Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/1/2014

This news feed contains yesterday’s material as well as today’s, due to our recent service outage.

The Rotherham Muslim pedophilia scandal continues to dominate the news in Britain. At least 100 girls reportedly gave birth to babies fathered by their rapists. Meanwhile, the focus now is on the question: “What did Tony Blair know, and when did he know it?”

In other news, two men were injured by an assailant wielding a samurai sword during a fight that broke out at a Norwegian wedding.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, 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: One in Four Govt-Controlled Firms Operating at a Loss
» Researcher: Finland Faces Mass Unemployment
 
USA
» A Survivor of 9/11 Speaks: An Interview With Deborah Weiss, Esq.
» Fort Hood Jihadi’s Letter to Islamic State Shows “Government Really Has Been Lying”
» Mississippi Mother Claims Her Daughter Was Viciously Attacked at School
» Worldview-3 Satellite Delivers First Super-Hi-Res Images
 
Europe and the EU
» British Terror Fighters Banned From Coming Home by David Cameron
» Cameron Faces UKIP by-Election Bloodbath
» Denmark: Construction Begins on World’s Most Advanced Neutron Research Centre
» French Police Stop ‘Teenage Jihadist and Recruiter’
» French Education Ministry Picture Sparks Racist Abuse
» German Domestic Security Chief Warns of Terror Threat
» German Anti-Euro Party Enters State Parliament in Saxony Elections
» German Anti-Euro Party Enters First State Parliament: Preliminary Results
» Italian Entrepreneurs Face 3-Year Wait for Civil Court Cases
» Italian Families Borrow to Buy Their Kids Schoolbooks
» Italy: Politician Says Milanese Dress Down for Fear of Being Mugged
» Italy: SMEs Issue Mini-Bonds Worth One Billion Euros in Two Months
» Italy: Government Deal for 3 Bn Euro High-Speed Rail Airport Links
» Italy: Govt to Ensure Regions Spend EU Infrastructure Funds
» Italy: Mogherini Vows Marines Return After Latorre Ischemia
» Jihad Comes to Europe
» More Italians Than Russians Buying Luxury London Properties
» Muslim Rape Gangs: The Disturbing Role of Britain’s Leading Child Welfare Charity
» Netherlands: Six Children Taken Into Care Over Parents’ Jihad Plans: Officials
» Portugal: Special Report — The Billion-Dollar Fall of the House of Espirito Santo
» Rotherham’s — And England’s — Shame
» Samurai Sword Attack at Norway Wedding
» Teenager Held at French Airport for Trying to Join Islamist Rebels
» UK: Carswell Gives MPs the Hump
» UK: More Than 100 Teenage Girls in Rotherham Gave Birth to Their Rapists’ Children
» UK: Rotherham is Not an Isolated Incident
» UK: Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Scandal: Labour Home Office to be Probed Over What Tony Blair’s Government Knew — and When
» UK: Rotherham: Yvette Cooper Calls for Change to Law After Abuse Scandal
» UK: Revealed: Islamic State’s ‘Banker’ Was Director of a Private Muslim Primary School in Birmingham
» UK: Senior Muslims Call for Women to Have More Say in Communities
» UK: Seven Children Arrested Over Death of Man Found With Serious Head Injury as Police Launch Murder
» UKIP Set for Crushing Clacton Win
 
North Africa
» 82 Pct of Egyptians Approve of El-Sisi’s Performance: Baseera
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Caroline Glick: The Unfinished War
» Has the Third Gaza War Between Israel and Hamas Ended?
 
Middle East
» 600kg Saudi Man Forklifted to Hospital
» British Man, Saudi Wife Attacked by Religious Police — Video
» Did Assad and Maliki Facilitate the Rise of the Islamic State? An Interview With M. Zuhdi Jasser and Sherkoh Abbas
» ‘Halal Wine’ With 24-Carat Edible Gold Leaf Released in Dubai
» Hezbollah: ISIS Wants Lebanon
» Iraqi Forces Break Through to Besieged Town of Amerli
» IS in Retreat as Kurdish, Iraqi Forces Advance to Amerli With US Air Support
» Islamic State Threatens Coexistence Even Among Muslims
» Lewis: ISIS Has Strong Bureaucratic Structure, Likely Repeatable Processes
» NBC’s Richard Engel: Military Commanders ‘Apoplectic’ Over Obama’s ‘No Strategy’ Remarks
» Saudi Arabia: Shock as ISIS Slogan Found on School Walls in Riyadh
» The Italian State Secret That Could Aid the Kurds
» Turkey’s Aselsan Increases Profit by 100%
» Turkish PM Wants Peace With Kurds, EU Membership by 2023
 
Russia
» Putin Calls for Talks on ‘Statehood’ For Eastern Ukraine
 
South Asia
» In Pictures: India’s ‘Untouchable’ Scavengers
» Military Members Given Major Posts in New Thai Cabinet
 
Far East
» Alleged Bomb Plot Foiled at Manila Airport, State-Run Media Report
» Hong Kong Democracy Activists Protest After Beijing Rejects Free Elections
» Japan to Start Work on First Long-Distance Maglev Line
» North Korea Owes Sweden €300m for 1,000 Volvos it Stole 40 Years Ago — and is Still Using
» When Chinese Children Forget How to Write
 
Australia — Pacific
» Australia Unite With US: RAAF Aircraft to Deliver Military Equipment to Help Against Barbaric Islamic State Terrorists
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Al-Shabab Militants Attack Somali Intelligence Headquarters
» Thousands Flee Boko Haram Attacks in Nigeria for Cameroon, Police Say
» U.S. Military Conducts Operation in Somalia, Pentagon Says
 
Immigration
» Asylum Seekers or Welfare? Swedish Election Breaks Immigration Taboo
» Italy Rescues Almost 4,000 Migrants, Many Children
 
General
» New Paper on ‘The [Warming] Pause’ Says it is 19 Years at Surface and 16-26 Years at the Lower Troposphere.
» See the Secret, Tiny Bedrooms Flight Attendants Use on Long-Haul Aircraft
» What Would Happen if You Shot a Gun in Space?
 

Italy: One in Four Govt-Controlled Firms Operating at a Loss

Fiera di Roma 15.7 million euros in the red says Cottarelli

(ANSA) — Rome, August 26 — One in four local-government-controlled service providers are operating at a loss, Spending Review Commissioner Carlo Cottarelli said Tuesday citing 2012 annual reports.

That means 1,424 out of a total of 5,264 publicly-funded companies Cottarelli has reviewed so far, turned out to be loss-making.

Another 143 such companies were found to have depleted their capital or to be in the red outright, and an additional 1,075 firms could not be assessed because their annual reports were not available, the economy ministry added. Of the firms in the red, the worst performers were Venice-based CMV SpA, which is tasked with promoting real estate construction (-20.3 million euros), Fiera di Roma trade fair organizer (-15.7 million euros) and Lazio Cotral public transport operator (-14.9 million euros).

Cottarelli is trying to boost efficiency and cut waste at every level of Italy’s bloated public administration system.

Since his appointment last fall, he has come up with 32 possible places to cut public spending, earning him the nickname of Mr. Scissorhands.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Researcher: Finland Faces Mass Unemployment

The autumn will be even bleaker than the summer in terms of unemployment, according to employment experts. Firms are no longer simply putting employees on furlough, but are more eager to terminate their agreements outright. One researcher says that the situation can now be described as mass unemployment.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

A Survivor of 9/11 Speaks: An Interview With Deborah Weiss, Esq.

by Jerry Gordon

On the occasion of this 13th Commemoration of 9/11, we interviewed a survivor of that attack in lower Manhattan; Deborah Weiss, Esq. Ms. Weiss heads Vigilancenow.org. She formerly worked for the Committee on House Oversight in Congress; the Forbes for President Campaign in 1995-96; and served as an attorney in New York under the Giuliani administration. Her articles have also been published in FrontPage Magazine, American Thinker, American Security Council Foundation, the Weekly Standard, Washington Times, and National Review Online. She is the co-author of Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamist Terrorist Network (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). She is the principal researcher and writer of Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Language and Intimidation. Weiss will be interviewed by New English Review senior editor Jerry Gordon, on the September 7th, 2014 Lisa Benson Show on KKNT 960 The Patriot on the Salem Radio Network…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

Fort Hood Jihadi’s Letter to Islamic State Shows “Government Really Has Been Lying”

Victims of the Fort Hood shooting are pointing to news of a letter from the shooter, Nidal Hassan, as further evidence that the 2009 attack was a terrorism attack.

Hasan sent a two-page undated letter to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad asking to become a member of the extremist Islamic group, Fox News reported Friday after obtaining the letter.

In the letter, Hasan says it would be an honor to become an “obedient citizen soldier” for ISIS and signed the missive with his name and the abbreviation “SoA,” or “Soldier of Allah” — the same identification he used on business cards before the shooting.

News of the letter immediately stirred a renewed debate over why the administration designated the Fort Hood shootings an act of workplace violence rather than terrorism despite Hasan’s proven ties to al Qaeda.

A lawyer for the victims says Hasan’s letter to ISIS is just more “salt in their wounds.”

“It’s just yet another piece of evidence demonstrating that the government really has been lying about Hasan and his motivation for years,” Reed Rubinstein told the Washington Examiner Friday. “It’s almost like (Hasan is) taunting him — especially given the federal government’s response to the attacks.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Mississippi Mother Claims Her Daughter Was Viciously Attacked at School

A Mississippi mother’s claim that her five-year-old daughter was viciously beaten on the school playground during the first week of school and that school officials are not telling the full truth about the incident has gone decidedly viral.

The mother, Lacey Harris, alleges that unknown assailants kicked her daughter, AvaLynn, repeatedly until she fell off a slide at Arlington Elementary School in Pascagoula, Miss.

On Aug. 29, Harris started a community Facebook page, Justice for AvaLynn, to garner support. As of Sunday night the page has already generated over 72,000 likes.

“The mother alleges another child kicked her child on the slide,” Pascagoula Police Department Lt. Jim Roe told The Mississippi Press. “Right now, there’s no indication something criminal took place. I have spoken with school security and an assistant superintendent is investigating the matter.”

Roe added that his department has no plans to investigate further.

The mad mother vehemently disagrees that no crime occurred.

“AvaLynn informed Lacey that she was assaulted by another student: that she was kicked repeatedly in the face until she fell off of the slide on the school’s playground,” the Facebook page explains. “The school informed Lacey were no teachers present when the incident occurred, and because of that, no one could prove whether or not another student had harmed Ava.”

Leaving aside the fact that police and school officials could likely ask the little girl and other students present what happened, the Facebook page notes that photos taken of AvaLynn do seem to suggest that perhaps something more is involved here than just a plunge from a schoolyard slide.

[…]

[NOTE: The URL(above) has posted before and after pictures of this child. There is also a link to a Face Book page started by her mother with more information. It is obvious that the little girl will need opthalmology treatment for her eye(s), ENT and orthopedic work for her nose, and perhaps plastic surgery and dental care. Not to mention psychiatric care.]

[Return to headlines]
 

Worldview-3 Satellite Delivers First Super-Hi-Res Images

By Alan Boyle

The world’s most powerful commercial Earth-imaging satellite was launched less than two weeks ago, but DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 spacecraft is already sending back ultra-high-resolution pictures of cars with their doors left open and dump trucks that have clearly emptied their loads.

The resolution is so ultra-high, in fact, that the federal government isn’t allowing DigitalGlobe to release the pictures at their best just yet. Due to regulatory restrictions, they have to be downgraded from a resolution of 12 inches per pixel to a fuzzier 15 inches per pixel (30 to 40 centimeters per pixel) until Feb. 21, 2015.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

British Terror Fighters Banned From Coming Home by David Cameron

BRITONS fighting for the Islamic State will be banned from returning to the UK under radical plans to be unveiled tomorrow.

The Prime Minister is expected to announce the crackdown in a Commons statement.

Last night a Government source told the Sunday Express: “We are looking at stopping ­British citizens re-entering the country if they are suspected of terrorist activity abroad.”

The move comes days after security chiefs raised the threat level to “severe” following ­warnings that a jihadi attack in Britain is “highly likely”. Thesource added: “The Government s considering a range of measures to keep the country safe in the face of an increased threat level from Islamist extremism…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Cameron Faces UKIP by-Election Bloodbath

Party set to win first Commons seat after shock poll reveals Farage’s staggering 44-point lead over the Tories

Ukip are set to win their first Commons seat with a landslide 64 per cent of the vote following the biggest swing in modern political history.

Turncoat MP Douglas Carswell is set to humiliate David Cameron at the Clacton by-election sparked by his defection, a Survation poll for The Mail on Sunday has revealed. The figures — the first test of public opinion since the politician rocked Westminster by defecting to Nigel Farage’s party — predict a record 48 point swing towards Ukip…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: Construction Begins on World’s Most Advanced Neutron Research Centre

After a decade of preparation, the building of the world’s most advanced neutron microscope — co-hosted by Sweden and Denmark — will finally get underway tomorrow.

The massive science research facility using the neutron scattering technique, dubbed the European Spallation Source (ESS), is expected to have 400-500 full-time employees and have 2,000-5,000 visiting researchers every year. It will cost Danish tax-payers almost two billion kroner.

“It could be the largest Danish research infrastructure investment ever,” Henning Friis Poulsen, a professor at the Institute of Physics at Denmark’s Technical University, told Videnskab.dk.

“ESS will become a global leader in its field and will attract brilliant researchers and students from all over the world.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

French Police Stop ‘Teenage Jihadist and Recruiter’

French police stopped a 16-year-old girl from boarding a flight to Turkey at Nice airport on Saturday on suspicion that she was on her way to join an Islamist militia in Syria, the Interior ministry said.

The development comes just days after two other French female teenagers were arrested on August 19 and later charged with criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist organisation. These arrests were part of an ongoing investigation into the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl from the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil, also suspected of travelling to Syria to join jihadist fighters.

The French interior ministry estimated in April that nearly 700 French citizens or residents have made their way to Syria since the conflict began.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

French Education Ministry Picture Sparks Racist Abuse

A picture of a group of pre-school children posted on the French education ministry’s Facebook page (see above) was inundated over the weekend with racist comments — because most of the children in the photo were black.

“I wish a happy return to school for all the children of (Guinea) Conakry,” read one post that had not been deleted despite the ministry’s efforts to remove offensive comments from the page. Another post asked: “This picture is in France?”

One web user asked what the ministry was “trying to achieve with this picture” while another called the image “a deliberate provocation”, asking how it could be “normal to have a picture of French schoolchildren when only one of them is white?”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

German Domestic Security Chief Warns of Terror Threat

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says Islamic extremists from Germany who have traveled to fight with militants in Syria and Iraq may carry out terror attacks on German soil.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

German Anti-Euro Party Enters State Parliament in Saxony Elections

Germany’s anti-euro party has won its first state parliament seats following elections in Saxony. However, the ruling CDU conservatives will now need to find a new coalition partner.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

German Anti-Euro Party Enters First State Parliament: Preliminary Results

Germany’s anti-euro party on Sunday won its first seats in a state parliament where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives retained a clear lead, according to preliminary results.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) won more than 39 percent of the vote in eastern Saxony state, according to preliminary results, meaning it will need to find a new coalition partner.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which backs the dissolution of the euro, won around 9.6 percent and makes its debut into a state assembly, the initial results showed.

The AfD, which leaped into the European Parliament in May but narrowly missed out on entering the German parliament in last September’s general elections, was set up by economics professor Bernd Lucke, a former CDU member, early last year.

It also wants an end to EU bailouts and for Germany to return to its once beloved Deutschmark.

“It’s time for a new party in Germany,” Lucke said on ZDF television as the first results were coming in.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italian Entrepreneurs Face 3-Year Wait for Civil Court Cases

More than double average time required in other EU states

(ANSA) Rome, August 28 — Italian entrepreneurs must wait on average more than three years for civil court cases to be heard, waiting more than double the average time required in other European countries, a study published Thursday shows.

Only Greece has a slower judicial system with an average of 1300 days needed to resolve a business dispute in court compared to three years and one month in Italy and just 544 days on average in the EU, according to the study by the Confartigiano federation of artisans.

The long delays cost Italian firms as much as 1,032 million euros a year, the study found.

Bankruptcy proceedings in Italy take as long as seven years on average.

Between 1980 and 2013 a backlog of as many as 5 million civil cases built up in the Italian judicial system with Italy placed at only 24th out of 27 for judicial efficiency.

One slight sign of progress is that the average time required for appeal court cases fell from 1051 days in 2011 to 1025 in 2013.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italian Families Borrow to Buy Their Kids Schoolbooks

Books biggest expense, average family spends 710 euros a year

(ANSA) — Florence, September 1 — One in 20 Italian families will have to take out a loan to pay for their children’s education in 2014, according to a study by Findomestic spending watchdog.

Families will pay an average of 710 euros a year for their children’s schooling, or 10 euros more than last year.

Households with just one school-age child will be set back an estimated 606 euros, while those with two kids in school will spend an estimated 857 euros, the study showed.

As many as 18% of families will draw on savings to cover school costs, while 6% will rely on family or friends, and 4% will receive scholarships.

Another 5% will seek out bank loans, up from 1.1% last year, the study found.

Books and dictionaries are the biggest single expense for 71% of families, followed by satchels, transportation, computers, clothing, and school meals.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Politician Says Milanese Dress Down for Fear of Being Mugged

Lombardy regional councillor says dressing up ‘reserved for few’

(ANSA) — Milan, August 29 — People in Milan are dressing less stylishly because they fear being robbed, said Lombardy regional councillor Maria Teresa Baldini on Friday in a written brief.

Referring to “information circulated by the press” regarding thefts and muggings near the central station in the city that will host Expo 2015, Baldini said, “The lack of security often makes people less willing to look nice, which nowadays is becoming something reserved for the few who can afford a body guard or to hop from a taxi into a hotel or from a hotel into a store”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: SMEs Issue Mini-Bonds Worth One Billion Euros in Two Months

‘An important result’ of govt competitiveness decree says Padoan

(ANSA) — Rome, August 28 — Twenty-six small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have issued one billion euros’ worth of mini-bonds in the past two months, the economy ministry said Thursday in a report on the first results of the government’s competitiveness decree. “This is an important result,” said Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. “This is a positive experience. I will take it to the next ECOFIN (EU finance and economy ministers) council in Milan (on September 13)”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Government Deal for 3 Bn Euro High-Speed Rail Airport Links

Leonardo da Vinci, Malpensa, Tessera links to cost 1 bn each

(ANSA) Rimini, August 26 — Infrastructure Minister Maurizio Lupi signed Tuesday an agreement with Italian State Railways managing Director Michele Elia to link Italy’s high-speed train network to airports in Rome, Milan and Venice at a cost of some 3,000 million euros.

In all, linking the high-speed train network to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport and Milan’s Malpensa Airport will cost 1,000 million euros each with a link to Venice’s Tessera Airport expected to cost slightly less.

“By the end of 2014 we want the feasibility from the FS (State Railways),” said Lupi, “this is an agreement in line with the action of the government”.

“We have to pass from words to facts and go beyond just making announcements. It has been shameful that our main airports were not linked to the high-speed trains”.

The first step involves analysis of the plans by transport ministry officials, to be completed by the end of February 2015, including designs of the service, as well as financial arrangements.

The agreement, “was born of the need to facilitate quick and efficient links between the three airports and major cities, as happens in other European Union countries, and for the development of international tourism all over the country,” said Lupi’s office Monday in a joint statement with Trenitalia.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Govt to Ensure Regions Spend EU Infrastructure Funds

‘We will step in if regional officials don’t’ sources say

(ANSA) — Rome, September 1 — The government will substitute regional authorities as needed to make sure EU-funded infrastructure projects are completed, government sources said Monday.

The exercise of the so-called “power of substitution” is contained in Premier Matteo Renzi’s Unblock Italy decree, which is designed to eliminate red tape, stimulate the economy, and attract investors.

As part of the decree, the government will take it upon itself to act as a watchdog, making sure regions comply with EU norms and spend funds they are allocated, the sources said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Mogherini Vows Marines Return After Latorre Ischemia

Rifleman hospitalized in New Delhi after losing consciousness

(ANSA) — Rome, September 1 — Bringing the two Italian marines detained in India back to Italy remains an Italian government priority, Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said Monday after one of the pair was hospitalized with a condition similar to a mild stroke. “I feel close to Massimiliano Latorre and I wish with all my heart that he can get back as soon as possible,” Mogherini said in a statement.

She reiterated that message to Paola Moschetti, companion of marine Massimiliano Latorre who has been hospitalized in New Delhi, the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Doctors said Latorre has been responding well to treatment in the neurology department after he lost consciousness due to a mild cerebral ischemia, or restriction of blood supply.

“As it has always been in these months, we follow the case of the two marine riflemen every day, with the aim of bringing them back to Italy: it is a priority for the government,” added Mogherini who on Saturday became the European Union high commissioner for foreign policy.

Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti flew to New Delhi to check on his condition and to show support for Latorre’s family members who are with him in India. Doctors said they were “pleased with how he responded to the first treatment,” according to a statement from the Italian defence ministry.

Latorre and Salvatore Girone are living at the Italian embassy in New Delhi after being detained in connection with the shooting deaths of two Indian fishermen during an anti-piracy mission in 2012.

Latorre and Girone are accused of killing fishermen Valentine (aka Gelastine) and Ajesh Binki after allegedly mistaking them for pirates and opening fire on their fishing trawler while guarding the privately owned Italian-flagged oil-tanker MT Enrica Lexie off the coast of Kerala on February 15, 2012.

Rome has protested a long series of delays in the case, which has caused major diplomatic friction between the countries.

The frustration was displayed Monday by Giulia Latorre, daughter of Massimiliano, in an angry post on her Facebook page.

“What great news…My father has had an ischemia. Sadly there is never good news, only sh***y news,” wrote Giulia Latorre.

“You, s***y Italy, let them stay there a bit more”, she said, referring to the length of time that has passed with no resolution in the case.

Italy successfully fought to ensure that the Indian government took the death penalty off the table in the case and that it dropped the application of a severe anti-terrorism, anti-piracy law, which it said would have equated Italy with a terrorist state. Nicola Latorre, Democratic Party (PD) chairman of the Senate defence committee, blamed the “unjust detention in India” of the two marines for creating overwhelming stress for the pair and contributing to Massimiliano Latorre’s illness.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Jihad Comes to Europe

by Guy Millière

Belgian security services have estimated that the number of European jihadists in Syria may be over 4000.

European leaders have directed their nastiest comments against the Jewish state, none of them has asked why Palestinian organizations in Gaza put their stockpiles of weapons in hospitals, homes, schools and mosques, or their command and control centers at the bottom of large apartment buildings or underneath hospitals. None of them has even said that Hamas is a terrorist organization despite its genocidal charter.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

More Italians Than Russians Buying Luxury London Properties

Snatched up 6.7% of total between January and July

(ANSA) — Rome, August 27 — Italians have surpassed Arabs and Russians to become the lead buyers of high-end homes in London’s elite neighborhoods, Knight Frank real estate consultants reported Wednesday. Italians made up 6.7% of overall luxury home purchases in the first seven months of the year, Knight Frank said.

Citizens of the Bel Paese favored properties in the upscale Chelsea, Knightsbridge, and South Kensington areas, spending an average of 5.5 million euros each, according to the consultants.

The French followed with 4.1% of purchases, while the Russians, who led the pack a year ago, came in third.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Muslim Rape Gangs: The Disturbing Role of Britain’s Leading Child Welfare Charity

by James Delingpole

Among the more nauseating spectacles of the Rotherham child rape scandal has been the squirming evasion and shameless attempts at face-saving by the various authority figures whose job it supposedly was to prevent such horrors happening.

One of them is a man named Javed Khan. He is the head of Britain’s largest children’s charity Barnardo’s which now stands accused of having known about the Muslim rape gang problem for well over a decade — but which chose to do next to nothing to confront it.

In an ugly interview with Sky News, Khan infuriated viewers — and his normally mild-mannered interviewer Eamonn Holmes — with his mealy-mouthed evasiveness.

Not only did Khan refuse to call for the resignation of South Yorkshire Police Commissioner (and former head of Rotherham Council Children’s Services) Shaun Wright but it often seemed as though he was trying to make excuses for the various institutions which allowed mass child rape to occur on their watch.

Holmes could barely contain his fury.

“You’re the expert in the field. You’re the man who people turn to when all else fails. Your charity’s job is to protect children, to protect the innocence of those children. I put it to you, Mr Khan, no one else has bothered: are you going to fail them as well?”

Khan once again evaded the question. As well he might — for the children’s charity he represents is almost as heavily compromised by this scandal as Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police.

We know this thanks to Peter McLoughlin’s detailed report Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery. A whole section of it is devoted to Barnardo’s.

Barnardo’s, founded in 1866, is Britain’s largest children’s charity, with annual revenues of nearly £250 million — most of it, via the government, from the pockets of the UK taxpayer. In other words it has more than enough money, campaigning muscle and political clout to make its influence felt on socially important issues. Apparently, though, the fact that Muslim gangs around Britain have been grooming and sexually abusing often underage white girls (and Sikh girls) was not considered by Barnardo’s sufficiently serious to merit blowing the whistle…

[JP note: For more on Javed Khan see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2546033/Head-government-backed-charity-took-armed-gang-settle-long-running-land-row-Pakistan.html ]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Netherlands: Six Children Taken Into Care Over Parents’ Jihad Plans: Officials

Officials have cancelled the passports of two couples from Huizen in Noord-Holland and taken their children into care because of fears they were planning to head to Syria, officials said on Saturday.

There are strong indications the two couples, aged 30 and 31 and 32 and 34, were planning to travel to the Middle East to join the IS militia, the public prosecution department told a news conference.

One couple had an eight-month old girl, the other five boys up to nine years in age. The children have been taken ‘to a place of safety’ but have not been kept together, the Telegraaf reported. The children were all born in the Netherlands and have Dutch nationality. Their passports have also been cancelled.

Justice minister Ivo Opstelten said on Friday the passports of 33 people suspected of wanting to join terror groups had been cancelled.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Portugal: Special Report — The Billion-Dollar Fall of the House of Espirito Santo

Aug 29 (Reuters) — On June 9, with his 150-year-old Portuguese corporate dynasty close to collapse, patriarch Ricardo Espirito Santo Salgado made a desperate attempt to save it.

So far, shareholders and investors in the family companies and Banco Espirito Santo have lost more than 10 billion euros, making this one of Europe’s biggest corporate collapses ever.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Rotherham’s — And England’s — Shame

By John O’Sullivan

The Muslim men who tortured more than 1,400 girls are criminals.

So are the authorities who covered it up.

We often read or hear from the media that a nation is “shocked” or “horrified” by the revelation of some crime or government scandal. It is almost never true. At best, most people are disapproving or mildly interested in the shocking news. Since Tuesday afternoon, however, Britain has felt real shock and horror over the report that 1,400 young women in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham had been groomed, raped, prostituted, trafficked, and brutally abused in almost every possible way by a criminal gang for the last 16 years. In addition, the authorities — which in this case are the local government authority, the police, and the child-protection services — had been repeatedly informed of these crimes but had dismissed the reports as false or exaggerated and taken no action to investigate, halt, and punish them…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Samurai Sword Attack at Norway Wedding

Wedding guests in the town of Skedsmo, central Norway, watched in horror as two men were attacked with a Samurai sword on Sunday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Teenager Held at French Airport for Trying to Join Islamist Rebels

Arrested girl (16) suspected of being en route to Syria ‘for jihad’

A 16-year-old girl suspected of trying to reach Syria to join Islamist rebels has been arrested in the southeastern city of Nice, France’s interior minister said today.

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement that border police at Nice airport arrested the girl on Saturday, before her departure “for jihad”.

A man around the age of 20 was later arrested on suspicion of being her recruiter and of purchasing her airline ticket to Turkey, in order to reach Syria.

Thousands of foreign fighters, many from western Europe, have joined extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria and Iraq, according to US and European intelligence estimates.

France has made clamping down on radicalised Islamist cells a priority, but has not been able to stem a wave of its citizens and others, some as young as 14, from leaving France to join the Syrian civil war.

It estimates that approximately 800 of its citizens have left to join Islamist groups in Syria.

Mr Cazeneuve unveiled measures in April to try to prevent young French Muslims and others from becoming radicalised, including a hotline set up for parents to signal suspicious behaviour in their children.

Authorities have received nearly 300 tips via the hotline, the statement said, 45 percent of which involved women or young girls.

The family of the girl arrested on Saturday was not aware of her intentions, Cazeneuve said.

France’s Muslim community is the biggest in the European Union, at 5 million.

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

UK: Carswell Gives MPs the Hump

by Black Dog

Chief Whip Michael Gove’s orders to Tory MPs not to heap abuse on Ukip defector Douglas Carswell came too late for one grandee.

‘I won’t hear a word about Carswell being a swivel-eyed loony, not a bit of it,’ said the MP, straight-faced, before chortling: ‘It’s better than that, the bloody man looks like a camel on crack.’…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: More Than 100 Teenage Girls in Rotherham Gave Birth to Their Rapists’ Children

‘Abuser told me to abort baby or I’d be killed… but when I fell pregnant again he let me keep it’: Child abuse victim reveals how she became pregnant twice by same attacker

A Rotherham child abuse victim has told how her attacker warned she would be killed if she refused to have an abortion — at the age of 14.

The woman, now in her 30s, revealed how she then fell pregnant to the same abuser for the second time just six months later and on that occasion was allowed to keep the child.

Her story comes as it was revealed that as many as 100 teenage girls may have had babies after falling pregnant to their abusers.

According to the Sunday Mirror, the victim, known only as Jane, was targeted as a schoolgirl in Rotherham while she was living with her parents.

She described how her attacker, who was in his 20s, was driving around in his car looking for potential victims when he saw her in the street.

After ‘chatting her up’ and buying her food and clothes, Jane admitted she felt ‘flattered’ by the attention.

In the weeks that followed he would sneak in through her bedroom window and have sex with her while her parents slept in the next room.

She told the newspaper that she found out she was pregnant while she was at school — but on telling her attacker, he ordered her to get rid of the baby.

‘He told me they would do a DNA test and he would be jailed. He said his friends would find me and kill me.’

Despite her desperate parents informing social services, she claims no action was taken…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Rotherham is Not an Isolated Incident

Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale who helped expose the Cyril Smith scandal, warns that similar abuse is taking place across the country

The ball bounces high in the shadows off the gable end and a handful of kids chase it down the road. Under the stairway to the flats nearby, half a dozen teenage girls lie sprawled on the concrete, sheltering from the slate-grey drizzle. They watch the ball ping back up the street, strung out in the fading evening light, as the acrid smell of cannabis hangs overhead. Further down the road, a group of lads in hoodies mill around the off-licence asking passers-by if they can buy a few cans of strong lager for them…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Scandal: Labour Home Office to be Probed Over What Tony Blair’s Government Knew — and When

The extent to which the former Labour government tried to play down criminality and extremism among British Muslims for fear of undermining community cohesion is revealed today, as the fallout from the Rotherham sex abuse scandal continued…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Rotherham: Yvette Cooper Calls for Change to Law After Abuse Scandal

Shadow home secretary says Labour would introduce mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse

Mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse would be introduced by a Labour government to try to prevent a repeat of the Rotherham scandal and encourage a cultural shift where allegations from victims are treated seriously…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Revealed: Islamic State’s ‘Banker’ Was Director of a Private Muslim Primary School in Birmingham

One of the Islamic State terror group’s key financier was director of a Muslim faith school in Birmingham, it emerged today.

Prominent Islamic cleric Dr Nabil al-Awadi, a naturalised Kuwaiti, was partly resident in the UK until last year, living in Brixton, south London.

Until February 2013, the Sunni was a director of the independent Al-Birr school in Nechells, Birmingham, which was founded in seven years ago.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Senior Muslims Call for Women to Have More Say in Communities

Rotherham abuse scandal highlights the need for female leadership in Muslim organisations

More women should be appointed to the highest levels of Britain’s Islamic organisations to help prevent repetition of the child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham, according to senior Muslim figures…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Seven Children Arrested Over Death of Man Found With Serious Head Injury as Police Launch Murder

Seven children have been arrested following the death of a man with a serious head injury. Warren Free, 42, was found injured at an address in Spalding, Lincolnshire, on Thursday. He died at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham the following day. Police are treating his death as murder…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UKIP Set for Crushing Clacton Win

David Cameron and the Tories’ electoral hopes are about to take a long walk on Clacton’s short pier. A poll in the Mail on Sunday today has Ukip on 64% and the Tories on 20%, a lead that suggests this contest is over before the writ has even been moved.

So, Ukip are going to get their first MP. This means that the fracture on the right of British politics is a lot closer to becoming permanent, handing Labour the kind of inherent electoral advantage that the Tories enjoyed in the 1980s. This morning, the next election is Ed Miliband’s to lose…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

82 Pct of Egyptians Approve of El-Sisi’s Performance: Baseera

In a poll carried out by the Egyptian Centre for Public Opinion Research, eight percent of Egyptians said they disapprove of El-Sisi’s performance, while 10 percent are undecided.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Caroline Glick: The Unfinished War

The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire.

The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.

Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas.

Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, according to Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to enable Hamas to credibly claim victory.

According to Amos Harel, senior IDF commanders want Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands for open borders with Israel and for the steady transfer of funds to Hamas’s treasury.

Harel quoted a senior IDF source who said that if Israel doesn’t give in to Hamas’s demands for open borders, Hamas will renew its attacks at the end of September.

In the senior commander’s words, “If we can assist [Hamas] by expanding fishing grounds and easing restrictions on border crossings of people and goods into and from Israel, this will help maintain the quiet.”

So to delay the next Hamas onslaught against us, the IDF is lobbying the government to surrender to Hamas…

           — Hat tip: Caroline Glick [Return to headlines]
 

Has the Third Gaza War Between Israel and Hamas Ended?

A Middle East Round Table Discussion with Dan Diker, Mike Bates, Eric Tokajer and Jerry Gordon

Tokajer: How do the Israelis view the United States and the rest of the world the situation from their perspective? They seem to only identify the conflict going on in Israel. For instances, we have the Egyptians, the United Arab Emirates that are involved in Libya now. We have ISIS all over Syria and Iraq. We have these Islamic battles going on with hundreds of thousands being killed. Contrast that with hundreds and low thousands being killed in the Israel conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

Diker: The Israeli body politic feels very much alone at this juncture. There is a strong feeling here in Israel that the American people and Congress embrace the Israeli people. There is, to be a little bit cynical about it, probably more support for Israel in the American Congress than there is in the Knesset if you take all of the parties together. That’s just an attempt at humor, to express an idea that’s very profound in Israel. They really do feel embraced by the American people. But on the world stage there is a completely disproportionate view of the world towards Israel versus the Palestinians than the much larger problem of radical Islamic terror in the world. No one can quite understand why people in the West refuse to understand that Hamas, the Islamic State formerly ISIS, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran are all the same in terms of their ultimate goals. That is to kill Americans, kill Israelis, kill Christians, kill Jews, and kill anybody that is not a Muslim in their image. We do not understand why people are not making the connection to radical Islamic terror and have isolated the Palestinian/ Israeli Conflict as if it were some other sort of conflict other than the Jihad in Gaza. It is the same Jihad that attacked the United States on September 11th and twenty-nine times after that trying to penetrate the borders of the United States…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

600kg Saudi Man Forklifted to Hospital

A Saudi man weighing 610 kilograms was forklifted to hospital on Monday for medical treatment at the expense of the monarch to reduce his weight.

Khaled Mohsin Shairi was flown from his southwestern hometown of Jizan to Riyadh on a specially-equipped plane.

It posted a picture of overweight Shairi being lifted on a forklift out of the plane on arrival in the capital.

Acting on orders of King Abdullah, the health ministry had to acquire a specially-made bed and a crane to transfer Shairi from his second-floor apartment, SPA state news agency reported.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

British Man, Saudi Wife Attacked by Religious Police — Video

Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the religious police, has launched an investigation into a physical assault by some of its members on a British national who was with his Saudi wife in the capital Riyadh.

The investigation was ordered by the Commission president Shaikh Abdul Lateef Bin Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh after a short video clip went viral on social networks showing a Commission member pouncing on the Briton in front of a mall in Riyadh.

In the nine-second clip, the British man, identified by pan-Arab daily Al Hayat as Peter Haworth, could be heard shouting “This is my wife.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Did Assad and Maliki Facilitate the Rise of the Islamic State? An Interview With M. Zuhdi Jasser and Sherkoh Abbas

Jasser: Jerry, you want to start us off on a discussion on Syria?

Gordon: I want to focus on what is occurring in the Northeastern quadrant of Syria that is very dangerous. It is the return in massive force of a new and revitalized Islamic State formerly ISIS once a minor portion of Al-Qaeda that has vanquished Al-Qaeda itself. ISIS or IS has really conducted a barbaric jihad conquering large swaths of Syria and Iraq ejecting Christians and slaughtering Muslim opponents. Who aided the launch of ISIS in Syria and why has it emerged so rapidly as a major threat to the region and the West?

Abbas: It did not start under ISIS first. In fact the first group was recruited by Assad and Iran to attack American troops in Iraq. They were successful in harming Americans and derailing Americans in Iraq by sending suicide bombers and killing Americans. This is one of their tactics they used by Assad’s regime. When Americans put some pressure on Assad about what was occurring in Iraq a lot of these Islamic terrorists were put in prison in Syria. Later on when the Syrian Revolution started, where the people wanted a democracy, freedom, Assad released those terrorists to hijack Syrian revolution. The early people in the Syrian revolution wanted change and democracy. Believe me, none of those were terrorists. None of them were Al-Qaeda or ISIS groups. They were basically people who wanted democracy, freedom and change. They wanted to have a different culture of change and be friends with the West. They were seeking a better relationship with neighbors. However Assad’s regime was very clever. With Iran’s help they releasing these Salafist terrorists, criminals, others to discredit the revolution and basically label it as an Al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Those people were working on behalf of Assad who allowed them to rob and kill in those areas. Their job was to infiltrate the Free Syrian Army and the revolution to send a message to the West that alternative to Assad is much worse. They succeeded by not allowing any funding to go or any help to the democratic groups like Zuhdi and myself. Basically all the help went to radicals. Eventually some of those who got so big that they started to take over the oil field in the Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and Hasaka areas becoming more powerful than Assad. Maliki wanted per Iran’s plan to use similar scenarios in Iraq to duplicate what Assad was doing in Syria…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

‘Halal Wine’ With 24-Carat Edible Gold Leaf Released in Dubai

A new product dubbed as sparkling “halal wine” has been reportedly released in Dubai featuring a 24-carat edible gold leaf to add a glittering effect.

The “Lussory” wine is said to be completely halal because it contains no alcohol, according to the UAE-based 7days newspaper.

“Lussory is a 100 percent halal product with 0.0 per cent alcohol content,” 7Days quoted Lootah Premium Foods as saying.

The grapes used to produce the Lussory halal wine came from the vineyards of La Mancha in Spain, the newspaper added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Hezbollah: ISIS Wants Lebanon

BEIRUT: The threat of ISIS to Lebanon cannot be underestimated, a Hezbollah official warned Sunday, stressing that occupying the country was part of the group’s expansionist plan.

“The terrorist threat on Lebanon is actual, real and continuous,” said Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s executive council. “And whoever doubts or underestimates (this threat) is either ignorant or negligent, and he harms the high national interest of Lebanon.”

Speaking at a ceremony at the southern village Shaqra to honor a Hezbollah martyr killed last Sunday, Kaouk accused “whoever denies Hezbollah’s role in protecting” Lebanon of being “oblivious to the truth.”

“ISIS’s decision has been announced. Their pretended slogan is to create the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, which includes Lebanon,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Iraqi Forces Break Through to Besieged Town of Amerli

The Iraqi military says its forces have broken a siege by jihadist militants surrounding the town of Amerli. It is the biggest military success for Baghdad since a jihadist-led offensive began in June.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

IS in Retreat as Kurdish, Iraqi Forces Advance to Amerli With US Air Support

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurdish and Iraqi forces fighting to lift a two-month siege of Amerli by the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) were swiftly advancing on the Shiite Turkmen town on Sunday and had the militants on retreat.

The joint, three-pronged advance toward Amerli began Saturday, and was backed by US airstrikes on the outskirts of the town on Sunday.

IS armies have surrounded Amerli for the past two months, cutting off the estimated 20,000 population from food, water and electricity. Reports from inside paint a shocking picture of a slowly starving population…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic State Threatens Coexistence Even Among Muslims

Jihadist militias are increasingly sectarian in their actions. Attacking shared religious symbols, like the tomb of Jonah and the shrine of Saint George in Mosul, means destroying cultural, historical and social bridges. Conflict is not only inter-confessional but is also increasingly intra-confessional within Islam, between Sunnis and Shiites.

Beirut (AsiaNews) — The crazy jihadist project, whose aim is the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, could also bring to an end to the age-old traditional coexistence between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The killings, rapes, and attacks by Islamist militias are in fact increasingly sectarian. In addition to Christians and other non-Muslim minorities, Muslims are affected as well, divided as they are between Sunnis and Shias.

As Mideast experts point out, it is no accident that the Islamic State has targeted and destroyed most holy places and places of worship rather than tourist attractions and archaeological sites of great historical and cultural interest.

In Iraq and throughout the Middle East, holy places have long been a place of tolerance and peaceful coexistence. They include the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah in Mosul — which Muslims sometimes revere even more than Christians — and the Shrine of Saint George, both of which were destroyed as part of the mad Islamist plan.

In order to destroy coexistence, Islamists have struck people and sites symbolising religious and cultural integration. Saint George for instance is a prophet for Muslims and a saint for Christians, a symbol of union between the two religions.

Similarly, the Lebanese branch of al Nusra, a group linked to the al-Qaeda terror network operating in Syria, has released Sunni soldiers whilst threatening to behead Shia hostages. The group said it was prepared to execute Lebanese Shia soldiers should Hizbollah actively participate in the war. At least 3,000 jihadists are actively seeking recruits in Lebanon.

The split within Islam between Sunnis and Shias is growing at the speed of the advancing army of the Islamic State, which took advantage of a power vacuum — particularly in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein — to boost its influence.

Sunni-Shia tensions are not only a serious threat locally, but could affect global peace and security. Fanning the confessional flames among Muslims also means challenging the very idea of nationhood in many Mideast countries like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

Increasingly, states and governments appear weak, with local authorities divided. As millions of displaced people flee lands they inhabited for thousands of years, one of the greatest humanitarian crises ever appears to be unfolding before our eyes.

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

Lewis: ISIS Has Strong Bureaucratic Structure, Likely Repeatable Processes

Jessica Lewis, research director at the Institute for the Study of War and former Army intelligence officer, joined Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday to discuss the threat posed by ISIS and how the terror group’s bureaucratic, corporate structure makes them even more dangerous.

Lewis noted that ISIS has the ability to document the military actions of all its local organizations through a strong bureaucracy, which is very important for a group that is involved in many different regional campaigns.

Additionally, ISIS is very sophisticated in its use of social media to recruit new members. Lewis pointed out that the public relations arm is one of their most developed organizations within ISIS, enabling their messages to spread globally.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

NBC’s Richard Engel: Military Commanders ‘Apoplectic’ Over Obama’s ‘No Strategy’ Remarks

NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel claimed military commanders are “apoplectic” over President Barack Obama’s dithering on ISIS and admission that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with them.

Engel spoke Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” where he was asked by Andrea Mitchell about the “president’s reluctance to take the fight against ISIS to Syria.”

“Well, I spoke to military commanders, I speak to former officials, and they are apoplectic,” he explained. “The think that this is a clear and present danger. They think something needs to be done.”

[…]

[Return to headlines]
 

Saudi Arabia: Shock as ISIS Slogan Found on School Walls in Riyadh

The residents of al-Naseem neighborhood in eastern Riyadh, were shocked when they saw the slogans of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the walls of some schools, Al-Hayat daily reported.

A number of residents who spoke on condition of anonymity said they suspect that a group of young men were behind it.

The young men did not look religious but used to stay up till late on the streets near the schools, the residents said.

Sulaiman Al-Battah, sociologist, blamed social media for publishing inaccurate news reports and deviant ideas.

He said: “Our society is very passionate about Islam and Muslims. “That is why it is easy to take advantage of young men’s feelings, especially in the absence of awareness campaigns.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Italian State Secret That Could Aid the Kurds

Thanks to a hidden supply of weapons seized from a Russian arms trafficker 20 years ago, Italy may be able to quickly help Kurdish fighters as they battle against the ISIS jihadist terrorists

So far, it has mostly been the United States supporting Kurdish efforts against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. In northern Iraq, U.S. aircraft have delivered 15,000 weapons to Kurdish fighters over the past four weeks.

But the Italian Parliament has just approved a plan to send weapons to Kurdish militants to help them in their fight against ISIS jihadists. The first Italian aircraft could participate in an airlift to Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous region, this week.

Massoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, has explicitly requested “modern weaponry” and “air cover” from the West — even to the papal envoy last week. Kurdish fighters — called the Peshmerga — particularly want small arms, shoulder rockets and plenty of ammunition, as they are hastily equipping volunteers rushing against the ISIS advance.

Yet there may be some technical issues along the way. “The Kurdish Peshmerga have always used Soviet-manufactured weapons,” says Gianandrea Gaiani, a military expert. The problem is that NATO weaponry standards are much different than those of the former Soviet bloc. Even the ammunition is incompatible. Italy can much more easily give helmets, flak jackets, bomb protection, night vision goggles, and laser targeting systems.

Thousands of hidden weapons

But if Kurds really need Kalashnikovs, perhaps Italy is in the perfect position to help.

Twenty years ago, Italy participated in a seizure operation at sea during the Balkan war. The “Jadran Express,” a transport ship coming from Ukraine and traveling towards Split, in Croatia, was intercepted and taken to the southern Italian port of Taranto.

It turns out that the freighter was transporting a massive arsenal: crates with 30,000 AK-47s, 400 9K111 Fagot missiles with associated ramp launches, 5,000 Katyusha rockets, 11,000 anti-tank rockets, and 32 million munitions.

Authorities arrested Russian oligarch Alexander Zukhov, a billionaire with a Sardinian villa, for the haul. His grandfather was the legendary Marshal Georgy Zukhov of the Red Army.

After 10 years on trial, Zukhov and other defendants were acquitted. The defense argued that the weaponry load had never entered Italian territorial waters. The Supreme Court eventually acknowledged that Italy had no criminal jurisdiction to penalize arms trafficking outside its borders.

A state secret

These 2,000 tons of weapons were confiscated and, despite a judicial destruction order, the load remained stored underground on the Isola della Maddalena, in northern Sardinia…

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

Turkey’s Aselsan Increases Profit by 100%

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, AUGUST 28 — Aselsan, a leading Turkish defense systems producer, claims to have increased its net profit by 100% in the first six months of this year over the same period a year ago, as the company’s order book reached 9.4 billion US dollars. According to its activity report of 2014, as Anadolu Agency reports, the company has made 199 million Turkish lira (USD 92 million) profit in the half year so far. Earlier this month, Aselsan climbed up on a list of the world’s top 100 defense giants, compiled by the prestigious U.S. weekly, Defense News. Based on 2013 figures, this year’s list ranks military electronics concern Aselsan 67th, compared to 74th last year.

Aselsan’s 2013 defense revenue was slightly over USD 1 billion, up from USD 862 million a year ago.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Turkish PM Wants Peace With Kurds, EU Membership by 2023

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, SEPTEMBER 1 — Peace in Turkish Kurdistan and EU membership by 2023 are the two main aims of the new Turkish government’s program presented on Monday to the parliament by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, appointed on Thursday by newly sworn-in head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Davutoglu noted that the new government aims to get the parliament to pass a new constitution. Erdogan has repeatedly said that he would like to see a presidential system brought in, but his AKP party does not have the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament. The next parliamentary elections are slated for June 2015.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Putin Calls for Talks on ‘Statehood’ For Eastern Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appealed for immediate “substantive talks” on the future status of eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, separatists in the country’s east are preparing an offensive on a major port city.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

In Pictures: India’s ‘Untouchable’ Scavengers

Rights group Human Rights Watch has called on the Indian government to end “manual scavenging” — the practice of cleaning human waste by low-caste communities — in a new report.

The practice is banned by law in India, but it is rampant and activists say tens of thousands are involved in this demeaning work which opens them to prejudice and abuse.

The report calls on the government “to ensure that local officials enforce the laws prohibiting this discriminatory practice”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Military Members Given Major Posts in New Thai Cabinet

Thailand’s coup leader and newly appointed premier Prayuth Chan-ocha has received royal endorsement for his cabinet. The junta chief has awarded top posts to senior military officials.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Alleged Bomb Plot Foiled at Manila Airport, State-Run Media Report

(CNN) — Manila’s international airport is on high alert after authorities foiled an alleged bomb plot Monday, state-run media in the Philippines report.

Counter-terror agents acting on a tip interrupted a group of men allegedly assembling improvised explosive devices in a white truck parked outside a terminal at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, said the Philippines News Agency, or PNA.

The agency initially said four suspects had been arrested but later revised the number of arrests to three. The white truck had been parked outside terminal three of the airport when it was intercepted about 1:45 a.m. local time (1:45 p.m. Sunday ET), PNA said.

The agents from the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation also seized firearms from the men, it said.

The names of the suspects have not yet been released, and investigators are trying to establish who was behind the alleged plot and their motive. The investigation is continuing.

Rebel groups in the Philippines have been fighting to establish an independent Muslim homeland in the south of the predominantly Christian country.

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]
 

Hong Kong Democracy Activists Protest After Beijing Rejects Free Elections

Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have vowed to embark on a campaign of civil disobedience, after Beijing announced rules giving it control over candidates in the territory’s next leadership election.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Japan to Start Work on First Long-Distance Maglev Line

New technology will slash travelling time from Tokyo to Nagoya from 90 minutes by conventional bullet train to just 40 minutes. And Japan has high hopes for its world-leading technology as an export.

Considered the next-generation of long-distance, mass-transit vehicles, the maglev uses magnetic pulses to propel the carriages, doing away with the need for wheels, axles and bearings.

Maglev projects have been put into operation previously — Shanghai put its Transrapid system into operation in 2004 and similar vehicles are used at airports in South Korea and Beijing — although Japan is regarded as the world leader in the technology and nothing on the scale of the Tokyo-Nagoya route has ever before been attempted before.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

North Korea Owes Sweden €300m for 1,000 Volvos it Stole 40 Years Ago — and is Still Using

North Korea’s foremost trade debt to the western world is bizarre even by North Korean standards. Each time the administration misses a payment, as it has done every year for the past 40 years, we are reminded of one of the most unexpected political twists of the last century: Kim Il-sung scamming Sweden out of 1,000 Volvo 144 sedans.

It is a story that is just as strange as it sounds — and, in 2014, it shows how North Korea’s grand aspirations and increasingly bellicose rhetoric may founder on a chronic inability to assess its own financial ability. Judging by emerging tourist footage and rogue documentaries, it may also be an unexpected testament to the durability of Swedish engineering.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

When Chinese Children Forget How to Write

There’s no Chinese alphabet. Instead, each word is represented by a character, or a compound of two or three characters.

A respected Chinese dictionary lists more than 85,000 characters. An estimated 7,000 are in daily use.

But the knowledge of how to compose those characters is in danger.

All over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerised help.

Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list.

The result? It’s possible to recognise characters without remembering how to write them.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Australia Unite With US: RAAF Aircraft to Deliver Military Equipment to Help Against Barbaric Islamic State Terrorists

Australia has answered a request from the United States’ Obama Administration to supply vital military equipment to parts of the war-torn middle east in the fight against the Islamic State.

In a multi-national effort, Australian war planes will deliver arms and munitions to Kurdish fighters battling militants in Iraq. Addressing reporters in Canberra on Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: ‘this is about what is right for our country and what is best for our world’…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Al-Shabab Militants Attack Somali Intelligence Headquarters

Militant group al-Shabab has bombed Somalia’s intelligence headquarters in the capital, Mogadishu. The rebels were trying to reach a high-security prison within the facility.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Thousands Flee Boko Haram Attacks in Nigeria for Cameroon, Police Say

Sustained Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria’s far northeast have forced thousands of people from their homes, swamping towns in the north of neighbouring Cameroon, authorities said on Sunday.

“We’ve been flooded here in Mora by Cameroonians and Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram,” a police officer in the northern town told AFP on condition of anonymity. “The day before yesterday, there were already more than 10,000 people in Mora. Not a day goes by without more people coming.”

The United Nations’ humanitarian office (OCHA) said on August 5 that Boko Haram attacks have forced nearly 650,000 people from their homes in the northeast states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

U.S. Military Conducts Operation in Somalia, Pentagon Says

(CNN) — U.S. military forces conducted an operation Monday against the Al-Shabaab network in Somalia, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

“We are assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information as and when appropriate,” he said.

No other information was immediately available.

The United States designated Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group, as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008. It has targeted Al-Shabaab leaders in Somalia at least twice in the past year.

2013: Somali Pres. on Al-Shabaab Also Monday, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) announced that military forces had liberated several important towns from the terrorists’ grip, in the Middle Shabelle and Hiiran regions…

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]
 

Asylum Seekers or Welfare? Swedish Election Breaks Immigration Taboo

(Reuters) — A Swedish anti-immigration party is likely to score its best ever general election result this month, as a growing number of voters question the cost of the country’s open door asylum policy.

Opinion polls show that a majority in Sweden, where 16 percent of the population is foreign-born, still backs the liberal regime which over the decades has welcomed refugees from Chile and Yugoslavia to Somalia and Syria.

An absolute political consensus in support of the policy, however, is no more in a nation divided over record numbers of asylum seekers as Sweden’s cradle-to-grave welfare system comes under strain.

Jan van Eyck

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy Rescues Almost 4,000 Migrants, Many Children

Arrivals being sent to reception centres across Italy

(ANSA) — Rome, September 1 — Almost 4,000 migrants arrived in Italy over the weekend, including one ship bearing as many as 100 children and at least two pregnant women among its 1,044 passengers, authorities said Monday.

A navy frigate brought that group to the port of Salerno after rescuing the migrant vessel in the Strait of Sicily under Italy’s search-and-rescue operation Mare Nostrum. Authorities said the migrants will be transferred to accommodation centers in regions all over the country including Liguria, Piemonte, Lazio, Tuscany, Veneto, Umbria, Friuli, Basilicata and Abruzzo. Many of the total arriving between Friday and Sunday evening sailed from North Africa on rickety vessels, keeping Italian rescue vessels active in finding migrants making the perilous crossing.

Last week, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano announced that Italy’s Mare Nostrum, which was set up almost one year ago as a temporary measure, will be replaced by an expanded version of European Union border control agency Frontex.

The Italian operation has cost nine million euros a month, taking up the bulk of the Navy’s budget.

Italy had been calling for the EU to step in to shoulder some of the burden.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

New Paper on ‘The [Warming] Pause’ Says it is 19 Years at Surface and 16-26 Years at the Lower Troposphere.

“HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series” [pdf] — from the Open Journal of Statistics:

The IPCC does not estimate the duration of the hiatus, but it is typically regarded as having extended for 15 to 20 years. While the HadCRUT4 record clearly shows numerous pauses and dips amid the overall upward trend, the ending hiatus is of particular note because climate models project continuing warming over the period. Since 1990, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose from 354 ppm to just under 400 ppm, a 13% increase. [1] reported that of the 114 model simulations over the 15-year interval 1998 to 2012, 111 predicted warming. [5] showed a similar mismatch in comparisons over a twenty year time scale, with most models predicting 0.2°C — 0.4°C/decade warming. Hence there is a need to address two questions: 1) how should the duration of the hiatus be measured? 2) Is it long enough to indicate a potential inconsistency between observations and models? This paper focuses solely on the first question.

[…]

[See link to Journal and to Dr. McKittrick’s website at the URL, above. Also find there several good graphs.]

[NOTE: Do not expect this evidence to change the “consensus”. The climate change consensus business has too much money invested in its own theories. Truth is the casualty.]

[Return to headlines]
 

See the Secret, Tiny Bedrooms Flight Attendants Use on Long-Haul Aircraft

Turns out that on Boeing’s 777 and 787 airliners there is a secret stairway that leads to a tiny set of windowless bedrooms for flight attendants and pilots. After all, they also need sleep on journeys than can take 18 hours or more.

Passengers aren’t allowed up there, and few people know they even exist.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

What Would Happen if You Shot a Gun in Space?

Fires can’t burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.

The only difference between pulling the trigger on Earth and in space is the shape of the resulting smoke trail. In space, “it would be an expanding sphere of smoke from the tip of the barrel,” said Peter Schultz an astronomer at Brown University who researches impact craters.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

3 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/1/2014

  1. Shadow Home Secretary says Labour would introduce mandatory reporting of child sexual assault. Is she kidding?????

    Too little and far too late, and absolutely clueless as to the real problem!

  2. @Muslim Rape Gangs: The Disturbing Role of Britain’s Leading Child Welfare Charity

    Not only did Khan refuse to call for the resignation of South Yorkshire Police Commissioner (and former head of Rotherham Council Children’s Services) Shaun Wright but it often seemed as though he was trying to make excuses for the various institutions which allowed mass child rape to occur on their watch.

    Holmes could barely contain his fury.

    Victim Support chief denies leading armed gang in Pakistan land dispute

    Victim Support receives £38 million a year from the Government, …

    “We’ve received testimonials from people who’ve been involved in mandatory work activity in Barnardo’s shops,” she said. “They’ve also been involved in the Youth Contract, a large component of which is workfare.”

    The coercive element of workfare and the mismanagement of that programme risks tens of thousands of young people being open to exploitation – an accident waiting to happen.

  3. How much will be too much? This Muslim gang rape scandel has a parallel here in the US, I hope…

    The advent of the tea party, of which I am not a member however I have been to a few of their rallies, is a pretty fascinating case. Our Democrat controlled Federal gov’t put forth a “stimulis” funding that absolutely shocked the middle class in the US.

    Mom and Dad were eating their dinner, after a full days work, in front of the TV when they learned of it. They put down their forks, went out to the garage and got some cardboard and made signs expressing their opinion. They then went out in their cheap polyester clothes (check out the pictures!) to the local gathering of like minded tax payers and PROTESTED! It appears that most of them had never before been to a political rally. They were compliant citizens that wanted to raise a family and get by. But this was too much.

    For having rocked the boat they have been called every name in the book, particularly by Democrats but also by Republicans. How dare you unwashed citizens disturb the graft and vote buying we have worked out BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES! Go back home and go back to sleep. Just make sure you send the money in every April 15th.

    Obamacare was a bridge too far even for the Republicans, and the Tea Party persisted. They are still vilified by the Dems And R’s for their temerity to state that they want things to change and they want the army of gov’t workers and regulators to reduce in size.

    I think the Tea party have made some progress to change the course of career Republicans in the US. They are being called obstuctionist. Well, yes, they are trying to obstruct career politicians who walk away with tens of millions of dollars in their pockets along with their family members and crony friends. Have you ever wondered how Harry Reid and Nancy Pelocy became so incredibly wealthy on a civil servant’s salary, let alone their children???

    My congressman, Timothy Bishop, is up on ethics violations and fraud charges and still it will be a tough race for his contender because Mr. Bishop has the entrenched money elite at his side. Jesse Jackson Jr. won re-election in a landslide EVEN THOUGH HE WAS IN THE MAYO CLINIC FOR BI-POLAR DISORDER AT THE TIME OF THE ELECTION! This tells me that Mom and Dad absolutely have to get off the couch and step out if we are to right this ship we call a country.

    You too in the UK can attempt to change the tide if you put down your forks, turn off the TV, make some signs and take to the streets. Are you fed up yet? What will be too much?

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