Police had to launch a baton charge against anti-immigration protesters who objected to the relocation of migrants to their neighborhood in a suburb of Rome. Meanwhile, protesters in a small town near the Italian city of Treviso successfully forced the authorities to relocate a group of migrants away from their area.
In other news, the Kurdish militia group YPG reports that mujahideen for the Islamic State launched poison gas attacks in a Kurdish area of Syria last month.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Papa Whiskey, Srdja Trifkovic, 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.
A central part of the deal requires that some 50 billion euros in Greek assets be escrowed in a liquidation fund:
Granted said fund will not be domiciled in Luxembourg as was originally envisioned, but Europe will still have control and first refusal rights over what are technically Greek properties, in the process Athens handing over about 25% of Greek GDP (and sovereignty) over the Brussels.
What are these assets? For the answer we go to the horse’s mouth, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who laid out the holdings of the proposed Greek privatization that would be sold off as follows: “it still is going to be an independent fund, valued at €50 billion which can be airplanes, airports, infrastructure and most certainly banks.”
In other words, Zero Hedge’s Tyler Durden notes, the country is going to be sold off piecemeal in order to satisfy its debt and its creditors. Further, none of the proceeds from the piecemeal sales will ever go to the Greek people; they will all go to Greece’s creditors.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Funeral Home in Agrinio Renamed ‘Schaeuble’
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JULY 14 — Greeks are known for their humor and their ability to maintain it even in the most difficult situations. When that humor combines with business ideas, then the result is even more spectacular. For example, as GreekReporter website writes, the owner of a funeral home in Agrinio, central Greece, found a way to make fun of Greece’s current financial situation and the blackmail that the country has received from its European partners, and especially Germany.
The funeral home owner took advantage of the political developments and rename his business after the relentless German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Over the last few days, the funeral home photographs have gone viral among social media users, mainly on Facebook and Twitter.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: 40,000 Workers Already Fired or Suspended
Capital controls delivered a blow to construction projects
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JULY 7 — The imposition in Greece of capital controls delivered the last blow to the public construction projects, leading to many cancellations, even in sites that operated normally until yesterday as Greek reporter website writes. The main reason behind the cancellations is that there is no way for the workers to be paid. It was estimated that over the last weekend thousands of workers were laid off or suspended until the political and economic situation of the country clears up. “We estimate that approximately 40,000 people have departed in the last days, as many construction sites have closed down, leading to layoffs and suspensions,” noted Zacharias Athoussakis, Chairman of SATE, an organization that represents medium and large engineering companies. At this point, it is certain that many of these jobs have been permanently lost, even if the construction sites reopen.
Meanwhile, issues have also arisen in the road transport sector, with many drivers complaining that they are stranded abroad, due to their inability to pay the cost of the trip in cash. An extraordinary meeting was held on July 6 between Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis and transport companies’ representatives, where they discussed the problems that hinder the sector’s operation. It was determined that the main problems arise from gas supplies, the drivers’ inability to pay tolls, ferry tickets and even the inability to pay for their stay in foreign countries. The estimated cost for operating expenses during a voyage between Greece and Central Europe, ranges from 4,000 to 5,000 euros, which cannot be paid in cash.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Bankers Blast EU, Say Rules Hamper Growth
Patuelli says Europe is bike with ‘unbalanced pedals’
(ANSA) — Rome, July 8 — Antonio Patuelli, the head of Italian banking association ABI, on Wednesday blasted the European Union, saying the rules it imposed on lenders hampered economic growth. “We don’t like this Europe, it’s not what we want,” Patuelli said in his annual report to the ABI assembly.
“It’s a bicycle with unbalanced pedals, with one part pushing for development and the other creating too many rules that are increasingly strict for banks’ capital… This complicates the recovery”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Interest in Greek Real Estate Up 194%, Agency Says
Domestic interest plummets while more foreigners eye property
(ANSA) — Rome, July 10 — The number of foreigners searching online for Greek real estate has soared in recent weeks, said Greek real estate group Spitogatos on Wednesday, as a debt crisis threatens to pull the country from the eurozone and international media continue to warn of a financial collapse.
In the period between June 11 to July 8, the highest spikes in property searches on the group’s four websites came from Russia, which increased 244%; alongside Italy, with a 194% increase; followed by France at 156% and Turkey at 105%, Spitogatos Group said.
“The increase in searches is strongly linked to the media exposure of Greece, occupying the front page of every newspaper in the world, the hype related to the on-going negotiations and the decline in the real estate demand and prices over the last few years,” said Dimitris Melachroinos, CEO of Spitogatos.gr.
Melachroinos said that over the last eight years, prices for Greek real estate have decreased by 50% on average and annual property sales transactions have dropped by more than 90%.
Another effect of the debt crisis has been a significant drop in domestic property searches on the group’s sites, where searches originating in Greece dropped 38% between June 11 and July 8.
Other big jumps came from countries that traditionally host large numbers of Greek immigrants, such as the United States, where searches climbed 114%; Australia, up 105%; and Canada, which rose 96%.
Melachroinos said the figures don’t necessarily translate directly to an increase in sales, however.
“The real estate industry does not work with impulsive purchases; regulation and socio-political environment is crucial, so we have to wait for the development of events,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: State Pension Fund for Clergy in the Red up to 115 Mn Euros
72% of clergy fund pensioners have a second retirement fund
(ANSA) — Rome, July 17 — The Italian state “clergy fund” that disburses pensions to 13,788 former priests is “constantly in deficit”, in the red from 2012-2015 for a total of between 56 and 115 million euros and with a capital deficit of more than 2.2 billion euros in 2015, said Italian tax agency INPS on Friday.
The “Open Doors” report by the agency said 72% of clergy fund pensioners also have a second retirement fund.
The clergy fund wasn’t affected by the controversial 2011 Fornero pensions reform that contained tough measures implicitly dictated by Brussels.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Bankruptcy of the Planet Accelerates — 24 Nations Are Currently Facing a Debt Crisis
There has been so much attention on Greece in recent weeks, but the truth is that Greece represents only a very tiny fraction of an unprecedented global debt bomb which threatens to explode at any moment. As you are about to see, there are 24 nations that are currently facing a full-blown debt crisis, and there are 14 more that are rapidly heading toward one. Right now, the debt to GDP ratio for the entire planet is up to an all-time record high of 286 percent, and globally there is approximately 200 TRILLION dollars of debt on the books. That breaks down to about $28,000 of debt for every man, woman and child on the entire planet. And since close to half of the population of the world lives on less than 10 dollars a day, there is no way that all of this debt can ever be repaid. The only “ solution” under our current system is to kick the can down the road for as long as we can until this colossal debt pyramid finally collapses in upon itself.
As we are seeing in Greece, you can eventually accumulate so much debt that there is literally no way out. The other European nations are attempting to find a way to give Greece a third bailout, but that is like paying one credit card with another credit card because virtually everyone in Europe is absolutely drowning in debt.
Even if some “ permanent solution” could be crafted for Greece, that would only solve a very small fraction of the overall problem that we are facing. The nations of the world have never been in this much debt before, and it gets worse with each passing day.
According to a new report from the Jubilee Debt Campaign, there are currently 24 countries in the world that are facing a full-blown debt crisis…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The IMF Formula for Taking Over a Nation
The formula involves printing money out of thin air, …Loan money to a country well beyond it’s ability to repay, preferably to corrupt oligarchs, … wait for the country to fall into financial trouble, then make a deal to transfer all the valuable infrastructure assets of that country to its international creditors.
Now the oligarchs own the highways, bridges, water treatment plants, ports, beaches and national monuments and can CHARGE the citizens RENT for their use and control every aspect. Legally.
Summed up in my favorite 3 minute video from “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
This is How Quickly Greece’s Future is Deteriorating
Some time ago University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales wrote about a “horrifying joke” he heard from his colleagues that asked, “What’s the difference between Japan and Greece?” The punchline was “three years.” Now, even that seems too long.
The International Monetary Fund’s July 14 forecast for Greece’s debt as a share of gross domestic product in 2017 was almost 200 percent, up substantially from its April estimate of 151.8 percent.
That also passes through an intermediate forecast of 169.7 percent made in the framework of a preliminary draft debt sustainability analysis by the IMF on June 26.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tusk: Europe Was ‘Close to Catastrophe’ Over Greece
European Council President Donald Tusk returned this week with a group of journalists from seven leading European newspapers, including Kathimerini, to the same room where on Sunday he held marathon talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and Monday to agree a new bailout deal.
In his interview, Tusk talks about how at 7 a.m. on Monday Greece’s eurozone membership was hanging by a thread. He also gives his view on the role of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in the negotiations and the little-known part played by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Speaking of the eventual agreement, Tusk says it was necessary to avoid the real risk of chaos and possible bankruptcy. “This is the first step in a long process,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chattanooga Gunman Came From a Middle-Class Muslim Family
The gunman who targeted U.S. military service members in a late-morning shooting Thursday in Tennessee was a 24-year-old electrical engineer who had grown up in Chattanooga as part of a conservative Muslim family.
Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait but moved with his family to the United States as an infant after the start of the Persian Gulf War and became a U.S. citizen, according to accounts given by friends and one of his sisters.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chattanooga Gunman Spent Time in Jordan, Official Says
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The 24-year-old gunman who killed four Marines in an attack on two military sites here traveled to Jordan last year for about seven months, a senior intelligence official said Friday.
The official said that investigators were combing through the computer, cellphone and social media contacts of the gunman, identified as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, to determine whether he was in touch with any extremist groups in Jordan before or during this trip.
It was still too early, the official said, to determine whether Mr. Abdulazeez, who was born in Kuwait, had been inspired or directed by Islamic extremists or any other terrorist organization.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chattanooga Mosque Where Gunman Worshiped Mourns Marines
By Richard Fausset
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — In the past two or three months, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, the man accused of killing four Marines here Thursday, had begun showing up fairly regularly at Friday Prayer at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, a large mosque and cultural center, said Dr. Azhar S. Sheikh, a founding member of the center’s board.
Dr. Sheikh, a practitioner of internal medicine originally from Pakistan, said he knew the family of Mr. Abdulazeez, 24, calling them “very upstanding people.” He said they had regularly worshiped at the three-year-old center on the east side of Chattanooga, near a number of suburban-style commercial developments and neighborhoods, and at an older mosque before that one.
He said that he thought the young man, who also died Thursday, had stopped attending services because he had moved away from the area, and assumed that Mr. Abdulazeez was attending again because he was back in town and staying with his parents. He said Mr. Abdulazeez had shown no signs of extremism.
On Thursday night, the mosque was in mourning for the Marines Mr. Abdulazeez is accused of killing. To honor them, Dr. Sheikh said, the center had canceled the Eid al-Fitr celebration planned for Friday, signifying the end of Ramadan. About 1,000 people normally attend.
But Dr. Sheikh, interviewed in the center’s near-empty parking lot Thursday night, said it would have been wrong to celebrate this year. “We have canceled out of respect and remembrance for our fallen Marines,” he said.
[This is in accordance with Qur’an 3:28, which stipulates that believers must not “take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers … except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them.” — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Chattanooga Shooting: Terrorism Task Force Investigates, 4 Marines Dead
By Ed Payne, Drew Griffin and Victor Blackwell
[…]
A terrorism task force is investigating, a law enforcement source said, with the FBI taking the lead.
Authorities “have not determined whether it was an act of terrorism or whether it was a criminal act,” Ed Reinhold, FBI special agent in charge, told reporters. “We are looking at every possible avenue, whether it was terrorism — whether it was domestic, international — or whether it was a simple, criminal act.”
“We have no idea what his motivation was behind this shooting,” Reinhold said. “There’s no indication at this point that anyone else was involved.”
[…]
Abdulazeez was not in any U.S. databases of suspected terrorists, a U.S. official said. He was born in Kuwait and had Jordanian citizenship, two law enforcement officials said. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen, one official said.
And he may have traveled back to the Middle East in recent years.
Almir Dizdarevic, who was Abdulazeez’s mixed martial arts coach when he was a teenager, said his former student’s father told him about two years ago that his son had left the country to “move back home.” Since then, Dizdarevic said when he ran into Abdulazeez at a Tennessee mosque several times, his former student told him he was teaching wrestling and doing well.
[No idea about his motivation? After ISIS tweeted about Chattanooga a mere three hours after the attacks? FBI — Famous But Incompetent. They’re great at monitoring the Internet and finding half-wits who are too dumb to realize they’re being set up for a sting. This guy was obviously smart enough to stay off their radar, even when he went “home” and came back to carry out his mission. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Chattanooga Murderer of Four Marines Identified: Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez
Here’s what we know so far. The murderer, who was also killed in the shootout, was 24 years old and is thought to have been born in Kuwait, although he is listed as from Hixson, Tennessee. He was not on an terrorist watch lists as far as anyone knows so far.
In case you’re not up to speed on the details of what happened
The gunman first shot up a recruiting center before driving to the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center and killing four Marines before he was shot, authorities said. Sources told Fox News police chased the gunman from the recruiting center to the Center, where the killings took place.
“We are treating this as an act of domestic terrorism,” said Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FBI: Alleged Chattanooga Gunman Purchased Some of His Guns ‘Legally’
By Awr Hawkins
The FBI indicates alleged Chattanooga gunman Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez had three firearms with him on July 16—two long guns and one handgun. The FBI also indicates Abdulazeez bought at least “some” of the guns “legally.”
That means he bought “some” of the guns the same way that Dylann Roof (Charleston), Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi (Garland), Jared and Amanda Miller (Las Vegas), Elliot Rodger (Santa Barabara), Ivan Lopez (Fort Hood 2014), James Holmes (Aurora theater), and Jared Loughner (Tucson) bought theirs—by passing a background check.
According to NBC News, the FBI’s Ed Reinhold said they know some of the guns were purchased this way, but they have yet to determine how every gun was acquired.
[This will be the ProgMob narrative: Don’t blame the pestiferous Muslims or their combative creed, blame our right to keep and bear arms — and strive to abrogate it. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Former FBI Assistant Director on Mohammad Abdulazeez: “We Don’t Know That it’s a Muslim Name”
By Robert Spencer
This is the quality of analysis that we have at the highest levels of the FBI and other agencies. No wonder we are in the fix we’re in.
“CNN Analyst Unsure If Mass Shooter Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s Name is Muslim,” by Matthew Balan, Newsbusters, July 16, 2015:
On Thursday’s The Lead, CNN analyst Tom Fuentes was unwilling to conclude that the perpetrator of a mass shooting against servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee was Muslim. John Berman asked the former FBI assistant director, “Now that we have the name [Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez], the key questions are what?” Fuentes replied, “I know…what the name sounds like, but we don’t know that it’s a Muslim name. We know it’s an Arabic name. We don’t know what this individual was believing in, and that’s what they’re going to be trying to determine.”
Minutes earlier, Berman brought on Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary of homeland security, and made a much more conclusive statement: “I got to state the obvious here…this is a Muslim name, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.” Kayyem, who is of Lebanese Christian descent, confirmed that this was the case, and provided some background:…
[These fumbling federal fools seem to be willing to do anything to avoid inculpating a Muslim — even deny that someone named for Islam’s prophet has a Muslim name. In another context this would be comical. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’
In the latest data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature, informally named “Tombaugh Regio” (Tombaugh Region) after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
“This terrain is not easy to explain,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The discovery of vast, craterless, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-flyby expectations.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘He Was Our Hero’: 4 Marines Killed in Tennessee Terror Attack Id’d
One was a 19-year-old from Georgia, who served as a lance corporal artillery cannoneer. Another was a 40-year-old from Massachusetts, who survived two tours in Iraq and earned a Purple Heart.
A day after a gunman opened fire on military personnel in Chattanooga, Tenn. — killing four Marines — profiles of the men who served their country only to die on its soil began to emerge.
Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, from Springfield, Mass. and a Marine since 1997, was one of those killed Thursday by Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, a Kuwaiti-born Chattanooga resident who opened fire on two military facilities in Chattanooga before being shot dead by police near the scene.
The three other Marines killed were identified Friday as Lance Cpl. Skip “Squire” Wells, of Marietta, Ga., Sgt. Carson Holmquist, of Grantsburg Wisc., and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, of Chattanooga.
Sullivan served in India Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marines and fought in the 2005 Battle of Abu Ghraib, where he earned a Combat Action medal and Purple Heart.
The Facebook page of a Springfield bar and restaurant owned by one of Sullivan’s two siblings posted a message paying tribute to Sullivan.
“He was our hero and he will never be forgotten,” it read. “Please keep his family & friends in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you Tommy for protecting us.”
Sullivan’s friend, Josh Parnell, of Chicago, told Oak Lawn Patch, “There’s no Marine you would want that was better in combat than him.”
[But he couldn’t fight for his own life because of the federal horror of handguns on government facilities. Utterly shameful. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Here’s Why Politicians Hate the Confederate Flag
There is a very good reason why the Confederate flag is under attack.
It is because it is the rebel flag. The flag of resistance, of (as columnist Fred Reed so neatly — so accurately — put it)… leave me the hell alone. This is why it’s favored by rural whites whose great-great-great grandparents never owned slaves nor wanted to — but who can’t stand annoying busybodies (they call ‘em Yankees down South but the principle applies generally) who seem to think they are god’s anointed, sent hither to instruct and enlighten.
Who cannot stand the idea that others (anywhere) might hold differing opinions, do things differently — and so must be compelled to hold the right opinions, do the right things.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How the Republicans Plan to Lose to Hillary
A new survey from Univision, the pro-Mexico television network, demonstrates the utter folly of Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters. It finds that 68 percent have a favorable view of Hillary Clinton despite the scandals swirling around her. By contrast, only 36 percent have a favorable view of former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican and speaks Spanish.
Bush “was the highest-rated of all the Republican candidates,” Univision reports, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a one-time proponent of amnesty for illegals, coming in second with only a 35 percent approval rate.
What the poll demonstrates is that Hispanics are basically owned by the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ power grab for the Latino vote has been successful. However, ultimately the Democratic Party’s success in the presidential election depends on convincing Republicans to fruitlessly continue to appeal to Hispanics, while abandoning the GOP voter base of whites, conservatives and Christians.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Huffington Post Won’t Cover Trump as Politics, Donald Fires Back at ‘Blog’
Donald Trump fired back Friday after The Huffington Post announced they would no longer cover his 2016 presidential run as a political story, calling the liberal news site a “glorified blog.”
The website announced its editorial decision earlier in the day, with a blaring homepage headline that read: “YOU’RE FIRED! From Our Political Reporting.”
HuffPost editors said in a brief coverage note that Trump’s candidacy would not be part of their politics coverage going forward, and, “Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
HuffPo: Motive for Shooting of Marines in Tennessee ‘A Mystery’
By William Bigelow
Under a huge headline screaming “Horror at Home,” Huffington Post obfuscated the massacre of four American Marines by a Muslim by writing, “Motive Mystery.”
The subheading read, “Lone Gunman Murders 4 Marines In Hail Of Bullets … ‘Endless Shots, One After The Other—Just Unloading’ … Chattanooga Devastated … ‘A Nightmare For The City’ … Motive Mystery—Suspect Not On Feds Radar … Eerie Yearbook Quote …”
[…]
HuffPo, to its delight, made sure to quote an FBI official stating that no motive had yet been discerned for the murderous assault in Tennessee, and better yet, that no apparent ties to international terrorism had been found. HuffPo reported:
“We have no idea what his motivation was,” an FBI official said late Thursday night. Abdulazeez had no known ties to an international terrorism, the official said.
[A mystery! But, as in the game “Clue,” there’s a solution: “Mister Hijabman! With the AK! In the gun-free zone!” and “Because it’s the last day of Ramadan and ISIS told me to and I want my celestial Playboy Club key!” — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Jesse Ventura: Will You Stand With Me Against Big Media?
As everyone knows, I won a defamation lawsuit against Chris Kyle and the American Sniper book and I won $1.84 million: $500,000 for defamation and $1.3 million in unjust enrichment, because the estate had made nearly $6 million off of this book.
The truth came out; the story was a lie to begin with; it was proven in court and I won.
Well what’s happening right now is corporate media has signed a brief in the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to overturn the verdict. They are standing behind the Kyle estate and want the verdict overturned.
Here’s why: they could publish a lie — whether intentionally or not — about anyone in the United States of America. And, if you sue them for unjust enrichment based off that lie, you cannot get any money in return, despite whatever these companies may have profited from it. For any money they make illegally by vilifying a certain party, they want the ability to keep that money for themselves.
The law allows an outside entity to come in and submit an official appeal that my lawyers then have to respond to. It’s part of our judicial system. These major media conglomerates want to turn over my unjust enrichment that a jury awarded me. If they are able to do this, that means they could defame anyone without having to pay an unjust enrichment award.
This is the lie that propels the media’s money making scheme. And if they succeed, not only will Jesse Ventura go down, but so will you.
You might want to know who signed on to do this. It’s literally a who’s who of corporate media. Take a look for yourself. Check out the full list in the court documents attached here and here.
Ask yourself: does this make defaming someone a business?
It seems it could become a lucrative business, depending on who you defame and how much money you make. Free speech is part of the fabric of our land, but the First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to lie and profit.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jihad Against U.S. Troops is Not a ‘Circumstance’
By Michelle Malkin
Four U.S. Marines, barred from carrying weapons at naval training facilities despite explicit ISIS threats against our military, are dead in Tennessee. Another service member and a Chattanooga police officer survived gunshots after Thursday’s two-stage massacre allegedly at the hands of 24-year-old jihadist Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Navy secretary Ray Mabus called the terrorist’s spree “insidious and unfathomable.” President Obama bemoaned the “heartbreaking circumstance” in which the murdered Marines found themselves.
“Unfathomable”? Not if you’ve been paying attention. Islam-inspired hate crimes against our troops have continued unabated since the Obama White House first dismissed the 2009 Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”
Here’s what’s unfathomable: While the social-justice warriors in Washington bend over backward to appease CAIR and Muslim-civil-rights absolutists, Americans in uniform are dying on American soil at the hands of Allah’s homicidal avengers — but the commander-in-chief couldn’t even bother to deliver a live statement to the nation yesterday about the bloodshed.
Lightning strikes are random events of unfortunate circumstance. The concerted attacks and plots against our troops in their recruitment centers and on their bases here at home are outrageous acts of war. Instead, Obama issued another bland, bloodless pronouncement about the assassinations of our disarmed troops.
[The Good Michelle rips them a new one. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Mayor Brags: Our White Population Plummets
The mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, in an address to the radical socialist organization National Council of La Raza, bragged that his city is no longer majority white and the city’s schools now have students who speak 62 different languages.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Kansas City, Kansas, was 52 percent white.
But in a speech before the La Raza National Affiliates Luncheon earlier this week in Kansas City, Mayor Mark Holland boasted that only five years later his city’s white population has been reduced to 40 percent.
He seemed to suggest that La Raza was at least partly responsible for the progress. But he also cited the refugee resettlement work of the United Nations and U.S. State Department for the city’s transformation into a gleaming example of multicultural diversity.
Kansas City, he said, “is very proud of the work of National Council of La Raza.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New Brain Implants Are So Microscopic, You Won’t Even Know That You’ve Been Implanted
(NaturalNews) The cult of “science” has a fetish for trying to amalgamate humanity with machine. And its latest endeavor in this pursuit has taken the form of an emerging brain implant technology that would render humans part flesh, part computer.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), have come up with a concept they’ve dubbed “neural dust” that they say can be implanted into people’s brains for data collection purposes. And the technology is reportedly so small that humans wouldn’t even know it was inside their heads…
Government-funded implantable brain chips will read, control people’s thoughts
So what’s the purpose of such invasive technology? The team that came up with the idea claims neural dust could be used to treat chronic diseases and “severe disabilities” with greater ease. This is often the excuse linked to human-machine alchemy projects — it’s to help people!
On the flip side, microscopic cranial implants offer a way for nefarious entities to literally enter the minds of humans, perhaps undetected, and track their thoughts and behaviors. This is a much more likely scenario — a type of “Mark of the Beast” for one’s brain that could even allow governments to control people’s minds.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New Horizons Team Baffled by Discovery of Icy Plains on Pluto
The latest pictures from New Horizons have revealed yet another baffling terrain on the surface of Pluto: fresh icy plains that are less than 100 million years old, and could be even more recent.
New Horizons has now uploaded just 1 or 2 per cent of the data gathered during its fly-by earlier this week, but more is on the way. Researchers are as fascinated as they are confused by what they’re seeing, and the findings at Pluto show it is every bit as complex as the other planets we’ve explored. “I think the solar system saved the best for last,” said Stern.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Says ‘Lone Gunman’ Behind Tenn. Attack, Vows Full Investigation
President Obama vowed a thorough and prompt investigation Thursday into the attack at two military sites that killed four Marines in Tennessee, while saying it appears the attack was committed by a “lone gunman.”
“It is a heartbreaking circumstance for these individuals who have served our country with great valor to be killed in this fashion,” Obama said.
The gunman has been identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who according to a source was born in Kuwait in 1990.
Law enforcement officials said Thursday they are treating the case, for now, as an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Obama said an investigation is ongoing, but said, “We know that what happens to be a lone gunman carried out these attacks.”
[Barry Hussein is lying through his male-model teeth. A “lone gunman” whose attack just happened to be announced by ISIS on Twitter three hours afterward — this was no “domestic terrorist” anomaly but an ISIS op, and he and his myrmidons are trying to sweep it under the rug. Gross and willful malfeasance from the worst president ever. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Pluto Mission Marks End of Planet Exploration Era. Where Next?
We have been exploring worlds beyond our own since 1959, when both the US and Soviet Union sent probes to the moon, and we have sent robotic adventurers to every planet in the solar system, plus moons, comets and asteroids.
These missions have inspired millions to wonder about our place in the cosmos and have indirectly taught us more about the planet we call home. The fly-by of New Horizons is the last of the firsts — we will never set eyes on an uncharted world in our solar system again.
So what’s next? “We are running out of unknown territory, but we can now go back to places we have visited briefly and explore them more fully,” says Curt Niebur, who oversees NASA’s robotic missions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Report: FBI Tracked Chattanooga Shooter’s Family for Years
Once again, another convenient shooting has helped supercharge anger, hatred, fear, and division across the Western World after an alleged “Islamist extremist” opened fire on and killed 4 US Marines at a recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Without any knowledge of how the US has in fact created Al Qaeda and its many global affiliates, including vicious terrorist groups plaguing Southeast Asia, and the most notorious to date, the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), the American public will predictably react in a manner that will simply further justify America’s meddling across the globe amid its self-created and perpetuated “War on Terror.” It will also help in efforts to further tighten control over the American public itself, with increased justifications for expanding police state measures and future pushes to disarm the American people.
Yahoo News would report in their article, “Shootings at Chattanooga military facilities leave 4 Marines, gunman dead; act called ‘domestic terrorism’,” that:
A U.S. official told the Associated Press that Abdulazeez had not been on the radar of federal law enforcement before Thursday’s shooting.
But also added:
His father had been investigated several years ago for “possible ties to a foreign terrorist organization” and added to the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to a report in the New York Times, but that probe did not surface information about Abdulazeez, the paper said…
Just recently, the Washington Post literally allowed a spokesman of Al Qaeda to defend his faction’s role in the fighting in Syria, and his condemnation of the United States for not rendering more aid for the cause of overrunning and destroying the Syrian nation — a goal the US itself is likewise pursuing…
Essentially, the Washington Post afforded a terrorist organization space to make an appeal to the American public for military support. Ahrar al-Sham regularly coordinates with and fights within operations led by Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, a US State Department designated terrorist organization from which ISIS itself sprung.
[…]
And while Foreign Policy and terrorists writing in the pages of the Washington Post demand more weapons and support from the West, it is already a documented fact that immense and constantly flowing supply convoys are streaming out of both NATO-member Turkey and US-ally Jordan’s territory, into Syria and Iraq, for the purpose of resupplying ISIS. This explains ISIS’ otherwise inexplicable ability to not only maintain its impressive fighting capacity as it simultaneously wages war against both the Syrian and Iraqi armies, but to expand its fighting to all fronts opposed to US regional hegemony.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tennessee Gunman First Radicalized, Now Idolized by Internet Jihadists
By Malia Zimmerman
U.S. investigators aren’t ready to conclude that Thursday’s murder of four Marines was an act of terrorism, but terrorists are.
Dozens of Twitter accounts spewing jihadist bile have placed Mohammad Abdulazeez’s bearded face as their main images, and tweets believed to have been sent out by Islamic State radicals and sympathizers have proclaimed him a martyr. And according to one top federal official, the posthumous praise for the sick slaughter comes over the very forum that may have turned the suburban-bred college graduate into a killer.
“The threat is real, and it comes from the Internet,” said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas. “This is a new generation of terrorist. This is not Bin Laden in caves with couriers anymore. This is what the new threat of terrorism looks like.”
While the FBI is investigating the Chattanooga shooting as a terrorist act, the agency has not yet declared it one. But McCaul said Abdulazeez appears to have been motivated by ISIS to first open fire at a military recruiting center in a Chattanooga strip mall and then at a nearby military training center, where four Marines were killed.
“My judgment and experience is that this was an ISIS inspired attack. And it has been opened as a terrorism investigation by the FBI, which is a very significant event in this case,” McCaul said.
After the attack, Twitter accounts linked to terrorist groups exploded with praise for Abdulazeez. One twitter user with hashtags #IslamicState and #ChattanoogaShooting pledged “The War Has Just Begun. More to come fellas,” another taunts “We are in your homeland, payback time?” and a third attempts to justify the murders of the Marines by proclaiming they “participated in slaughtering Muslim babies.” Other twitter posts with hashtags “Chattanooga”, “ISIS,” and “Islamic State” vow “O American dogs, you will see wonders. Soon” and another mocks in broken English “Taste the blood of Americans …. Are very good.”
[These creatures are not going to change. The only way to be rid of them is to get rid of them. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Tennessee Gunman Was Armed to the Teeth and Ready for War With America
Mohammad Youusef Abdulazeez, the naturalized American-turned Islamic radical who killed four Marines Thursday, was heavily armed, wore an ammo vest and was bent on waging war against America, according to authorities who spoke a day after the horrific attack at two military facilities in Chattanooga.
Abdulazeez, 24, a Kuwaiti-born Chattanooga resident who was killed by police to end his rampage, used an AK-47 to gun down the unarmed Marines after crashing into a gate at the Navy Operations Support Center, according to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. And the troubled gunman, who officials believe had become increasingly radicalized in recent months, wore an ammo vest with multiple rounds of ammunition, while carrying other weapons.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Latest: Tennessee Shooter Failed Background Check
An Ohio company says the man who gunned down four Marines in Tennessee failed a background check in May 2013.
Todd Schneider, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., says Muhammad Abdulazeez was conditionally hired as an engineer at a nuclear plant about 35 miles northeast of Cleveland. He spent 10 days there before he was let go because he failed a background check.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Throwable Camera Aims to Save Lives
By Allison Barrie
Is it a child’s bouncing ball or the latest in covert surveillance? A new bouncing ball lets law enforcement, military personnel, and search and rescue teams quickly evaluate dangerous environments before they enter them.
Bounce Imaging makes the Explorer throwable camera, which throws like a softball but functions like tactical tech. MIT students Francisco Aguilar and Dave Young developed the innovative technology, which became available this month.
Watching the rescue efforts during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Aguilar was determined to come up with a better way to help find survivors.
Search and rescue teams often have to resort to fiber-optic camera tech which can be expensive, bulky, and difficult to maneuver in the field. Explorer is a solution that is simple to use, low cost and works with the everyday smartphone and tablet technology.
Explorer is about the size of a softball. Highly durable, it can withstand a seven-foot drop onto concrete.
The device’s exterior is a thick rubber shell — its interior contains a state-of-the-art camera with six lenses. The lenses each look out of a different spot.
When Explorer is sent into action, its camera takes a few photos every second from its lenses. Sophisticated software then uploads the images to a mobile device — whether it’s a smartphone or tablet. All the raw images are put into one processor.
When you look at your screen, the software has already stitched all the images together to build full panoramic images. Costa Rican Institute of Technology engineers developed the cutting-edge image stitching software.
[Pretty clever. I want one! — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
To Know Hillary is to Hate Hillary
It is now crystal clear to any objective observer; Hillary Clinton is a horrible candidate. As Americans get to know Hillary, they like her less. In the latest Associated Press-GFK poll, Hillary scores an abysmal 39% approval rating, compared to an unfavorable rating of 49%.
In the three months since Hillary launched her campaign, her numbers have dropped dramatically. Back in April, Clinton had a more respectable approval rating of 46%; in July of 2014 it was 48%. As voters have seen Clinton on the campaign trail, they have not been impressed.
Her positive ratings have even fallen 11% among Democrats such as Donald Walters of Louisville who noted “Ever since she announced…I just haven’t liked the way she’s handled things. She doesn’t answer questions directly.” Obviously, Hillary knows she is horrible answering unscripted press questions; no wonder she spent months avoiding the media.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) The American Medical Association (AMA) is upping the ante in pursuit of total control over the medical industry. Outraged that acclaimed physicians like Dr. Mehmet Oz of The Dr. Oz Show would dare to speak on national television about issues that go untouched by many conventional doctors, the AMA has proposed new “ethical and professional guidelines” for physicians that threaten to censor doctors who deviate from what the AMA deems as medical gospel…
Even though the AMA represents as little as 17 percent of all practicing MDs — and this number continues to decrease — the organization seems to think that it deserves full authority over what doctors say and how they advise the public on the latest food and medicine science. And it spends a pretty penny to maintain this medical monopoly, shelling out nearly $20 million annually to lobby Congress to do its bidding.
“Keep in mind that the AMA is not the voice of the medical profession,” warns the Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA), a health freedom advocacy group that is standing up in defense of medical free speech.
“Its membership has slipped to the point where it represents only 17 percent of MDs, and many of those are free memberships given to medical students, yet it remains the fifth most powerful special interest on Capitol Hill … This gives it the clout to influence Medicare prices, make recommendations that shape national policy, and rake in about $218.8 million a year from its government-granted CPT medical code monopoly.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
United Airlines Awards Hackers Millions of Miles for Revealing Risks
United Continental Holdings Inc has awarded millions of frequent flier miles to hackers who have uncovered gaps in the carrier’s web security, in a first for the U.S. airline industry.
United confirmed with Reuters that it has paid out two awards worth 1 million miles each, worth dozens of free domestic flights on the airline. United did not confirm tweets from individuals who say they have been paid smaller awards as well.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
White House Celebrates Muslim Holiday on Day Muhammad Murders Four Marines
By Bob Price
President Barack Obama sent a celebratory message to Muslims around the world on the White House Twitter account nearly two hours before his first tweet on the subject of four dead Marines killed by an Islamic gunman.
“From my family to yours, Eid Mubarak!” —@POTUS to Muslims celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr,” the White House tweeted. This message was tweeted at 4:48 p.m. according to the White House Twitter feed.
[…]
The president has been criticized this week for a number of insensitive moves regarding the deaths and captivity of Americans. Earlier this week, President Obama remained silent on the death of Kate Steinle, the woman murdered by a previously deported illegal alien, as reported by Breitbart News’ Alex Swoyer.
[These presidential Eid ul-Fitr greetings have become an annual act of political buttsuckery. Pro forma, but no less nauseating for that. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
By Pamela Geller
“We are treating this as an act of domestic terrorism,” said Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
U.S. Attorney William C. Killian said. However, Killian said that the investigation would bear out precisely what kind of crime this was, and he cautioned people not to get caught up in the label. (Washington Post)
How ironic that it is Bill Killian — who was the most reluctant official to speak at today’s press conference. William Killian is the Department of Justice official who vowed to criminalize social postings on Facebook and Twitter.
We held a protest against Mr. Killian, and thousands joined us here.
Killian should be removed from the case. He is incapable of conducting a sharia-free investigation.
[In view of the ISIS tweet that crowed about this attack, Killian’s characterization of it as “domestic” terrorism rather than international is nothing but a fantastic lie. It was obviously not just inspired but directed from overseas. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) Obtaining high-quality, chemical-free food that’s actually grown in the U.S. — not just sold here — remains a challenge, and increasingly so as much of the so-called “food” grown on U.S. soil today is patented, genetically engineered imitation food. The latest data show that, as far as the availability of non-GMO, organic corn is concerned, as much as 90% of what’s being sold on grocery store shelves in the U.S. actually comes from overseas.
This is because demand for non-GMO, organic corn has far outpaced domestic availability, which is also increasingly the case for many other food crops. As the general public wakes up to the fact that we’ve all been lied to about what’s being sold to us as “food” — virtually every processed food item sold in the U.S. today contains unlabeled GMOs linked to causing cancer and other chronic diseases — demand for clean food, the way nature intended it, is skyrocketing…
Even as the U.S. remains the world’s top producer of corn and soybeans, organic and non-GMO food producers in the states are having to look elsewhere for clean, chemical-free corn and soy alternatives, as the vast majority of corn and soy grown in the U.S. is still GMO. So instead of U.S. farmers reaping the benefits of the burgeoning non-GMO and organic food markets, other countries are profiting instead, all due to the biotechnology industry corruption that created this market disparity in the first place.
“[I]mports to the U.S. of Romanian corn rose to $11.6 million in 2014 from $545,000 the year before,” reports Bloomberg Business, illustrating how much money U.S. farmers are losing by growing toxic GMO corn sprayed with deadly Roundup (glyphosate).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
17-Year-Old Austrian Found Guilty of Joining Islamic State
Vienna regional court: participating in a terror organization
(ANSA-AP) — BERLIN — A court in Austria has sentenced a 17-year-old boy to 2 1/2 years in prison for joining the Islamic State group.
The Vienna regional court found Oliver N. guilty Wednesday of participating in a terror organization and incitement to terrorism.
The boy, whose full name wasn’t released in line with Austrian privacy rules, had traveled to Syria last year and claimed to have worked as an ambulance driver collecting wounded IS fighters.
Prosecutors said he also spread IS propaganda videos online.
Presiding judge Alexandra Skrdla said there was insufficient evidence to prove that the boy had actively taken part in combat.
The boy’s lawyer, Wolfgang Blaschitz, said his client had turned his back on jihadist ideology since returning to Austria this spring.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Anders Breivik Accepted at Norway’s University of Oslo
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has won a place to study political science at Oslo’s university.
In 2012, he was sentenced to the maximum 21 years in prison for carrying out Norway’s worst massacre since World War Two.
This jail term can be extended if he is deemed to remain a danger to society.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ESA’s Jupiter Mission Takes Big Step Forward
The European Space Agency’s next big mission is to send an unmanned probe to Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
The mission, called JUICE for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, won’t launch until 2022 and should arrive in 2030 according to the current plan.
ESA just announced that a prime industrial contractor for the mission has been chosen: Airbus Defence & Space in France
The ESA Industrial Policy Committee chose Airbus on July 16 and work should start by the end of the month with spacecraft assembly in Toulouse, France.
The €350.8 million contract covers industrial activities for the design, development, integration, test, launch campaign, and in-space commissioning of the spacecraft, but not the launch on an Ariane 5 booster which will be arranged in a separate contract.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Floods: EU Provides 66.5 Mln to Italy, Romania and Bulgaria
Strasbourg Assembly approves aid covered by the European Solidar
(ANSA) — STRASBOURG — Romania, Bulgaria and Italy will receive 66.5 million euros in total for compensation to cover part of the cost of emergency measures taken during the 2014 floods, after European Parliament approved a EU Commission proposal. The aid, covered by the European Solidarity Fund, was adopted by 667 votes to 31, with 11 abstentions.
The European Solidarity Fund aid will now help the three countries repair damage done to public and private infrastructure, private homes, businesses, agriculture, the environment, and cultural heritage by floods that hit Romania in the spring and summer, Bulgaria in the summer and Italy in the autumn of 2014.
The Council has already approved the aid, the bulk of which (56 million euros) goes to Italy, with Bulgaria receiving almost 2 million euros and Romania nearly 8.5 million euros. The funds will particularly help restore vital infrastructure and services, reimburse the cost of emergency and rescue operations, and cover some of the clean-up costs in the disaster-stricken regions.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Police Stations Under Attack
Numerous police stations have been attacked in the past sixteen days in France. François Desouche provides a non-exhaustive list of those buildings directly affected by urban violence. The list does not include physical attacks, or the police cars set on fire or damaged.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fresh Fears Over Swedish Women Joining ISIS
Up to 40 women have travelled from Sweden to join radical Islamist groups in the Middle East, according to Sweden’s Security Service, Säpo.
Women are increasingly leaving one of the safest countries in the world to work with extremist groups such as Isis (also known as the Islamic State) in Syria and the wider region, a spokesperson Säpo told Sveriges Radio programme Ekot on Friday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Heat Wave Causes Loss of 50 Mn Litres of Italian Milk
Farmers’ group calls situation in Po Valley ‘worrisome’
(ANSA) — Milan, July 16 — An early July heat wave with temperatures reaching nearly 40 degrees Celcius in parts of northern Italy has put cows under stress and brought about the loss of 50 million litres of milk, said Coldiretti farmers’ group on Thursday.
The group said the situation is ‘worrisome’, most of all in the Po Valley, and said 20 of the 50 million litres of milk have been lost in the region of Lombardy.
Despite the use of shower sprays and fans to cool the cows, they are drinking as much as 140 litres of water a day compared to their usual 70 litres per day.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Man Commits Suicide Moments Before Eviction
Throws self out of window as bailiff arrives
(ANSA) — Genoa, July 16 — A 66-year-old Genoa man on Thursday jumped out a window to his death moments before a bailiff arrived to evict him.
The suicide, who lived on the first floor, went to the top floor of his building and threw himself out a window in the stairwell.
The bailiff arrived moments later, with the eviction notice.
The man lived in a public housing project building and his electricity and gas utilities had already been shut off.
He was a former auto body mechanic who lived with his mother in the home but quit working after her death 20 years ago.
Neighbours said everyone in the area knew him and he never gave any signs of being suicidal.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Senate Rejects Urgent Euro-Referendum Petition
Request tabled by M5S, backed by League
(ANSA) — Rome, July 8 — The Senate on Wednesday rejected a petition from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) for a bill on whether to keep the euro as Italy’s current to be put to urgent discussion. The Northern League joined the M5S in voting in favour. The M5S and the League are both hostile to the European Union and celebrated Greece’s No to creditors proposals to avert a default in Sunday’s referendum.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Expels Albanian Suspected of Recruiting for ISIS
Man released after court ruled insufficient evidence for trial
(ANSA) — Brescia, July 13 — The prefecture of Brescia repatriated a man from Albania, sending him back to his home country on Monday following his March arrest on suspicion of recruiting foreign fighters for ISIS.
Alban Elezi had been held in jail following his arrest but was released last Friday when the court ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to try him.
Elezi was put on a commercial flight from Milan to Tirana, and the expulsion order forbids him from re-entering Schengen territory for the next five years.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Man Gets Life for Murdering Employer to Steal Safe Key
Accomplice gets 24 years for shooting Andrea Ferri in 2013
(ANSA) — Pesaro, July 16 — A court on Thursday sentenced a man to life in prison and his accomplice to 24 years for the 2013 murder of their employer.
Macedonian national Donald Sabanov, 26, and co-defendant Karim Bari, a 26-year-old Moroccan-Italian, were found guilty of shooting to death 51-year-old Andrea Ferri, owner of several petrol pumps in Pesaro province, in order to steal the key to his safe.
Sabanov was also sentenced to spend one year in solitary confinement, and the court awarded the victim’s family one and a half million euros in damages.
The courtroom packed with the victim’s relatives, friends and employees broke into applause when the verdict was read.
“We received justice,” said Ferri’s widow, Simona.
“Huge thanks to the prosecutors for their hard work”.
The victim’s brother Michele Ferri said “at last we will no longer have to see the indifferent eyes of Sabanov, who has never showed the least remorse. This is a liberation that makes us cry”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Opposition Mounts Over Bill Proposing Cannabis Legalisation
Proposal brought Wednesday backed by 218 MPs
(ANSA) — Rome, July 16 — Opposition mounted on Thursday against the bill presented on Wednesday and supported by 218 MPs proposing to allow legal possession of a modest quantity of marijuana for recreational use as well as home cultivation of up to five plants.
“This is just another act of an offensive that has lasted for years, towards the liberalisation of drugs. But a state that makes a harmful behavior lawful isn’t good for the welfare of its citizens and must take responsibility for that,” said Paola Ricci Sindoni, national president of the Science and Life Association.
“I strongly believe in the educational function of the state and I think that public decision-makers have a responsibility. That’s why the proposal to legalise cannabis for recreational use is, as I see it, unsustainable. You can’t abdicate the protection of health for accounting reasons, nor can you justify this choice with the fact that cannabis is already used. Rather, controls should be intensified,” said Annagrazia Calabria, MP and leader of Forza Italia Youth.
“It’s unbelievable that before a generation that is calling for opportunities for work, study, and housing to build a future, our parliamentarians are finding it useful to make it easier and legal to use drugs,” said Giovanni Ramonda, director of the Pope John XXIII Community.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Mattarella Against ‘Hateful Exploitation’ On Muslim Holiday
Italian president speaks out in favor of respect for diversity
(ANSA) — Rome, July 17 — Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Friday encouraged “a constructive dialogue between religions” on the feast day of Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim celebration marking the end of Ramadan fasting.
“I hope that today’s event will be an opportunity to reiterate the rejection of every type of hateful exploitation, in respect for the values and ideals that have always guided Italy’s actions,” Mattarella said.
He added that “the pluralism of worship and the rejection of all forms of discrimination based on religious affiliation are historic conquests guaranteed by our Constitution”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Oslo University Admits Mass Killer Breivik to Study Program
Convicted mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been admitted to the University of Oslo’s political science program, although he will stay in his cell to study, the university’s rector said Friday.
The 36-year-old right-wing extremist is serving 21 years in prison for killing 77 people in politically motivated bomb-and-gun massacres in 2011. The sentence can be extended when it expires.
“All inmates in Norwegian prisons are entitled to higher education in Norway if they meet the admission requirements,” university rector Ole Petter Ottersen said Friday in an email to The Associated Press.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norwegian Iron Helped Build Iron-Age Europe
Two thousand years ago, Norway produced iron in significant quantities. Much of it was exported both southward and northward from Trøndelag in central Norway.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Speedometer’ Neurons Discovered in Rat Brains
A long-sought neural ‘speedometer’ has been discovered in rats: a set of dedicated neurons that fire quickly when the rats move fast, and more slowly when they dawdle.
The cells are a missing component of the brain’s elaborate navigation system, which helps us to know where we are and where we have been. They were discovered1 in a seven-year project in the lab of Edvard Moser and May-Britt Moser at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The Mosers were co-winners of last year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 2005 discovery of another fundamental part of the brainsystem: GPS-like grid cells, which fire according to position in space.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Medic Turned ISIS Recruiter’s Father is ‘Ashamed’ Of His Son
Mohammed Al-Khabass, 25, is accused of ‘playing a major role’ in grooming young Britons and persuading them to go to Syria to join the terror group.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
You Can Now 3D Print With Liquefied Wood
A chemist at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden is making sustainable 3d printing a reality
You can 3D print just about anything these days, from car parts to cakes. Most additive manufacturing uses plastic or metal (or sugar), because it is easy to melt these materials down and extrude them.
But, there has been blowback about the current state of 3D printing, because of its significant environmental impact. It uses considerable amounts of energy in manufacturing—50 percent more than injection molding—and creates a lot of non-biodegradable materials, which some designers and environmentalists consider unnecessary.
Printing with purely natural materials could alleviate that second environmental burden, but that has long seemed impossible. “Wood is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. None of these components melt, and they burn when heated,” says Paul Gatenholm, a chemistry and biopolymer technology professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas Leader, Saudi King Shake Hands After Muslim Prayers, Signaling Easing of Tensions
Hamas says its leader shook hands with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman after Muslim holiday prayers, signaling an easing of tensions over the Palestinian group’s ties with Saudi regional rival Iran.
There was no official announcement in Saudi state media of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
The visit came days after Iran reached a nuclear deal with Western powers, prompting concern among its regional rivals.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Nuclear Deal: Top Cleric Says it is ‘An Insult’
A senior cleric has challenged Iran’s historic nuclear deal with world powers, echoing a cautious early assessment of the accord by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an arch-conservative who has the last word on matters of state.
Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani did not dismiss the accord in his remarks at Friday prayers in Tehran, but his language was sufficiently tough — some terms of the deal were an “insult” and “excessive”, he said — to indicate unease about the accord within Iran’s clerical establishment.
His remarks contrast with the praise given to the accord by President Hassan Rouhani and the Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic State Used Poison Gas in Northeast Syria: Kurds, Monitor
The Islamic State group used poison gas in attacks against Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria in late June, a Syrian Kurdish militia and a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said on Saturday.
The YPG militia said Islamic State had fired “makeshift chemical projectiles” on June 28 at a YPG-controlled area of the city of Hasaka, and at YPG positions south of the town of Tel Brak to the northeast of Hasaka city.
Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman, said the type of chemical used had not been definitively determined. None of the YPG fighters exposed to the gas had died because they were quickly taken to hospital, he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
by Caroline Glick
On Tuesday, we moved into a new nuclear age.
In the old nuclear age, the US-led West had a system for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It had three components: sanctions, deterrence and military force. In recent years we have witnessed the successful deployment of all three.
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, the UN Security Council imposed a harsh sanctions regime on Iraq. One of its purposes was to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, we learned that the sanctions had been successful. Saddam largely abandoned his nuclear program due to sanctions pressure.
The US-led invasion of Iraq terrified several rogue regimes in the region. In the two to three years immediately following the invasion, America’s deterrent strength soared to unprecedented heights.
No one was more deterred by the Americans in those years than then Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. In 2004 Qaddafi divulged all the details of his secret nuclear program and handed all his nuclear materials over to the Americans.
As for military force, the nuclear installation that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad built in Deir a-Zour with Iranian money and North Korean technicians wasn’t destroyed through sanctions or deterrence. According to foreign media reports, in September 2007, Israel concluded that these paths to preventing nuclear proliferation to Syria would be unsuccessful.
So then-prime minister Ehud Olmert ordered the IDF to destroy it. The outbreak of the Syrian civil war three years later has prevented Assad and his Iranian bosses from reinstating the program, to date.
The old nuclear nonproliferation regime was highly flawed.
Pakistan and North Korea exploited the post-Cold War weaknesses of its sanctions and deterrence components to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons and technologies.
Due to American weakness, neither paid a serious price for its actions.
Yet, for all its flaws and leaks, the damage caused to the nonproliferation system by American weakness toward Pakistan and North Korea is small potatoes in comparison to the destruction that Tuesday’s deal with Iran has wrought…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Sometimes, it is difficult to determine if Obama, and his minions, are incompetent, or if the damaging policies of this administration are specifically directed at the destruction of our system. Often, it is easy to believe it is a little of both. People tell me all the time that Barack Obama’s disregard for the limiting principles of the United States Constitution shows that he doesn’t understand the Constitution; I respond that he understands the philosophies of the Constitution perfectly well. His refusal to abide by the Constitution is not a sign of ignorance, but a sign that he hates the Constitution, and the liberty that it stands for.
As Obama works to foundationally change America from within, he also believes he must knock America down a few notches on the world stage, to bring it down to being on-par, or below, the rest of the nations of the world. He has also encouraged that we cease our resistance to the enemies of the United States, and their contempt for our system of freedom. Obama has inspired Putin’s policy of Russian expansionism, North Korea’s saber-rattling, China’s boldness in the South China Sea, the request for the lifting of the American embargo against Cuba, the increase of chaos by socialists and drug cartels south of the border, the atrocities we have seen perpetrated by the Islamic State, and the thrust toward nuclear weapons in the Middle East promoted largely by Iran. And with the leftist-style diplomacy of appeasement in the Iranian deal, Obama, and his leftist co-conspirators in the international realm, are making sure the world is being marched steadily towards a global war that could be more devastating than any conflict we have experienced in history. Obama’s team was willing to bend-over backwards in order to please Iran
As the Iran deal was being negotiated, the Iranian government kept demanding more and more. They knew they could. They knew that Obama’s team was willing to bend-over backwards in order to please Iran, be it for “flowers in their hair, give peace a chance” reasons, or because Obama’s Muslim upbringing makes him more a child of Islam than of American Liberty. Then, when the deal was finally completed and sealed, it turns out that Iran has not been, necessarily, forbidden to build nuclear weapons.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Believed That Any Deal is Better Than No Deal
Some suggest that Obama was naive or misguided or a poor negotiator to end up with such a bad deal. Normally this would be true if one believed that Obama really wanted what he said he wanted. But I don’t believe that anyone could be so inept. I must conclude that he has lied all along about what he wanted and was merely saying so as a cover for his true goals.
At one point in negotiations, Iran was down for the count. Rather than delivering a coup de grace by tightening sanctions, Obama released sanctions and money thereby resuscitating Iran. Who does that? Certainly not someone who wanted to win.
We must conclude that the most important thing for Obama was to reach a deal, any deal, no matter what.
Here’s the time line…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
United Arab Emirates Executes Woman Found Guilty of Killing American Teacher
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates on Monday put to death a woman with links to Islamic extremists who was convicted of murdering an American teacher with a butcher knife in an upscale Abu Dhabi mall.
The execution, carried out just two weeks after the country’s top court delivered a guilty verdict, marked a swift end to a case that has rattled this Western-allied Gulf country, where violent crime is rare.
The Federal Supreme Court convicted Alaa Bader Abdullah al-Hashemi, a 30-year-old Emirati mother of six, of deliberately murdering 47-year-old schoolteacher Ibolya Ryan in a mall restroom stall on the capital’s upscale Reem Island.
Authorities say the killer, shrouded in a traditional black garment and veil, later planted a homemade bomb outside the home of another American. It failed to explode.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
MH17 Ukraine Disaster: Memorials Held for Crash Victims
Emotional services are being held to mark the first anniversary of the MH17 air disaster over eastern Ukraine, in which 298 people died.
A service took place at the Ukrainian village closest to where the Malaysian airliner came down, followed by a procession to the crash site.
Ceremonies are also being held in the Netherlands, the home of the majority of the victims.
Earlier, Australia held a memorial for its 38 citizens who died in the crash.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels are widely believed to have shot down the Malaysia Airlines plane as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Russia denies this, blaming Ukrainian government forces for the disaster in the eastern Donetsk region.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ukrainians, Australians Mark Anniversary of MH17 Downing
Residents of the Ukrainian village where a Malaysian airliner was shot down with 298 people aboard a year ago joined a procession to the crash site on Friday, while Australia’s prime minister remembered the “savagery” of the disaster as he unveiled a plaque in Canberra that’s set in soil from where the wreckage fell.
The two ceremonies come amid a sharp dispute over who was responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014.
Ukrainian and Western authorities say the plane was downed by a missile fired either by rebels or Russian troops who allegedly back them.
The rebels and Moscow say it was hit by a Ukrainian warplane or a Ukrainian-fired missile.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘US Interest in Kyrgyzstan: Strategy of Global Dominance’
Washington has given a human rights award to a Kyrgyz man who was arrested for instigating ethnic strife in his country, in yet another example of the US exerting its strategy of full spectrum global dominance, political analyst Srdja Trifkovic told RT.
The US State Department has decided to hand its Human Rights Defenders Award to Kyrgyz national, Azimzhan Askarov, who, in 2010, played an active role in ethnic riots between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in his country. Askarov was arrested during the violence and convicted of taking part in the murder of a Kyrgyz police officer.
RT: Askarov was actively supported by US diplomats. Richard Miles even called him ‘the father of the colored revolutions’. What’s the significance of his involvement?
Srdja Trifkovic: When he’s on the scene, you can be sure that there can be destabilization of the regime under the auspices of ‘democratic change.’ The context is quite clear. Only ten days ago, Kyrgyzstan officially became a member of the Eurasian economic union, after passing the accession process by the parliaments of other members: Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia — which, of course, is a red flag to the State Department. A year earlier, the US lease at Manas Air Base had ceased, and effectively, the US was watching one of the putative, important geostrategic assets in Central Asia slipping away. It’s curious that they weren’t so concerned about this particular human rights case — as they call it — while they were still in possession of the Manas Airport. The sentencing came in 2011, several months after the ethnic riots. There’s no doubt we’re witnessing an activist for Uzbek separatism being lionized in much the same way as Albanian separatists in Serbia, who were actively involved in the clashes with police and the military in the late 1990s, were being celebrated and feted in Washington as human rights activists and victims of violence. So this is just more of the same: whenever relations between the US and a certain country deteriorate because the country is no longer keen to be the US strategic asset — like a joker from the sleeve, human rights activists are produced, in this particular case, most likely, guilty of grievous crimes.
RT: Let’s speak more about the significance of Kyrgyzstan. The US had a presence at the country’s Manas Air Base for many years. How important is the country to the Americans?…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
China — Tibet: Qinghai: Relatives of Lama Who Self-Immolated Are Arrested for Asking for His Body
Sonam Topgyal died on July 10 from burns. Restrictive measure on the sale of gasoline and communications lines are blocked with city where the monk set himself on fire.
Xining (AsiaNews) — Chinese authorities have arrested the parents and siblings of the Tibetan Monk who died last week from burns in an act of self-immolation, on 9 July in Kyengudo, in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yulshul to protest against the Chinese government.
A Tibetan source speaking to Radio Free Asia says Sonam Topgyal — the name of the member, whose identity was unknown on the day of the facts — died July 10 in a hospital in Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, where he was transported by the Chinese police.
When the family of the deceased requested the return of his body for burial, the Chinese authorities refused to make and arrested his parents and five siblings. Nangchen Tashi, the monks father, is a local businessman who is very unpopular with the Chinese government for his support for the Tibetan language and culture.
After the self-immolation, which took place in the main square of Kyegudo, police ordered restrictive measures throughout the city and disrupted communications. As of 9 July, anyone who wants to refuel in the city must obtain a permit from the Local Government.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Japan: Elderly Overtake Teenagers in Crime Figures
Police in Japan have dealt with more elderly crime than juvenile crime in the past six months, it’s reported.
It’s the first time that people over the age of 65 have surpassed teenagers in crime statistics since 1989, when Japan’s National Police Agency started publishing age-related crime data, the Kyodo News Agency reports. Officers took action against more than 23,000 elderly people in the first half of the year, compared to fewer than 20,000 youngsters aged between 14 and 19, officials figures show.
Japan has seen a fall in overall crime rates over the past 10 years, but not among its growing elderly population. The new figures show that violent crime committed by the over-65s rose by more than 10% compared to the same period last year. Of the country’s 127 million people, more than a quarter are now of retirement age, but the government has warned that the figure is likely to grow significantly in the coming decades.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Australian Father Jailed Over 12-Year-Old Daughter’s Wedding
An Australian man has been jailed for eight years for arranging an Islamic marriage between his 12-year-old daughter and a man twice her age.
He said he allowed the girl to marry a 26-year-old Lebanese man, in a ceremony in New South Wales, because he did not want her to have sex outside marriage.
The 63 year old was found guilty in April of procuring a child under the age of 14 for unlawful sexual activity.
During sentencing in Sydney the judge told him he had “failed” his daughter.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
At Least 12 Killed in Nigeria Suicide Blasts
One of two female attackers ‘aged 10’
(ANSA) — Rome, July 17 — At least 12 people have died in explosions at prayers for the Muslim festival of Eid in the Nigerian town of Damaturu, the army said Friday.
The two female suicide bombers included a 10-year-old girl, said Nigerian army spokesman Col Sani Usman.
There were two blasts at a venue where volunteers were waiting to screen worshippers, he said.
No group has said it carried the attack but Boko Haram has recently stepped up its campaign of violence.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya’s Westgate Mall Re-Opens Amid Security Concerns
Business is set to resume at Westgate shopping mall nearly two years after Somalia’s al-Shabab gunmen killed at least 67 people there. How secure is Westgate and other Kenyan malls?
Before the September 2013 attack, Westgate shopping center was seen as a totem of Kenya’s rising middle-class, but that image and the building itself were badly damaged when four al-Shabab gunmen stormed the mall, tossing grenades and shooting shoppers and staff.
Atul Shah, the Director of Nakumatt, the leading supermarket in Kenya, told DW their business suffered massive losses. But after undergoing renovations, Shah said he is optimistic that Westgate’s Nakumatt branch will once again emerge as a premier shopping mall in Nairobi.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
$1 Million Price Tag Hinted at in El Chapo’s Escape
Just about the only hard facts to emerge in the wake of the escape of Mexico’s most notorious drug baron are that he is gone, and that he used a sophisticated, solidly constructed tunnel to fashion his departure from the tight confines of the nation’s most secure prison cell.
The whereabouts of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo? Unclear. His accomplices? Not sure. How long it took to build the tunnel, and how much it cost? For that, there are only estimates.
One is this: More than a year and at least $1 million.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mexican Lawmakers Say Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ Had 18-Minute Head Start on Escape
At least 18 minutes passed before anyone was alerted to the escape of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, two Mexican lawmakers said Thursday.
Deputy Aleida Alavez of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party told The Associated Press that National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido reported during a tour of the maximum security prison Wednesday that Guzman had an 18-minute head start. She said Rubido hesitated when asked how much time elapsed, but eventually answered.
Officials had not said publicly how much time passed from when Mexico’s most prized prisoner slipped into a mile-long tunnel Saturday night and when authorities became aware he was gone.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Diabetic Migrant, 10, Dies After Her Insulin Thrown in Sea
Syrian girl’s father had to throw her body overboard
(ANSA) — Syracuse, July 17 — The Italian Coast Guard on Friday heard a 10-year-old Syrian girl who suffered from diabetes has died on board a migrant boat heading to Sicily because the men piloting the boat threw a backpack containing her insulin into the sea.
The girl, who was travelling with her parents and sisters, fell into a coma during the journey and died on the boat, which was carrying more than 320 migrants.
Her father, who had protested when the backpack with her insulin was tossed away, had to throw his child’s body overboard.
Diabetes is a metabolic disease. Sufferers take insulin to regulate their blood sugar levels.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive — Rand Paul on Tennessee Terror: Restrict Immigration From Muslim Nations
By Matthew Boyle
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview here that he wants to restrict immigration from predominantly Muslim countries after the Chattanooga, Tennessee, terrorist attack.
Paul said in an interview backstage at a rally his presidential campaign is holding inside the Hyatt Regency here in downtown Houston:
I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism. There was a program in place that Bush had put in place—it stood for entry-exit program from about 25 different countries with a lot of Islamic radicals, frankly. I think there does need to be heightened scrutiny. Nobody has a right to come to America, so this isn’t something that we can say ‘oh their rights are being violated.’ It’s a privilege to come to America and we need to thoroughly screen those who are coming.
The alleged shooter in the Chattanooga incident—which claimed the lives of four U.S. marines, whom he allegedly murdered in the terror attack—was named Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. The 24-year-old was born in Kuwait and immigrated to the United States before he opened fire in Chattanooga, killing four Marines.
Paul also told Breitbart News about another similar incident regarding foreigners from the Middle East who were placed in Kentucky via immigration programs for refugees—and tried to, before getting caught, buy military grade missiles. Paul said:
In my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, we had two Iraqi refugees who were let into our country who were plotting to buy stinger missiles a few years ago, but they got arrested and put in jail. But I think we’re doing the wrong thing by just having this open door policy to bring in people without significant scrutiny. I’m for increasing scrutiny on people who come on student visas from the 25 countries that have significant jihadism. Also, any kind of permanent visas or green cards, we need to be very careful. I don’t think we’re being careful enough with who we let in.
Paul added that he’s planning to, via his position in the U.S. Senate, investigate Muslim immigration problems.
[Muslim immigration shouldn’t be “looked into” or “restricted,” it should be stopped dead. The mass importation of these creatures is part and parcel of the Democrat Party’s demographic re-engineering scheme to make Americans a subjugated minority in our own land. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Refugees to be Moved From Treviso-Area Town After Ugly Protests
Matrasses burned on Thursday as local show anger
(ANSA) — Treviso, July 17 — A group of 101 refugees hosted at a residence in the town of Quinto di Treviso, near Treviso, will be moved by the end of Friday, the local mayor, Mauro Dal Zilio, said after two days of protests by a group of locals. On Thursday there were ugly scenes, when matrasses intended to be used by the refugees were burned outside the complex and workers from a cooperative tasked with providing the migrants with food were denied access. Many local residents are angry that the authorities were allowing empty apartments in the complex to be used by the refugees. Veneto Governor Luca Zaia alleged the migrants’ presence was part of a process of “Africanization” of the region.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Clash With Anti-Refugee Protestors
Local residents try to stop arrival of group of migrants
(ANSA) — Rome, July 17 — Police on Friday clashed with a group of protestors who had set up a road block against the arrival of a group of refugees in a northern suburb of Rome as they broke through the cordon. The police responded with a baton charge after coming under a barrage of objects at Casale San Nicola, including sun umbrellas and chairs. Earlier on Friday, Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli said that the road block would be cleared and the transfer would go ahead as planned. “We have sent 19 people who must stay in Casale San Nicola and there is a road block of citizens who do not allow them in,” Gabrielli said. “At the moment they (the refugees) are in vehicles but they will enter the centre because we’ll remove the block. We won’t take any steps back”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Stop Coddling Migrants, Northern League Tells Prefects
Salvini lashes out at prefects after anti-immigrant clashes
(ANSA) — Rome, July 17 — The leader of Italy’s Northern League party Matteo Salvini said on Friday that state authorities should stop opposing anti-immigrant feeling in the country after police clashed with people protesting against the arrival of refugees in Rome and protesters near the northern city of Treviso forced local authorities to move migrants.
Police earlier responded with a baton charge after anti-immigrant protestors who had set up a road block threw a barrage of objects at them in the Casale San Nicola suburb.
Rome prefect Franco Gabrielli had sworn to clear the road block and ensure the transfer of refugees went ahead as planned.
Other protests at Quinto near Treviso ended after authorities moved the 101 migrants to a barracks farther away from the city.
“Instead of giving the mayors and citizens that are protesting a hard time, prefects should do their job and stop coddling thousands of illegal immigrants,” Salvini said.
“Host them at the prefect’s office or at your house, if you want,” he added.
The Northern League has stepped up its campaign against migrants in recent months. In June, the governor of the northern region of Lombardy Roberto Maroni told local officials to stop accepting irregular migrants from other parts of Italy.
A migrant crisis has fuelled political divisions in the country, which is struggling to emerge from an economic slump that has thrown many people into unemployment or low-paid work.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Sanctuary Cities, Immigration Reform and Heightened Vigilance
In the wake of the San Francisco murder of Kate Steinle by serial illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez—a story garnering national headline attention—the spotlight on immigration debate has now shifted to sanctuary policies adopted by some 275 U.S cities to protect illegal aliens from the reach of federal law enforcement.
The sanctuary movement began in the 1980s as an extension of the “underground railroad” to help illegal aliens from El Salvador and Guatemala. But it was more than that. The sanctuary movement in the U.S. not only sought to provide safe haven for the oppressed of foreign lands, but sanctuary leaders saw their movement as being in the vanguard of the Democratic Party left to spearhead change in the demographics and political policies of the United States by increasing the number of illegal immigrants.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ship With Over 400 Rescued Migrants Arriving in Cagliari
Expected to land in Sardinian port by Saturday morning
(ANSA) — Cagliari, July 17 — A ship carrying more than 400 refugees was expected to dock in Cagliari after they were rescued in the Strait of Sicily, authorities said Friday.
The ship, the Siem Pilot, was forecast to arrive by late Friday or early Saturday.
Meanwhile the Argos, a ship managed by charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and carrying about 550 migrants, was expected to dock in Reggio Calabria, authorities said Friday.
Those were among some 2,700 migrants rescued off the Libyan coast since Wednesday. The Argos initially docked at the port of Trapani, where about 150 refugees disembarked, before the ship was sent on with the remainder.
Meanwhile, new data from Italy’s interior ministry said that almost 82,500 migrants have been housed in arrival centres to date, 9% more than during the same time last year.
It added that a record 170,000 migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year with the majority in Sicily, about 18%.
The ministry said that Lombardy was second, receiving about 11% of newcomers, Lazio with 10%, Campania and Puglia at 7%, and Veneto and Tuscany with 6%.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
We begin with crime. There are a number of statistical measurements. One is a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealing that the number SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails in FY2009 (the most recent data available) was about 296,000. As American Thinker’s Randall Hoven explains, “SCAAP is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and in this context means ‘illegal aliens’ ‚Äì a GAO term meaning ‘Noncitizens whom ICE verified were [or whom states and local jurisdictions believe to be] illegally in the United States at the time of incarceration.’“
Another is a report by the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) obtained by Breitbart News. It shows that while illegal aliens comprise 3.5 percent of the nation’s population, they comprised a whopping 36.7 percent of federal sentences following criminal convictions in FY 2014. The actual number of crimes for which these illegals received sentences was 27,505. The primary categories include drug trafficking, kidnapping/hostage taking, drug possession, money laundering and murder convictions.
This data comprise actual convictions of federal offenders subject to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA). Omitted from the list are state and death penalty cases, as well as “cases initiated but for which no convictions were obtained, offenders convicted for whom no sentences were yet issued, and offenders sentenced but for whom no sentencing documents were submitted to the Commission.” And while the data do include immigration violations, which makes up the lion’s share of convictions, eliminating that category entirely would still have illegals comprising 13.6 percent of all sentenced offenders, a number that far exceeds the aforementioned 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population they represent.
More germane is data revealed by Judicial Watch (JW). They note that “as of April 26, 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had released 165,900 convicted criminal aliens throughout the United States, including many convicted of such violent crimes as homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.” These illegals, along with 706,950 non-criminal illegals, were ordered to leave the country, “but have not done so and remain free,” JW reveals. JW also explains the documents reveal the difficulty ICE has with local policies that interfere with federal enforcement of immigration law. Those would be “sanctuary city” policies and JW cites a case in Montgomery County, MD where officials prevented ICE from gaining access to an illegal charged with rape.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Tour Takes Aim at “New Intolerance”
It’s not just Chappelle who has changed over the past 10 years, of course. So has the culture, which has gotten noticeably touchier about all sorts of real and imagined slights. Spiked’s Tom Slater has a review-essay about seeing Chappelle, who converted to Islam in the late 1990s, perform in London that’s well worth a read if you care about freedom of expression and what is accurately called “the new intolerance.”
A snippet:
His new set is peppered with jokes about him coming face-to-face with the new intolerance. There’s the lesbian couple whose kid is at the same ‘liberal-rich’ private school as his son — one of them laughing along at his jokes about whether or not they qualify for the father-son picnic, the other ‘too committed to her lesbianism’ to entertain them. And then there’s that trans joke, in which Dave, finding himself at a poncey gallery party, is stared down when he dares to ask ‘Is he okay?’ after a cross-dresser collapses in the corner. ‘I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Disgraced Planned Parenthood Official Works for White House Staff…her ‘Right-Wing’ Hatred Exposed
Disgraced Planned Parenthood official Deborah Nucatola’s shocking personal work history is coming to light.
Records reveal that Nucatola was employed by a former White House staffer at the time that she was selling aborted baby fetus parts.
A staunch political advocate, Nucatola railed against the “right-wing” Bush administration. What’s more, she so enjoyed her work in the abortion industry that she touted a T-shirt celebrating a drug used in the practice.
Let’s break it down:
Works for a White House staffer
Nucatola is currently employed at Sexual Health Innovations, founded by former Obama White House staffer Jessica Ladd. Senior Obama administration officials sit on the board of the abortion activist group, including Praveen Basaviah of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and Kyle Bernstein of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The IRS-approved 501(c)3 tech nonprofit is a major Obama administration contractor.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Social issues are the key to either destroying or conserving our nation. Any effort in an attempt to preserve this great country will come to nothing if we do not get our moral house in order.
A movie that I saw recently has the hero sneaking in the killer’s house to investigate the suspect’s activities. When the hero hears the arrival of the killer, he quickly leaves so as not to be discovered. But, while he is outside the house trying to slink away, the killer sees the hero and invites him in for a drink. The hero, instead of running for his life, turns around and reluctantly goes back in. A few minutes later, while our hero is hanging by a rope about to be filleted, the killer asks, “Why don’t people trust their instincts? You could have run away and yet you came back because I offered you a drink and your fear of offending was deeper than your fear of pain. It works every time.”
The left knows this. They have taken issues such as gay marriage and abortion, removed them from the realm of morality and carefully placed them in the domain of civil rights. In a country that fought a civil war, suffered through decades of race issues and made remarkable gains, who now wants to deny anyone their “civil rights?” Become a victim in America and doors open to you.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both adherents to Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’ agree in that morality and ethics prevent the world from being what “it should be.” It is no wonder that groups like Acorn, in a once symbiotic relationship with Obama, have been deeply involved in voter fraud.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Maybe hard work is overrated. Having had sufficient sleep has been found crucial regarding how good a person looks as a potential employee or leader.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UN Aims to Trace the Transfer of All Guns and Ammo
Board of “government experts” approved report on UN plan to implement group’s “Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects (PoA).”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Well. I am now ashamed to be from Kansas, which is where I live. The mayor of Kansas City is a jackass and that is all I have to say about it.
In other news, it’s all bad isn’t it. I keep thinking of a news fast, but why be ignorant?
And there’s the other jackass who couldn’t figure out what that Muslim who killed 4 people could possibly have done — we have no idea and we don’t think he has a Muslim name. Really? The mind reels.
Keep up the good work, Baron and Baroness!
Even now FoxNews refuses to connect this shooting to Islam. Everyone is still mystified why he shot up the Marines.
The talking heads say he drank and might have did drugs so he couldn’t have been a Muslim. It doesn’t mean squat, once he kills a unbeliever he’s on the express train to allahland.
I also love how they explain away his time in Jordan. Like it’s a nice place, it’s not, it’s full of Salafists and Hamas types, he easily could have went to KSA or Yemen for further radicalization and training.
And the topper is all those New York secularists pontificating on TV what Islam is and isn’t. These bloviating heads have never opened a Koran or the Reliance of the Traveler or even El Ghazzali’s Alchemy of Happiness. Maybe these fools can sit in judgement of good recreational drugs and the party scene but that’s it.
I imagine Fox News will be losing their all American reputation one of these days when a Jehadi looking gentleman who everyone thought was one of the Saudi owners makes his way past whatever security there may be and all the way onto prime time or some similar scenario. To the Muslims, America especially must seem like virgin territory. I hope not but these are surreal times.
Willian Shirer in his Berlin Diary writes how he could hear Jews partying in the hotel as if it ‘would all blow over’. We all know how that worked out. Christian society is doing the same only much more dangerously. Ask a question and so many have ‘cute’ answers. We may not have long to wait to start seeing some very serious outcomes.
Abdulazeez was previously fired from a job at a nuclear power plant, where he worked as an engineer for a mere ten days, after failing a background check, AP reported.
http://www.rt.com/usa/310153-tennesee-shooter-failed-background-check/
Big Brother Obama collecting data
“Inequalities” between “minorities” and whites
“Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.”
“Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.” New York Post