Gates of Vienna News Feed 8/22/2017

Tonight’s news feed is almost non-existent. Maybe there was no news today. Or maybe President Trump’s visit to Phoenix so preoccupied our tipsters that they forgot to email us.

There’s some good news: after shutting down the account for Jihad Watch — presumably because it’s a “hate” site — PayPal has caved in to popular pressure and reinstated the account.

Also, check out the story about the entrepreneur who was caught smuggling 5.7 million amphetamine pills into Dubai hidden in sheep intestines.

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

Thanks to AF, Charles Low, LP, Srdja Trifkovic, SS, Upananda Brahmachari, 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.

USA
» Charlottesville to Cover Confederate Statues After Chaotic Meeting
» PayPal Bans Jihad Watch From Accepting Donations
» Robert Spencer: Overreach: Paypal Bans Jihad Watch, Then Backs Down
» Trump: We’ll ‘Probably’ End up Terminating NAFTA
 
Europe and the EU
» Body Washed up in Denmark from Sweden Had Limbs “Removed Deliberately” From Body
 
Middle East
» Dubai Arrests Man for Hiding 5.7M Pills in Sheep Intestines
» Trial of Stockholm Academic Facing Death Penalty in Iran Begins
 
South Asia
» Supreme Court Nulls the Practice of Triple Talaq in India
» Trump on Afghanistan: More of the Same
 
Immigration
» Swiss Immigrant to Australia Faces Deportation After ‘Failing a Character Test’ Because of His Links to Violent Far-Right Vigilante Group Soldiers of Odin
 

Charlottesville to Cover Confederate Statues After Chaotic Meeting

(Reuters) — City councilors in Charlottesville, Virginia, voted unanimously on Tuesday to cover two statues of Confederate war heroes in black fabric after ejecting spectators from a chaotic council meeting as residents demanded answers over how a recent white nationalist rally turned deadly.

Many activists and local residents crowded into the meeting, which began late Monday and spilled into the wee hours of Tuesday. It was the first council meeting since the Aug. 12 rally, when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters and killed a 32-year-old woman.

Many at the meeting shouted at the councilors and Mayor Mike Signer, forcing them at one point to leave the chamber.

Videos posted on social media showed some in the crowd yelling “shame” and “shut it down” and calling for Signer’s resignation. A photo online showed two people holding a sign that read “Blood On Your Hands” behind the council seats…

           — Hat tip: LP [Return to headlines]
 

PayPal Bans Jihad Watch From Accepting Donations

Online payment company PayPal has banned Jihad Watch and the site’s director Robert Spencer from accepting online donations using the service.

PayPal has reportedly suspended the account of Jihad Watch, according to the website’s director, Robert Spencer. In a post on Jihad Watch calling for the boycott of PayPal, Spencer outlined his correspondence with the company over a number of emails. PayPal’s suspension of Spencer’s account came shortly after an article published by Lauren Kirchner of ProPublica who criticized tech companies such as PayPal that allow Jihad Watch to utilize their online services.

“Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League,” wrote Kirchner. “But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon, and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially.”

Shortly after the publication of this article that PayPal contacted Spencer with an email which stated,

           — Hat tip: AF [Return to headlines]
 

Robert Spencer: Overreach: Paypal Bans Jihad Watch, Then Backs Down

But after banning Jihad Watch, PayPal encountered a crowd of free citizens. PayPal was inundated with emails and tweets denouncing its ready capitulation to Leftist attempts to delegitimize and silence all dissent. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people canceled their PayPal accounts.

And so PayPal quickly came to realize that the power of the people is not vested solely in the Leftist thugs who assert themselves ever more aggressively on America’s streets. PayPal discovered that America is still full of patriots who don’t wish to accept the Left’s lie that opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression constitutes “Islamophobia,” which is worse than jihad terror itself.

On Monday evening, I received this from PayPal:

           — Hat tip: AF [Return to headlines]
 

Trump: We’ll ‘Probably’ End up Terminating NAFTA

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he doubts the United States can reach a deal to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal … I think we’ll end up probably terminating NAFTA at some point,” he said at a rally in Arizona of the efforts to tweak the three-nation deal with Mexico and Canada.

“I personally don’t think you can make a deal without a termination but we’re going to see what happens, OK? You’re in good hands, I can tell you,” he added.

The three nations started formal negotiations to tweak the trade agreement this month. The U.S. came into the talks seeking a major overhaul in the deal that removed most barriers to trade between the countries. It went into effect in 1994.

As a candidate, Trump railed against NAFTA and other free trade deals, saying they sapped manufacturing jobs from American workers as companies sought to pay lower wages abroad.

           — Hat tip: LP [Return to headlines]
 

Body Washed up in Denmark from Sweden Had Limbs “Removed Deliberately” From Body

Police in Denmark have confirmed that a body that was found washed up on shores near Copenhagen on Monday had its arms, legs and head “deliberately” removed.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Dubai Arrests Man for Hiding 5.7M Pills in Sheep Intestines

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A state-owned newspaper in Dubai is reporting a man has found himself in a legal mess after allegedly trying to smuggling 5.7 million amphetamine pills into the sheikhdom hidden inside sheep intestines.

Al-Bayan newspaper reported in its Tuesday edition that the man appeared in court on charges he hid the pills in intestines packed into drums heading into Dubai’s massive Jebel Ali port.

Prosecutors say the man said his brother had told him to try to bring the intestines into the country. Customs authorities discovered the pills when they inspected the cargo before it was to be released and taken to a warehouse…

           — Hat tip: LP [Return to headlines]
 

Trial of Stockholm Academic Facing Death Penalty in Iran Begins

The trial of a Stockholm academic who is detained in Iran on what Amnesty International calls ‘extremely vague grounds’ and could face the death penalty is set to get under way.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Supreme Court Nulls the Practice of Triple Talaq in India

In a majority Judgement, SC says triple talaq invalid, Govt welcomes verdict; Muslim leaders say will be difficult to implement.

Upendra Bharti | HENB | New Delhi | Aug 22, 2017:: Supreme Court of India paved the way to free India out of the arbitrary, inhumane and forced divorce of Triple Talaq to rescue the Muslim women from the scourge of Sharia Law.

Triple talaq, the controversial Muslim divorce law that allows men to leave their wives immediately by uttering “talaq” (divorce) thrice, has been banned by the Supreme Court, which today called it illegal, retrograde and unworthy. Calling the practice “bad in law”, a constitution bench of five judges said that triple talaq “is not integral to religious practice and violates constitutional morality”.

Triple talaq is legal for Muslims according to the constitution, but several Muslim women who have been divorced, including by Skype and on WhatsApp, had challenged the 1400-year-old practice.

Five judges of different faiths — Chief Justice JS Khehar, Justice Kurian Joseph, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer — heard the case over five days from May 12 to May 18.

“Triple talaq may be a permissible practice but it retrograde and unworthy. Since triple talaq is instant it is irrevocable and the marital tie gets broken, it violates the right to equality,” said the court.

Two judges — including the Chief Justice — differed and said while triple talaq “may be sinful”, the court can’t interfere in personal laws that are considered a fundamental right by the constitution…

           — Hat tip: Upananda Brahmachari [Return to headlines]
 

Trump on Afghanistan: More of the Same

by Srdja Trifkovic

President Donald Trump’s address to the nation on Afghanistan was carefully crafted and well delivered. It did not provide a blueprint for winning the war, however, which remains his stated objective. Trump has settled for a compromise between all-out escalation, advocated by some of his generals, and the disengagement he had favored on the campaign trail. His approach, based on the doctrine of “principled realism”—seeing the world as it is, not seeking to remake it—in this case is likely to result in an open-ended continuation of the Afghan stalemate.

Trump is aware that the nation is tired of the longest war in American history: “I share the American people’s frustration. I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and most importantly lives, trying to rebuild countries in our own image, instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations.” He frankly admitted that he has changed his mind: “My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my instincts,” but “decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office . . . “ His explanation for the shift sounded reasonable: we should “seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made,” while the consequences of a rapid exit “would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill.” He invoked Obama’s “hasty and mistaken” withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, and pledged not to repeat that error.

Trump’s outright rejection of a timetable for withdrawal was ostensibly pragmatic: “A core pillar of our new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.” It is counterproductive “to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military options. We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground—not arbitrary timetables—will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”

The problem is that this statement of intent does not amount to “a new strategy.” It is uncannily reminiscent of George W. Bush’s 2003 pledge that “our forces will be coming home [from Iraq] as soon as their work is done,” and his promise (two years later) that the troops would depart as soon as they “complete the mission.” It is unfortunate that Trump did not spell out the “conditions” that would make disengagement possible at some future date…

           — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic [Return to headlines]
 

Swiss Immigrant to Australia Faces Deportation After ‘Failing a Character Test’ Because of His Links to Violent Far-Right Vigilante Group Soldiers of Odin

A Swiss immigrant is facing deportation from Australia after the government discovered links to a far-right-wing vigilante group.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

3 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 8/22/2017

  1. In the US, we went from a difficult divorce law to divorce on demand; in India, they’ve gone from very simple divorce to something else that will be more complex. The only certainty is that the children will continue to suffer. Hurray for us?

    • Given a choice between the US system (insofar as I understand it) and the Muslim one, I’d say the first is the lesser evil.

  2. It seems that these guy/s are trying to make an issue of things.
    An interesting site. SWEDISH MUSEUM ACCELERATES THEIR CULTURAL COLLAPSE BY TURNING VIKING ARTIFACTS INTO SCRAP METAL
    ………… curators of Stockholms Länsmuseum have been ordering the systematic destruction of newly found artifacts from the Iron Age and the Viking period………
    ……… raise the alarm before but only met indifference from the Liberal Swedish Media. According to Runer, this has been going on since at least 2016…….
    ….. Why do they not invite other museums around the world to collect and protect their artifacts in their name if money is an issue? I know at least ten museums around me that would stop everything they are doing right now to plan a trip and bring back the artifacts to add them to their collection.

    Why don’t they store them in labelled wooden boxes as it was done for hundred of years? If not, let them ask for voluntary work to take care of the findings or let it be given to the native people that are interested in this culture. Even if used as door stops or cutlery, they’ll take better care of it than any Swedish liberal government…….

    ….(“New Suede” and Sweden’s Minister of Culture) are the ones that now approve those decisions and define what should compose Swedish History and choose what will be Sweden’s future………….
    …… “”ancient marble statues made thousands of years ago are actually racist and were specifically used to “whitewash history”””……

    ……..Cultural Marxism aims at erasing the past to get rid of the last roots that our children can call theirs……..
    ………Destroy a people’s history so they cannot find a common heritage to fight for and you can start anew and create the society you seek. ………
    http://www.returnofkings.com/128167/swedish-museum-accelerates-their-cultural-collapse-by-turning-viking-artifacts-into-scrap-metal Many of us know this as like when the Bamyan statues and the ideology of Jahiliyyah is turned to destroy all the pre-islamic artifacts.

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