Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/19/2014

More than fifty political leaders from nine western states gathered in Utah yesterday to discuss the return of public land managed by the federal government to state control. The meeting had been planned before the standoff at the Bundy ranch in Nevada, but group noted that the recent incident in Bunkerville underlines the urgency of the issue.

In other news, approximately 850 illegal migrants were rescued today from the Mediterranean and brought to shore by two ships of the Italian Navy.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, JP, Papa Whiskey, Steen, 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.

Financial Crisis
» Italy in the Hands of the Usurers
» No Recovery in Sight for Italian Print Journalism
» What Happened to the Middle Class? The Infographic
 
USA
» 37% of Voters Fear the Federal Government
» 8 Vaccinated Students at NJ College Contract Mumps
» Fight on Against ‘Big Brother’ Control of ‘Truth’
» Islamic Society Event Offers Cultural Education
» It’s Time’: Lawmakers From 9 States Gather in Utah, Discuss Ways to Take Control of Federal Lands.
» Mark Levin’s “Liberty” Amendments: Legalizing Tyranny
» Maryland ObamaCare Exchange Spent $90 Million on Technology Before Abandoning Website
» Newly Released Clinton Document Describes Internet as ‘Right Wing’ Tool of ‘Conspiracy Commerce’
» ObamaCare: Covered Patients Say They Can’t Find a Doctor
» ObamaCare Site Vulnerable to ‘Heartbleed’ Bug
» Supreme Court Justice to Student: If Taxes Go Too High ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’
» U.S. Accommodation of Totalitarianism, From the Soviet Union to Iran
» US Prosecutors Reveal How Abu Hamza Recruited Jihadists to Fight Against America in Terror Trial
» Western Lawmakers Talk Federal Land Takeover
» You Won’t Believe the Method That Common Core is Using to Teach Our Kids Subtraction
 
Europe and the EU
» ‘Concordia to be Dismantled in Turkey or Italy’
» Fatwa for Jihad Against Spain
» Germany: When Muslims Renounce Their Faith
» Germany: ‘Free as a Bird, Without Any Fear’
» Italian Blood Test for Copper Predicts Alzheimer’s Risk
» Italy: Unions to Strike Against Deregulated Opening Hours
» Italy: Aperitif-Maker Campari Buys After-Dinner Delight Averna
» Italy: Susa Mayor Mailed Bullet Over High-Speed Rail
» Italy: Illegal Waste Dump Impounded Near Taranto
» Italy: Seven Veneto Separatists Released From Jail
» Italy: Maurizio Gasparri Indicted for Looting State Funding to PdL
» Italy: Former Regional Lawmaker Sentenced to 10.5 Years for Graft
» Italy: M5S Says Government is Lying About Corrective Measures
» Italy: Man Who Killed Waiter in Pisa Flees to Tunisia
» The NSA, Glenn Greenwald, And Angela Merkel
» UK: A Weak Establishment is Letting Islamists Threaten British Freedoms
» UK: Chaos at Regent’s Park Mosque: ‘I’ve Not Seen Anything Like it in 30 Years’
» UK: Four Bradford Men Face Charges of Sexual Offences and Trafficking
» UK: Girls Were Ordered to Sit at the Back of Classes and Christian Pupils Left to ‘Teach Themselves’ At State Schools Targeted for Takeover in Muslim ‘Trojan Horse’ Plot, Report Reveals
» UK: Islamist Plot: Six Schools Face Ofsted Special Measures
» UK: Interim Board Appointed at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College With Gove Approval After Council Sacks Governors
» UK: Leaked Inspectors Report: UK Schools Discriminate Against Non-Muslims
» UK: Racist EDL Protests Outside Regent’s Park Mosque
» UK: State Schools Isolate Non-Muslims
» UK: Sheffield Man Aras Hussein Guilty of Beheading Girlfriend
» UK: Sheffield [Man] Denies Trafficking Teenage Girl for Sex
» UK: Terror-Convict Islamists ‘Baying for Blood’ Square Off Against UK Nationalists Outside London Mosque
 
North Africa
» Egypt: Ex-General: St.Catherine Monastery Must be Destroyed
» Egypt: Police Disband Brotherhood Marches in Various Cities
» Libya: Portuguese Embassy Stormed by Gunmen
 
Middle East
» Britain’s Establishment Muslim Organization Defends Pakistan and Iran
» Five Iraqis Killed by Smoke From Oil Blaze
» Military Operation in Iraq Kills 21 Militiamen
» The Poster Girls for Jihad: Interpol Searches for Two Austrian Teens ‘Who Went to Syria to Fight for Islamic Rebels’
» U.S. Drone Hits Al-Qaida Convoy in Yemen, 21 Terrorists Killed
» UN Says Syria Has Eliminated 80 Pct of Chemical Weapons
 
Russia
» All Ukranian Naval Ships Leave Crimea
» Better Relations With West Not up to us, Says Russian PM
» Ukraine: Donetsk Separatists: ‘We’ll Stay Until Victory’
 
South Asia
» Afghanistan: Six Taliban Insurgents Killed in Premature Blast
 
Far East
» Five Uighur Muslims and Two Vietnamese Police Killed in Gun Fight
» Japan’s Whalers Want to Return to Sea “Soon”
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Catholic Priest is Killed in Central African Republic
» Somalia: Dozens Killed After Brutal Violence Erupts in Bal’ad
 
Immigration
» EU Border Agency Frontex Allocates 7.1 Mn Euros to Italy
» Italy: MP Calls for Inquiry Into Death of Young Migrant
» More Migrants Are Rescued and Land in Lampedusa
» UK: Asylum Seeker Jailed for Rotherham Rape
 
Culture Wars
» India Recognises Third Gender
 

Italy in the Hands of the Usurers

While in the election campaign, Renzie is promising 80 euro, a miserable handout, a political-mafioso-masonic vote-buying ploy, the public debt is increasing month by month. But wasn’t it meant to get smaller thanks to the sacrifices? Where did we get to in 2011? We got to the pair made up of Napolitano-the-president-of-himself and senator-in-a-night Rigor Montis, who were meant to save Italy from the spread-gone-mad? And then with Letta, torpedoed for obvious media incompetence, the man who wanted to die for Maastricht, and finally the”ebetino” little idiot devoted follower of Merkel, the ECB and such like. After years of care, during which there has been the killing off of the companies, the creation of unemployment to the post-war level and taxes even on the air, the spread has gone down. And so? By devastating Italy, to whom have we done a favour?

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

No Recovery in Sight for Italian Print Journalism

Dailies, magazines suffer double-digit declines in revenue

(ANSA) — Rome, April 16 — There is no recovery in sight for Italy’s enfeebled print-journalism industry, a report issued Wednesday said. Last year revenues for newspapers and magazines both suffered double-digit declines, with advertising revenue down nearly 20%, according to Italian newspaper and magazine publishers federation FIEG. “In the last month of 2013 and the first part of this year, there were signs of economic recovery in the country,” said the report, which stressed however that the recovery will “have a very limited impact on print journalism, where problems are both structural and cyclical”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

What Happened to the Middle Class? The Infographic

Restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster are struggling, while high end dining is flourishing. At GE, demand for high-end dishwashers is racing ahead of sales growth for mass-market models. The increased wealth of highly skilled workers, the insane wealth of those with capital, and the outsourcing of lower skilled jobs have left us all asking, “what happened to the middle class?”

[Comment: Check out the Infographic.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

37% of Voters Fear the Federal Government

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Likely U.S. Voters now fear the federal government, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Forty-seven percent (47%) do not, but another 17% are not sure.

Perhaps in part that’s because 54% consider the federal government today a threat to individual liberty rather than a protector. Just 22% see the government as a protector of individual rights, and that’s down from 30% last November. Slightly more (24%) are now undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

8 Vaccinated Students at NJ College Contract Mumps

The New Jersey Department of Health is investigating eight confirmed cases of mumps found in students at Stevens Institute of Technology.

The college in Hoboken says the students range in age from 18 to 21. All were fully vaccinated with two documented doses of mumps-containing vaccine.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Fight on Against ‘Big Brother’ Control of ‘Truth’

Whether “Big Brother” government bureaucrats have the right to determine what is “truth” will be the focal point of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing Tuesday.

The Susan B. Anthony List is fighting to overturn an Ohio election regulation that allows state bureaucrats to censor statements on election-campaign billboards if they believe they are false.

The case originated in 2010 when SBA List tried to put up billboards to educate the constituents of then-U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Ohio, about his vote in support of taxpayer-funded abortion under Obamacare.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic Society Event Offers Cultural Education

FREDERICK, Maryland. (AP) — The Islamic Society of Frederick’s youth club members born in the United States or who came to America at a young age don’t know a lot about their native countries. An event held this month by the recently organized group seemed to make a lot of progress in filling the education void…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

It’s Time’: Lawmakers From 9 States Gather in Utah, Discuss Ways to Take Control of Federal Lands.

It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.

More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.

“It’s simply time,” said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.”

Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart, R-Provo, was flanked by a dozen participants, including her counterparts from Idaho and Montana, during a press conference after the daylong closed-door summit. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee addressed the group over lunch, Ivory said. New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington also were represented.

The summit was in the works before this month’s tense standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing, Lockhart said.

“What’s happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem,” Lockhart said…

[Return to headlines]
 

Mark Levin’s “Liberty” Amendments: Legalizing Tyranny

For 100 years, the federal government has usurped powers not delegated to it in our Constitution.

What should we do about it? Should we reclaim our existing Constitution and put an end to the usurpations?

Or should we “modernize” the Constitution by delegating to the federal government the powers it has usurped — so as to legalize what is now unconstitutional?

Mark Levin begins “The Liberty Amendments” by saying he doesn’t believe the Constitution requires “modernization through amendments”. But he then proposes a series of amendments, six of which modernize our Constitution to delegate to the federal government most of the powers it has usurped during the last 100 years.

And each of his six amendments does the opposite of what its title promises. I’ll show you.[1]

[Comment: Read it all.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Maryland ObamaCare Exchange Spent $90 Million on Technology Before Abandoning Website

Maryland has given up on its Obamacare website, but not before spending $90 million of taxpayer funding on technology, according to a cost breakdown released Friday.

Of the $90 million, exchange board Chairman Joshua Sharfstein said that the marketplace spent $55 million on the website itself, The Washington Post reports. Officials opted in late March, after six months of struggling with the inoperable system, to give up on fixing the website and start over again with a model of Connecticut’s more successful exchange website.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Newly Released Clinton Document Describes Internet as ‘Right Wing’ Tool of ‘Conspiracy Commerce’

A previously unreleased White House document among the 7,500 published by the Clinton presidential library Friday warns that the burgeoning Internet of 1995 is being “seized” by the “right wing” and turned into a “communication stream of conspiracy commerce.”

The 1995 report, titled “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce,” describes the Internet as a new method of communication “employed by the right wing” and used to “convey their fringe stories into legitimate subjects of coverage by the mainstream media.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

ObamaCare: Covered Patients Say They Can’t Find a Doctor

While open enrollment for coverage under the Affordable Care Act is closed, many of the newly insured are finding they can’t find doctors, landing them into a state described as “medical homelessness.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

ObamaCare Site Vulnerable to ‘Heartbleed’ Bug

People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Barack Obama’s signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government’s vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Supreme Court Justice to Student: If Taxes Go Too High ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd of law school students that if taxes in the U.S. become too high then people “should revolt.”

Speaking at the University of Tennessee College of Law on Tuesday, the longest-serving justice currently on the bench was asked by a student about the constitutionality of the income tax, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports.

Scalia responded that the government has the right to implement the tax, “but if it reaches a certain point, perhaps you should revolt.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

U.S. Accommodation of Totalitarianism, From the Soviet Union to Iran

Diana West Queries Andrew Bostom About His New Book, Iran’s Final Solution For Israel

Journalist Diana West authored the ground-breaking 2013 analysis of Communism, and Soviet Communist influence operations, American Betrayal. She posed the following salient questions to author Andrew Bostom about his timely study, Iran’s Final Solution For Israel, just published in March, 2014. (Dr. Bostom’s responses, unless otherwise indicated, are all referenced in Iran’s Final Solution For Israel.)

Diana posed the following two questions to me, and I responded (at some length).

Diana has kindly posted my responses at her blog as well.

[Diana West Question 1]: On November 16, 1933, FDR “normalized” relations with the USSR in spite of overwhelming evidence that USSR was anything but a “normal” state. On the contrary, it was a self-declared revolutionary entity openly (and covertly) dedicated to the subversion and overthrow of non-Communist nations. The US-USSR agreement included Soviet promises not to foment the overthrow of our Constitution, not to support agents attempting to overthrow our Constitution, and the like — hostile covert activities which were already underway and, after the agreement, would only increase in scope and depth. Maintaining diplomatic (also WWII-era military) relations with the USSR, then, would require the US government to engage variously in “looking the other way,” ignoring or denying facts, telling lies, demonizing truth-tellers for the duration — a pattern of behavior, I argue in American Betrayal, that ultimately helped subvert our government, and even our nation’s character. This same pattern of behavior may be seen in current US dealings with Islam in all of its guises. As part of the “P5 +1 “ (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, i.e., the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany), President Obama has recognized Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium, despite Iran’s open campaign to seek nuclear weapons, and clear declarations of its intentions to destroy Israel. In pursuing such negotiations, is the US engaging in another iteration of this same denial of reality?

[Diana West Question 2]: Your book argues that a “delusive policy-making mentality” exists across the political spectrum, even among conservative Iran experts who are alarmed by Iran’s nuclear potential. Explain the pitfalls of policy-making without taking into consideration Iran’s “animating Islamic ideologies,” and relate it also to the book’s ground-breaking arguments against seeking “regime change” (along the lines of the “Green Movement”) as the West’s preferred solution.

**

[Response Diana West’s First Question]

[AB] Yes! In addition to the foreboding chronological symmetry—the recognition of the Soviet Union on November 16, 1933, and almost precisely 80 years later, the announcement of the “P5 + 1” agreement, November 24, 2013—two essential parallels are immediately striking, and ominous:…

           — Hat tip: Andy Bostom [Return to headlines]
 

US Prosecutors Reveal How Abu Hamza Recruited Jihadists to Fight Against America in Terror Trial

An imam associated with al Qaeda ‘hid in plain sight’ at London’s notorious Finsbury Park Mosque, posing as a firebrand imam and community leader while secretly engaged in a ‘global campaign to spread terror’, a New York court heard today.

Prosecutors told how Abu Hamza, the 56-year-old former nightclub bouncer on trial in lower Manhattan, used the mosque as a base from which to try make hundreds of converts to his creed of violent jihad.

They said in their opening statements on Thursday that Hamza would send his recruits as far afield as the western United States and Afghanistan in the cause of killing non-Muslims, prosecutor Edward Kim told a courtroom in Manhattan.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Western Lawmakers Talk Federal Land Takeover

It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.

More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.

“It’s simply time,” said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

You Won’t Believe the Method That Common Core is Using to Teach Our Kids Subtraction

The dumbing down of America is accelerating. A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Unfortunately, these “standards” are doing to public education what Obamacare is doing to our health care system — absolutely ruining it. Just look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below is a comparison between the “old method” of subtraction and the “new method” of subtraction being taught in many of our schools. When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a joke…

I thought that there was no possible way that this could be real. I really thought that this must have come from some sort of parody website.

But it is actually true…

Posted below is stunning video of an Illinois Curriculum Director explaining that under Common Core, it is okay for children to say that “three times four equals eleven” as long as they can give the reasons for their answer…

What will our country look like if this insanity is allowed to continue?

[Comment: This is insidious. The goal of Commie Core is not to educate the children, but to create a nation of dummies that are too stupid to fight the new overseers.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

‘Concordia to be Dismantled in Turkey or Italy’

Piombino, Genoa prime sites says Gabrielli

(ANSA) — Rome, April 17 — The wreck of the Costa Concordia will be dismantled in Turkey or Italy, Civil Protection chief Franco Gabrielli said Thursday.

Gabrielli told parliament that Ankara had presented the best offer, $40 million, compared to a whopping $200 million by the Italian port of Civitavecchia.

He said Genoa and Piombino had the technical means to do the job. “We hope an Italian port will take care of the Concordia’s dismantlement,” Gabrielli said.

The Concordia went down off Tuscany in January 2012 killing 32 people in Italy’s worst postwar maritime disasters.

Ship captain Francesco Schettino is on trial for allegedly causing the disaster and abandoning ship too soon.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Fatwa for Jihad Against Spain

Oh, my brothers!

Spain occupies 78% of the Iberian Peninsula. Can it be mere coincidence that that is exactly the same percentage that the Zionist Entity occupies of our sacred Palestine?

Our brothers and sisters ruled Spain long ago. We were driven out by genocidal scorched-earth Islamophobic proto-Zionist Crusader campaigns.

But we shall return to rule Al Andalus once more…

[Return to headlines]
 

Germany: When Muslims Renounce Their Faith

Fearing ostracism by their family, or even death, many former Muslims keep their disbelief secret. A German organization offers support to people who leave Islam for another religion, or for none.

[Return to headlines]
 

Germany: ‘Free as a Bird, Without Any Fear’

Prize-winning atheist Bangladeshi blogger and co-founder of the Shahbag Movement Asif Mohiuddin joins DW in the studio to talk about his time in spent in jail, the death penalty and his new life in Germany.

[Return to headlines]
 

Italian Blood Test for Copper Predicts Alzheimer’s Risk

Plasma levels linked with triple risk of disease

(ANSA) — Rome, April 14 — A blood test developed in Italy to measure “free” copper levels in the plasma offers promise for predicting and preventing Alzheimer’s disease, said researchers at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital of Rome on Monday. Elevated copper levels in blood plasma coincides with triple the risk of contracting the neurological degenerative disease, they said.

The new blood test offers the prospect of preventing the disease by lowering the concentration of copper in the blood for at-risk subjects, explained Rosanna Squitti at Fatebenefratelli Hospital. In recent years, a number of studies have concluded that copper plays an important role in roughly 60% of Alzheimer patient cases, added research coordinator Paola Maria Rossini, also at Fatebenefratelli. Rossini added that free copper circulating in the blood can have a toxic effect on the brain, and thus become a target for preventative treatment. The blood test and research were developed by researchers at the Università Cattolica in Rome as well as the Fatebenefratelli Hospitals of Rome and Brescia.

The study was published in the Annals of Neurology.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Unions to Strike Against Deregulated Opening Hours

‘Opening shops on national holidays doesn’t create jobs’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 18 — Unions representing people who work in retail stores on Friday announced a series of strikes against the opening of shops on several upcoming national holidays. Workers said shops should not open on Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, April 25, which is Italian WWII Liberation Day, and May 1, which is Labor Day.

“After two years of deregulated opening hours, we have seen that liberalization has failed to create jobs or increase sales.

On the contrary working conditions have deteriorated, impacting on the lives of workers,” the unions said in a note. Family consumption dropped 7.3% between 2007 and the third quarter of 2013, with non-food sales dropping by 4.6% and food sales down 2% in the same period. This led to the loss of 134,000 jobs (-4%), the unions said.

“Ongoing deregulation has led to a situation where commercial interests prevail over the rights of workers, who are being exposed to progressively more exhausting work schedules,” said Fisascat retail workers union leader Pierangelo Raineri.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Aperitif-Maker Campari Buys After-Dinner Delight Averna

Acquisition of household Italian brand brings new products

(ANSA) — Rome, April 15 — Italian beverage giant Campari continued to expand its line of popular products with the announcement Tuesday of the purchase of 100% of Fratelli Averna SpA, an iconic maker of after-dinner drinks.

The price tag for the Sicily-based distiller was 103.75 million euros, with 98 million euros paid immediately, the companies said.

Averna, founded 150 years ago, produces the popular household ‘amaro’ liqueur, and with the acquisition, Campari also adds Fratelli Averna’s other after-dinner drinks to its holdings, including the herb-based bitters Braulio, Limoncetta and Frattina.

As well, Campari — best-known for its signature red aperitif — gains Averna, the second best-selling liquer in Italy.

The company’s limoncello is especially popular, made with the peel of high-grade lemons from Italy’s popular Sorrento area, as is the Grappa Frattina of Pordenone. Bob Kunze-Concewitz, chief executive officer of Campari, emphasized the role of brand-name recognition in the industry in a statement on the Fratelli Averna deal.

“Adding a portfolio of brands with high quality, high margin and strong cash generation capability, this acquisition represents a great opportunity for us to leverage our international route-to-market for profitable growth, in line with our acquisition strategy,” he said of the purchase, which is expected to close in June.

That includes expanding in Germany and other parts of central Europe as well as in North America, where Campari sees growth potential from interest in mixed drinks including Italian bitters and liqueurs. In a statement, the Averna family said it was confident the deal will help to ensure the authenticity of its made-in-Italy brands.

“Today we pass the leadership of our business to Gruppo Campari, who has very deep roots in Italian traditions and values in the beverage sector with more than 150 years history,” the family said. “We are confident that Gruppo Campari will efficiently develop the business that has been managed by five generations of our family, who first of all associated its name with the iconic bitter product, and developed other high quality products as well”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Susa Mayor Mailed Bullet Over High-Speed Rail

Gemma Amprino threatened for supporting controversial TAV line

(ANSA) — Turin, April 17 — It was business as usual for Gemma Amprino, mayor of the Piedmont town of Susa in northwestern Italy, on Thursday after a parcel containing a bullet and written threats was mailed to her by opponents of a controversial high-speed rail (TAV) link between Turin and Lyon in France that is due to pass through the area. “The best response to what happened is to live as if these things did not exist,” said Amprino, whose pro-TAV position is well known. “The only way to give voice to democracy is to keep going,” she added. The threat letter, which was also mailed to the local councillor responsible for transport, Salvatore Panaro, came at the start of the campaign for administrative elections on May 25 in which positions for and against the Turin-Lyon rail link are expected to feature prominently. Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi, Piedmont regional president Roberto Cota and Turin provincial president Antonio Saitta all expressed their solidarity with Amprino and Panaro over the incident. Originating as a spontaneous grass-roots movement centred on Val de Susa in the 1990s, the No-TAV movement now has national and international visibility, organising largely peaceful demonstrations and other acts of protest up and down the country.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Illegal Waste Dump Impounded Near Taranto

Two cautioned after stinking eyesore found amid olive groves

(ANSA) — Taranto, April 18 — Italian police on Friday impounded an illegal-waste dump near the southeastern Puglia city of Taranto.

Police said the dump contained at least 100 tonnes of so-called ‘special’ or highly toxic waste. The operation, in the countryside near the town of Faggiano, uncovered the smelly eyesore amid a pristine, rolling landscape of olive trees and vineyards, police said.

Police said they had opened a probe to see if local aquifers had been tainted.

Two people, with suspected mafia links, were cautioned.

The Puglia mafia, Sacra Corona Unita (SCU), is known to traffic waste like its bigger and more dangerous cousins, the Camorra around Naples, the Calabria-based ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra in Sicily.

Naples, the capital of Campania, has been dogged by years of waste crises.

Illegal waste disposal and trafficking are major mafia money-spinners and whole areas of the south, such as Campania’s Terra dei Fuochi (Land of Fires), have been contaminated with toxic landfills, often set ablaze by frustrated locals.

Taranto, a major port, has been at the centre of a longstanding row pitting job security against environmental and health concerns after its huge, polluting Ilva steel plant was partially closed due to unusually high local cancer rates.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Seven Veneto Separatists Released From Jail

Among 24 arrested for ‘plotting violent insurrection’

(ANSA) — Milan, April 18 — Judges in northern Italy on Friday ordered the release of seven separatists from the Veneto region around Venice, while releasing five others to house arrest. Among those freed entirely were former MP Franco Rocchetta, the founder of the Liga Veneta (Veneto League) separatist party, and Lucio Chiavegato, a leader in the anti-government Forconi (pitchfork) movement. “It’s good news from Brescia, but it’s still shameful that they had to spend any time in jail just for their ideas,” said Matteo Salvini, the head of the regionalist Northern League, which is not directly affiliated with the separatists but has rallied behind their cause. Those released were among a total of 24 Veneto separatists arrested at the start of the month for allegedly plotting a violent insurrection against the Italian State. At the time Police seized a bulldozer they said had unsuccessfully been customized into a sort of armored tank, complete with a cannon intended to grab attention at a protest in Venice’s St Mark’s Square.

The economic crisis has increased support for independence in the northeastern region, where many allege the central government is bleeding local businesses dry with high taxation.

Last month, separatists organized an unofficial referendum in which an overwhelming majority of participants voted in favour of leaving Italy.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Maurizio Gasparri Indicted for Looting State Funding to PdL

‘Post-Fascist’ hawk allegedly embezzled funds for life insurance

(ANSA) Rome, April 16 — Hardline right-wing MP Maurizio Gasparri was indicted Wednesday for allegedly embezzling some 600,000 euros from state funds to Silvio Berlusconi’s now-defunct People of Freedom (PdL) party.

Judge Cinzia Parasporo ordered Gasparri, a former member of the neo-Fascist MSI party who later became an ardent Berlusconi supporter, stand trial October 1 on charges of filching the money to buy himself a life insurance policy.

Gasparri subsequently paid back the cash in two tranches after he was busted for the alleged embezzlement. According to the indictment the investigation headed by Judge Alberto Pioletti established that: “(Gasparri), having access to sums of money from the Senate budget allocated as contributions to the workings of the office of the leader of his parliamentary group, helped himself to 600,000 euros using them to buy an insurance policy in his own name valid for his entire lifetime and for his beneficiaries in case of death”.

Berlusconi dissolved the PdL and revived his first party, Forza Italia, after a pro-government group peeled off last year, refusing to bring down the executive when the ruling Democratic Party (PD) insisted on enforcing a ban from office for the three-time premier and media magnate because of a tax-fraud conviction.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Former Regional Lawmaker Sentenced to 10.5 Years for Graft

Bribed civil servants, illegally funded his own campaign

(ANSA) — Monza, April 18 — A court on Friday sentenced a former regional politician to 10 and a half years in prison for corruption, graft and bankruptcy fraud.

Ex-Lombardy council member Massimo Ponzoni was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of using two real-estate companies, Il Pellicano and Immobiliare Mais, as fronts to channel slush funds to his own electoral campaign, to bribe public employees to obtain favors for his real-estate associates, such as getting building permits on land destined for farming, to induce journalists to write articles in his favor, and to purchase boats and luxury homes.

Both companies went bust in 2010.

His four co-defendants also got prison sentences on the same charges.

Former civil servant Rosario Perri, who was in charge of issuing building permits among other responsibilities, was sentenced to five and a half years, while Antonino Brambilla, a former provincial vice president, got five years.

Consultant and businessman Filippo Duzioni, who prosecutors said was the fixer who made sure the graft money got from point A to point B, was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars, and a former mayor, Franco Riva, got two and a half years.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: M5S Says Government is Lying About Corrective Measures

(AGI) Rome, April 19 — The anti-establishment Five Star Movement’s (M5S) Senate group accused Renzi’s government of lying about corrective measures on Beppe Grillo’s blog. “Soon, Italians will pay the price for Renzi’s lies, because they’ll be told to pay for the Democratic Party’s electoral campaign through new corrective measures. He knows it, and like we said from the start Europe knows it even more. So why does Europe support him instead of condemning him? It’s simple: they fear the Five Star Movement’s support among voters”.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Man Who Killed Waiter in Pisa Flees to Tunisia

(AGI) Pisa, April 18 — One of the men who beat a Bengali waiter to death in Pisa has fled to Tunisia, police said in a press conference on Friday. The 27-year-old Tunisian reportedly took a flight from Milan to Tunis several days ago.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

The NSA, Glenn Greenwald, And Angela Merkel

Analyst J.R. Nyquist says Merkel was known to be suspiciously pro-Russian when she ran for high office in Germany but that her political party, the Christian Democrats, nominated her anyway, “and now Germany is more dependent on Russian natural gas than ever before.” Germany’s so-called “unique relationship with Russia” means that the country gets 36 percent of its natural gas imports and 39 percent of its oil imports from Russia.

The increasing dependence on Russia is related to Merkel’s decision, after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, to phase out Germany’s nuclear energy program. Pressure to cancel Germany’s nuclear program had come from the German Green Party.

A prominent member of the German Green Party, Hans-Christian Ströebele, met with Edward Snowden in Moscow and gave him a “whistleblower” award. He previously served as a lawyer for the Soviet- and East German-backed terrorist group, the Baader Meinhof Gang (also known as the Red Army Faction), and was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment in 1982 for setting up a communications network between the terrorist prisoners and activists outside the jails.

Merkel, who grew up in the formerly communist East Germany and spent 35 years of her life under the dictatorship, is the subject of a book by Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuthtitled, The First Life of Angela M., which suggests that she had deeper ties to the communist regime than previously known or acknowledged. She has admitted joining the Free German Youth, the communist youth organization, and a photo has surfaced showing her in a communist uniform.But the book argues that she hid her role in the youth group as secretary for agitation and propaganda, instead depicting herself as someone engaged in “cultural” affairs.

One of Merkel’s defenders said she “couldn’t remember whether she was involved in agitation and propaganda.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: A Weak Establishment is Letting Islamists Threaten British Freedoms

By Charles Moore

Birmingham council and police must do all they can to uncover extremist subversion in the city’s schools. All Islamist schools of thought are hostile to democracy

Sunday is Easter Day, but the pupils of 25 or so state schools in Birmingham probably do not know what that means for Christians. Argument rages about Islamist infiltration of these schools, and the exclusion of non-Muslim beliefs that results…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Chaos at Regent’s Park Mosque: ‘I’ve Not Seen Anything Like it in 30 Years’

There were extraordinary scenes yesterday outside the Regent’s Park Mosque in London as the road was blocked by Islamist protestors and counter-demonstrators…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Four Bradford Men Face Charges of Sexual Offences and Trafficking

Five men, including four from Bradford, will appear at Sheffield Crown Court later this month to face charges of sexual offences and trafficking against a 13-year-old girl.

Shakeal Rehmen, 26, of Haworth Road, Bradford, has been charged with rape and trafficking the girl, who cannot be identified.

Mohammed Shapal, 21, also of Haworth Road, and Yaseen Amini, 36, of Broadway, Bradford, have been charged with sexual activity with a child and trafficking.

Usman Ali, 20, of St Mary’s Road, Manningham, has been charged with sexual activity with a child.

The fifth defendant Bekir Rasheed, 35, of Ulverston Road, Woodseats, Sheffield, has charged with trafficking.

All five men have been remanded in custody by Sheffield magistrates to appear before the city’s Crown Court on Monday, April 28.…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Girls Were Ordered to Sit at the Back of Classes and Christian Pupils Left to ‘Teach Themselves’ At State Schools Targeted for Takeover in Muslim ‘Trojan Horse’ Plot, Report Reveals

An investigation into Birmingham schools at the centre of a plot to introduce hardline Islamist teaching has found pupils were illegally segregated and non-Muslim students were discriminated against.

Inspectors also revealed that the GCSE syllabus was restricted to conform with ‘conservative Islamic teaching’, with lessons in sex education banned and evolution only covered ‘briefly’.

Department for Education inspectors were ordered into Park View School and its sister schools, Golden Hillock and Nansen, after a letter dubbed ‘Trojan Horse’ was uncovered apparently outlining a plot by Muslim hardliners to drive moderate headteachers out of schools…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Islamist Plot: Six Schools Face Ofsted Special Measures

by Andrew Gilligan

Six schools implicated in the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ plot by extremists to ‘Islamise’ secular state education face being placed in special measures

At least six Birmingham schools at the centre of an alleged Islamic takeover plot are set to be placed in “special measures” by Ofsted in a move that could see their entire leadership removed. The six schools are implicated in the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot by extremists to “Islamise” secular state education in Birmingham which has allegedly seen the illegal segregation of pupils and discrimination against non-Muslim pupils…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Interim Board Appointed at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College With Gove Approval After Council Sacks Governors

The entire governing body at a Bradford secondary school with more than 1,000 pupils has been sacked over concerns about its “actions and effectiveness” following a critical Ofsted report.

Bradford Council has replaced the governors, at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, who include two serving Bradford councillors, with an interim executive board after winning approval from Education Secretary Michael Gove…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Leaked Inspectors Report: UK Schools Discriminate Against Non-Muslims

Schools in the UK city of Birmingham are discriminating against non-Muslim students, practice forced sex segregation and invite extremists to promote Islamic values among the children, says an official report leaked to The Telegraph…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Racist EDL Protests Outside Regent’s Park Mosque

LONDON: Members of the racist English Defence League (EDL) staged a protest outside Regent’s Park Mosque here during Jummah prayers, attempting to spark confrontation between the worshippers and the EDL but the Metropolitan police intervened to stop the break out of violence.

Dozens of EDL members arrived outside London’s historic mosque for the timing of Jummah prayers to provoke the worshippers into a confrontation but it’s believed that at least three people arrested belonged to the EDL. A spokesman of Scotland Yard told The News that “a man has been arrested for attacking the police and two are in custody for causing affray during the protest”…

[JP note: No mention that EDL and others were protesting a demonstration by hate preachers and convicted terrorists taking place outside the mosque. Furthermore, according to more reliable sources, the arrested men belonged to the group of Muslim demonstrators.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: State Schools Isolate Non-Muslims

Schools in Birmingham discrimate against non-Muslim students and restrict GCSE teaching to fit in with Islamic beliefs, according to official report

By Andrew Gilligan

Schools in Birmingham are illegally segregating pupils, discriminating against non-Muslim students and restricting the GCSE syllabus to “comply with conservative Islamic teaching”, an official report leaked to The Telegraph discloses.

Department for Education inspectors said that girls in a school at the centre of the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot were forced to sit at the back of the class, some Christian pupils were left to “teach themselves” and an extremist preacher was invited to speak to children.

The report, into three schools in the city, follows weeks of controversy over the alleged plot to “Islamise” secular schools in Birmingham and will lead to calls for intervention. The report focuses on Park View School and its sister schools, Golden Hillock and Nansen, the only primary of the three. Inspectors found that Park View practised forced and discriminatory sex segregation and has “restricted” GCSE subjects “to comply with conservative Islamic teaching”.

Core elements of the GCSE syllabus were missed out as “un-Islamic” and an extremist preacher with known al-Qaeda sympathies and anti-Semitic views was invited to speak with children. At Golden Hillock, there was discrimination against non-Muslims, the report found. Its handful of Christian students “have to teach themselves” in one GCSE subject after the teacher “concentrated on the students who were doing the Islamic course”.

At Nansen, Year 6 children, aged 10 and 11, received no teaching at all in the arts, humanities or music…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Sheffield Man Aras Hussein Guilty of Beheading Girlfriend

A man who beheaded his teenage girlfriend with a kitchen knife has been found guilty of her murder.

Pizza delivery driver Aras Hussein decapitated 18-year-old student Reema Ramzan at his flat in Sheffield in June before stabbing himself in the chest. The 21-year-old was jailed for life at Sheffield Crown Court and ordered to serve a minimum term of 20 years. Hussein admitted killing Miss Ramzan, but he denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Sheffield [Man] Denies Trafficking Teenage Girl for Sex

A man accused of trafficking for sex a teenager with learning difficulties has denied the allegation and said he just gave her a lift. Kareem Ahmed, aged 20, of Manor Park Centre, Manor, Sheffield, was in a relationship with Amanda Spencer when he gave her and another girl a lift to an address in Sheffield…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Terror-Convict Islamists ‘Baying for Blood’ Square Off Against UK Nationalists Outside London Mosque

by Raheem Kassam

Radical Islamists from the terrorist-linked ‘Need4Khilafah’ group took to London’s streets today in a protest held outside London’s Regent’s Park Mosque. Activists including notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary and others linked to other extremists organisations around the UK arrived at the Regent’s Park Mosque during Friday’s noon prayers…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt: Ex-General: St.Catherine Monastery Must be Destroyed

The oldest in the world. Threat to national security, he says

(ANSAmed) — Cairo, April 18 — A retired Egyptian army general wants to demolish the most ancient monastery in the world, located in the Sinai peninsula. In a request bound to raise protests not just from Christians, former Army general Ahmed Attiya Ragai asked to demolish the UNESCO-listed heritage site Monastery of St. Catherine, in the heart of South Sinai, built 15 centuries ago. The former general denounced it as a threat to Egypt’s national security due to the presence of 25 “foreigners” in the complex. The foreigners would be the Greek Orthodox monks who run it. In front of the administrative court of Ismailiya, the former general also accused the monks of stealing surrounding land, hiding the fact that the monastery’s foundation is on “Moses’ well” (the spring, according to biblical tradition, which quenched the thirst of Jews fleeing from Egypt) and illegally building monastic cells and other buildings that did not exist when the complex was built in the sixth century. In order to determine the actual historic value of the monastery and truthfulness of the accusation concerning the “Moses’ well” (one the prophets revered in Islam), the court has appointed a group of experts, suspending, at present, any decision on the complaint.

Christian historiography traces the earliest traces of monastery to 17 centuries ago, when in approximately 328, Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, had a votive chapel built near the Burning Bush where Moses — according to tradition — spoke with God. The site is at the foot of Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai), whose peak is where the prophet received the tablets of the Ten Commandments. In the chapel location, Emperor Justinian had a monastery built in the sixth century, with high walls and also a rich library, which holds hundreds of ancient manuscripts. These documents, now in the process of being digitization, include papyrus of extraordinary value, including a copy of the first Bible, and make the library the second most important Christian library in the world, next that of the Vatican.

The monastery is also a melting pot of different religious cultures. The complex also contains a mosque — never opened for worship because it was built in the wrong orientation, not facing in the direction of Mecca — and to witness to the peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims, the complex has enshrined a manuscript signed by the Prophet Muhammad, preserved in the library.

Among the accusations against the Orthodox monks, who were visited in 200 by Pope John Paul II — is also that of having raised the Greek flag in special circumstances. Already in February 2014, the former general had made the same complaints to Egyptian journalists in Cairo. In a counter- press conference on March 30, a St. Catherine’s monk, a former Parliamentary lawyer and members from local rejected the accusations , claiming that Attiya seeks to incite hostility in the peoples of the area.

The pilgrimages and group visits to the monastery have been reduced by half, after attacks by raiders stole and at times, kidnapped tourists, returning them always after a few hours. But now visits have concluded due to months of continuous armed clashes between police and armed groups that the government accuses of terrorism.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt: Police Disband Brotherhood Marches in Various Cities

Cairo — Security forces dispersed several pro-Muslim Brotherhood marches in various Egyptian cities on Friday using teargas bombs. Security forces in Alexandria disbanded a march for Brotherhood supporters in Abu Seliman area, head of Alexandria’s investigations unit, Major General Nasser al-Abd, told Aswat Masriya…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Libya: Portuguese Embassy Stormed by Gunmen

(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, APRIL 18 — The Portuguese embassy in Tripoli was stormed last night, well-informed sources told ANSA on Friday. Four gunmen broke into the embassy at 2 am, wounding security guards. The four then fled after more security officers arrived at the scene.

The motives of the break-in are still unclear though theft is reportedly considered a likely possibility.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Britain’s Establishment Muslim Organization Defends Pakistan and Iran

by Paul Austin Murphy

It seems that Fiyaz Mughal’s Tell Mama organization has overstepped its jurisdiction of “measuring and monitoring anti-Muslim attacks in the UK” to defend the Muslim hellhole that is Pakistan and the Islamic theocracy that is Iran.

This latest article from Tell Mama (‘Yet More Tabloid Islamophobia, the Peter Hill Article’), written by Steven Rose, is itself a response to an article written by Peter Hill for the UK’s Daily Express: ‘Why does Britain feel so obliged to accommodate for minorities?’ (published on the 7th of April)…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Five Iraqis Killed by Smoke From Oil Blaze

Four children, student die after attack on Tikrit pipeline

(ANSA) — Baghdad, April 18 — Five people including four children and a university student were killed and another 340 suffered smoke intoxication when a black toxic plume swept over the Iraqi city of Tikrit after a nearby oil blaze Thursday.

The pipeline on the Tigris river was attacked by militants, police said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Military Operation in Iraq Kills 21 Militiamen

(AGI) Baghdad, April 19 — An Iraqi army operation south of the city of Ramadi, in the province of Anbar, killed 21 militiamen from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). Sixteen more have been arrested, according to ‘Nova’, a local security source, which maintains that the operation was conducted in the area of Humera in a joint army and police action. Prior to this operation, Isis elements caused the interruption of all communication lines and of the Internet.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

The Poster Girls for Jihad: Interpol Searches for Two Austrian Teens ‘Who Went to Syria to Fight for Islamic Rebels’

Interpol is searching for two Austrian teenage girls who they believe were tricked into going to Syria to fight for Islamist rebels. Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, vanished from their homes in Vienna on April 10.

The first hint their parents received as to where the girls might have gone was a spate of social media posts claiming they had gone to fight a ‘holy war’.

But the parents say that they don’t believe the messages are being written by the girls. Authorities suspect they have been tricked into leaving the country.

Samra and Sabina come from Bosnian refugee families who settled in Austria after the ethnic wars of the 1990s, and were born in the country.

[…]

New photos on their Facebook pages show them brandishing Kalashnikov rifles — and in some cases surrounded by armed men.

However, it has since emerged that some of these pictures have been circulated online for years — casting doubt on whether they actually show the girls.

In the latest posting they announced plans to marry so that they could become ‘holy warriors’ and in the messages they say: ‘Death is our goal’.

Their families doubt that the messages were really written by them.

Austrian officials believe that the pair, judging by the scenes around them, are in a training camp and are not only already married, but also already living in the homes of their new husbands.

In Vienna the family admitted that the two had recently started going to a local mosque run by a radical Imam, Ebu Tejma.

[But don’t keep such mosques under surveillance — that would be “Islamophobia’! — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

U.S. Drone Hits Al-Qaida Convoy in Yemen, 21 Terrorists Killed

ADEN, Yemen, April 19 (Xinhua) — Up to 21 al-Qaida militants were killed in a U.S. drone air raid on their convoy in Yemen’s southeastern province of al-Bayda early on Saturday, an army officer said.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UN Says Syria Has Eliminated 80 Pct of Chemical Weapons

(AGI) Beirut, April 19 — Syria’s regime has destroyed or surrendered almost 80 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal.

The news was announced by the Head of the Joint Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and UN mission for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, Sigrid Kaag. The results indicate that Damascus has accelerated its rate of elimination. Syria should now be able to respect the deadline on April 27, Kaag added.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

All Ukranian Naval Ships Leave Crimea

(AGI) Kiev, April 19 — All the ships of the Ukrainian Naval Forces have left Crimea heading for Odessa, the press service of the current government of Ukraine said on Saturday. The landing craft Kirovograd and the corvette Vinnitsa were among the ships still based in Sevastopol Bay and Donuzlav Bay.

Withdrawal of military aircraft has also continued.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Better Relations With West Not up to us, Says Russian PM

(AGI) Moscow, April 19 — Although the crisis in Ukraine shows no sign of abating, Vladimir Putin said he believed there was nothing to stop relations or collaboration between Russia and the West returning to normal. In an interview to be broadcast by the state television channel Rossiya on Saturday evening, Putin warned that this did not depend on Russia, or not just on Russia, but on its interlocutors. He noted that the recent appointment of former Norwegian premier Jens Stoltenberg as next NATO secretary general could help a lot. Stoltenberg takes up his post on Oct. 1.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine: Donetsk Separatists: ‘We’ll Stay Until Victory’

Pro-Russian activists in eastern Ukraine are refusing to accept an international deal struck in Geneva on Thursday. Instead, they’ve placed new demands on the government in Kyiv. The city of Donetsk remains on edge.

Tensions remain high over in eastern Ukraine over Easter, as pro-Russian activists show no sign of leaving occupied buildings. In the protest hub Donetsk, the regional administration building in the city center was taken over by separatists in early April. Now, Russian flags flap loudly in the wind at the top of the high-rise office…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Afghanistan: Six Taliban Insurgents Killed in Premature Blast

KABUL, April 19 (Xinhua) — Up to six Taliban insurgents were killed Saturday in a blast in eastern Afghan province of Ghazni, police said.

“A local Taliban leader named Mullah Saddiq, along with five militias, were killed after improvised explosive devices (IEDs) they were building went off prematurely in Khoshak locality of the provincial capital Ghazni city at around morning,” deputy provincial police chief Asadullah Insafi told Xinhua…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Five Uighur Muslims and Two Vietnamese Police Killed in Gun Fight

18 Uighur Muslims illegally entering Vietnam were arrested by Vietnamese police who received request from the Chinese authorities to send them back to China, but some of the arrested robbed an AK-47 from a guard and opened fire at police.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]
 

Japan’s Whalers Want to Return to Sea “Soon”

The Japanese organization for whalers proposes a change in program to international community to in exchange for the resumption of activities. They also seek an injunction against the environmental movement Sea Shepherd, which follows the whalers to boycott them at sea.

Tokyo ( AsiaNews) — The two Japanese research Institutes which has hunted whales for over ten years for “scientific purposes” have asked the international community for permission to resume their program “in the near future”. The Kyodo Senpaku and the Institute for Cetacean Research have also asked a court in Seattle, United States, for an injunction against the environmental movement Sea Shepherd which follow and target the whalers.

The decision to prohibit the practice was taken on March 31 by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The International Tribunal pointed out that the excuse of “scientific reasearch “ with which the Rising Sun has continued to hunt the giants of the sea “does not justify the number of whales killed”. According to the Court , since 2005 the Japanese ships have killed 3,600 whales under the “Jarpa II” program.

The Japanese government has declared that it will respect the ruling, but added that it reserves the right to resume the hunt by changing its parameters . And the Kyodo Senpaku , which owns the entire Japanese whaling fleet, called on Agriculture Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi to allow the resumption of the program in the North Pacific “as soon as possible”.

Whaling has long divided the international community . In 1986 , Japan signed the international moratorium on this activity but has continued to hunt whales for “scientific research” .. Norway and Iceland , however, have refused to sign the agreement and continue the hunt for commercial reasons. The moratorium excludes indigenous groups, which may continue to eat whale meat, but sets limits on the number that they can kill. Tokyo now has to choose between a halt to all hunting, review its scientific program — and therefore lower the number of whales killed — or withdraw from the International Commission that regulates the activity.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Catholic Priest is Killed in Central African Republic

(AGI) Vatican City, April 19 — A Catholic priest, Father Labbe Christ Formane Willbona, was murdered in the north of the Central African Republic, allegedly by a group of armed shepherds of the Fulani ethnic group, considered to be close to the former rebel group of the Seleka. The news was released by Vatican Radio. Father Willbona was returning to the hamlet of Paoua, where he was the parish priest of St. Kisito church, when armed men opened fire. Local security sources reported that the corpse was mutilated before being buried.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Somalia: Dozens Killed After Brutal Violence Erupts in Bal’ad

According to news reports from Bal’ad, a town in the Middle Shabelle region, a fierce confrontation erupted today between government troops including the military soldiers and police officers.

Officers from the Somali police force left Mogadishu this morning and were on the way to Jowhar, another town in the Middle Shabelle region, when they were attacked by military soldiers from the government on the main road near Bal’ad.

Although the precise numbers has not been specified yet, high-ranking officials and soldiers were killed in the intense clashes. The chief of the Somali police force for the Middle Shabelle region was also reported to have been slain in the ghastly skirmish…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

EU Border Agency Frontex Allocates 7.1 Mn Euros to Italy

Operations Hermes and Aeneas counter illegal immigration by sea

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 17 — European operations to combat illegal immigration in Italian waters have been allocated 7.1 million euros for the period May-September, sources close to the European Union agency for external border security FRONTEX said Thursday. There are currently two Frontex operations underway in Italy: Hermes and Aeneas, respectively covering the southern Mediterranean between Italy and North Africa and the Adriatic and Ionian seas.

So far this year these have been running thanks to 4.8 million euros carried forward from the November 2013 budget after the agency received additional funds following boat accidents off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa last October in which over 350 migrants are known to have died. The total Frontex budget for 2014 was 89.1 million euros, the agency said. Of this sum, 42.1 million was destined for operations, of which just over half was for sea operations.

The Frontex-sponsored operations are in addition to Mare Nostrum, a military and humanitarian operation launched by the Italian navy and coast guard last autumn in the wake of the Lampedusa disaster to spot and save migrants at sea.

On Tuesday Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told parliament over 20,500 migrants had landed on the Italian coast so far this year, as compared to 2,500 during the same period in 2013.

Speaking before a committee on the country’s borders, Alfano stressed that the number of incoming migrants was on pace “to reach the record levels of 2011, when more than 62,000 people entered”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: MP Calls for Inquiry Into Death of Young Migrant

29-year-old Gambia man ‘not hospitalized in spite of symptoms’

(ANSA) — Rome, April 15 — A centre-left MP on Tuesday called on the interior and health ministers to explain why a 29-year-old Gambian migrant died of a heart attack while being held in a migrant reception center just three days after he landed on Italy’s shores.

The young man reached the coast of Sicily on April 11. He was transferred to a migrant holding center near the city of Siracusa in spite of the fact that he was clearly experiencing some form of medical distress, including blurred vision, according to International Organization for Migration (OIM) staff members who were present on the docks when he landed and who had urged government personnel to hospitalize him.

He finally saw a doctor three days later, when he was taken to an emergency clinic within the holding center while already in full cardiac arrest. He died Monday.

“We want to know why he was not taken to hospital where he might have received potentially life-saving treatment,” said Khalid Chaouki of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), and who filed the motion with fellow MPs. “This incident shows that reception facilities are often incapable of recognizing the primary needs of migrants. We need to rethink them,” added the Moroccan-Italian MP, an outspoken defender of immigrants’ rights who just before Christmas last year barricaded himself for days inside a migrant holding center on the island of Lampedusa to protest conditions there.

Local prosecutors have launched an investigation into the young man’s death, Corriere del Mezzogiorno newspaper reported.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

More Migrants Are Rescued and Land in Lampedusa

(AGI) Palermo, April 19 — About 850 migrants have been rescued on Saturday afternoon off the coast of Lampedusa by two Italian Navy vessels, during the ‘Mare Nostrum’ operation. Italian Navy sources reported that the ‘Espero’ went into action south of Lampedusa rescuing 400 people and, in the same area, the ‘Cassiopea’ ship rescued 450 migrants.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Asylum Seeker Jailed for Rotherham Rape

An asylum seeker who dragged a mum into a South Yorkshire car park and raped her after a night out has been jailed.

Alan Ahmed, aged 39, attacked his victim after she got separated from friends when she went to buy food. Ahmed pulled the 31-year-old mother down a street and tried to have sex with her, before forcing her into a car park and raping her. The court heard the woman has twice tried to take her own life since the attack in the early hours of August 10, 2013…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

India Recognises Third Gender

Transgenders people to get job, education quotas

(ANSA) — Rome, April 15 — India’s Supreme Court recognised transgender people as a third gender in a legal landmark Tuesday. The court granted a raft of basic rights to those who identify themselves as neither male nor female “It is the right of every human being to choose their gender,” it said.

The court ordered the government to provide transgender people with quotas in jobs and education like those for other minorities.

Special amenities should also be laid on, it said.

India is estimated to have some two million transgender people.

‘Hijra’ is a common term used to describe transgender people, transsexuals, cross-dressers, eunuchs and transvestites.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

3 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/19/2014

  1. Quote:
    special measures
    end

    Too bad those “special measures” don’t include charges for treason, sedition, a long sentence in the fortress known as the tower, and either “disappearing” or execution.
    And as for “conservative Islamic teaching,” . . . there is also something known as conservative Western teaching. And it’s the antidote for the former, particularly in large doses to non-Muslims.

  2. “It appears that agents of the federal government — BLM, FBI, DHS, and perhaps other letters of the alphabet soup…” What is it with our leaders and acronyms? USA, UK, there’s got to be a reason… Off for me Sunday night pint now, or should I say me SNP…

  3. How is the EDL racist, islam is not a race its a nasty cult! nationalist maybe! the government is against them so they must be good!

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