After a protest march against the relocation of the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, more than twenty “youths” threw firebombs at a synagogue in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. A group of Jewish students was inside the synagogue at the time, but fortunately no one was injured.
In other news, Italy is reportedly secretly preparing to withdraw from the euro by setting up a parallel currency. The plan is said to enjoy the support of Silvio Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia.
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Thanks to Dora, Insubria, KS, Reader from Chicago, SS, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
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Congress’ Higher Education Act Reauthorization Tackles Free Speech and Due Process
Today, the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Republican members introduced legislation called the PROSPER Act to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. In a positive development, the legislation includes provisions on free speech, free association, and due process on campus.
For those unfamiliar with the HEA, it is the landmark federal law that tackles all things higher-education-related, from financial aid to reporting of campus crime statistics under the Clery Act.
Positive aspects of the bill include a provision helpfully declaring that “free speech zones and restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution.” While not binding on institutions, it adds that no institution of higher education that receives federal funds “should restrict the speech of such institution’s students through such zones or codes.” The bill also requires institutions receiving federal funds to annually disclose “to current and prospective students any policies held by the institutions related to protected speech on campus, including policies limiting where and when such speech may occur.”
[Comment: The article was published Dec. 1, 2017.]
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Spread the Swamp? Trump Administration Wants to Move Government Offices Out of Washington
[…]
There hasn’t been so much buzz about getting “Washington” out of Washington since Franklin D. Roosevelt sent 30,000 federal workers to the Midwest after a presidential commission advised such moves would ensure the prototypical federal employee “remains one of the people in touch with the people and does not degenerate into an isolated and arrogant bureaucrat.”
“We need to find out what we can move,” said Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Youngstown, Ohio, who is seeking to create a commission that would identify parts of the bureaucracy that could be moved to economically distressed regions like his. A fellow Ohio congressman and political rival, tea party activist Warren Davidson, has mounted a parallel bureaucracy migration push. He calls it the “Drain the Swamp Act.”
None of it is going over well with die-hard Washingtonians. Many scold that the idea will flame out the same way it did when the Clinton administration pondered and then dropped a big relocation initiative, and the Reagan administration did the same before it.
When the House Government Oversight Committee passed a “Divest D.C.” resolution earlier this year that calls on all agencies to investigate moving out, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting House representative for Washington, warned that it would cost taxpayers a fortune, spread dysfunction throughout the bureaucracy and economically devastate the region.
Her Democratic allies on the committee were not impressed by the suggestion of the measure’s sponsor, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) that maybe it could lead to the Department of Transportation moving to the traffic capital of the nation, liberal Los Angeles.
Other Democrats, though, are intrigued by the possibilities of a redistributed bureaucracy.
“There is a lot of wisdom outside the Beltway,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley Democrat. He wants agencies to more aggressively tap into it, as the Defense Department did when it set up a shop in Silicon Valley. Khanna, a Stanford economist, is among several in Washington’s intellectual circles who say fading factory and farm towns are well positioned to benefit from the kind of relocations envisioned in plans like Ryan’s.
There are other reasons the movement has regained steam of late. While only 15% of the federal workforce is in Washington, it is where most of the top decision makers live and work. David Fontana, a professor at George Washington University Law School who is writing a book about decentralizing the federal government, says their bubble is growing ever more insulated from reality.
“When you have this concentration of important people all in a single place, they form their own tight networks immune to other influences,” he said. Decentralizing that power away from the capital has long been a trend in other countries, Fontana said. “This is not a crazy idea.”
The Trump administration will likely put it to the test soon. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a Montanan, is aiming to move the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation out of Washington as soon as logistically possible. Western politicians like Sen. Corey Gardner (R-Colo.) are cheering him on.
“Ninety-nine percent of the nearly 250 million acres of land managed by BLM is west of the Mississippi River, and having the decision makers present in the communities they impact in Colorado or across the region will lead to better results,” Gardner wrote in an email.He wants the bureau headquartered in his state, and Colorado’s Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, has joined Gardner’s lobbying campaign…
| — Hat tip: Dora | [Return to headlines] |
Will Canada Ban Pamela Geller?
On Friday’s show, Pamela Geller joined me to discuss the efforts of a Quebec based group to pressure the Canadian government to deny her entry into the country for a December 18th event organized by the Jewish Defence League.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Firebombs Hurled at Synagogue in Sweden After Protest March Over Jerusalem
More than a dozen men hurled firebombs at a synagogue in Gothenburg in southern Sweden hours after locals marched in the city against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
No one was injured in the attack Saturday night, which ended without injury, the online edition of the Expressen daily reported.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
German Conservatives Reject ‘United States of Europe’ Ahead of Coalition Talks
BERLIN (Reuters) — Senior members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives on Saturday rejected the vision for a “United States of Europe” put forward by the Social Democrats (SPD), with whom they are hoping to form a governing coalition.
SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Thursday his party, which suffered its worst post-war election result in September, would only gain support by providing a clear vision of Europe, and called for a United States of Europe by 2025.
Merkel’s conservatives, who lost voters to the far-right due to their liberal migrant policy, want the SPD to agree to a last-ditch alliance with them after talks on a tie-up with two smaller parties collapsed.
Discussions on maintaining the conservative-SPD coalition, which has governed Germany since 2013, are due to start on Wednesday but the two parties look set to clash over the issue of Europe, which is likely to play a key role in talks.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Roche: Novartis CEOs Risk Trial for Scorning Drug
Accused of share-rigging for denigrating Avastin
(ANSA) — Rome, December 7 — The CEOs of Roche and Novartis risk trial in Italy for share-rigging over alleged denigratory campaign starting in 2011 against the eye-disease drug Avastin, prosecutors said Thursday. Roche’s Maurizio De Cicco and Novartis’s George Schrockn Fuchs received notification that a probe had ended, which is generally the prelude to an indictment request.
The two managers are accused of conspiring to obstruct, via the diffusion of false news, the use of the very cheap Avastin in favour of a much dearer product, Lucentis.
The two pharmaceutical giants were fined 180 million euros by Italian antitrust authorities for this affair.
Rome prosecutors have based their case on the content of emails between De Cicco and Schrockn Fuchs.
They are also relying on the results of a technical consultation which assessed the characteristics of the two products and their therapeutic efficacy. Both CEOs and their firms denied the charges, saying they had done nothing wrong. “We have nothing whatsoever to do with the charges,” they said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Hatches Shocking Plan ‘To Leave the Euro’
ITALY is secretly hatching plans to sideline the euro and set up a parallel currency.
In a move that will spark fears across the EU of an “Italexit”, three of the country’s political parties are backing the introduction of “Fiscal Credit Certificates” as an alternative to the euro.
The complex plan has the approval of the European Central Bank.
Among the parties backing it is Silvio Berlosconi’s Forza Italia, which has enjoyed an astonishing comeback in the polls.
The revelation comes as Martin Schulz, the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic party who is tipped to become Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy, last week called for the creation of a United States of Europe by 2025.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Twenty one masked men have thrown Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Sweden tonight as terrified Jewish students huddled inside.
The group of youth, who were holding a party in the venue, had to be rushed to basement until security forces arrived.
The sickening attack has taken place in Gothenburg just days after US President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
Armed officers raced to the scene tonight just after 10pm to reports of ‘several’ Molotov cocktails being thrown outside. […]
The attack comes one day after thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in a ‘day of rage’ today over Trump’s incendiary Jerusalem move.
It is not known if the two incidents are linked.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorist Threat UK: Christmas Markets at ‘High Risk’ In Britain Mapped
Jihadis have been threatening festive bloodbaths as they explicitly target Brit shoppers at Christmas.
Propaganda published by jihadi supporters has shown gun toting ISIS terrorists on Oxford Streetand public executions on Regent Street.
Britain’s terror threat level remains severe — meaning an attack is highly likely — after MI5 revealed they have foiled 20 terror plots since 2013.
At least eight cities in the UK have readied their security for the threat of Xmas terror.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Welcome to the Hell Hole That is Brussels
Last month alone in Brussels, there were three separate outbreaks of rioting and looting on a major scale.
If you penetrate the thick cloud of professional indignation to scrutinize the reality of the “capital of Europe”, what you see in many respects is actually a hell hole, one where socialism, Islamism, riots and looting are the new normal.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Congress is Finally Pulling Funding From Palestinian ‘Pay-to-Slay’
In an unusual display of bipartisanship, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed The Taylor Force Act, a bill to reduce U.S. funding for the Palestinians unless official bodies stop subsidizing the families of killers.
Co-sponsored by Lindsay Graham, Dan Coats and Roy Blunt, The Taylor Force Act was named in honor of Taylor Force, a West Point graduate who had served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was stabbed to death while with a Vanderbilt University tour group in Israel. By any stretch of the imagination, the stipends offered for such killings lavish incentives to commit violence.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) argues cynically that such payments relieve poverty. Alas, they do. However, they do so at the price of murders. Would passage of the Taylor Force Act halt or add to terrorist activities? The answer is obvious. Eliminating the incentive for terrorism will reduce its presence. Clearly pathologies of the kind the world has experienced from the Middle East won’t disappear, but the Taylor Force Act is a mitigating influence in the right direction.
Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the U.S. has permitted the two key Palestinian organizations — the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)and the PA — to get away with murder or, at least, with honoring murder. It is time for this scandalous behavior to end.
At the moment, terrorists who murder are honored with street names. In fact, the more egregious the crime, the more you get paid. Campsites, schools, clinics are named after so-called martyrs who kill innocent Jews.
This is arguably the most barbaric government policy on the globe since the crime of murder is endorsed by officials and U.S. taxpayers are partially responsible for underwriting the crime.
It is conceivable The Taylor Force Act could have a salutary effect on President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA since it could open a pathway to an accord which might yield Palestinian jobs and opportunities. The PA has two pools to deal with “pay-to-slay” arrangements with combined budgets exceeding $300 million annually. In fact, payments to “martyrs” dwarf the average monthly salary of an ordinary working inhabitant of the West Bank. De-incentivizing murder seems like the obvious thing to do.
The passage of this act came a day before President Trump conferred recognition of Jerusalem as the Israel’s capital. Trump said his decision was a “recognition of reality.” The White House also noted that the decision would not have any impact on the future of boundaries as negotiated in a final status agreement.
Clearly the physical location of the American embassy is not material to a future peace deal. But the back-to-back actions on the Taylor Force Act and the embassy represent the unequivocal Trump administration support for the state of Israel, a condition that has not been the case heretofore.
| — Hat tip: Dora | [Return to headlines] |
House Passes Bill to Stop US Taxpayer Funding of Palestinian Muslim Terrorists
On Tuesday, the U.S. House unanimously approved the Taylor Force Act (H.R. 1164) which pressures the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) to stop the practice of paying convicted terrorists and their families by eliminating U.S. funding to the P.A. unless it stops these types of payments.
| — Hat tip: SS | [Return to headlines] |
Humiliation — The Only Path to Peace for the Middle East
President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel will be as a stab in the heart to the Arab World. But anything else would be to succor Arab hopes that Israel might some day be defeated and eliminated
By Spengler
For perhaps a quarter of the world’s population, President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem on December 6 was humiliating. Just for that reason it makes Middle East peace more probable. More than President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Israeli-Egyptian peace deal of 1979, President Trump is likely to be remembered as the American president who contributed most to peace.
Wars end not when the loser is defeated, but rather when the loser is humiliated. Throughout history, as I argued in a 2016 survey of ancient and modern wars, losers have fought on until they lack the manpower to fill their depleted ranks. Typically that occurs after 30% of military-age men are dead, as in France during the Napoleonic Wars, the South in the American Civil War, or Germany in the Second World War. The losing side will not abandon hostilities until all those who want to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so — unless it is humiliated before the physical exhaustion of its resources has run its course.
That is why the use of atomic weapons against Japan well may have been an act of mercy. The American fire-bombing campaign had already wrecked most of Japan’s cities and killed far more civilians than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan might have sustained far more damage in a conventional resolution through bombing and an eventual invasion. Atomic weapons humiliated the Japanese by displaying the incomparable superiority of Western technology and the pointlessness of further resistance.
There are some defeats whose memory is too painful to bear…
| — Hat tip: KS | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Says ‘Perplexed’ By Mogherini
‘Fuels unrealistic expectations by Palestinians’
(ANSA) — Tel Aviv, December 7 — The Israeli foreign ministry said Thursday that EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini “leaves us perplexed” by reiterating the EU stance on Jerusalem’s status after the US recognised it as Israel’s capital. “The insistence that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel is the denial,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said, “of an undeniable historic fact.” He said that “every denial of this simple truth pushed peace farther away by creating expectations in the Palestinians which are outside reality”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Putin’s Rage Triggered by Obama’s Moves
Fearing meddling by U.S., Moscow now turns to ‘hybrid warfare’
VLAD’S REVENGE: Part of an occasional series
In interview after interview with top U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats about the downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations, one date keeps resurfacing: January 2012.
That month Michael McFaul, President Obama’s newly appointed ambassador to Russia, arrived in snow-covered Moscow and almost immediately began meeting with opposition leaders and human rights activists critical of the Kremlin.
It was a provocative move at a sensitive moment when Vladimir Putin was already seething over perceived American backing of mass protests designed to smear him. The Russian president was also facing a wobbly economy as global oil prices plunged as he struggled to reclaim Russia’s influence on the world stage.
Mr. McFaul, an academic by training and a political appointee, had never served as an ambassador before. The sandy-haired Montana native was 49 at the time, and in the midst of his whirlwind first month in Moscow, he blogged that he’d started things off “with a bang.”
An investigation into what’s happened since, down to and including explosive charges of Russian meddling in the U.S. political process, suggests the fallout was greater than anyone could have predicted.
In interviews The Washington Times has conducted with several foreign diplomats and more than a dozen current and former high-level U.S. intelligence and national security officials, Mr. McFaul’s arrival in Moscow has been cited as being like a bee sting that enraged the Russian bear.
It actually “pissed off Putin so much” that the Russian president personally vowed revenge, said one former official involved in the intelligence debate raging over the causes of the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“The Washington establishment drastically underestimates who started this,” a foreign diplomat with access to Mr. Putin told The Times. “It was actually Obama and Hillary, not Putin. They sent McFaul over to Russia to try and overthrow Putin, and it made him livid.”
Mr. McFaul in an email exchange insisted it was never the Obama administration’s policy or goal to overthrow the Russian president. But he acknowledged outright that Mr. Putin “perceived us — of course, wrongly, in my view — as trying to undermine his legitimacy.”
“Could that perception have been one of the motivating factors for his attack on our sovereignty in 2016?” the former ambassador wrote. “Yes.”
Mr. Putin’s inner circle, including a mysterious Army general who would later rise in prominence to craft the Kremlin’s policy of “hybrid warfare” against Washington, already knew Mr. McFaul well before 2012.
A political scientist at Stanford who helped set up the Moscow Carnegie Center in the mid-1990s, Mr. McFaul had served as the top Russia policy adviser on Mr. Obama’s National Security Council during the administration’s fumbling attempt to “reset” relations with Moscow in 2009. By the time he showed up as U.S. ambassador, he was viewed by Mr. Putin’s allies as a henchman for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Just before Mr. McFaul’s arrival, Mr. Putin and Mrs. Clinton had engaged in a nasty public exchange over the 2011 Russian legislative elections, which triggered the largest Moscow street protests since the 1990s. Mrs. Clinton criticized the vote as “neither free nor fair” and called for a “full investigation.”
Mr. Putin countered by accusing Washington of supporting the opposition protesters. “We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs,” he declared.
‘To punish Hillary’
The politics had become deeply personal, according to former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Mrs. Clinton.
How Mr. Putin would strike back at her wouldn’t be known for another four years, and it would come about in ways that may take Washington many more years to fully comprehend.
Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election were the “most successful covert influence campaign in the history of covert influence campaigns.”
“The Russians,” he added, “wanted to punish Hillary and erode confidence in the American electoral process itself.”
[…]
It’s not clear whether the U.S. intelligence community or multiple congressional investigations into Russia’s activities — not to mention former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe — can stop the Russians if they try again.
READ THE WHOLE THING
| — Hat tip: Dora | [Return to headlines] |
The 20-year-old woman who is accused of murdering a teenage boy and attempting to kill four other people after allegedly ploughing her car into a crowd in Perth has sobbed in court.
| — Hat tip: SS | [Return to headlines] |
EU Faces Being Destroyed by Forcing Member States to Take in Refugees, Czech Leader Warns
THE European Union faces being destroyed by forcing Eastern states to take in refugees against their will, the designated Czech Prime Minister has warned.
Andrej Babis cautioned the bloc that pushing Czechs over the refusal to shelter asylum seekers could fuel a rise in extremist parties in the country.
The EU’s executive will sue Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the bloc’s top court for their refusal to host asylum-seekers, Brussels said on Thursday.
The European Commission accused the three countries of “non-compliance with they legal obligations on relocation”.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) could impose heavy fines, but may take up to many years to conclude.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Family Reunification ‘Promotes Parallel Societies’, Turkish Sociologist Warns
Turkish migration researcher and sociologist Necla Kelek has slammed left-wing parties’ insistence that migrants be allowed to import their families to Germany — an issue proving to be a major sticking point in coalition talks — warning that the phenomena leads to problems with “political Islam”.
“Family reunification promotes parallel societies and also sends the wrong signal to people in their home countries,” Kelek told Die Welt in an interview earlier this week. “It would be better not to have a grand coalition than one made under such a concession.”
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Mogherini, a chief honcho of the corrupt EU, was member of the Italian Communist Youth Federation from 1988, in 1996 joined the Youth Left after the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party and its transformation into a social democratic party. In 2001 she became a member of the National Council of the Democrats of the Left (DS), later serving on its National Executive Board and Political Committee. A member of the Italian Communist Youth Federation from 1988, in 1996 Mogherini joined the Youth Left after the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party and its transformation into a social democratic party. In 2001 she became a member of the National Council of the Democrats of the Left (DS), She then joined the so-called Democrat party, run by communists.
The ghost of Karl Marx stalks Israel with Jewish communists, leading the attack, as the EU destroyed each European nation-state.
Instead of spreading bureaucrats around the country, decentralize Congress. Require representatives to stay in their district office, conduct hearings via phone and internet, and cast votes on secured terminals. Senators should have their offices and secure terminals in the capital cities of the states they represent.
The House of Representatives should also be increased in number to where each represents about 100,000 people. That move, and forcing them to reside within their district instead of taking up residence in DC will go a long way towards making them more accountable to those whom they represent. I would also change their pay to a stipend for official business expenses, and require them to otherwise have a regular job to keep them too busy for much mischief.
The depth of the rot in the US:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-09/chicago-woman-who-filmed-brutal-kidnapping-and-torture-disabled-teen-sentenced-commu
1) Sentences are reversed.
2) Judge is a member of ‘The Muslim Bar Association of Chicago’
3) Why does the organization in #2 even exist?
Unsurprising:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-10/rioting-protesters-breach-us-embassy-gates-beirut-repelled-tear-gas-and-water-cannon
Front and mid-house security at embassies worldwide are locals hired for the purpose of ‘cost-control’. They probably sympathized with the rioters and let them in.
I want to highlight the WA car assault:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5161999/Woman-charged-murder-sobs-court.html
At least the Aussies got the charges right…hopefully they do the same with the sentencing.
I love the pictures of the Muslimah…I am sure she is one of those hardcore ‘Islam 4 lyfe, yo’ types…save for all those Perth evenings she spends drinking, nightclubbing, and fornicating. And save for all instances where she can personally benefit from the gynocentric Western system of largesse. Typical Ummah hypocrite.
This one is just mad her life of eternal partying, shopping, socializing, and vacationing is now at an end:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/364180-diplomat-rips-tillerson-trump-administration-in-resignation-letter