unemployment rate, a soaring cost of living, pervasive crime, crumbling schools and a worrisome exodus of professionals and middle-class Puerto Ricans who have moved to places like Florida and Texas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Market Manipulations Become More Extreme, More Desperate
In two recent articles we explained the hows and whys of gold price manipulation. The manipulations are becoming more and more blatant. On February 6 the prices of gold and stock market futures were simultaneously manipulated.
On several recent occasions gold has attempted to push through the $1,270 per ounce price. If the gold price rises beyond this level, it would trigger a flood of short-covering by the hedge funds who are “piggy-backing” on the bullion banks’ manipulation of gold. The purchases by the hedge funds in order to cover their short positions would drive the gold price higher.
With pressure being exerted by tight supplies of physical gold bars available for delivery to China, the Fed is growing more desperate to keep a lid on the price of gold. The recent large decline in the stock market threatened the Fed’s policy of taking pressure off the dollar by cutting back bond purchases and reducing the amount of debt monetization.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain’s Shadow Economy Flourishes in Downturn
About 40 men pace around on a busy Madrid square to keep warm as they wait to be hired for the day at building sites across the Spanish capital.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Fed Chief Yellen to Stay Course on Tapering Despite Faltering Jobs Growth
New Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen has said the US central bank will further reduce its monetary stimulus. In her first policy statement since taking office, she also lamented weak jobs growth.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“You Just Shot an Unarmed Man!”: Witness Says Police Shot His Friend With His Hands Up (Video)
Five months after Fairfax County, Virginia police shot and killed 46-year-old father and husband John Geer in his home, the police’s investigation into the shooting has still yet to be completed, and his friends and family are outraged.
Now, Geer’s best friend Jeff Stewart who witnessed the shooting is speaking out, saying he saw police shoot his friend with his hands up.
Geer and his wife were having a domestic dispute and his wife called the cops. She told them he had a gun. Geer told police over the course of the 20-30 minute stand-off he was drinking and had a gun, but said it wasn’t on him.
Stewart, who arrived at the scene after receiving word, said he saw Geer slowly sliding his hands down the sides of his door, and it was when his hands were at head height that an officer opened fire on him.
Shocked, Stewart says he told the police “you just shot an unarmed man!”
After being shot, Geer shut the door and stumbled back into his home. Video from the scene shows police then waged a military style invasion his house, using a tank-like vehicle to break down his door before a team of police dressed like military stormed in.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
3D Printing Marks Out the Future of Car Making
Boston-based startup Mark One recently announced a 3D printer that can print composite materials. DW looks at how car makers are using the technology and its possible effects.
Japan-based car maker Honda has made it easy for customers to print models of their cars, using plans on Honda-3D.com.
3D printing technology is advancing at a tremendous rate. Printers are improving and getting cheaper too. But printing metals and composite materials has been a challenge for manufacturers and hardcore DIYers. But that’s about to change.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Army Must Notify Its Human Guinea Pigs
The Army cannot delay its duty to warn veterans subjected to Cold War-era drug experiments about potential health concerns, a federal judge ruled.
The ruling comes in Vietnam Veterans of America et al. v Central Intelligence Agency et al. , a 2009 class action that claimed at least 7,800 soldiers had been used as guinea pigs in Project Paperclip.
Soldiers were administered at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 types of drugs, among them Sarin, one of the most deadly drugs known, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Big Pharma Hides $450 Million of Influenza Drugs & Research From Public
If you haven’t heard, Tamiflu has been found to be just as deadly as the influenza virus itself. It was promoted as a way to keep the ‘avian flu pandemic’ at bay, a pandemic which never happened, but guess what — Tamiful sales went through the roof. Thanks to the UN and the CDC’s promotion of the product, it couldn’t be restocked on store shelves fast enough. A physician pointed out that 8 out of 10 of the studies done on the drug hadn’t been published, but oops — that wasn’t supposed to get out!
Many people are aware that the true results of clinical trials are often shielded from public view, and even legally withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients who might want to make informed decisions about their health. But Tamiflu may or may not reduce your chance of getting pneumonia (a secondary problem that sometimes develops with influenza) or lessening your chance of dying from the virus since the true results are kept under lock and key. In fact, it could kill you, but these results were never made public.
The makers of Tamiflu, Roche, haven’t broken a law — surprisingly, by keeping Tamiflu’s results hidden for more than five years. It is just by accident that this particular drug is now the example for an entire industry that keeps drug side effects — often deadly ones — hidden from us.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bold Prediction: Intelligent Alien Life Could be Found by 2040
The first detection of intelligent extraterrestrial life will likely come within the next quarter-century, a prominent alien hunter predicts.
By 2040 or so, astronomers will have scanned enough star systems to give themselves a great shot of discovering alien-produced electromagnetic signals, said Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
“I think we’ll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments,” Shostak said here Thursday (Feb. 6) during a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chilling Legal Memo From Obama DOJ Justifies Assassination of US Citizens
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama’s top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president’s power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title “disposition matrix”.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cruz and Paul Turn Up the Heat on Democratic Establishment
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has also boldly been leveling counter-attacks against the Democratic establishment, highlighting how the president’s “pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat” proves an orchestrated effort to morph the executive branch into a dictatorship.
Though Paul went into specifics on the wanton abuses of former president Clinton, he only scratched the surface. Clinton stands accused of sexual misconduct with a large number of women, including Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Juanita Broaddrick, Ellen Wellstone, Carolyn Moffet, Paula Corbin, Sandra Allen James, Christy Zercher, and a dizzying array of others.
In addition, Newsmax reported in 1999, citing Star magazine’s Richard Gooding who had the scoop on confidential FBI files, Clinton employed his pervasive pattern of inappropriate hanky-panky with three female Secret Service agents, thus throwing caution to the wind as most sexual predators do.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
DARPA Boffin: Future Government Surveillance Will be Like Apple’s Siri
The US Military’s Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), has indicated that future government surveillance programs will operate much like Siri does on today’s iPhones, in that NSA spooks will interact with algorithms that become smarter as they know what to expect.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Failed Somali Pirate Prosecution Fuels Terror Trial Fears
The failed prosecution of an alleged Somali pirate — and the fact that that failure could leave him living freely, and permanently, inside U.S. borders — is highlighting anew the risks of trying terror suspects in American courts.
Just a few weeks ago, Ali Mohamed Ali was facing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence in a 2008 shipjacking off the coast of Yemen — an incident much like the one dramatized in the film Captain Phillips. Now, the Somali native is in immigration detention in Virginia and seeking permanent asylum in the United States.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Famed Former Child Actress Shirley Temple Dies
(CNN) — Shirley Temple Black, who rose to fame as arguably one of the most well-known child actresses in Hollywood history, died late Monday night, her publicist said. She was 85. Temple died of natural causes at her Woodside, California, home, surrounded by family and caregivers, a statement from Cheryl Kagan said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
First Muslim Fraternity Expands Across the USA
(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) — Created a year ago at the University of Texas, the US first Muslim fraternity is gaining national attention as two chapters have been created at the University of California, San Diego and Cornell, and plans are being made to establish chapters at Pennsylvania, San Diego and the University of Florida…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Former CIA Director: In Order to Spy on Domestic Dissidents, Just Call Them Terrorists
Back in 2012, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report called ‘Policing Dissent’, exposing the Boston Police Department’s ‘red squad’ surveillance operations, directed at antiwar and economic justice organizers. Among the documents we obtained through a public records lawsuit were so-called ‘intelligence reports’ from the Boston police fusion center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC). These documents shocked the public. In files labeled “HOMESEC-DOMESTIC”, “GROUPS-CIVIL DISTURBANCE”, and “GROUPS-EXTREMISTS”, detectives described the entirely peaceful activities of groups and individuals ranging from Veterans for Peace and CodePink to Howard Zinn and a former city council member.
While the BPD files didn’t explicitly call these non-violent activists ‘terrorists’, detectives working at a so-called ‘counterterrorism fusion center’ came about as close as they could get to doing so without spelling out the T word in black and white. But it’s no secret that other law enforcement agencies jumped that shark long ago. In recent years, undercover informants have infiltrated antiwar movements targeted as “domestic terrorists”. While the past decade’s terror wars have given local, state, and federal law enforcement seemingly endless funds to pursue activists simply for challenging government policy, the US government’s conflation of peaceful dissent with terrorism has a long history in the United States, dating back at least to the 1970s.
Betty Medsger’s new book on the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, “The Burglary”, contains some relevant and largely suppressed history. In the wake of the Media, PA burglary and the subsequent newspaper articles exposing J. Edgar Hoover’s red squad surveillance programs, some CIA officers began to voice dissent internally about their own agency’s troubling domestic operations, codenamed MHCHAOS.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
GAO: DHS Blowing Upgrade of Obsolete Border Control Computers
Among people who think the federal government should be entrusted to do something, controlling and defending the borders features pretty high on the list. The interpretation of what that entails and how tight such control should be varies, but even for limited-government folks, making sure the U.S. border is more than a line on a map is seen as something of a core function for that big bureaucracy occupying the swampland that either Maryland nor Virginia wanted.But we’re talking about government, here. And according to the Government Accountability Office, not only has the Department of Homeland Security been relying on increasingly archaic (read: freaking ancient) and ineffective (read: can’t do what?) computer technology to monitor comings and goings across the border, it’s making an expensive balls-up of finally replacing that system.
Yesterday, David A. Powner, GAO’s Director of Information Technology Management Issues, described the existing system to the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
George Soros Attacked by Ex-Girlfriend During Deposition
The former girlfriend of George Soros reportedly became so incensed at the billionaire during a recent private deposition that she took a swing at his head while screaming obscenities. Adriana Ferreyr, 30, a soap star from South America, hit him right in the head, while knocking the glasses off the head of one of his attorneys and cursing at another, the New York Daily Newsreported.
Ms. Ferreyr is suing Mr. Soros over a $1.9 million condo in the Upper East Side that she claims he promised to her but instead gave it to the woman he married, Tamiko Bolton, a few months ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Holder Urges States to Repeal Bans on Felons’ Voting
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday urged states to repeal laws that prohibit felons from voting, a move that would restore the right to vote to millions of people.
African-Americans represent more than a third of the estimated 5.8 million people who are prohibited from voting, according to the Sentencing Project, a research group that favors more liberal sentencing policies. And in Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, more than one in five African-Americans has lost the right to vote.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hollywood Star Clint Eastwood Saves Man From Choking
Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood has been credited with saving the life of a golf tournament director in California who was choking on a piece of cheese. “Clint saved my life,” said Steve John, director of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am golf tournament.
The actor reportedly saw that Mr John was in difficulty and performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on him. The technique requires a rescuer to carry out abdominal thrusts on a choke victim to dislodge the blockage.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Lewiston-Auburn Charter School Board Denies Links With Turkish Imam
Board members say the proposed charter school would have no affiliation with imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania.
AUBURN — Board members of a proposed charter school in Lewiston-Auburn denied Friday that the school would have any ties to the Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen, who is at the heart of political upheaval in Turkey…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Man Who Fled Communism Blasts Oregon Lawmakers for Gun Control Attempt
A man who fled Cuba’s communist regime in the 1960s blasted Oregon lawmakers Thursday during a public hearing on proposed gun control legislation.
Manuel Martinez, who narrowly escaped Cuba in 1962 after being imprisoned for opposing Fidel Castro, passionately defended the Second Amendment in front of Oregon’s Senate Judiciary Committee, comparing the state’s attempts to pass gun control to moves made by his former government.
“Don’t sell me this. A very powerful man tried to sell me this 50-something years ago, I didn’t buy it,” Martinez said. “This is Marxism, plain and clear.”…
Others such as Oregon Firearm Federation Director Kevin Starrett attacked the state’s obvious attempt at gun registration, which has already been used to implement confiscation in several states.
“We all know what this bill is about. This is a gun registration and confiscation bill,” Starrett said. “Let’s not tell the same lies we told in New York and California.”
Despite the obvious move towards registration, the bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Floyd Prozanski, claimed no records would be kept past 10 days, calling Starrett a “conspiracist” for not blindly trusting the government’s claims.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Nationwide Gun Confiscation is Goal of Mayors Against Illegal Guns
Poughkeepsie, N.Y. mayor says he left the group over confiscation plans
A current New York mayor has publicly announced his decision to leave Mayors Against Illegal Guns because the gun control group demands an all-out “confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens.”
In an announcement published by his city’s newspaper, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Mayor John C. Tkazyik said he quit the group after realizing it was simply a vehicle for Michael Bloomberg to “promote his personal gun-control agenda.”
“It did not take long to realize that MAIG’s agenda was much more than ridding felons of illegal guns,” he stated. “Under the guise of helping mayors facing a crime and drug epidemic, MAIG intended to promote confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens.”
“I don’t believe, never have believed and never will believe that public safety is enhanced by encroaching on our right to bear arms and I will not be a part of any organization that does.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NSA Spying Undermines Separation of Powers
by Glenn Reynolds
The program makes it easy for the president to spy on and blackmail his enemies.
But if the federal government has broad domestic-spying powers, and if those are controlled by the executive branch without significant oversight, then the president has the power to snoop on political enemies, getting an advantage in countering their plans, and gathering material that can be used to blackmail or destroy them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: ‘That’s the Good Thing as a President, I Can Do Whatever I Want’
President Obama “quipped” today during a visit to Monticello with the French president, “That’s the good thing as a President, I can do whatever I want.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Nominee for Ambassador to Argentina: I’ve Never Been There
In the latest blunder for an Obama administration ambassadorial nominee, prolific Democratic campaign fundraiser Noah Mamet admitted Thursday that he has never been to Argentina — the nation where he wants to represent U.S. interests as America’s top diplomat. The White House has tapped him to be the U.S. ambassador to the South American country.
‘Mr. Mamet have you been to Argentina,’ asked Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio during the Californian’s confirmation hearing.
‘I haven’t had the opportunity yet to be there,’ he admitted, ashen-faced.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sheriff Looks to Black Leaders for State Fair Help
TAMPA (FOX 13) — Hillsborough County’s sheriff is reaching out to local African-American leaders after “unprecedented incidents of violence and disorder” that forced deputies to shut down the Florida State Fair early on Friday night.
Deputies say dozens if not hundreds of teens were involved in a “wilding” event at the fair’s opening night, fighting with each other while assaulting and robbing other fairgoers. The chaos got so bad that the 200 deputies on hand could not contain it, Sheriff David Gee wrote. Ninety-nine people were ejected, and 12 were arrested.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Government Reportedly Ordering Drone Strikes Based on Cell Phone Location
The U.S. government reportedly is ordering some drone strikes based on the location of terror suspects’ cell phones — without necessarily confirming the location of the suspects themselves — raising concerns about missiles hitting unintended targets.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Was Jay Leno Canned by NBC for Criticizing Obama?
The day after Jay Leno signed off on 22 years of hosting The Tonight Show, suspicions still abound as to why he was canned despite still being on top of the ratings. Could the fact that Leno was the first mainstream comedian to criticize Obama on sensitive issues such as Benghazi-gate have contributed to him being ejected by NBC?
Whereas virtually every late night comic has made superficial sideswipes at Obama in recent years, Leno took the unusual step of taking a conservative talking point, Benghazi-gate, and incorporating it into his Tonight Show monologue on two separate occasions.
The first example occurred back in October 2012, when Leno quipped, “Don’t ask — don’t tell” is back. Not the gays in the military. It’s President Obama’s new policy for questioning about Libya. Don’t ask — don’t tell. That’s the big story. The Republicans are accusing the White House of successfully engineering a massive cover-up of the Libyan attack. But on the plus side, it’s the first time in four years the Republicans have credit to Obama for doing anything successful.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ethnic Diversity’s ‘Inconvenient Truths’
Since geographers rank Greater Toronto and Metro Vancouver respectively the third and fourth most “hyper-diverse” cities in the world — more than 45 per cent of the residents of each metropolis are born outside the country — Putnam’s findings are more than relevant to these regions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Mother Lode’ of Amazingly Preserved Fossils Discovered in Canada
A treasure trove of fossils chiseled out of a canyon in Canada’s Kootenay National Park rivals the famous Burgess Shale, the best record of early life on Earth, scientists say.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Said He Lied About Crack Cocaine Use Because He Was ‘Embarrassed’
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said he lied for months about smoking crack cocaine because he was embarrassed. According to the Toronto Sun, Ford made the comments in his new “Ford Nation” YouTube show posted online Monday. “Why did I lie? I think everybody in the world has lied, because I was embarrassed,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell the truth. That’s the only answer I can give. That’s as straightforward as I can be.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“Sweden — Europe’s Closest Thing to a Fascist, Hate-Based Regime”
by Iain Channing
The Englishman Iain Channing returns to Sweden, the country he lived in during the 1980s. What has happened to the safe and well ordered country that was so admired throughout the world? Do people really appreciate the politicians’ radical experiment in social engineering? And what about Malmö — Sweden’s preeminent test tube? Here is Channing’s report.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
3.5 Million ‘Spanish’ Jews to Apply for Citizenship
Jewish associations expect 3.5 million Sephardic Jews to apply for Spanish citizenship after Spain’s Justice Ministry approved a draft law which will allow them to return to the country their ancestors were kicked out of more than 500 years ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A Belfast-born convert to Islam who planned to shoot Prince Harry dead has been jailed after admitting making a threat to kill. Ashraf Islam, 31, who was formerly known as Mark Townley, had wanted to kill the fourth in line to the throne, whom he believed ‘had blood on his hands’ after taking part in two tours of Afghanistan, by disarming a bodyguard and using his gun to shoot Harry.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austria: Haider Stadium Plan Finally Complete
Managers at Austrian far Right leader Joerg Haider’s recently completed football stadium are so desperate to find a use for the 90 million Euros building they are using it to stage a billard contest.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austria: Young Mozart Discovered in Schoenbrunn Painting
Walk past too quickly and you’ll miss it — but in the painting ‘Wedding Supper of Joseph and Isabella of Parma’ on show at the Schoenbrunn Palace there is a tiny figure among the many guests and musicians that’s worth getting a closer look at. On the edge of the orchestra and one of the only faces that appear to stare directly at the artist, is a very young Mozart, thought to be around four-year-old boy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Britons are too ignorant about Europe to vote in a referendum on the subject, a top Brussels official claimed last night. Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, said the British debate about Europe was so ‘distorted’ that people could not make an ‘informed decision’ about whether or not to stay in the EU.
Mrs Reding — who boasted that 70 per cent of the UK’s laws are now made in Brussels — also rubbished David Cameron’s bid to curb immigration from Europe, saying it was incompatible with membership of the EU.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Cyprus Peace Talks Resume After Two-Year Break
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders have pledged to end the island’s four-decade division as soon as possible, they said in a joint statement. This comes after peace talks had stalled for nearly two years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Cities Aim to Curb Recruitment of Jihadists
Experts across the EU seek strategies to prevent potential young European jihadists from traveling to Syria to join radical groups. Some fear the young people could return to Europe as terrorists.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU to Force Britons to Publish Details of Wills and Property
A bill being debated in Brussels would force UK citizens to disclose ‘reams’ of private, financial information on a public register
New legislation planned in Brussels is set to heap fresh costs and paperwork on families’ financial planning, as well as leaving their affairs open to unwanted public scrutiny.
A European law is being drafted whose original aim was to prevent corporate money-laundering. The objective, supported by the UK, was to force companies to disclose on a register the money and other assets held inside trusts or equivalent legal arrangements…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
France: Marine Le Pen’s Worldview: Oppose America, Embrace Iran
by Peter Martino
Le Pen’s worldview seems comes from the man sitting next to her, Aymeric Chauprade, who taught geopolitics at the Joint Defense College of the French army, until he was fired after writing a book in which he voiced the possibility that that the 9/11 attacks might have been part of a deliberate plot conceived in Washington to start an American war against the rest of the world.
Chauprade is being groomed to become the leader of the FN group in the European Parliament after the next French general elections.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National (FN), the most likely winner of the upcoming municipal and European elections in France, held a press conference on January 22, in which she presented the foreign policy of her party, including a passionate plea for France to break off its relations with Saudi Arabia and ally itself to Iran.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Police Bust Gang for €1m Fine Wine Thefts
French police targeted a gang of robbers on Monday who had allegedly helped themselves to €1 million worth of cases of high-end Bordeaux wine from vineyards in south-western France.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Museum Guard Breaks Napoleon’s Chair
A historic chair that once belonged to the former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte may have been able to hold the “little corporal”, but it was not designed, it seems, to hold the weight of the museum’s security guard.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Cities and Airports Hit by Taxi Drivers’ Protest
Taxi drivers in Paris and other major French cities staged a go-slow protest on Monday that was expected to bring chaos to certain roads, in particular those that link the French capital’s two airports and the centre of the city.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Firm Bans Muslim Headscarves at Work
A privately-owned French company claims to have become the first in the country to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves and other prominent religious symbols at work. But critics say the move, which had the backing of employees, is against the law.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Muslims Angered at Insinuation That Muslims Are Easily Angered
The right-of-center think tank and conservative news portal The Brookings Institute and International Policy Council has published on Feb. 6, 2014 that during a meeting between German government officials and influential leaders of the nation’s rather large Muslim minority, the scheduled topic of gender equality quickly went off the rails when the followers of Mohammed took offense to the possibility that there just may a connection between Islam and forced marriages…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Polar Bear Dies After Eating Coat and Bag
A polar bear has died after eating a visitor’s coat and bag. Anton the bear is the latest in a string of animals who have died after eating things thrown into his enclosure at Stuttgart Zoo.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Social Democrats ‘Have More Weight’ In Coalition
Germany’s junior government coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats, seem to the public to be defining policy more than Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, according to a survey.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Human Sacrifices 3,000 Years Ago in Crete
Proof from excavations in ancient Cydonia
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS — A new discovery made during archaeological digs on the Greek island of Crete confirms the hypothesis, already advanced in the past, that over 3,000 years ago human beings, and not only animals, were sacrificed to local gods.
‘The presence of the human skull must not surprise us as Greek mythology is full of stories of sacrifices of virgins in an attempt made by society to ingratiate gods and confront great disasters’, said Andreadakis.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Space Agency Chief Tenders Resignation Amid Probe
Seven investigated for alleged kickbacks
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — Italian Space Agency (ASI) President Enrico Saggese tendered his resignation Friday amid a probe into alleged kickbacks in contracts. Rome prosecutors placed Saggese and six others under investigation Thursday, carrying out searches in ASI offices and in those of suppliers, as well as in suspects’ homes. Investigations began after an ASI manager reported being the object of an attempted bribe. The suspects, who include two employees of Italian aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica, could face charges of bribery and corruption. Saggese denies all wrongdoing, and his decision to step down, according to an ASI statement, was in order “to defend his integrity, reputation and prestige after more than 40 years of experience in the field”. Other organisations implicated in the probe include Sistina Travel, which organises foreign travel on behalf of ASI employees, the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA), Get-It, Eurofiere, Art Work and Space Engineering, which have offices across the peninsula.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian PM Letta Meets Greek Left-Wing Leader Tsipras
(AGI) Rome, Feb 8 — Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta met Alexis Tsipras on Saturday. Tsipras is the leader of the Greek left-wing party Syriza and is also a candidate for the EU Commission chairmanship.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Alitalia Needs Strong Partner to be World Player, Says Lupi
Northern League threatens ‘war’ if Milan airport cut out of deal
(ANSA) — Rome, February 5 — Italy’s flagship carrier Alitalia needs a strong partner if it is to be a major international player, Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi said Wednesday.
And a business connection with Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways could provide the right opportunity, he added.
“We need a great partner to return to being players on the world stage,” said Lupi, who also denounced complaints of unfair competition lodged earlier by German-based carrier Lufthansa.
Lupi said that simply showed that the German airline, which has complained of the potential deal to the European Commission, was afraid of a strong rival.
Etihad Airways is reportedly in the final stages of making a significant investment in troubled Alitalia.
Meanwhile, the governor the regionalist Northern League, said he feared such a deal would lead to the closure of Milan’s Malpensa international airport and demanded guarantees it be protected.
Otherwise, said Maroni, “there will be war”.
In response, Lupi said that a hook-up between Alitalia and Etihad “must be developed” in a manner that protects jobs and improves the market share while providing “benefits to the entire national system, even in the north and Malpensa airport”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Poltrona Frau Workers Concerned by US Takeover
Furniture maker to become subsidiary of Michigan-based Haworth
(ANSA) — Tolentino, February 6 — Unions expressed concerns Thursday about potential job losses in Italy following a deal by a United States-based firm to buy control of upscale furniture manufacturer Poltrona Frau.
Haworth, based in Michigan, has agreed to pay 2.96 euros per share for a majority stake in the company, based in Tolentino, a city in eastern Italy’s Marche region near the Adriatic Sea.
The value of the deal has not been publicly announced but it is expected to clear regulatory hurdles and close in April.
About 410 workers directly employed at the Poltrona Frau manufacturing plant say their labour is essential to the final product but they are concerned Haworth may not see their value.
“We want to understand the real intentions of Haworth,” said unions for the workers at the company.
About 1,000 more workers depend on the plant in addition to its 410 workers.
“Without our experience, and our hands, no one today can achieve products of that quality”.
On Wednesday, Charme Investments and Moschini SrL announced they were selling their shares in Poltrona Frau, together totaling about 60% of the entire company, to Haworth, a family-owned office furniture giant.
Charme is the holding company of Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who is also chairman of Ferrari, and owns just over 50% of Poltrona shares, while Moschini holds about 7%.
Officials from Poltrona Frau and Haworth have met with employees about the plan but the unions said they want more information.
“We’ve asked for a meeting as soon as possible to learn the new business plan,” said the provincial secretary of the CGIL union Aldo Benfatto.
He said that if Haworth decided to move the company from Tolentino, it would mean “sacrificing the quality of the production and a high level of craftsmanship”.
Poltrona Frau produces high-end office and home furniture, combining modern design with traditional craftsmanship, but has also had a strong connection with Charme by making leather seats for car brands including Ferrari and Fiat. As well, it has worked with Haworth in recent years, promoting designs from the American group in Poltrona Frau’s outlets in the US.
Poltrona Frau has had several flagship stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other US cities.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Must Launch TV License Sales Quickly, EU Says
Commission in contact with Italian authorities over auction
(ANSA) — Brussels, February 6 — Italy is ultimately responsible for the speedy launch of a new auction that will sell three 20-year digital television licenses, a European Commission spokesman said, adding that the body was in contact with the Italian authorities over the development. “In final analysis it is their responsibility to quickly launch the auction, in line with EU laws, to ensure access to new entries or allow the smaller operators to expand,” said a spokesman for Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Prosecutor Asks 7.5 Years for Luigi Lusi on Embezzlement
Requests seizure of 25.6 mn euros and life ban from office
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — A Rome prosecutor requested a 7.5-year prison sentence for the former treasurer of the now defunct centre-left Daisy Party, Luigi Lusi, who is accused of embezzling more than 25 million euros of electoral funding. Prosecutor Stefano Pesci asked that the ex-senator be banned for life from public office and for the seizure of 25.6 million euros in assets — the amount of party funding Lusi is accused of taking.
On December 30, Lusi was ordered to reimburse 22.8 million euros of the allegedly misappropriated party funds, and has been under house arrest since May after his release from prison.
The prosecutor requested a three-year prison sentence for accountant Mario Montecchia and 2.5 years for Montecchia’s former colleague Giovanni Sebastio.
Lusi, Montecchia and Sebastio are accused of criminal conspiracy for embezzlement, but Lusi is also charged with slandering his ex-boss, Francesco Rutelli, former leader of the Margherita party 2002-2007.
The prosecutor petitioned for the acquittal of Lusi’s secretary, Diana Ferri. The former Daisy Party is one of a number of Italian parties hit by funding scandals in recent years, increasing public disaffection with politics.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Has Hopes for New Right-Wing Government
(AGI) Trieste, Feb 8 — Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hopes his party will repeat the success of 1994, the year of the first Berlusconi government and the first right-wing cabinet since WWII. “I am happy that many have listened to my call to regain the freedom we have lost, because we are no longer certain of our rights,” the leader of Forza Italia said on Saturday.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Plans Crackdown on Internet Hate
Politicians from the Democratic Party (PD) will this week propose a new law to tackle internet hate speech, following high-profile attacks against leading politician Laura Boldrini.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Comeback in European Elections?
Silvio Berlusconi is planning his comeback in Europe. Thus far, Brussels isn’t taking the idea too seriously. But his appeal at the ECJ and a political rehabilitation in Italy might make it possible.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Back on Trial for Political Corruption
Italy’s scandal-ridden former premier Silvio Berlusconi is back in court yet again. This time he is facing charges of having bribed an opposition politician to swap sides.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Knock-Off Italian Food Costs Italy 60 Bn Euros — Coldiretti
Italian farmers’ group pleads for better labeling
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — Food products passed off as Made in Italy is costing the Italian economy more than 60 billion euros in sales, a study by the farmers’ group Coldiretti revealed at the Fieragricola in Verona on Friday.
Coldirettti also displayed examples of knock-off goods from different continents, including the traditional Christmas cake pandoro, made in Argentina; Venetian salami from Canada; asiago cheese produced in the United States; and Kressecco, a sparkling wine resembling Italian prosecco, from Germany.
The farmers’ group also found a kit for making a knock off of parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Valpolicella wine. Coldiretti claimed there is a leap in the quality of international “agro-piracy” products that threaten icons of Italy’s national cuisine. Coldiretti demanded universal labelling for the origins of foods on a national and European level, as called for by an Italian law passed last year but that the farmers’ group claims has remained unenforced.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysians Charged in Sweden for Hitting Kids
A Malaysian couple accused of hitting their children in Sweden have been formally indicted in a case that has caused outrage back in Malaysia. If convicted, they face up to ten years in prison.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Michelangelo Was Skilled Forger: French Claim
He might be considered one of the great artists of the Italian Renaissance, but Michelangelo was also a “skilled forger”, or so a French art historian has claimed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norovirus Breaks Out in Southern Norway Hospital
OSLO, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) — A hospital in southern Norway has been partly closed after a breakout of the highly contagious norovirus, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported on Sunday. The pulmonary department at the Ostfold Hospital in Fredrikstad was closed after 16 medical workers and 10 patients had been infected by the virus, which causes acute gastroenteritis…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Stinky Herring Tin to be ‘Disarmed’ After 25 Years
A fermented herring expert has been called to help “disarm” a 25-year-old can of the odorous Swedish delicacy that managed to literally raise the roof of a cabin in northern Norway. “If there’s any fish left in the can, I’m going to eat it,” Ruben Madsen of Sweden’s Surströmming Academy told The Local.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Politician Writes First Urdu History of Norway
A Labour party politician in Norway has written the first Urdu-language history of the country, in a bid to help other Pakistani-Norwegian immigrants to better understand their new country.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Probe Into Suspected Fraud at Italian Swimming Federation
Investigation into works funding in Olympic pool in Rome
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — Rome prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible fraud in the financing of maintenance works at sporting complexes managed by Italian Swimming Federation (FIN) following reports of possible irregularities from Italian Olympic Committee (CONI). The probe will look into invoices totalling over 820,000 euros for maintenance works at Rome’s Olympic pool at the Foro Italico sporting complex.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Scientists to Map Genome of Medieval English King Richard III
(Reuters) — A year after they revealed a twisted skeleton found under a car park as the mortal remains of King Richard III, scientists in Britain plan to grind samples of his ancient bones and use them to map his genome.
The project, which may alter perceptions of the last king of England to die in battle more than 500 years ago, aims to learn about Richard’s ancestry and health, and provide a genetic archive for historians, researchers and the public.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Scientists Identify Gene Linking Brain Structure to Intelligence
For the first time, scientists at King’s College London have identified a gene linking the thickness of the grey matter in the brain to intelligence. The study is published today in Molecular Psychiatry and may help scientists understand biological mechanisms behind some forms of intellectual impairment.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Scotland Has Everything to Become One of the World’s Richest Countries’
Scotland has oil, it’s small and can adopt the same regulatory measures as Singapore or Switzerland. That’s everything it needs to eventually join the list of the richest nations of the world, Dominic Frisby, author of ‘Life After the State’, told RT.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Scotland: Is the Loch Ness Monster Dead?
A veteran custodian of Loch Ness monster sightings is concerned that Nessie has not been seen in well over a year, and may be gone, according to a news report. This is the first time in nearly 90 years that such a lengthy lag in sightings has occurred.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Malmö Nursery Hit Again by Bomb Hoax
A suspected explosive device found near a nursery school in Malmö was destroyed by bomb technicians on Monday. The item was a box with cables sticking out. News agency TT reports the same school as the victim of an identical hoax last year. “We think someone has done it on purpose,” says Calle Person of the regional Skåne police.
Neither the preschool nor any of the surrounding buildings have received any threats and no children had arrived at the school before the bomb scare, Persson said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Military Suffers ‘Alarming’ Drop-Out Rate
Seven of ten soldiers in Sweden’s all-volunteer military drop out before their contracts expire, a retention rate below the worst predictions calculated when Sweden scrapped mandatory conscription.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Thames Bursts Banks as Cameron Calls UK Floods ‘Bibilical’
In England, the Thames has burst its banks. A new political row over the handling of devastating winter storms has erupted into the open.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tortured Ukrainian Can Come to Germany
A Ukraine protest leader who says he was kidnapped and tortured has been granted a German visa, Berlin said Monday, as media reported he wants to move to the country.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tourism: Saudi Arabia to Sign Major Agreement With Greece
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, FEBRUARY 10 — Saudi Arabia and Greece will sign a major agreement on Monday to boost cooperation in the tourism sector, generate growth in tourist traffic and offer opportunities to the southern European nation to showcase its tourism products and services in the local market. Greek Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni, who has been invited by Prince Sultan bin Salman, chief of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), will sign the accord on behalf of Greece.
Greece has also announced plans to offer residency permits to non-EU citizens, including Gulf investors, on purchasing or renting property. The tourism sector is very important for Greece, generating 12 billion euros in revenues, which has accounted for 17% of the country’s GDP during the last few years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Residents Grapple With Poor Government Flood Response
Hundreds of homes have been hit by severe flooding in southeast England after the River Thames burst its banks. Flood victims say the government has failed to deal with the crisis.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Bomb Sent to Army Careers Office in Reading
A bomb has been discovered at an armed forces careers office in Berkshire.
The package arrived in the post at the premises in St Mary’s Butts, Reading, during the afternoon.
Another package was received at the Army and RAF Careers Office at Dock Road in Chatham, Kent, Thames Valley Police said. That has not been confirmed as a bomb.
The South East Counter Terrorism Unit is investigating whether there is a link between the two.
An MoD bomb disposal team was called to the office in Reading at about 14:00 GMT and the area around it was sealed off.
Officers on the scene confirmed it was a small but viable explosive device, which had been received in the post and had been made safe.
Kent Police said officers were called to the Chatham office at 10:45 GMT following a report of a suspicious package.
In a statement they said: “After the envelope that had been delivered to the building had been made safe the scene was stood down at about 5pm.
“Enquiries are now ongoing which will involve whether the incident in Chatham is linked to one in Reading.”
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Collie Dog Eats Somerset Builder’s £80k Aston Martin Car
A BUILDER was praying his car insurance covered ‘acts of dog’ after his pet chewed his £80,000 Aston Martin. Luce, a four-year-old border collie spaniel cross, waited until her owner had left for work before she started chomping her way through the treasured motor’s wheel arch.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Eric Pickles: Spend Aid Abroad to Stop Flooding in the UK
Sustainable aid spent across the world will help to alleviate the effects of extreme weather in the UK, the communities secretary suggests
Britain’s international aid budget will help reduce flooding in the UK by addressing the causes of climate change abroad, Eric Pickles has said. Mr Pickles rejected “populist” calls from Ukip and some Tory MPs that money should be diverted from foreign aid budgets to support British people suffering from the effects of flooding suggesting instead that money spent in a “sustainable” way will help alleviate extreme weather in the UK…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Flooding: Somerset Levels Disaster is Being Driven by EU Policy
By Christopher Booker
EU directives actually require certain plains to become flooded
It was obviously somewhat reckless of Lord (Chris) Smith to visit the Somerset Levels on the very day that the floodwaters had risen a further three feet, whole villages were having to be abandoned and the residents had rather more on their minds than talking to the man whose agency they see as the prime cause of the disaster that has engulfed them. If there is one very large penny that has dropped since I first reported on this crisis five weeks ago, it is that this desperate mess has come about as a direct consequence of policies pursued by the Environment Agency (EA) for more than a decade, beginning with its refusal to dredge the rivers that could allow the floodwaters to escape to the sea.
But what has been emerging in recent days is another hugely important factor in bringing this disaster about: the extent to which the agency’s policy has been shaped and driven by the European Union. My co-author Dr Richard North, an expert researcher who writes the EU Referendum blog, has been combing through dozens of official documents to unravel just how it was that the agency came to adopt a strategy deliberately designed to allow flooding not just in Somerset but elsewhere in the country, all in the name of putting the interests of “biodiversity”, “sustainability” and wildlife habitats above those of farming and people…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Islamic Bank to Open at Oxford
DOHA (Ahlul Bayt News Agency) — Salah Jaidah, Chairman of Islamic Finance and Vice Chairman of MENA at Deutsche Bank and Chief Country Officer for Deutsche Bank Qatar, will be inaugurating the Oxford Islamic Banking and Finance Society at Oxford Union on February 12, 2014.
He will be joined by Nigel Denison, Managing Director of Bank of London and the Middle East (BLME), Azeemah Zaheer, Vice President of Gatehouse Bank, and Baroness Warsi, Chair of the Global Islamic Finance and Investment Group and the UK’s Ministerial lead on Islamic Finance…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Jailed for Threatening to Kill Prince Harry
(Reuters) — A British Muslim convert who told police he wanted to kill Prince Harry was jailed for three years on Monday after pleading guilty to threatening murder, police said. Ashraf Islam, 31, was told by the judge who sentenced him at Isleworth Crown Court that his plan had been “vague and unlikely to succeed”, but he nevertheless posed a danger to the public, according to reports in British media.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Ugly Face of ‘Muslim’ & ‘Christian’ Patrols
Yesterday on my LBC Drivetime Show we talked about the rising tide of extremism in some areas of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. Last year there was a lot of publicity about the so-called ‘Muslim Patrols’ who were seeking to impose Sharia Law by ordering people to stop holding hands in the street, to stop drinking alcohol etc…
[Reader comment by Steve Earl on 8 February 2014.]
Iain, I know it’s very difficult in your reasonableness to countenance this but there really isn’t any equivalency here. On the one hand you’ve got a few nasty pathetic thugs who actually barely nudge anyone’s awareness and on the other you have a real cultural, ideologically driven thuggery which is becoming more and more evident in towns and cities all over England. And, much as you might wish and even believe it not to be so, will not stop…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why Britain Can’t Use Foreign Aid Money to Help Somerset
By Fraser Nelson
Should Britain’s foreign aid budget be raided to help homes hit by the flood? There are plenty calls for this today, making the splash of the Daily Mail (below)>
A local MP, Ian Liddell-Grainger, says:- “We send money all over the world now we need to give people down here the hope that they will get what they need. We should divert some of it down here. We don’t have to divert it forever, but we need it now.”
But this demand is based on a misunderstanding of how aid money is allocated…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Villages Along the Thames Swamped as River Surges in Britain’s Latest Bout of Flooding
The River Thames has burst its banks after reaching its highest level in years, flooding riverside towns upstream of London.
The Environment Agency has issued 14 severe flood warnings — meaning there’s a danger to life — along the Thames east of Windsor, about 20 miles from London.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Whales Gobble Up Endangered European Eels
Rare European eels are thought to cross the Atlantic Ocean to breed, but not all of them finish the ambitious voyage. Some meet their end in the bellies of deep-diving whales, new research reveals. Not only does the finding underscore the risks European eels face during their epic migration, but it also shows that whales may have a previously unknown appetite for eels.
Considered critically endangered, European eels (Anguilla anguilla) are found in increasingly small numbers in rivers, lakes and brackish waters across the continent from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnian Protestors Bring Sarajevo to Standstill
Bosnia’s biggest antigovernment protests in almost two decades shut down the centre of the capital Sarajevo and affected five other cities on Monday, as public anger against politicians increased. Riots led by unemployed workers in the industrial town of Tuzla set off a series of anti-government demonstrations across the country.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Minority Albanian Parties to Boycott Serbia Elections
Early elections called March 16, but Albanians want demands met
(ANSAmed) — BELGRADE, FEBRUARY 10 — Most of Serbia’s minority Albanian parties said Monday said they plan to boycott March 16 early elections to protest the government’s failure to meet their demands. Among these unmet demands are autonomous tribunals in the Albanian Muslim municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, located near the Kosovo border.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EuroMed: Horizon 2020, EU Program for South
Presented in Cairo: 80 mln for health, environment, energy
Participants at the conference to launch Horizon 2020 — including EU ambassador to Cairo, James Moran, and the head of the European neighbourhood, Africa and Gulf Countries unit, Elisabeth Lipiatou — stressed relations developed between EU and Egypt under the association agreement which became effective in 2004 to promote the liberalization of commercial exchanges and Egypt’s access to European markets.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
European People’s Party Meets With Euro-Med MPs in Dead Sea
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, FEBRUARY 10 — The Group of the European People’s Party (EPP) at the European Parliament held a meeting at the Dead Sea to discuss the Syrian crisis and challenges facing the region, including the peace process, organizers said today. Participant in the gathering including MPs from the Euro-Med countries, whereby participants also discussed means to resolve the Palestinian Israeli conflict.
The gathering is organised by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and is being held in a bid to boost the Euro-Mediterranean network, coordinate its activities and expand cooperation between the north and the south.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
European People’s Party Meets With Euro-Med MPs in Dead Sea
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, FEBRUARY 10 — The Group of the European People’s Party (EPP) at the European Parliament held a meeting at the Dead Sea to discuss the Syrian crisis and challenges facing the region, including the peace process, organizers said today. Participant in the gathering including MPs from the Euro-Med countries, whereby participants also discussed means to resolve the Palestinian Israeli conflict.
The gathering is organised by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and is being held in a bid to boost the Euro-Mediterranean network, coordinate its activities and expand cooperation between the north and the south.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UFM Meetings Bringing All Partners Together, Says Fule
Ministerial ones resumed, those on SMEs and industry soon
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, FEBRUARY 7 — A ‘revitalized’ Union for the Mediterranean is finally managing to bring all regional partners together, EU neighborhood chief Stefan Fule underscored on Friday during the presentation of the annual European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed)report at the European Parliament. ‘‘Regional challenges require regional solutions,’’ Fule said, noting that the European Union is putting forth a great deal of effort in this direction, benefiting from closer relations with the Arab Maghreb Union and as part of the 5+5 Dialogue (the Mediterranean forum including Italy, Spain, France, Portugal and Malta alongside Libya, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
C-130 Hercules Transport Plane Crashes in Oum El Bouaghi, Algeria
Dozens have died after a military transport aircraft carrying troops and family members crashed in eastern Algeria. The C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed in Oum El Bouaghi, about 500 kilometers east of the capital.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Azhar Never Seeks Political Power — Grand Imam
Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayyeb said on Friday that Al-Azhar has always been a beacon of moderate Islamic teachings and never sought any political authority. In an interview with State television, el-Tayyeb stressed al-Azhar patriotic role in the different historical eras of Egypt. “Islam never knew the so-called religious State,” he said, adding that Al-Azhar has always led popular revolts but when it comes to ruling, it always resorts to its enlightening role.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: EIB Finances Conversion of Power Plant for 205 Mln
El Shabab project is expected to reach a 50% increased capacity
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, FEBRUARY 10 — The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a loan agreement for an amount of 205 million euros to finance El Shabab power plant project. The project consists of the conversion of an open-cycle power plant to combined-cycle gas technology and it should significantly improve the generating efficiency of the power plant, resulting in an increase in capacity to 1500 MWe representing a 50% increase in electricity output, in order to meet the growing electricity demand at a competitive cost and with a low environmental impact.
The project will be co-financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Saudi Fund for Development.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt will need to import an additional $1 billion worth of petroleum products and secure significant natural gas supplies as it scrambles to meet energy needs for the summer, Oil Minister Sherif Ismail has told Reuters. One government after another has struggled to cope with energy crunches, and Ismail said this coming season would be no exception.
Failure to find a solution could frustrate Egyptians, who rioted in the past over long lines at gas pumps just before the army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Activists Against Genital Mutilation
The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Mutilation aims to change minds about this gruesome procedure, which is still practiced at a very high rate in many countries across Africa. Its victims are scarred for life.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt Ratifies Death Sentences on 14 People Convicted in Connection to 2011 Sinai Attacks
Egyptian state TV is reporting that the presidency has ratified the death sentences of 14 men convicted in connection to Islamic militant attacks in the Sinai Peninsula during the country’s 2011 uprising. Eight were tried in absentia.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Moussa: El-Sisi Will Run for President
Leading political figure Amr Moussa claimed on Tuesday that armed forces chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi intends to run in the upcoming presidential elections. Moussa, who headed the committee that drafted the 2014 constitution, met with Field Marshal El-Sisi on Tuesday, according to the official Facebook page of army spokesperson Ahmed Ali. Moussa, who came fifth in the 2012 presidential election, told Al-Ahram Arabic that El-Sisi will likely announce his candidacy by the end of the month.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamist Leader Says He Will Not Contest Elections, As Egypt Has Become ‘Republic of Fear’
A leading Egyptian Islamist and a former presidential candidate says an ongoing crackdown by the military-backed interim government has turned the country into a “republic of fear.”
Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, who joined mass protests against the now-ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last summer, reiterated his decision that he will not contest upcoming presidential elections expected for the spring, denouncing the vote as a “farce” since it will come amid “suppression.”
Morsi was removed in a military coup in July that followed the mass protests. “You created the republic of fear,” roared Abolfotoh in a Sunday news conference.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The imam of Al-Ansari mosque in Benghazi’s Hadaiq district was killed yesterday afternoon. Sheikh Atif Al-Madouli died when gunmen shot at him several time while he was returning home from the mosque after Asr prayers. According to Ibrahim Al-Sharaa, spokesman for Benghazi Joint Security Room, he was taken to Benghazi Medical Centre where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Madouli, a Salafist, is reported to have been a member of the external intelligence forces under the Qaddafi regime. Following his murder protesters burned tires in the area.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Sixteen “Extremists” Killed in Sinai — Egypt Army
Cairo — Sixteen “extremists” were killed in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, Egypt’s military spokesman said. Spokesman Ahmed Aly added that the extremists were killed when forces targeted hideouts that were being used by the Muslim brotherhood…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Airstrike Wounds Two Palestinian Activists in Gaza
GAZA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) — Two Palestinian activists were injured in an Israeli airstrike in Central Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources said on Sunday. According to the witnesses, the two were riding a motorcycle at the time of the strike. Ministry of health spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said one of the activists was critically injured and the other sustained moderate wounds.
Meanwhile, Israeli army spokesman said the airstrike targeted an activist named Abdullah al-Kherty, who was engaged in hostile rocket attacks against Israel. He added that al-Kherty is a member of the Global Jihad Organization…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Mystery Surrounds Discovery of Apollo Statue in Gaza
Local fisherman discovers 500kg. bronze statue of Greek god which Hamas police seize.
Lost for centuries, a rare bronze statue of the Greek god Apollo has mysteriously resurfaced in the Gaza Strip, only to vanish almost immediately from view and be taken into police custody.
From what they can tell it was cast sometime between the 5th and the 1st century BC, making it at least 2,000 years old. “It’s unique, said Jean-Michel de Tarragon, an historian with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sephardic Ancestry Bill Causes Embassy Stir in Israel
Rajoy proposes granting citizenship to those who trace their Spanish Jewish ancestors
Spain’s embassy in Tel Aviv has been inundated with inquiries from Israeli citizens interested in obtaining Spanish nationality after it was announced that a proposal opening the citizenship doors to descendants of Sephardic Jews was filed in Congress.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government has submitted the citizenship bill to lawmakers. If passed, it is estimated that around 3.5 million people who can prove their ancestry to the Jewish community that was expelled in 1492 could benefit.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austrian Woman Freed by Dubai Police Speaks Out
A woman who said she was raped by the son of a police chief in Dubai has told how she was locked up and “treated worse than a dog” when she tried to have him arrested. The woman was only freed after intervention by Austria’s young foreign minister Sebastian Kurz, who organised a crisis team to head to the UAE to negotiate the woman’s release.
She faced charges of having sex out of marriage when she complained she had been raped, and faced jail as a result. She was told she could escape being charged if she agreed to marry the man she said had attacked her.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Berkeley Prof Criticized for ‘Indoctrination’ Of Students
Critics of a professor on an American college campus claim that he is using assignments in class to indoctrinate students to oppose criticism of radical Islam.
Professor Hatem Bazian, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, is requiring his students to tweet weekly on Islamophobia, according to a column in the Toronto Sun.
Several students said they were uncomfortable with the assignment and felt it was “unethical.” One student reportedly said, “I can’t help but feel this is unethical. This is his agenda, not mine.”
Another requirement of Bazian’s class, entitled De-Constructing Islamophobia and History of Otherness, is for students to get reactions from “people of color” on ads critical of radical Islam placed by Pamela Geller, author of the blog Atlas Shrugs.
Geller said she believes Bazian is indoctrinating students.
“The very idea that he is surveying ‘people of color’ about my ads is ridiculous and offensive. Jihad terrorism is not a race. The Islamic oppression of women, gays, and non-Muslims is not a race. What has Hatem Bazian ever said or done in defense of the non-Muslim ‘people of color’ who are victimized by Islamic jihadists in Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere?” Geller said in an email to the Free Beacon…
| — Hat tip: Takuan Seiyo | [Return to headlines] |
Bomb Attached to Car Kills Intelligence Officer in Yemen
Yemeni security officials say a bomb attached to a car has killed a senior intelligence officer in the capital.
Last month, an intelligence general was shot dead in the province of Lahij. Officials believe the attacks were in retaliation for a military offensive that pushed al-Qaida militants out of their strongholds in southern Yemen.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Brahimi: Little Progress in Second Day of Syria Talks in Geneva
Talks between Syria’s government and opposition have made little progress, UN-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said. The delegations blame each other for violence that has killed hundreds across Syria in recent days.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Gunmen Kills 10 in Attacks in Iraq
TIKRIT, Iraq, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) — Six policemen and four anti- Qaida militiamen were killed by gunmen in two incidents in Iraq’s Salahudin province, a provincial police source said on Sunday.
In one of the attacks, gunmen stormed a police checkpoint before dawn and shot dead six policemen outside a village near the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 90 km east of the provincial capital city of Tikrit, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Iraqi Suicide-Bomb Class Gets Fatal Lesson From Faulty Teacher
Talk about final exams.
Terrorists-in-training at a camp in Iraq got a quick, deadly lesson in the art of suicide bombing Monday when their instructor used a demonstration belt that was loaded with live explosives, the New York Times reported.
The explosion at a training camp for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria killed 22 members of the group and wounded 15, according to The Times. Eight more were arrested as they tried to flee.
The instructor was known to Iraqi officials as a “prolific” recruiter of young men for suicide missions, according to The Times. But this time the virgins that terrorists are promised were waiting for him — not just some other poor sap.
He “was able to kill the bad guys for once,” an Iraqi official told The Times.
Class deceased.
| — Hat tip: LS | [Return to headlines] |
Kuwaiti Fighter Airlifted to Kuwait
KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti man was sent back home after he was injured during fightings in Syria, a local daily reported yesterday quoting sources with knowledge of the news. The injury happened during a fight between rebel fighters and Syrian Army troops. He was transported to Turkey “where a Kuwaiti medical aircraft picked him up and sent him back to Kuwait”, said the sources who spoke to Al-Rai on the condition of anonymity. While state officials had subtly acknowledged that Kuwaitis had joined rebel fighters in Syria since the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime began in 2011, there are no official records that mention names or numbers of those fighters.
Local newspapers had posted reports in the past couple of years about Kuwaitis who were killed during infightings in Syria, in addition to reports about others who crossed the border with Turkey to join the Free Syria Army. Political and Islamist figures have been outspoken about providing financial support to rebel fighters in Syria.
On June 2013, former Islamist MPs joined a campaign to arm up to 12,000 Jihadists in Syria, and the government later acknowledged that there are unofficial fundraisings organized across the Gulf state. Raising funds for Syrian refugees requires a special permit from local authorities in Kuwait where official humanitarian aid goes through the United Nations.
Also last year, former Islamism MP Dr. Waleed Al-Tabtabaei posted pictures on his Twitter account which showed him in military suit standing alongside who he said were ‘rebel fighters’ in Syria.
| — Hat tip: RR | [Return to headlines] |
Kuwait: Jihadism Punishable With Up to 30 Years in Prison
Proposed anti-terrorism bill follows Saudi example
(ANSAmed) — Kuwaiti lawmakers are debating an anti-terrorism bill that would punish anyone enlisting in foreign wars or aiding and abetting such enlistment with up to 30 years in prison and 80,000-euro fines.
The implicit aim of the bill is to prosecute Kuwait nationals taking part in the civil war in Syria, local analysts said. The bill presented by pro-government MP Nabil al-Fadhl, an outspoken opponent of hardline Islamists, also calls for prosecuting affiliates or sympathizers of extremist political, religious, or intellectual groups, both local and regional.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
More Evidence the Syrian “Rebels” Are Al-Qaeda
Partisangirl on Twitter noticed a photo posted on the Atlantic. It shows a mercenary supposedly from the secular Free Syrian Army wearing an al-Qaeda t-shirt.
Picture of rebels @TheAtlantic label FSA, are wearing alqaeda shirts and Taliban garb http://t.co/yloO54IjnJ
— Partisangirl (@Partisangirl) February 6, 2014
The fact the United States supports a “resistance” that almost if not entirely consists of al-Qaeda and other closely related Sunni jihadist fanatics is not mentioned by the establishment media. They are, after all, the only force that can come close to defeating al-Assad’s military.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
With the 55,000 photographs that emerged prior to the Geneva talks, photos which clearly showed that the Assad regime tortured people to death in its prisons, the idea that the regime and its human rights violations have to be stopped has again become a matter of public discussion. Of course these photographs are important evidence in proving the atrocities committed by the regime.
However, we must not forget that the same regime oppressed the Syrian people long before there was a civil war in Syria and even before Bashar Al-Assad himself came to power; it is not the first time that the Baathist ideology unleashed a bloodbath. According to the latest data from the International Rescue Committee, nine million people in Syria have had to abandon their homes since 2011: Six million of these are living as refugees inside and outside the country. Among the female refugees, 41,000 of the women who left Syria were pregnant. 30,000 doctors were forced to leave the country and approximately 500 healthcare professionals are in jail.
The fact that Assad’s forces are constantly besieging villages and districts, using crude barrel bombs and engaging in a policy of mass slaughter making no allowances for women, children and the elderly has been demonstrated time and time again. Most recently, epidemics have begun appearing among innocent people deprived of medical aid. Even though there is still a geographic location referred to as Syria, it is no longer possible to speak of a Syrian state; the Syria with thousands of years of history that once stood on trade routes no longer exists. It is impossible to speak of any healthy industry in a Syria in which its best known historical artifacts have been destroyed, buildings have been ruined wholesale and the vast majority of the infrastructure and transport system has disappeared. An 80 percent decline in all industrial production across the state has been reported since 2011, but the true figure is said to be 90 percent…
| — Hat tip: RR | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Pilgrims Killed in Saudi Hotel Fire
In Saudi Arabia, at least 15 people are dead after a fire broke out at a hotel filled with Muslim pilgrims. Authorities say the hotel is located in the Saudi holy city of Medina, in the country’s west…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Suicide Bomb Trainer in Iraq Accidentally Blows Up His Class
In what represented a cautionary tale for terrorist teachers, and a cause of dark humor for ordinary Iraqis, a commander at a secluded terrorist training camp north of Baghdad unwittingly used a belt packed with explosives while conducting a demonstration early Monday for a group of militants, killing himself and 21 other members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, army and police officials said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria Aid Efforts Stop as Mortars Shatter Homs Ceasefire
Long-awaited Homs aid operation designed to move out Syrian civilians and deliver essential aid halted by mortar fire
A ceasefire in the Syrian city of Homs was shattered by mortar fire on Saturday, halting a long-awaited operation designed to move out civilians and deliver essential aid. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have blockaded the historic centre of Homs for more than a year, denying food and other basic supplies to its people…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Problems and dangers of every sort afflict the always-troubled region.
By Daniel Pipes
The recent fall of Fallujah, Iraq, to an al-Qaeda-linked group provides an unwelcome reminder of the American resources and lives that were expended from 2004 to 2007 to control the city — all that effort and nothing to show for it. Similarly, outlays of hundreds of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan did not prevent the release of 72 prisoners who have attacked Americans.
These two examples point to a larger conclusion: Maladies run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers cannot remedy them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trade Group Gives Iran Glance at a Future Without Sanctions
A visit by a French trade delegation to Tehran this week has sent diplomatic sparks flying between Washington and Paris. But is there more than diplomacy at stake in the struggle over Iran’s economic future?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Gunman Kills Two at Cathedral in Russia
Police are so far unsure of the motive of the gunman, who reportedly shot a number of people in the legs.
A gunman has opened fire in a cathedral, killing a nun and a churchgoer and wounding six other people. The attack happened in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on the Russian island of Sakhalin, off the country’s east coast. Most of the injured were shot in the legs but their lives are not thought to be in danger, said a local archbishop…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Gunman ‘Kills Two’ Inside Sakhalin Cathedral
Six other people were wounded in the incident — most were said to have been shot in the legs and were not critically hurt. A gunman has opened fire inside a cathedral on the eastern Russian island of Sakhalin, killing a nun and a churchgoer, say reports…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Kaliningrad to Mark Sausage Day With Giant Sausage
KALININGRAD, February 9 (RIA Novosti) — Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad was set to embrace its medieval roots on Saturday by celebrating Long Sausage Day, complete with production of “the fattest sausage.” The sausage, made according to old Prussian recipes, will be 3 meters long and 30 centimeters thick, a spokeswoman for a local museum said…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Ukraine’s Security Agency Warns of Heightened Terrorism Risk Amid Anti-Government Protests
Ukraine’s security agency is warning of a heightened risk of terrorism amid nearly three months of anti-government protests. The agency said in a statement Sunday that it was putting its counter-terrorism units on alert, after receiving a large number of bomb threats across the country at airports, train stations, pipelines and other locations.
Some 30,000 activists turned out for a rally on Kiev’s Independence Square on Sunday, the day the protests usually draw the largest crowds. The protests started after President Viktor Yanukovych ditched a key treaty with the European Union in favor of a bailout loan from Russia.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ukraine Protests Take Center-Stage at EU Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels
European Union foreign ministers have offered assistance to Ukraine — provided the country gets a new government. They stopped short of any immediate threat of sanctions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
With Top Skiers Done, Austria’s Matthias Mayer Tops Men’s Downhill
Matthias Mayer, an unheralded 23-year-old from the deep Austrian team, was in gold medal position in the men’s downhill on Sunday, with all the top skiiers having completed their runs. Christof Innerhofer of Italy was second, six hundredths of a second behind, and Kjetil Kansrud of Norway was third.
Although he has had some success at the Super G discipline, Mayer has never been on a podium for a World Cup downhill.
Bode Miller, the American veteran who had been the most impressive skiier in training, started off fast at the top of the mountain but was bounced wide of his intended line in the middle section, could not recover on time and failed to medal.
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Suspected Militants Killed in Dagestan Raid
(CNN) — Russian special forces killed five suspected militants and took another into custody Saturday during an assault on a house in the volatile Caucasus republic of Dagestan, a Russian security source told CNN…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan Troops Urge Karzai to Sign Security Deal With US
Officers in the Afghan army fighting to contain the Taliban insurgency have called on the country’s President, Hamid Karzai, to sign a security agreement that would keep a small number of American troops in Afghanistan beyond the end of this year.
The Washington Post reports that soldiers have openly called for Karzai to sign the deal in the Afghan media, despite being officially made to keep silent on the topic.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Afghanistan: Violent Protests Break Out in Oruzgan Two Months After Australians Leave
A remote Afghan province in which Australia spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and lost numerous lives trying to secure, is having serious governance and security problems less than two months after the Australians left.
Hundreds of angry rural residents flooded into the Oruzgan capital, Tarin Kowt, last week, burning tyres, blocking roads and closing down business in a five-day protest about alleged corruption and collusion with the Taliban by the provincial government…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Are Pakistan’s Talks With the Taliban Bound to Fail?
Despite agreements between the Pakistani government and the Taliban on a number of issues, experts have doubts over the chances of success of the ongoing peace talks.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Imran Khan: Flirting With the Taliban
Liberal Pakistanis have criticized cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s opposition to a military operation against the Taliban. His alleged support to the Islamists has earned him the title, ‘Taliban Khan.’
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
India: Narendra Modi Woos Muslim Businessmen With Equality, Equity Mantra
Reaching out to the Muslim community, chief minister Narendra Modi called for security, equality, prosperity and equity in the state’s growth regardless of one’s faith or religion.
Modi was speaking at the inauguration of the first-of-its-kind business conclave organised by entrepreneurs belonging to the minority community in the country in Ahmedabad on Friday. Over 50 minority entrepreneurs, most of them belonging to Ahmedabad, have set up stalls showcasing their products at the three-day event which has the theme of ‘Harmony in business: Let’s grow together’…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Marines ‘Innocent’ But Sorry About Fishers’ Deaths
‘We don’t feel responsible’ says Girone in New Delhi
(ANSA) — New Delhi, February 6 — Two Italian marines who could face the death penalty in India over accusations they killed two Indian fishermen while on an anti-piracy mission in 2012 are sorry about the deaths, but not guilty of murder, one of them said Thursday.
“We are sorry about the loss of human lives, but in no way do we feel responsible,” said Salvatore Girone, who along with Massimiliano Latorre is accused of killing the fishermen after allegedly mistaking them for pirates and opening fire on their trawler while guarding the privately owned Italian-flagged oil-tanker MT Enrica Lexie off the coast of Kerala on February 15, 2012. “We feel sorrow on a human level, but we are innocent,” he told journalists in New Delhi.
The pair said their sorrow was compounded by the fact that the fishermen were seamen like themselves.
“We both grew up in two cities on the sea and we are fishermen ourselves,” they said.
“Like them, we are seamen”. The pair could face the death penalty if the Indian authorities decide to prosecute them under the terms of an anti-terrorism, anti-piracy law.
“This allegation pains us not just as servicemen, but also as parents and as human beings,” said Latorre.
“As a professional Italian serviceman who fights piracy, I am very upset by this”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Condemns India Invoking Terrorism Law on Marines
(AGI) Rome, Feb 8 — Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino condemned India’s apparent inclination towards invoking its anti-terrorism Suppression of Unlawful Acts of Violence Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation Act (SUA) in the case of the marines accused of killing two fishermen in Kerala, even the part where the law does not demand the death penalty. “Signals coming from New Delhi today on the judicial proceedings involving our marines leave me indignant and speechless”, Bonino said on Saturday, adding: “An eventual request for the SUA act to be invoked on the two marines, if it should be confirmed, will be challenged in court by the Italian defence in the strongest terms.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
by Janet Levy
India’s centuries-long resistance to Muslim aggression began in 636 B.C. This started a series of incursions in which Muslim warriors desecrated Hindu places of worship and universities, slaughtered monks and priests, and unleashed a reign of terror to impose Islam and subjugate the majority Hindu population. In K.S. Lai’s 1973 book, Growth of Muslim Population of Medieval India (1000-1800), the author estimated that about 60-80 million people died in India between 1000 and 1525 as a result of Islamic invasions…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Tiger Evades Hunters, Kills 10th Person in India in 6 Weeks
A tiger prowling near villages in northern India killed its 10th person in six weeks, a day after eluding a trap set by hunters with a live calf as bait. The female tiger is believed to have strayed from Jim Corbett National Park, India’s oldest national park, which was established in 1936 to provide endangered Bengal tigers with safe territory.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Consulate Employee Killed in Pakistan, Police Say
Pakistani police say gunmen have shot and killed a local employee of the U.S. consulate in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Police official Arif Khan says attackers riding on a motorbike struck when Faisal Saeed was walking home Monday in the Gulbahar area of the provincial capital.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Angry Over Spain’s Tibet Genocide Claims
Beijing expressed anger on Tuesday after a Spanish judge sought arrest warrants for former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and four other senior officials as part of a probe into alleged genocide in Tibet.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Conspiracy Theories Abound About China’s Gold Purchases
China’s net imports of gold through Hong Kong last year were worth a thumping HK$409 billion. That’s roughly 1,170 tonnes of bullion. To put that into perspective, it’s equivalent to 40 per cent of all the gold produced by all the mines in the world last year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Red Star Rising: China’s Ascent to Space Superpower
China’s new-found footing off-world is changing the rules of today’s space race — find out how the rest of the world is rethinking its strategies.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Scientists Confirm Fukushima Radiation in California Kelp
Scientists analyzing kelp off the coast of San Diego confirmed the presence of cesium this week, a radioactive isotope directly linked to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Part of the ongoing “Kelp Watch 2014” project, government and academic institutions have begun receiving results from samples of Bull Kelp and Giant Kelp collected along the California coast. Despite attempts by the media to downplay the ongoing disaster, the discovery has only confirmed the continued build up of radiation in West Coast waters.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Court Presses Ahead With Arrest Warrants for Former Chinese Leaders in Tibetan Probe
MADRID — A Spanish court has issued international arrest warrants for several former Chinese leaders, including retired President Jiang Zemin, as part of an investigation into alleged genocide in Tibet. Jdge Ismael Moreno signed the warrants Monday. They were ordered by the court in 2013, but delayed by legal technicalities.
The Spanish National Court is acting on the principal of universal justice in a case brought by Spanish pro-Tibetan groups. The warrants mean the Chinese leaders face possible arrest if they travel abroad.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Genetic Origins of High-Altitude Adaptations in Tibetans
Genetic adaptations for life at high elevations found in residents of the Tibetan plateau likely originated around 30,000 years ago in peoples related to contemporary Sherpa. These genes were passed on to more recent migrants from lower elevations via population mixing, and then amplified by natural selection in the modern Tibetan gene pool, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University, published in Nature Communications on February 10.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Vineyard Owners Are Hoping That China Will Become the Next Top Wine Producer
Vineyard owners are hoping that China will become the world’s next top wine producer, although consumers still prefer foreign brands
China is the youngest player in the world’s emerging wine-production markets — and has quickly become the world’s fifth-largest wine producer. Industry experts estimate the nation will have the most land devoted to wine production and bottle more wine than any other country in five years. “It’s just like the Australia and Chile markets 10 or 20 years ago,” Wu says. “Perhaps Chinese wine can become a well-received world brand in three decades.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Australian State of Victoria Faces Most Dangerous Bushfire Threat in Five Years
MELBOURNE, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) — Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria on Sunday faced the worst bushfire threat since the Black Saturday in 2009 as more than 100 blaze raged across the state in a dry and windy weather.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Australian Scientists Discover Oldest Known Star
A team of Australian astronomers say they have identified the oldest known star in our universe — one that formed a mere 200 million years after the Big Bang.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to unambiguously say that we’ve found the chemical fingerprint of a first star,” lead researcher, Stefan Keller of the Australian National University (ANU) research school of astronomy and astrophysics said in a press release. The star, named SMSS J031300.36-670839.3, is estimated to be 13.6 billion years old.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Australian Mom Barred From Pool for Wearing a Dress Says There’s a Way Around Rule: Be a Muslim
An Australian woman said she was prevented from swimming in a public pool because she wore a dress instead of traditional swimwear — but may have gotten a pass if not for one small issue. “I can only let Muslims in the pool in dresses,” the lifeguard said Friday according to Katherine Pulo, 39, who was interviewed by the Illawarra Mercury.
Pulo said she’s worn the dress previously without incident and asked the lifeguard, “How do you know I’m not Muslim?” “You’re not Muslim,” she said the guard replied…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Girl, 14, Gang Raped While Walking Home Through Sydney Park
A 14-year-old girl who was gang raped in a western Sydney park was so traumatised that police had to wait a day before they could speak to her.
The men are all described as being of African appearance and aged in their late teens to early 20s and police say people in the community must know the men responsible.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
South Pacific Sandy Island ‘Proven Not to Exist’
A South Pacific island, shown on marine charts and world maps as well as on Google Earth and Google Maps, does not exist, Australian scientists say. The supposedly sizeable strip of land, named Sandy Island on Google maps, was positioned midway between Australia and French-governed New Caledonia. But when scientists from the University of Sydney went to the area, they found only the blue ocean of the Coral Sea.
The phantom island has featured in publications for at least a decade. Scientist Maria Seton, who was on the ship, said that the team was expecting land, not 1,400m (4,620ft) of deep ocean.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Debate Intensifies Over Possible German Army Training Mission in Somalia
Members of the German armed forces may soon be sent to Somalia to take part in a training mission. The opposition is skeptical, saying the security situation in the east African state remains unstable.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya: Sikh Monument Irks Kisumu Preachers
Kisumu — The controversial monument erected by the Sikh community in one of the streets in Kisumu has caused jittery among the city residents. The storm was raised by members of Repentance and Holiness Ministry associated with Prophet Dr. David Owuor who claimed the statue was ‘satanic’…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya: In the Footsteps of Imams With a Radical Agenda
Muslim leaders have contributed their voices to a national chorus condemning what many see as religious radicalisation and resultant militancy at the Coast. Scholars, leaders of mainstream Islamic groups, politicians and analysts agree that the radicalisation is the foundation for the propagation of ideas and practices that seek to drift faithful to embrace Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab ideologies…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
GUATEMALA CITY, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) — Nine members of a family including a baby and a young girl were killed Saturday in a remote jungle region in northern Guatemala, the country’s officials said. Neighbors said the killings took place when two SUVs carrying armed men arrived at the family’s house…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
A significant but under-reported meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) took place on January 28 and 29th in Havana, Cuba.
CELAC is an organization created in order to promote regional integration. It includes almost all the Latin American and Caribbean countries but excludes the United States and Canada. It is also a political organization, created in Caracas in 2011 and inspired by the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez whose implicit aim was to diminish the influence of the Organization of American States (OEA) and the United States.
This summit had strong political connotations with implications for the future of the region. Several key resolutions were adopted.
First, CELAC affirmed the right of each nation to choose any type of “political and economic organization”. By the same token CELAC affirmed its support for the principle “of self-determination, respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country; and; support for the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries”…
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Mexico Finds Skeletal Remains Along US Border
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican officials have discovered hundreds of skeletal remains scattered on ranches in a stretch of towns along the U.S.-Mexico border as they carried out a wide search to locate missing people. Coahuila state prosecutors’ spokesman Jesus Carranza said Monday that the remains were burned and extremely hard to identify.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Narcotics Trafficking Slashes Central American Forests
Central American forests have been razed for roads and plane strips to traffic narcotics, as well as agricultural operations used to launder drug money.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Panama Releases North Korean Ship After Cuban Weapons Find
Panama has released a North Korean ship seized after it was found to be transporting weapons from Cuba. The ship’s owner was forced to pay an almost $700,000 fine. Three crew members face weapons trafficking charges.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A Land of Money and Fear: The Swiss Vote Against ‘Mass Migration’
Switzerland’s economic success is enviable, yet its people fear decline. On Sunday, voters approved a plan to reintroduce immigration quotas. The move is likely to create significant problems for the country’s relations with the EU — and could be expensive.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Australia’s Refugee Policy Causes ‘Mental Rot’
Australia’s reputation on human rights has been marred by reports that asylum seekers are subjected to inhumane treatment and mental health damage. Yet there is hardly political will to change.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Boehner Backs Off Amnesty for Now
Chances for a broad immigration bill to pass this year took a major hit Thursday when House Speaker John A. Boehner ruled out any action until President Obama proves to Republicans’ satisfaction that he is serious about enforcing the laws and no longer will try to work around Congress.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Immigration Outpaces New Births
Births are at a 27-year low but more foreigners moved to Denmark in 2013 than ever before
According to newly-released numbers from Statistics Denmark, the national birth rate is at a 27-year low. The 55,873 children born in Denmark last year is the lowest number since 1986.
But despite the drop in birth rate, the Danish population grew in 2013 thanks to a lower number of deaths and a record high net immigration number. The total population stood at 5,627,235 at the end of last year — an increase of 24,607 people, or 0.4 percent, over 2012.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Eurosceptics Hail Swiss Vote on EU Immigration
Right-wing parties in Europe hailed Swiss voters for approving curbs Sunday on EU immigration while mainstream European media worried about potential ripple effects across the continent.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive: How Mainland Chinese Millionaires Overwhelmed Canada’s Visa Scheme
Mainland millionaires swamped HK consulate with applications and led to freezing of world’s most popular investor immigration scheme
Applications by tens of thousands of mainland millionaires flooded Canada’s consulate in Hong Kong and overwhelmed the country’s investor immigrant programme, an investigation by the South China Morning Post has revealed.
Canadian immigration department spreadsheets obtained by the Post show how the huge number of applications forced the government in Ottawa to freeze the world’s most popular wealth-based migration scheme. One document, dated January 8 last year, showed there was a backlog of 53,580 Hong Kong-based applications for Canadian federal investor visas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive: Vancouver Facing an Influx of 45,000 More Rich Chinese
Over 60pc seeking Canadian wealthy investor visa are from China and want to live in British Columbia’s main city, data shows
A South China Morning Post investigation into Canada’s immigration programme for millionaire investors has revealed the extraordinary extent to which it has become devoted to a single outcome: Helping rich mainland Chinese settle in Vancouver.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Failed Somali Pirate Prosecution Fuels Terror Trial Fears
The failed prosecution of an alleged Somali pirate — and the fact that that failure could leave him living freely, and permanently, inside U.S. borders — is highlighting anew the risks of trying terror suspects in American courts.
Just a few weeks ago, Ali Mohamed Ali was facing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence in a 2008 shipjacking off the coast of Yemen — an incident much like the one dramatized in the film Captain Phillips. Now, the Somali native is in immigration detention in Virginia and seeking permanent asylum in the United States.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Half of Swiss Voters in Favour of Immigration Quotas
(AGI) Geneva, Feb 9 — Voting in Switzerland on a controversial referendum to reintroduce quotas limiting immigration showed 50.4 percent of the voters are in favour and 49.6 against, according to an initial estimate from the research institute gfs.berne. However, the results from Bern and Zurich were still missing on Sunday, and the institute’s president Claude Longchamp added that the estimate had a 0.7 percent margin of error.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration Groups Turn to Anger
Immigration reform advocates are done playing nice with House Republicans. After holding their fire for years at the urging of the Obama administration, several immigration reform groups now plan to unleash their anger at the right.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Migrant Vote Worries Swiss Neighbours
People living close to the Swiss border were plunged into uncertainty on Monday after Switzerland voted to restrict immigration from EU countries.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
New York to Issue Identity Papers for Undocumented Immigrants
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city would give undocumented immigrants identity papers to allow them to live more normal lives.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Deports Undesirable Muslim Criminals
Some 5,198 foreign citizens were expelled from the country in 2013, an increase of 31 percent since 2012, when 3,958 people were deported.
Norway has a long record of massaging Muslim numbers and serving up frankly absurd prognoses in order to make it look as if Islamic immigration into Norway is less of a fiasco than the average Norwegian man-in-the-street knows it is…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Republicans Object to Obama Easing Immigration Rules for Terror Supporters
President Obama’s use of an executive directive to ease the rules for people trying to enter the United States or stay in the country even though they have given “limited” support to terrorists or terror groups is causing problems for Republicans working on immigration reform.
“President Obama should be protecting U.S. citizens rather than taking a chance on those who are aiding and abetting terrorist activity and putting Americans at greater risk,” says Virginia GOP Rep. Robert Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and part of the GOP House leadership team working on immigration reform.
He and other Republican lawmakers argued that the administration is relaxing rules designed by Congress to protect the country from terrorists.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Spain and Morocco Must End Migrant Abuse’
Human Rights Watch has called on Morocco and Spain to end the abusive treatment of sub-Saharan immigrants, after at least nine migrants drowned trying to reach the Spanish territory of Ceuta last Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Police Blame Deaths on ‘Violent’ Migrants
The Civil Guard in Spain’s North African enclave in Ceuta have struck back at critics by releasing a video they say shows sub-Saharan would-be immigrants acting aggressively while attempting to cross the border during last Thursday’s tragic events which led to the death of 14 people, but opponents claim that it leaves many questions about police conduct unanswered.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Vote on EU Migrants Risks Igniting Row With Brussels
(GENEVA) — Swiss voters were Sunday deciding whether to curb immigration by European Union citizens, in a referendum seen as a crunch test of neutral Switzerland’s ties with the 28-member EU.
The vote, forced by populists who claim the country is being swamped, is also being watched closely by eurosceptics within the EU itself who want to rein in immigration among its member states…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Migrants Vote Stirs Alarm in Italy
Northern League energized, wants similar measure at home
In Italy and throughout Europe, the vote is expected to energize anti-EU parties ahead of European Parliament elections in May, where such parties are expected to win big. “Switzerland has taught the European Union a big lesson about democracy,” said Mario Borghezio, an MEP from Italy’s regionalist and anti-immigrant Northern League, which has forged ties with France’s far-right National Front.
“Brussels has imposed its choices on us, from austerity to the euro, without ever giving us a chance to voice our desires in a referendum. This is called democracy”. Both the League and the National Front called on their respective countries to introduce similar referenda. “The Swiss are showing great common sense,” National Front leader Marine Le Pen told French radio. “I think if France held a referendum on the same theme, the French would largely vote against mass immigration”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Vote Will ‘Fuel Right-Wing Populism’
A Swiss vote to limit mass immigration will only serve to fuel right-wing populism in neighbouring countries and is also a concern for Italians in border towns who depend on Switzerland for jobs, the mayor of Bellano, a town on the shore of Lake Como told The Local.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Feel Country is ‘Bursting at the Seams’
The Swiss vote on immigration quotas divided the country. The party that sponsored the referendum spoke of a “lack of space.” Experts and other Swiss parliamentarians warn of disastrous consequences.
Switzerland entered a binding contract with the EU. The freedom-of-movement agreement is just one of a package of seven contracts. Withdrawing from one contract would render the other ones invalid as well. Switzerland would risk free access to the European market with 500 million customers. That’s a significant issue, because 60 percent of Swiss exports go to EU member states.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Voters Narrowly Back Referendum Curbing Immigration
Swiss voters appear to have narrowly backed a new referendum that would limit immigration, according to early projections. The initiative could strain the country’s relationship with the European Union.
The law, which was introduced by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), sets a limit on the number of foreigners who could move to Switzerland each year. Its passage means the country will have to renegotiate treaties with the EU that permit the free movement of workers. “This is a sea change in Switzerland’s migration policy,” SVP chief Toni Brunner said on Sunday. “It is clear that immigration will have to be massively restricted.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Vote ‘A Warning Sign for Europe’
Germany’s anti-EU party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Monday picked up the baton and called for a similar law in Germany. “Independent of the content of the Swiss referendum, we should also create an immigration law in Germany which is based on the qualifications and integration abilities of the immigrants, and effectively prevents immigration into our social support systems,” Bernd Lucke, AfD spokesman said on Monday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Government in Damage Control Mode After Vote
Reeling from a vote to cap EU immigration, Switzerland’s government and business community moved on Monday to limit the damage to trade ties with the big European bloc.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Vote to Stem Immigration Could Cause ‘A Lot of Problems’
Switzerland’s neighbors and the EU say they regret the country’s narrow vote to limit annual migration inflows. Veteran German politician Wolfgang Schäuble warns of “a lot of problems” for the Swiss government in Bern.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Immigration Vote ‘Bad News’ For French
A Swiss vote to limit mass immigration has been met with concern among French government ministers as well as the legions of French who work in Switzerland. However France’s right-wing parties heralded the result of the referendum.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Vote to Curb EU Migrants, Brussels to Review Ties
GENEVA — Switzerland voted Sunday to impose curbs on European Union immigrants, in a nail-bitingly close referendum that sparked warnings from Brussels that it would review EU ties with the Alpine country. Final results showed that 50.3 percent of voters backed the “Stop Mass Immigration” plan pushed by right-wing populists. The fall-out from the result could sink a raft of deals, including on the economic front…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: James Brokenshire, The New Immigration Minister, Must Offer Reassurance
Following Mark Harper’s resignation, Britons want to be sure politicians have control over the country’s borders
The resignation of Mark Harper after employing an illegal immigrant as a cleaner might be one of the most ironic political downfalls in history. As a tough-minded immigration minister, he once sat on a TV show and told a failed asylum seeker that he had no right to be in the country and should leave.
He also gave his firm support to the controversial vans displaying posters that read: “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest”. Of those who opposed the campaign, he said, “No society that encourages people to break its laws can survive. That, however, is precisely what our critics are asking us to do. They say we should not try to persuade illegal immigrants to leave.”…
[JP note: Broken shires.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Charles W. Socarides, M.D., (1922-2005) was clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Western media and corporations have seized upon the Sochi Olympics to bash Russia for protecting heterosexual rights. In this light, I re-post a classic 1995 essay by a psychiatrist who treated hundreds of gays over his 40-year-career and cured about a third.
How did this change come about? Well, the revolution did not just happen…
It was all part of a plan, as one gay publication put it, “to make the whole world gay.” I am not making this up. You can read an account of the campaign in Dennis Altman’s The Homosexualization of America. In 1982 Altman, himself gay, reported with an air of elation that more and more Americans were thinking like gays and acting like gays. There were engaged, that is, “in numbers of short-lived sexual adventures either in place of or alongside long-term relationships.” Altman cited the heterosexual equivalents of gay saunas and the emergence of the swinging singles scene as proofs that “promiscuity and ‘impersonal sex’ are determined more by social possibilities than by inherent differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, or even between men and women.”
Heady stuff. Gays said they could “reinvent human nature, reinvent themselves.” To do this, these re-inventors had to clear away one major obstacle. No, they didn’t go after the nation’s clergy. They targeted the members of a worldly priesthood, the psychiatric community, and neutralized them with a radical redefinition of homosexuality itself. In 1972 and 1973 they co-opted the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association and, through a series of political maneuvers, lies and outright flim-flams, they “cured” homosexuality overnight-by fiat. They got the A.P.A. to say that same-sex sex was “not a disorder.” It was merely “a condition”-as neutral as lefthandedness.
This amounted to a full approval of homosexuality. Those of us who did not go along with the political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional meetings. Our lectures were canceled inside academe and our research papers turned down in the learned journals. Worse things followed in the culture at large. Television and movie producers began to do stories promoting homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle.
First response from James: Essentially the Russians won’t permit this psychological war on heterosexuals.
Contrary to the media spin, Russia’s family values bill does not make homosexuality a crime. Homosexuality is not illegal in Russia.
What the bill prohibits is “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” defined as “relations not conducive to procreation.” The law imposes significant fines of up to $31,000 for providing information about the LGBT community to minors, holding gay pride events, speaking in defense of gay rights, or equating gay and heterosexual relationships.
It’s a pro-life, pro-family bill, which is exactly why liberals hate it. There is no valid reason for providing information about the LGBT community to prepubescent youth. And some of the so-called “gay pride events” get rather obscene and should not be held in public. Furthermore, the media throws a hissy fit whenever a heterosexual speaks out about their values, witness A&E’s suspension of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson. The gays want the right to speak out, but they want to deny the same right to everyone else. Neither can gay and heterosexual relationships be equated: man + man = man + woman? That’s not a true equation.
| [Return to headlines] |
Planned Parenthood Pays $2 Million Settlement After Killing Black Teen in Abortion
The Planned Parenthood abortion business has been forced to pay a $2 million settlement to the family of a black teenager it killed in a botched legal abortion in 2012.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands Protest Abortion Reform in Spain
Thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid on Saturday to protest against the Spanish government’s plan to restrict access to abortion.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
2014 Road Map to Global Transformation
In working their New Year’s resolutions, many ponder what 2014 will look like for their families, state, nation, and world. Prognostications are indicators, imperfect ones at that; but evidence backs reasoned forecasts. Carl Teichrib of Forcing Change fame compiled a tangible list of 2014 religious, geo-political, and socio-economic change events that, in essence, provide a sort of road map to the future.[1]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Climate Slowdown? Just Wait Until the Wind Changes
The hiatus in global warming can be fully explained by strong winds across the Pacific. But when they end, warming will come back with a vengeance.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Males and Females Differ in Specific Brain Structures
The results highlight an asymmetric effect of sex on the developing brain. Amber Ruigrok, who carried out the study as part of her PhD, said: “For the first time we can look across the vast literature and confirm that brain size and structure are different in males and females. We should no longer ignore sex in neuroscience research, especially when investigating psychiatric conditions that are more prevalent in either males or females.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Paleo Diet Better for Weight Loss Than Nutrition Recommendations
Obese people lose more weight, have less blood fat and get a more slender waist if they follow a Paleolithic-type diet rather than following the official Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, new study shows.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Seeds of Life Can Sprout in Moon’s Icy Pockets
Ice pockets on the moon could be cooking up the building blocks of life. Simulations show that cosmic rays coming from outside the galaxy have enough energy to turn simple molecules in lunar ice into more complex organics — carbon-based compounds central to life on Earth.
In 2009, a spacecraft sent crashing into the moon’s south pole kicked up water vapour — probably melted from ice trapped in shadowed craters. That water contained organics, but no one was sure how they got there.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Baron, have not found that one yet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25853546
Cpt Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi appears to have used his initiative and pre-empted the order – rumour has it that Sikhs are good warriors and not to be messed with.
Now I’m not advocating appeasement of Muslims, Sikhs or any other group, and I’ve never served in the military, but can anyone who has explain how the wearing of beards can be detrimental to discipline? In the days when Britain was “great”, they were almost compulsory in the Royal Navy!
(Not-so-secret confession: my (ten years) younger brother grew a beard 20-odd years ago, and it looked so good on him I followed suit. He got so fed up with his friends’ mistaking us for one another, he got rid of his. I’ve still got mine, though it’s unaccountably turned grey!)
Not all men can grow a beard that isn’t scraggly.
Protective masks can seal the face of the soldier if he has a beard.
. . . can’t seal . . . .
@‘Scotland Has Everything to Become One of the World’s Richest Countries’
The Scots are perfectly capable of leading Western Civilization out of the neoliberal malaise.
The only trouble is that the share of government in Scotland is about 75 to 80 % and paid mainly by the English. True Socialism. And the main parties (Labour and SNP) are both VERY socialist.
>> Swiss Vote to Stem Immigration Could Cause ‘A Lot of Problems’ <<
Such foresight, such tender concern for the future implications of a particular course of action!
Any theories on the sudden burst in the number of stories?
I was gone for more than 2 days. This is what piled up while I was gone.