Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/21/2017

Four young people, three of them college students, were arrested after a recent anti-Confederate counter-protest in Richmond, Virginia. The four are being charged with felonies for wearing antifa masks, under a 1952 law that was passed to unmask the KKK. Each may serve up to five years in prison if convicted.

In other news, a Danish fashion agency has hired its first hijab-wearing model.

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

Thanks to Charles Low, Diana West, GH, Jerry Gordon, KS, Reader from Chicago, 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.

Financial Crisis
» This $700 Billion Public Employee Ticking Time Bomb is Only 6.7% Funded; Most States Are Under 1%
 
USA
» A Few Thoughts on President Trump’s UN Speech
» Nationalism Without Isolationism: Trump’s UN Triumph
» Students Face Prison for Wearing Masks
 
Europe and the EU
» AfD Makes Gains in German Election Polls
» Catalonia Independence Referendum Protests in Spain
» Copenhagen Police Close Off Neighbourhood After New Shooting
» Danish Fashion Agency Hires First Hijab-Wearing Model
» France: Le Pen’s Deputy Quits Party as National Front Crisis Rumbles on
» French Businessman Pledges to Pay Austrian Veil Fines
» French Warned About Pitfalls of Seeking to End Their Lives in Belgium
» How Sweden Helped Build the Internet
» How to Get Swedish Citizenship or Stay Permanently in Sweden
» Italy’s Five Star Movement Votes on Its Candidate for PM
» Muslim Party ‘Taken Over by Islamists’ Rejected by Swedish Election Agency
» Muslims Worried as Austria’s Party Leaders Put Spotlight on Islam
» Pamela Anderson on Julian Assange Relationship: “I Wouldn’t Call it Romance”
» Scottish Leader Raises Concern Over Catalonia Crisis
» Swedish Security Police Investigate Terror Threat in Stockholm
» To Prevent Rebellion, Spain Docks Cruise Ship Housing 16,000 Riot Police in Barcelona Port
» Two Against the EU: Hungary PM Victor Orban Visits Poland
» UK: Breaking: Police Make Sixth Arrest Over Parsons Green Terror Attack in London
» UK: Friend of London Bridge Killer Khuram Butt Has Been Jailed for Spreading ISIS Propaganda
» UK: Moorgate and Liverpool Street Closed Off as Police Swoop in Terror Alert
 
South Asia
» 4 Muslim Youth Gang-Raped Hindu Teenage Girl for 10 Days, Forced to Convert in Muzaffarnagar
 
Australia — Pacific
» Exclusive: Downfall of a Deviant: Grubby Nepalese Woolworths Shelf-Stacker on a Tourist Visa Filmed Up the Skirts of Dozens of Shoppers for Six Months — Until Teen Colleague Caught Him Recording Her on the Toilet
» Wife Forgives Her Husband for Hacking Off Her Fingers and Toes With a Machete Because She Tried to Leave Him — as He’s Jailed for Six Years
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Thousands of Displaced Darfuri Protest Visit by Indicted War Criminal President Bashir of Sudan
 
Immigration
» Australia: Immigrant Security Guard Found Guilty of Stomping His Girlfriend’s Two-Year-Old Daughter to Death Because She Urinated on His Sofa Walks Free After Less Than One Year in Jail After Winning Appeal
» Austria: There Are New Migration Routes Through Bulgaria and Romania
» Austria: Afghan Migrant Arrested for ‘Honor Killing’ His 14-Year-Old Sister
» First 50 Refugees From Manus Island and Nauru Detention Centres to be Settled in the U.S. — But What About the Other 800?
» George Soros Behind Plan to Flood EU With Cheap Migrant Labor, Claims Hungary
» Hundreds of Migrants Waiting to Break Into Britain Evacuated From Makeshift Dunkirk Camp
» Just Three Per Cent of Over Two Million Migrant Arrivals Since 2015 Have Been Deported
» Muslim Asylum Seeker, 35, To Walk Free Within Days for Forcing a Girl, 14, To Marry Him at a Melbourne Mosque — as Peter Dutton Says the Case Shows Why Australia Needs Citizenship Values Test
» Over 4,000 Asylum Seekers in Austria Vanish During Asylum Claim
 
Culture Wars
» Australia: Big Wowsers? Big W Removes the Word Christmas From All Tree Boxes and Signs in Stores
» Pro-Traditional Marriage Former Australian Prime Minister Assaulted by Same Sex Marriage Advocate
 

This $700 Billion Public Employee Ticking Time Bomb is Only 6.7% Funded; Most States Are Under 1%

We’ve spent a lot of time of late discussing the inevitable public pension crisis that will eventually wreak havoc on global financial markets. And while the scale of the public pension underfunding is unprecedented, with estimates ranging from $3 — $8 trillion, there is another taxpayer-funded retirement benefit that has been promised to union workers over the years that puts pensions to shame…at least on a percentage funded basis.

Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB), like pensions, are a stream of future payments that have been promised to retirees primarily to cover healthcare costs. However, unlike pensions, most government entities don’t even bother to accrue assets for this massive stream of future costs resulting in $700 billion of liabilities that most taxpayer likely didn’t even know existed.

As a study from Pew Charitable Trusts points out today, the average OPEB plan in the U.S. today is only 6.7% funded (and that’s if you believe their discount rates…so probably figure about half that amount in reality) and many states around the country are even worse.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

A Few Thoughts on President Trump’s UN Speech

by Diana West

If I had to pick a title, I might call President Trump’s 2017 UN address, “Something for Everyone.”

For example, Trump supporters heard the words “America first” and “sovereignty” and glowed. Trump haters heard the word “sovereignty” and “American interests above all else” and ignited. So consumed were many by their own respective basking and bonfires, they failed to realize that no matter how many times Trump dropped the word “sovereignty,” it was sometimes in sentences like this: “We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea.” In other words, we must reject threats to the new world order and back again.

I’n guessing that’s why neocons were carving the speech up into way many too portions of red meat (carpaccio?) for comfort. Loving it were Elliott Abrams at National Review, Sohrab Ahmari (“Trump’s Turtle Bay Triumph”), and that third amigo, Lindsay Graham, the kind of people once pertrified by The Great Candidate Trump America First Foreign Policy Speech of 2016. With all of that, there was plenty of smoke coming out of many ears — the New York Times, Stalin supporter Max Boot, to name a couple — which was also entertaining.

Then there were the big lines — including the big and also red line about “obliterating” the regime of North Korea if “Rocket Man” doesn’t stop launching missiles at us or our allies. Such talk thrills the Deplorables at home, but it troubles me because it tells me the generals are telling Trump what a quickee little war it will be against “Rocket Man” — just forget all about China, Russia, whether this might be a trap door into a larger regional war, and all that other strategy stuff. Here, they seem to be displaying their customary lack of forsight, and also negligence, when it comes to a fair appraisal of what US capabilities are like after 16 years of taxing stress on our military resources, which, by the way, they never seem to want to stop.

For some out of the box thinking on the subject — and just the pleasure of seeing a real strategic mind at work — read Admiral James A Lyons’ thoughts on using food as a point of pressure against the regime, food that is currently being provided by the UN to North Korea, where the regime exploits it.

Admiral Lyons writes: “Using ‘food’ as a weapon to force regime change is not what civilized nations normally do, but North Korea is not a normal nation. It is rogue nation that not only subjects its people to unimaginable humanitarian crises, but is also is ruled by a destabilizing regime that has threatened to cause the deaths of millions of Americans. Therefore, extreme measures are required prior to taking military actions” (emphasis added).

Back to Trump at the UN. My own eyes certainly lit up when the president explained the problem with Venezuela was not that it had implemented socialism poorly, but that Venezuela had implemented socialism faithfully. A marvelous line. More enjoyable still were the gasps, hiccupped laughs and guffaws the line elicited from all of the assembled socialists. In those moments of global upset I realized I could not think of a single UN “member-state” that was not in some large and fundamental ways itself socialist, and that, tragically, includes the USA.

And here we get to the defective foundation of not only the President’s disappointing appeal to “reform” this insidious World Body, but also of the widest possible academic and political consensus on past events, which, naturally, informs current events. That defective foundation is over three-quarters of a century at least of “court history,” not facts, not conclusions, about the subversion of the nations of the world by agents and supporters of world communism, for most of a century directed and supported by Moscow using extensive domestic networks in many countries. The United Nations is and always has been a massive New York outpost of this same global movement, at its core in direct conflict with our democratic republic and constitutional form of government.

The (unasked) question is, how could the UN possibly be anything else? It was created under the aegis of Soviet agent Alger Hiss, whose cover as a senior State Department official was first revealed publicly by Whittaker Chambers in 1948.

Some additional contex from American Betrayal…

           — Hat tip: Diana West [Return to headlines]
 

Nationalism Without Isolationism: Trump’s UN Triumph

For 50 minutes on Tuesday, President Trump dazzled, and appalled, UN denizens in a speech that was the most detailed and reasoned defense to date of his “America First” ideology. The nationalism was still there, but any hint of isolationism was absent.

If “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un refuses to end his missile and nuclear programs and keeps up his “suicide mission,” Trump said, and if countries fail to isolate him despite the UN’s own resolutions, America “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

And he didn’t shy away from attacking several other sacred cows of Turtle Bay. He chastised the UN bureaucracy and hinted America won’t continue blindly pouring cash into it. He asked other countries to shoulder more responsibility in maintaining global peace and prosperity.

And then there was this: The nuclear deal with Iran is “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” Trump said. “Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States, and I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it — believe me.”

The usual suspects were appalled. “It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told the BBC.

In reality, it was a more-refined and a better-reasoned version of the worldview Trump’s been proclaiming since the campaign. It was a defense of the role national interests play in facilitating global cooperation…

           — Hat tip: KS [Return to headlines]
 

Students Face Prison for Wearing Masks

Three college students and one former student were arraigned Tuesday and Wednesday and face five years in prison each for wearing masks while protesting a Richmond, Va., Confederate rally Saturday.

The four individuals, who were either current or former Virginia Commonwealth University students, violated a 1952 Virginia law created to unmask Ku Klux Klan members in the state, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

AfD Makes Gains in German Election Polls

Populist party the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is making a late push in polls to place itself as the third largest party ahead of Sunday’s general election.

AfD looks set to make the parliament for the first time with 11 percent’s backing, according to a Forschungsgruppe Wahlen poll released Thursday for broadcaster ZDF. The party has primarily focused on an anti-immigration agenda during the campaign after growing to significance during the migrant crisis. A successful election night would break a longstanding taboo in the country that has kept populists out of politics for decades.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Catalonia Independence Referendum Protests in Spain

MADRID — Catalan pro-independence supporters have scuffled with Spanish Civil Guard officers escorting a government official arrested as part of a crackdown by national authorities on Catalonia’s plans to hold a secession referendum.

The protesters tried to block the officers as they took Xavier Puig away from the headquarters of the region’s department of external affairs in downtown Barcelona. Puig, the IT manager in the department, was one of at least 12 officials arrested Wednesday in police raids.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Copenhagen Police Close Off Neighbourhood After New Shooting

Police in Copenhagen temporarily closed off a section of the Nørrebro neighbourhood after a shooting during the early hours of Thursday.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Danish Fashion Agency Hires First Hijab-Wearing Model

A Danish modelling agency’s decision to add a model who wears a hijab to its staff has been described as ““quite exceptional”.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

France: Le Pen’s Deputy Quits Party as National Front Crisis Rumbles on

Marine Le Pen’s National front party continues to lurch from one crisis to another after the vice-prsesident Florian Philippot, one of her closest allies, announced he was quitting on Thursday morning after a very public dispute with his leader.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

French Businessman Pledges to Pay Austrian Veil Fines

VIENNA (Reuters) — A French businessman said he would pay all fines imposed on women wearing a full-face veil in Austria under a law banning it from Oct. 1, an Austrian broadcaster reported.

The reported remarks from Rachid Nekkaz, who already pays fines for women who wear Muslim niqabs and burkas despite bans in France and Belgium, provoked criticism from Austria’s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz.

[Comment: Why doesn’t this businessman donate money to victims of migrant violence instead?]

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

French Warned About Pitfalls of Seeking to End Their Lives in Belgium

Belgian doctors fear the number of French people heading over the border to seek help to end their lives could shoot up and are warning that the road to the end is paved with problems.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

How Sweden Helped Build the Internet

The Local discovers the untold history of how a little known Swedish Viking laid the foundations for the modern internet.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

How to Get Swedish Citizenship or Stay Permanently in Sweden

Like Sweden so much you want to stay forever — or even become a Swede? The process can seem daunting, so in an effort to help, The Local has summarized what you need to know about getting Swedish citizenship or the right to stay in Sweden permanently.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Italy’s Five Star Movement Votes on Its Candidate for PM

Members of Italy’populist Five Star Movement were on Thursday voting for a PM candidate the party hopes will beat the traditional parties to the job of running the country in next year’s elections.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Muslim Party ‘Taken Over by Islamists’ Rejected by Swedish Election Agency

Swedish electoral authorities have refused to register the Muslim-led “Jasin” party from taking part in next year’s Swedish election after radical Islamists had tried to take it over.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Muslims Worried as Austria’s Party Leaders Put Spotlight on Islam

As Austrians grow more openly hostile towards Muslims, major political parties are deliberately brandishing Islamophobia in the Catholic majority country ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Pamela Anderson on Julian Assange Relationship: “I Wouldn’t Call it Romance”

Pamela Anderson has discussed her rumoured relationship with Julian Assange on Good Morning Britain, revealing that although she does “love” the WikiLeaks founder and finds “nothing sexier than courage”, she wouldn’t define what they have as “romance”.

The actress and model sparked speculation that she might be involved with Assange when she was seen visiting him on numerous occasions in the last year.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Scottish Leader Raises Concern Over Catalonia Crisis

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed concern Thursday about the Spanish government’s crackdown in Catalonia, saying the right of self-determination should be respected everywhere.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

Swedish Security Police Investigate Terror Threat in Stockholm

Sweden’s security police are investigating a terror threat made against Stockholm.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

To Prevent Rebellion, Spain Docks Cruise Ship Housing 16,000 Riot Police in Barcelona Port

Efforts by Madrid to stop a Catalonia independence vote, currently slated for October 1st, seem to be growing more hostile by the day. Earlier this week Spanish police seized control of Catalonia’s finances, seeking to ensure that separatist politicians could not spend further public funds on the referendum, and condu

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Two Against the EU: Hungary PM Victor Orban Visits Poland

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is slated to visit Warsaw on Friday. Officially, he is returning Polish counterpart Beata Szydlo’s state visit to Budapest in February 2015, but the two government leaders have already met several times since then. The Polish and Hungarian governments are now coordinating their European policies.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Breaking: Police Make Sixth Arrest Over Parsons Green Terror Attack in London

POLICE have made a sixth arrest in relation to the Parsons Green terror attack detaining a 17-year-old male in Thornton Heath, south London.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Friend of London Bridge Killer Khuram Butt Has Been Jailed for Spreading ISIS Propaganda

AN ISLAMIC State-obsessed pal of the London Bridge terror attack ringleader who spouted hatred outside Windsor Castle has been jailed.

Wannabe jihadi Taha Hussain boasted about toppling a statue of Queen Victoria in front of the royal residence.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Moorgate and Liverpool Street Closed Off as Police Swoop in Terror Alert

MOORGATE and Liverpool Street were placed on lockdown as armed police and sniffer dogs swooped on the area in the heart of the City of London.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

4 Muslim Youth Gang-Raped Hindu Teenage Girl for 10 Days, Forced to Convert in Muzaffarnagar

Teenage Hindu girl says gang-raped for 10 days by 4 Muslim boys, allegedly tried conversion, forced to eat meat. Muzaffarnagar Police investigates the truth.

Jyoti Singh Thakur | HENB | Muzaffarnagar | Sept 19, 2017:: Four Muslim youth have been accused of gang-raping a Hindu teenage girl for 10 days forcing her to convert to Islam. It is also alleged that the victim girl was forced to eat meat even after strong protests. The incident has taken place in a communally sensitive area known as Muzaffarnagar in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The Muzaffarnagar region, located close to capital New Delhi, has witnessed serious communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in the past. The latest incident is bound to raise tensions in the area as authorities try to handle the situation carefully and a Muslim police officer is trying to suppress many things to save the face of local law and order situation.

The 16-year-old victim has accused the four young Muslim men — identified by the police as Akram, Aslam, Ayyub, and Salim — of raping her in captivity after abducting her. The suspects are thought to have been known to the victim.

“The girl has filed a FIR [First Information Report] against four youths — Akram, Aslam, Ayyub and Salim — for gang-raping for about 10 days,” said local police officer Mohammad Rizwan, according to the Hindustan Times.

           — Hat tip: Upananda Brahmachari [Return to headlines]
 

Exclusive: Downfall of a Deviant: Grubby Nepalese Woolworths Shelf-Stacker on a Tourist Visa Filmed Up the Skirts of Dozens of Shoppers for Six Months — Until Teen Colleague Caught Him Recording Her on the Toilet

A Woolworths shelf-stacker on a student visa used a secret camera app on his iPhone to ‘up-skirt’ dozens of customers until a colleague caught him filming her in the toilet.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Wife Forgives Her Husband for Hacking Off Her Fingers and Toes With a Machete Because She Tried to Leave Him — as He’s Jailed for Six Years

Atinae Afamiliona, 50, was driving through Sydney’s south-west with his wife Tiperia Afamiliona last year when she suggested they should separate. He then began a frenzied machete attack.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Thousands of Displaced Darfuri Protest Visit by Indicted War Criminal President Bashir of Sudan

For the past two days, indicted war criminal President Omar al-Bashir has been visiting internally displaced person camps in Darfur. He is endeavoring to project the image of reaching out to the very same indigenous African people that his National Congress Party has committed to ethnically cleanse, up to now killing over 600,000 and displacing five million internally with hundreds of thousands having fled to UN refugee camps in neighboring Sahel countries, Chad, Central African Republic and elsewhere. This time, Bashir has met with signs of protests from thousands of displaced Darfurians, the victims of his brutal Arab Coalition Plan to eliminate them by 2020.

Note the comments in this All Africa.com/Radio Dabanga report…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

Australia: Immigrant Security Guard Found Guilty of Stomping His Girlfriend’s Two-Year-Old Daughter to Death Because She Urinated on His Sofa Walks Free After Less Than One Year in Jail After Winning Appeal

A security guard who was jailed for stomping his girlfriend’s two-year-old daughter to death because she urinated on his sofa, will walk free after he was cleared on appeal on Thursday.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Austria: There Are New Migration Routes Through Bulgaria and Romania

‘‘In the Balkans, through Bulgaria and Romania new migration routes appeared’’, Austrian Defense Minister Hans-Peter Dosoczil said in an interview with the German newspaper Welt.

“According to our recent data, new routes have begun to emerge in the Balkans,” the minister said, adding that this is happening after Hungary and Macedonia “have significantly strengthened measures to protect the EU’s external borders.”

According to him, “many refugees are trying to reach the northern part of Europe through Slovakia, choosing a route through Romania or Bulgaria.”

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Austria: Afghan Migrant Arrested for ‘Honor Killing’ His 14-Year-Old Sister

An 18-year-old migrant from Afghanistan has been arrested in the Austrian capital of Vienna after police alleged he stabbed his own 14-year-old sister to death in an apparent honour killing.

The 18-year-old is said to have killed his sister on Monday after getting into a heated argument with her because she had complained to her parents about not wanting to go to school.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

First 50 Refugees From Manus Island and Nauru Detention Centres to be Settled in the U.S. — But What About the Other 800?

About 50 refugees being held in camps on Manus Island and Nauru will be welcomed to start afresh in the United States. Pictured here is some refugees at the camp in an undated photo.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

George Soros Behind Plan to Flood EU With Cheap Migrant Labor, Claims Hungary

HUNGARY’S ruling party has accused billionaire George Soros of being behind a plan to use migrants for cheap labour across Europe.

The country’s ruling Fidesz party has promised to launch a “national consultation” on the alleged plan by financier Mr Soros.

The right wing party, which is preparing for elections next April, promised on Thursday to expose Mr Soros’s alleged plan, as it fights to be re-elected for a third term.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Hundreds of Migrants Waiting to Break Into Britain Evacuated From Makeshift Dunkirk Camp

Over 500 migrants have been evacuated by French police from a migrant camp in a suburb of the northern French city of Dunkirk.

Many of the migrants in the camp ended up there after a similar makeshift camp in the area was burnt down in April. Police say they deployed around 200 officers who managed to detain close to 400 migrants who will now be housed in more permanent asylum centres, L’Express reports.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Just Three Per Cent of Over Two Million Migrant Arrivals Since 2015 Have Been Deported

Only 75,000 of the 2.2 million people who sought asylum in Europe in 2015 and 2016 have been deported to their homelands after their claims were rejected, a report has found.

More than half of the people who arrived during the migrant surge are still waiting for decisions on their asylum status, whilst those rejected are far more likely to “disappear” than be deported, according to a systematic study by the Pew Research Center.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Muslim Asylum Seeker, 35, To Walk Free Within Days for Forcing a Girl, 14, To Marry Him at a Melbourne Mosque — as Peter Dutton Says the Case Shows Why Australia Needs Citizenship Values Test

Peter Dutton has renewed his calls for an Australian citizenship values test after a Muslim refugee found guilty of marrying an underage girl was jailed for just one year.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Over 4,000 Asylum Seekers in Austria Vanish During Asylum Claim

Newly released figures show that over 4,000 migrants who came to Austria to claim asylum have gone underground and many have left for other more desirable countries in Europe.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Australia: Big Wowsers? Big W Removes the Word Christmas From All Tree Boxes and Signs in Stores

Discount department store Big W has removed the word ‘Christmas’ from boxes and signage in the lead-up to the holiday season in Australia, leaving shoppers baffled and infuriated.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Pro-Traditional Marriage Former Australian Prime Minister Assaulted by Same Sex Marriage Advocate

Tony Abbott was head-butted by a gay marriage supporter but the former PM didn’t report the assault until police contacted him. ‘It was just very disconcerting to find the love is love brigade, or a least someone who was advocating a yes vote, should, under the guise of wanting to shake your hand, in fact try to give you a so-called Liverpool kiss.’

           — Hat tip: GH [Return to headlines]