Several hardline Egyptian clerics have issued fatwas stating that political leaders who oppose the current Muslim Brotherhood government should be killed. President Mohamed Morsi felt compelled to make a public statement condemning these death fatwas.
In other news, nine Nigerian health workers who were administering polio vaccines were shot to death by Islamic radicals. Muslim leaders in the north of Nigeria believe that vaccines cause infertility.
Meanwhile, the governor of New York State has declared a state of emergency in advance of the blizzard sweeping across New England. The governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts have ordered all non-essential vehicles in their states to stay off the road.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Andrea Shea King, C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, Steen, 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.
Draghi Says Italy Central Bank Acted Correctly in MPS Ordeal
‘More regulatory oversight would have helped’ he adds
(ANSA) — Frankfurt, February 7 — European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on Thursday upheld his and the Italian Central Bank’s record in dealing with the unfolding scandal at Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Italy’s third-largest lender by assets.
During a press conference after the ECB’s monthly rate-setting meeting, Draghi said: “There is a detailed report from the Bank of Italy, which did everything it had to do and acted quickly”.
The ECB president also confirmed that he had signed off on both of the Italian central bank’s inspections of MPS.
Draghi, who pointed out how also the International Monetary Fund had praised the Bank of Italy’s actions, added that the MPS crisis serves as an example of the importance of strong oversight powers for regulators. “One thing this episode teaches us is that more oversight to regulators would have helped,” he said. (photo: Mario Draghi, left)
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
ECB Financing Rate on Hold Despite Business Pressures
The European Central Bank has said its keeping its benchmark financing rate on hold at a record-low 0.75 percent. The ECB has refused to enact any changes despite pressures created by the rise of the euro.
The euro hit a 15-month peak of $1.3711 on February 1, with French President Francois Hollande suggesting on Tuesday that the eurozone should develop an exchange rate policy to protect the currency from “irrational movements.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Budget Proposal Caps Expenditures at 960 Billion Euros
Draft presented after night-long negotiations
(ANSA) — Brussels, February 8 — Following all-night negotiations, a new draft for the the 2014-2020 budget was presented on Friday by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy that includes an overall expenditure ceiling of 960 billion euros, down from 1.03 trillion euros.
The new draft presented to leaders of the 27-country European Union reflected cuts to the European Commission’s proposal originally put forth in November 2012.
The 34.4-billion-euro cut to be spread over seven years would be the first time in history that the EU has reduced its budget.
Italy’s net balance improved by 500 million euros per year and includes 1.5 billion euros for the less developed regions, thanks to special funds allocated to the countries most affected by the economic crisis.
But growth factors like infrastructure, innovation and research were cut 13.84 billion euros in the draft, down to 125.69 billion euros compared to numbers proposed in November of 139.54 billion euros (164.31 billion in the Commission proposal).
Van Rompuy said that approximately six billion euros would be allocated for a long-awaited initiative to combat youth unemployment, accessible for countries where the rate exceeds 25%, including Italy.
Outgoing Premier Mario Monti said on Thursday that Italy would go to the Brussels summit fighting for the promotion of “growth and fairness”.
Italy is against calls from Britain, Germany and other northern European nations for cuts to the Commission’s proposed budget for the the 2014-2020 period.
The 27-state EU failed to reach an agreement on the budget at a summit in November.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Audit Report Highlights State Profligacy
Some 148 million euros in illegal payments made in 2010
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, FEBRUARY 8 — The annual report by Greece’s State Audit Council highlights widespread wasteful spending in the public sector, illegal payments and unjustifiably high expenses including 38,500 euros for the funeral of a former mayor and 5,500 euros for the purchase of cigars by the Development Ministry. The report, which examines state spending at the central and local level in 2010 — the year that Greece imposed its first raft of austerity measures in exchange for international rescue loans — was submitted to Parliament Speaker Evangelos Meimarakis on Thursday as daily Kathimerini reports. Even as millions of Greeks were seeing their salaries and pensions slashed, the authorities continued with excessive spending and the unchecked recruitment of staff and advisers, according to the report which found that the state made 148 million euros in illegal payments in 2010. In the majority of these cases there were no prosecutions. Only officials responsible for 13.5 million euros’ worth of these illegal payments were indicted to appear before a prosecutor, according to the report, while it remained unclear whether any of them were tried and convicted. Hundreds of pages of the report are devoted to a plethora of provocative expenses including 23,500 euros for an event at a provincial technical college marking the traditional cutting of the New Year’s cake, 4,500 euros for commissioning a painting of a deceased former mayor of Piraeus and 8,200 euros for leasing buses to transport municipal workers from the provinces to Athens to protest an overhaul of local government.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Siena Prosecutors Probe Origin of MPS Tax-Shield Assets
Magistrates suspect ‘repeated fraudulent behavior’ at bank
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — Siena prosecutors investigating the origin of some 40 million euros in cash and securities seized Wednesday from banks and trust companies as part of an investigation into possible fraud against the troubled Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) bank said the funds appear to have been acquired through “repeated fraudulent behavior” by an organization of several people at the bank’s finance department.
The prosecutors said the assets were “proof of the crime committed” as they were obtained through the “illicit operations committed inside the finance department” of MPS.
The prosecutors also said that given the assets’ value as evidence it was necessary to “safeguard the integrity of the material.”.
The assets seized by Italy’s tax police had been held in various institutions under a “tax shield” arrangement, sources told ANSA Wednesday.
There have also been reports of bribery and corruption by bank officials regarding, among other things, the costly nine-billion-euro acquisition of rival Antonveneta in 2008.
The scandal comes amidst a national election campaign and could damage the prospects for the left-leaning Democratic Party, which has longstanding ties to MPS and its lucrative foundation.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Audit Court Orders Cancellation of Onerous Derivatives Deals
Local administrators to comply or face gross negligence charges
(ANSA) — Rome, February 8 — Italy’s Audit Court on Friday told local governments to cancel costly derivatives agreements or face possible legal proceedings.
“The risks are numerous and unpredictable,” said the general prosecutor’s office of the Audit Court in a statement. For this reason local administrations should “take due measures to terminate excessively onerous contracts”.
The court said administrators could count on support from ordinary and administrative judges in cancelling contracts and that failure to comply could lead to charges of gross negligence against them.
The order follows the financial scandal surrounding troubled lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), which recently disclosed previously undeclared losses to the tune of 730 million euros resulting from at least two high-risk derivatives operations, and the December conviction of four international banks for alleged fraud over the sale of derivatives to the city of Milan.
Prosecutors alleged Milan lost 105 million euros as part of the sale of bonds worth 1.69 billion euros between 2005 and 2007 by Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG, and Depfa Bank Plc, which stood accused of defrauding the city by hiding how much they earned.
The banks all denied any wrongdoing.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Three Million Euros Seized From Enigma Securities in Milan
Tax evasion suspect denies role in MPS furor
(ANSA) — Rome, February 8 — Italian financial police seized on Friday more than three million euros from the Milan-based financial services company Enigma Securities for suspected tax evasion.
Enigma vigorously denied reports in the Italian press that its dealings with troubled lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) had any relation to derivatives trades at the heart of a series of probes, which have sparked scandal and headlines in recent weeks.
Enigma said its operations for MPS consisted of “a small amount of fixed-income trades” which were “all conducted in accordance with standard market practices”.
The Bank of Italy flagged to justice authorities suspicious financial operations executed by Enigma Securities in recent months, which triggered an investigation into the company’s fiscal compliance.
The Guardia di Finanzia financial police seized a sum believed to be equivalent to the alleged tax evasion.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Soros Fears ‘Rebellion’, Warns “The Euro Could Destroy the EU”
From a discussion of the Dutch political system being in the pocket of Big Oil to warning that German policy stipulations and the Euro itself could “potentially destroy the European Union,” amid rebellion, George Soros has drastically reduced all Euro-related exposure from his portfolio — only a few weeks after his cautious optimism that Europe is ‘revived’ in Davos. As Open Europe blog notes, Soros fears that “there is a real danger that the [Euro] solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem.”
The interview below with Dutch TV shows Soros grave concerns that the Southern nations are “being pushed unwittingly… into a long lasting depression,” as Germany’s austerity program is “counter-productive — cannot actually succeed.” Just as we recently noted the similarities between the European Union and the Soviet Union, so Soros believes the ‘Euro’ itself is “bound to break up the European Union.” It may take generations, he notes, as a terrible tragedy of “lost political freedom and economic prosperity.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Telecom Italia Share Price Slides on 2012 Results
Company misses debt-reduction target
(ANSA) — Milan, February 8 — Telecom Italia’s share price took a dive on Friday after the company posted “fairly weak” preliminary results for 2012. The price of shares in Italy’s main telecommunications provider fell by 5.7% during early trading on the Milan exchange and operations had to be suspended briefly.
Share prices subsequently crept back up again but then fell by 4.31% on the announcement by Telecom’s board of directors that it would be halving annual dividends to 450 million euros as part of its new three-year plan. Last year the group cut dividends by 23% to 900 million euros.
Earlier in the day Telecom announced consolidated revenues of 29.5 million euros for 2012 (up 0.5% over the previous year), consolidated net income of 11.67 million euros (down 2% over 2011) and a net debt of 28.27 billion euros.
The figure represented an improvement over the 30.41- billion-euro debt registered at the end of 2011 but fell short of the company’s 27.5-billion-euro target for last year.
“The steady pursuit of efficiencies has enabled the group to close the 2012 financial year with operating results in line with its targets,” said Executive President Franco Bernabe’. “Such results are even more significant, achieved as they were in an extremely tough economic climate with the persisting recession and market difficulties in Italy, and a slowdown in growth in Brazil and Argentina (where Telecom has subsidiaries)”, he said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
“The international banking system and the international industrialists had dominated the European setting for decades through the establishment of Central Banks. Through Central Banks, the Elite gradually absorbed the wealth of the world and used it to further their goal of a New World Order. All previous efforts to pass off a Central Bank on the American public had failed. And that was only because the United States Constitution gave Congress alone the authority to create money and govern its value.
“With planned precision, every ploy was used to establish a Central Bank in the United States, but it had to be secretly slipped into the Republic. It had to be a financial institution that performed all the functions of a Central Bank, and yet, the American public had to be convinced that it operated on their behalf. With great planning late one Christmas eve, while most Legislators were with family, the Federal Reserve Act was sneaked through Congress.
“The Federal Reserve (Fed) — a Central Bank privately owned by the Elite, International Bankers — created a financial power independent of, and above the Government of the United States. Under the Federal Reserve Act, private bankers were allowed to create money out of nothing and loan it to the United States at a high rate of interest.
“Along with the implementation of the Fed was the Income Tax. This unconstitutional taxation forced Americans to pay the government for each hour they worked; Americans were now taxed for making a living. While normal taxation is applied to support some form of government action, not one dime of this tax was used for the country, but every penny went directly into the pockets of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank.
[Comment: A must read article.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Watch: Greeks Fight for Food: “I Never Imagined That I Would End Up Here”
Once a bastion of European success and center of tourism, the country of Greece has become the harbinger of things to come for the rest of the world’s developed nations.
Not long ago Greeks were enjoying high paid salaries, early retirements, excess cash, and seemingly never ending economic growth.
Today, just a short time after a financial collapse that rocked global financial markets, Europe’s darling has turned into a frightening example of what happens when governments and their people take on more debt than they can ever hope to repay.
The end result is a warning to the rest of us.
Hundreds of people jostled for free vegetables handed out by farmers in a symbolic protest earlier on Wednesday, trampling one man and prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis.
Images of people struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck dominated television, triggering a bout of soul-searching over the new depths of poverty in the debt-laden country.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Action Star, Sheriff Joe vs. School Shootings
Steven Seagal to train Arpaio’s volunteer posse
(AP) — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is planning a training exercise aimed at helping his volunteer posse members respond to school shootings.
Arpaio’s exercise Saturday at a closed school site in suburban Fountain Hills will simulate scenarios for posse members who volunteered for patrols that the sheriff launched last month just outside schools to guard against shootings.
Action-film star and posse member Steven Seagal will serve as an instructor at the event.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Adolf Hitler — Progressive Pioneer
President Obama’s second inaugural was a speech that the Obama Media literally drooled over as a straight forward and forceful expression of progressivism unmatched in American history. I agree, it was, but there was one thing that bothered me… the tendency of these media personalities to ignore the sources of many of the ideas the president expressed so well.
In the interest of fairness and as a debt to history, I think it’s important that we take a minute to give due credit to one of the greatest progressives in history, someone who undoubtedly should be an inspiration and influence to all progressives — former German leader Adolf Hitler, who against strong odds rose to power and fundamentally changed Germany and for a while, the world…
After falling into dire poverty in Vienna, Hitler was forced to live in a homeless shelter for some time, and later a men’s hostel for the disadvantaged. He remained a socialist and a champion of the 99% ever after, although rejecting pure Marxism as being unworkable and unsuitable to those who favored strong, nationalist views and German exceptionalism…
Hitler was one of the first modern politicians to recognize how important media and messaging were to popularizing progressive policies:…
What Adolf Hitler wrote about messaging in Mein Kampf predates and almost exactly mirrors what Sol Alinsky wrote many years later in Rules For Radicals, a book that many progressives consider their political bible, but with one exception… Hitler was much more open about referring to what he was doing as propaganda for political purposes…
While Hitler recognized the sanctity of private property, he also was emphatic that the government should have the power to regulate the use of private property for the good of the nation since it had been acquired with the help and use of public personnel and infrastructure, thus anticipating Elizabeth Warren by over seven decades…
Hitler and the Nazis also were very involved in picking winners and losers among Germany’s corporate and manufacturing concerns, swapping preferential treatment, government contracts and loans and policies that benefited specific well connected and supportive companies in exchange for political and financial support for Hitler and his policies. In essence, Hitler made sectors of German business his partners in building the Third Reich while suppressing other, non-supportive players… certainly a tactic we’ve seen used recently with great success…
But where Adolf Hitler showed himself a true progressive was in his interest in education and children. All teachers were required to join the German Teacher’s League (Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund) and were required to attend seminars and classes in teaching progressive values in the classroom. All German university professors were required to be members of the National Socialist Association of University Lecturers.
[Comments: Article draws a lot of parallels. Many people don’t know that the acronym NAZI : “National Socialist Democratic German Worker’s Party (NSDAP in German, or Nazi using the typical German diminutive)”]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Al Jazeera and the Global Jihad in America
By refusing to investigate the Al Gore/Al Jazeera deal, it would appear that Capitol Hill “conservatives” like Republican Reps. Michael McCaul, Steve Scalise, and Paul Broun are adopting the view that we have nothing to fear from the global jihad and its instruments of propaganda being positioned on U.S. soil.
This view finds support from Scott McConnell, writing in Patrick J. Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, who says there should be no “national loyalty oath” for a new cable channel in America and that the transaction is “welcome news.”
Al Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood and the various terrorist groups it has spawned, including al Qaeda and Hamas.
In all seriousness, McConnell calls the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to the Al Jazeera channel a “public service.”…
In her article[url], “Al Jazeera: Non-Arabs Should Not Be Fooled,” Najat Fawzy AlSaied writes that, “The Emir of Qatar, an absolute ruler, and Al Jazeera, have not covered the ‘Arab Spring’ to advance democracy, but to support the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with the Qatari regime. Al Jazeera has as its chief goal Muslim Brotherhood domination.“
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Beck: Panetta Testimony Was Cover for Obama
So why in the world is Panetta so freely disassociating Obama from the night of Sept 11? It seems quite damaging to the President and the story he’s presented so far on his involvement with Benghazi. Glenn’s theory is that another hammer is about to drop — something even worse — that the President needs cover from. What news is coming?
“Let’s just play this out. At first nobody knew anything. We were getting information as quickly as we can, right?” Glenn said.
“And I said at the time: Why are there no pictures like there was with Bin Laden? Why are there no pictures of the situation room? The Secretary of Defense, while it’s going on, we have drones up in the sky. It’s easy to deploy a drone. You know we had drones up in the sky of Libya at this time. It goes — it’s beyond reason to think we didn’t.”…
| — Hat tip: Andrea Shea King | [Return to headlines] |
Bilderberg May Meet in Virginia Again
There is strong evidence thatBilderberg will return to Chantilly, Virginia for its annual closed meeting June 22-24, 2013 at theposh Westfields Marriott near the Dulles Airport. Westfields is booked up for that weekend and individuals are unable to make a one-room reservation, even five months in advance.
Bilderberg has been called the most exclusive and secretive club in the world. To be admitted, you have to own a multinational bank, a multinational corporation or a country. Since its first meeting in 1954, it has been attended by the top power-brokers, financial minds and world leaders.
Organizers require that no one other than participants and staff assistants be inside or on the grounds of the resort when Bilderberg meets. The hotel staff is limited and sworn to secrecy. They reimburse the costs of local and state police patrolling outside the walls and have their own army of security inside, both uniformed and in plain clothes.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FAA Clears Boeing Dreamliner for Lithium Battery Test Flights
US authorities have cleared Boeing’s grounded 787 Dreamliner passenger plane for test flights. Boeing wants to monitor its lithium-ion batteries in flight, after the planes were grounded over fire concerns.
The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said on Thursday that it would permit Boeing to conduct test flights of its “Dreamliner” 787 airliners, to gather in-flight data on the planes’ batteries and electrical systems.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to determine the root cause of recent Boeing 787 lithium-ion battery incidents, the FAA will permit Boeing to conduct test flights of 787 aircraft to gather additional data,” the US aviation regulator said.
The 50 Dreamliners in service were grounded worldwide on January 16 after unexplained overheating issues. A battery on one 787 melted mid-flight, while a battery caught fire on another Dreamliner after it had landed in Boston.
“The traveling public’s safety is our highest priority,” the FAA said in its statement. “These test flights will be an important part of our efforts to ensure the safety of passengers and return these aircraft to service.”
The FAA said the flights would only take place over unpopulated areas, and would be subject to more stringent safety rules than usual.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
FDA Approves First GMO Flu Vaccine Containing Reprogrammed Insect Virus
(NaturalNews) A new vaccine for influenza has hit the market, and it is the first ever to contain genetically-modified (GM) proteins derived from insect cells. According to reports, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the vaccine, known as Flublok, which contains recombinant DNA technology and an insect virus known as baculovirus that is purported to help facilitate the more rapid production of vaccines.
According to Flublok’s package insert, the vaccine is trivalent, which means it contains GM proteins from three different flu strains. The vaccine’s manufacturer, Protein Sciences Corporation (PSC), explains that Flublok is produced by extracting cells from the fall armyworm, a type of caterpillar, and genetically altering them to produce large amounts of hemagglutinin, a flu virus protein that enables the flu virus itself to enter the body quickly.
So rather than have to produce vaccines the “traditional” way using egg cultures, vaccine manufacturers will now have the ability to rapidly produce large batches of flu virus protein using GMOs, which is sure to increase profits for the vaccine industry. But it is also sure to lead to all sorts of serious side effects, including the deadly nerve disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GSB), which is listed on the shot as a potential side effect.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Justice Department Connections to Left-Wing Domestic Terrorist Enablers
A radicalizing agent like the SPLC fits right in with the plans for tyranny that Obama and his crew have for America.
What is the Southern Poverty Law Center? It is a radical Left organization that promotes a far-Left political agenda under the guise of being a “civil rights” organization. However, there is little civil and hardly anything right about the SPLC. This group earns its bread by acting as a legal and social bully against conservative groups that oppose its radical agenda. Using its inordinate access to the media, it is able to smear its opponents while trying to intimidate them into silence.
By attempting to lump mainstream conservative and libertarian groups together with obvious hate groups like the KKK or Aryan Nations — the SPLC once smeared the Ludwig von Mises Institute (which focuses almost solely on libertarian economic issues) as “Hitlerian” in a magazine issue that featured Hitler’s face superimposed on an American flag — this group slanders people who are concerned about liberty and traditional values in this country.
Meanwhile, the SPLC serves as a front and support for a variety of pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-Islamic terrorism, and pro-Communist groups. Basically, the SPLC is an anti-American agitation group. Another area of concern for the SPLC is in promoting and encouraging illegal immigration — the SPLC features on its “hate list” many prominent and not-so-prominent groups and individuals who speak out against illegal immigration.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive: Ted Nugent has clear message for those who want ‘their boots on our necks’
Let me be perfectly clear: It isn’t any of your damn business what you think I need, what you don’t want me to have and what you think is good for me.
I’m a free man who can think for himself. I don’t need a bureaucrat to manage my life or legislate my freedoms away under the ruse of security or their twisted theory of an improved quality of life. I don’t visit Washington, D.C., because I’m allergic to soulless, terminally disconnected bureaucratic paper-pushing punks on parade.
For one free man to attempt to tell another free man what legal products he should or should not be able to own is the most gross and irresponsible bastardization of freedom I can imagine. But then again, I’m not a helpless, feckless, spineless, bloodsucking sheep waiting for direction.
Newsflash for the anti-freedom idiot brigades: You aren’t free if you want to handcuff the freedoms of others. What you are is a mindless sheep, an easily led lemming who can’t spell the word freedom much less define it.
What Sen. Feinstein, VP Biden or President Obama want is more control over Americans. These socialists and Marxists don’t care about mass murder. What they want is more control, their boots on our necks.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Los Angeles Gunman Motivated by Racism
The former policeman being hunted in California over three murders said in his “manifesto” that he had been racially abused in the force.
Some 125 officers were deployed in and around Big Bear, east of Los Angeles, where police found the Nissan pickup truck belonging to Christopher Dorner, 33, who had posted a chilling online manifesto. “We’ll keep working on it until we’re able to either locate the suspect, or determine that he’s no longer in the Big Bear Valley,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, as schools and ski lifts were put on lockdown…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
New York Governor Declares State of Emergency Over Winter Storm
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York declared a state of emergency as a winter storm descended on the Northeast on Friday evening. But at a news conference, he said that while the storm was expected to cause problems, including widespread power failures, the people of the state had recently lived through much worse.
“This is a serious, severe storm but we just went through some really terrible storms with Hurricane Sandy,” he said. “We are not anticipating anything like that.”
Mr. Cuomo announced that area airports would stop operations Friday night and said there were already 3,000 people without power.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick took the unusual step of banning all cars from the roads in the state starting at 4 p.m. The governor of Connecticut, Dannel P. Malloy, also ordered all but emergency vehicles off the state’s highways.
The New York Times will be providing continuous updates on the storm.
| [Return to headlines] |
Nugent Smacks ‘Gangsters in the White House’
Obama says he respects 2nd Amendment? ‘And I’m a gay pirate’
“If you try to argue that the Chicago, Mexico, Washington, D.C., Rwanda gun-free zone is somehow desirable, then you are either as equally evil as the murderers that slaughter innocent people in those gun-free zones or you are opening the door and rolling out the red carpet, that is red because it’s saturated with the blood of innocent victims that are piled higher in gun-free zones than anywhere in the world,” Nugent said.
“Anybody that dares debate me about what the Second Amendment means and whether free Americans have the right to keep and bear arms as a gift from God, a right from God as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, I will do to you what I did to Piers. I will embarrass you, and I will make you look like some subservient sheep from England,” he said.
The very first thing Nugent does in his new column is attack the premise that some firearms can be restricted because no one supposedly needs them…
Nugent said he also doesn’t buy President Obama’s claim that he’s proposing “common-sense” gun restrictions or Obama’s claim that he is a great respecter of the Second Amendment.
“I say sure you are, Mr. President, and I’m a gay pirate,” mused Nugent. “One just has to study Barack Obama’s voting record.
“The commander in chief will go to the Vietnam Memorial Wall and will put on his community organizer, ACORN, Van Jones, gangland, Chicago, gangster-politic scam best and pretend to show respect for 58,000 heroic American military warriors who gave the ultimate sacrifice fighting communism. And then President Obama will go back and appoint members of the Communist Party as his czars.
“He will continue to associate communists, publicly admitted communists after visiting the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It doesn’t get any more arrogant. It doesn’t get any more dishonest, and it doesn’t get any more anti-American than this president,” he said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Planning the Decline of America
Author and conservative radio host Mark Levin makes the case in Ameritopia we are living in a post-constitutional republic, having jettisoned erstwhile philosophical genius and resolute moral courage of the founders and framers. Our government landscape reveals today a plenipotentiary political class of insiders and operators — along with their ruling class overlords — more closely resembling the type of royal English monarchy the founders fought against than elected representatives serving their constituents by promoting liberty and it’s main ingredient limited government.
It was brilliant strategy by the Frankfurt School disciples of Karl Marx to blend Marxism, the work of Sigmund Freud, and desirable tenets of the Progressive movement (influenced by Fabian Socialism; embraced among intellectuals and academics in the late 1800’s), bringing to fruition a documented fear expressed by our founders and framers; that our Constitutional Republic might be surreptitiously attacked from within, a possibility made feasible by virtue of the unique abundance of an essential God-given ideal; one that has facilitated America’s growth into the uniquely prosperous, generous, and most secure nation state known to exist on earth: Liberty.
[Comment: Long article, but a MUST read for every American.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Reported Cop Killer is Obama, Piers Morgan Fan: Special Report
The former police man suspected in the shooting deaths of 3 police officers is a rabid anti gun idiot and Obama worshiper.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Police in Los Angeles are conducting a massive manhunt for one of their own — an LAPD officer suspected of killing three people and injuring two others.
The search is for Christopher Dorner, fired from the police department in 2008 for making false statements. He was linked to the weekend killing in which one of the victims was the daughter of a former police captain who had represented him during disciplinary hearings, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Dorner has issued a manifesto that reveals him to be virulently opposed to the National Rifle Association, a supporter of Barack Obama, a fan of CNN’s Piers Morgan and, ironically, a supporter of gun control.
“Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, you’re a vile and inhumane piece of s — ,” wrote Dorner. “You never even showed 30 seconds of empathy for the children, teachers and families of Sandy Hook.”
In a message directed to Morgan, he wrote: “I want you to know that I agree with you 100 percent on enacting stricter firearm laws.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
$223,531,822.71 Secret is Unacceptable
Expenses on legal and consulting costs for northern Manitoba dams.
WINNIPEG, MB: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) announced today it lost an appeal with the Provincial Ombudsman over Manitoba Hydro’s refusal to disclose details for $223,531,822.71 worth of expenses on legal and consulting costs for northern Manitoba dams.
The expenses were racked up by northern Manitoba reserves as part of negotiations over the construction of new hydro dams and the Bipole III line. The CTF began investigating this issue several years ago after whistleblowers began alleging some of the funds had been misspent on payoffs and door prizes for public meetings such as Xbox’s, big screen TVs and freezers.
“It is absurd for the government to keep nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worth of expenses hidden from the public,” said CTF Prairie Director Colin Craig. “It’s not like we’re asking for details on nuclear weapons, we just want to see the bills supposedly for lawyers and consultants hired by aboriginal reserves for hydro dam negotiations.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Fact-Busters and the “Mosque-Buster”
by Janice Fiamengo
Gavin Boby is a British lawyer who established the Law and Freedom Foundation in 2011 to work with communities to resist Islamization, particularly the campaigns of harassment and dominance that mosques routinely bring in their wake. Dubbed the “mosque-buster” because of his success in defeating 16 of 17 mosque applications in British neighborhoods, Boby spoke in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto this past week about the principles underlying his pro bono work. When I heard him make his presentation in Ottawa on Monday, February 4, his measured, soft-spoken manner and fact-based analysis contrasted suggestively with the melodramatic denunciations and biased reporting that surrounded his appearance…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Center-Left Still Ahead in Last SWG Poll Before Italian Vote
Probable alliance with Monti needed to meet Senate quota
(ANSA) — Rome, February 8 — The latest and last SWG poll to be released before a pre-election blackout on Friday showed that the centre-left coalition headed by Pier Luigi Bersani was still in the lead for the upcoming national elections in Italy, with 33.8%.
Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition, which has been gaining ground in recent weeks, remains steady at 27.8%.
Though Bersani’s Democratic Party (PD) is favoured to win the election, the poll suggested it will not have a working majority in parliament.
According to SWG, Bersani’s coalition will take only 146 senators with it, less than the required 158.
This has led to speculation that Bersani could make a post-election pact with former European commissioner Monti, who took the helm of an emergency government in November 2011 and is standing for office on a reform platform backed by several centrist parties.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (MS5) of comedian Beppe Grillo remains in a steady third place at 18.8% in Friday’s poll.
Monti’s centrist coalition dropped almost one point (0.8%) with 13.4% of projected votes.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: Old Vikings of the Counter-Jihad
I may be the only American who has seen both the “panic room” where Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard fled in 2010 as a Somali Muslim man hacked at the door with an ax, and the apartment house where this week Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, 70, was almost killed by an “Arab”- or “Pakistani”-looking man posing as a postman. Since our vast media don’t consider these items news, I will tell you about them.
First, Westergaard’s panic room. It is a bathroom off the front hall of a modest, modern-style home in the small Danish city of Aarhus. The tiny room is equipped with a buzzer that rings through to the local police station, and it has a steel door. While the Somali was breaking through the front door of his home, Westergaard, then 74, who walks with a cane, made his way into the secure room, hoping the police would reach him in time. As he listened to each strike of the ax on his door, the assailant screamed, “Blood! Revenge!”
Blood and revenge for what? Four years earlier, Westergaard had drawn a cartoon of Muhammad. It was one of 12 such cartoons commissioned by his newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to demonstrate that Denmark’s media do not follow Islamic laws against depicting Muhammad. You haven’t seen Westergaard’s cartoon in American media? That’s because American media do follow this Islamic prohibition — only they call it being “sensitive” or “inclusive” or something. (Google “Westergaard” and “cartoon” to see if the image makes you want to pick up an ax.)
No matter what our media chiefs say, however, there is nothing “sensitive” or “inclusive” about capitulating to what is, in reality, fear of Islamic violence, thus allowing an elderly Danish artist to face this jihad alone.
The other front-line outpost of jihad manned by Danish senior citizens with pens that I can claim to have seen for myself is Lars Hedegaard’s apartment building. Just a few stories high, it stands on a quiet street in Frederiksberg, a municipality adjoining Copenhagen that is known for the city zoo and nearby park and gardens. On Tuesday, Lars got a call from the front door telling him he had a package. He opened a window and looked down on the postman — or, rather, on a man wearing the distinctive red jacket of the Danish postal service. Lars said he’d be right down, since the buzzer to let visitors into the building didn’t work.
Lars opened the front door, and the man, whom Lars judged to be about 30, handed him a package. As Lars took it, the man pulled out a gun and fired at Lars’ head. Lars sensed the bullet passing over his right ear. After Lars threw a punch at the man’s face, the man dropped the gun and the two men scuffled, Lars trying to shut the front door against his assailant. The man inserted his foot inside the door, got hold of his gun again and fired at Lars once (click — the gun jammed), then twice (click — jammed again). Then the gunman fled the scene. Not one but two men wearing ski masks were soon seen hopping over the wall into the zoo, near where the hippopotamuses live. Police arrived. Lars disappeared, enveloped by state security.
Why did someone try to kill Lars Hedegaard?…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
EU Pays Trolls to Fight Euroskepticism Online
“The words ‘legal’ and ‘European Union’ don’t fit together. Nothing matters here, there are no rules” — says the UK Independence Party’s Nigel Farage of the European Parliament’s plan to spend huge sums of taxpayer money on social network smear campaigns against those who speak out against it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
France: Delacroix Liberty Painting Defaced in Louvre
French police have detained a woman accused of defacing an iconic Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading The People, at a branch of the Louvre Museum.
She was held after being seen scrawling a graffiti tag on the painting, a Romantic masterpiece painted in 1830 to celebrate a French uprising. The museum in the northern town of Lens said the work might easily be cleaned but would be examined by a restorer. The Louvre Lens museum only opened in the former mining town in December. The painting by Eugene Delacroix, which featured on the pre-euro, 100-franc French banknote and reportedly inspired the Statue of Liberty in New York, is being exhibited in Lens for a year. French media quoted unnamed legal sources as saying the graffito was a clear reference to a 9/11 conspiracy theory…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
France: Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People Defaced at Len’s Louvre Gallery
The Louvre’s Lens branch closed two galleries on Friday after a woman defaced its main attraction, Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.
The 28-year-old woman scribbled “AE911” on a foot long section at the bottom of the painting. She was immediately seized by a guard and another visitor, and is being questioned by police. “AE911” is a shortened form of “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth”, a group whose website says they are seeking to establish the truth behind the suicide attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. Liberty Leading the People is Delacroix’s most famous work, and it was chosen as the emblem of the Louvre-Lens at its opening last December. It is on loan from the Louvre’s main collection in Paris…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
France: Lorraine: School Principal Threatened Over Class on History of Islam
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that the Notre-Dame Catholic primary school at Saint-Mihiel, in the la Meuse department of Lorraine in north-eastern France, has been subjected to a campaign of Islamophobic harassment. In late December, as part of the French national curriculum which requires pupils to receive a basic grounding in the history of the three main monotheistic faiths, the school taught a class on the origins of Islam, just as it does on those of Christianity and Judaism. A handout that included quotations from the Qur’an and named the architectural features of a mosque was given to students…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing content.]
The entire adult male population of a small village in northwest France are to be DNA tested in a bid to identify a firebug who has destroyed eight properties over the past year, including holiday homes rented out to British tourists.
Four hundred Frenchmen aged between 15 and 75, representing half the population of Larmor Baden, on the coast of southern Brittany, will be asked to give saliva samples to forensic Gendarmes this week who will go from to house in a bid to trace the culprit…
It will be compared to genetic testing of the entire adult male population of another small village in Brittany 17 years ago during the hunt for the killer of 13-year-old Caroline Dickinson who was raped and suffocated in a youth hostel.
One hundred and seventy men aged between 15 and 35 were tested but the killer was only found five years later in Florida.
Spanish drifter Francisco Arce Montes had crept into a Miami youth hostel and cut off a girl’s knickers with a pair of scissors. Montes was jailed in 2004 for thirty years in Rennes for murdering Caroline.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greek Lawmakers Flout ‘No Smoking’ Law
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, FEBRUARY 8 — Joining other Greeks who have ignored five smoking bans in the last decade and light up just about wherever and wherever they want, Greek lawmakers are openly smoking in Parliament in violation of the law they passed, and in the building where they did it. The defiance — as GreekReporter website writes — has angered 88 of the 300 Members of Parliament who wrote to the body’s speaker urging action against what they called a “pathetic and infuriating” state of affairs. MP’s enjoy other special privileges as well and a lifestyle that has angered Greeks suffering under crushing austerity measures. Greek media reported that during debates, most of them are in the halls drinking whiskey and eating unlimited free food. Greece has one of the European Union’s highest smoking rates but has given up on trying to enforce no smoking laws, including the last one in 2010 to outlaw smoking in enclosed public areas. Violators face fines of 50-500 euros which are rarely enforced and inspectors face resistance when they try to cite people for breaking the law. People still light up freely in bars, cafes, restaurants — and Parliament. It wasn’t that long ago that they would even smoke in supermarkets, and doctors often smoke in hospitals. The lawmakers wrote that, apart from assembly halls, at times there is “not a single square meter” in Parliament where the law isn’t broken.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Green Movement Founder Opposes Wind Turbines in His Backyard
It’s a case of NIMBY (not in my back yard) for the professor as he has joined local activists in Broadwoodwidger, Devon, who are trying to stop the erection of wind turbines. Lovelock says wind turbines are “monuments of a failed civilization.”
“I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood,” Lovelock recently wrote.
“We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bersani Rejects Monti Ultimatum, Won’t Drop Left-Wing SEL
SEL leader Vendola says ‘incompatible’ with outgoing premier
(ANSA) — Rome, February 6 — Centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani on Wednesday rejected an ultimatum from outgoing Premier Mario Monti to drop his alliance with the left-wing SEL group.
Bersani and Monti, who is standing on a reform platform backed by centrist parties, made overtures to each other on Tuesday, with political pundits saying Bersani is likely to win the February 24-25 election but may not have a working majority in parliament.
But on Wednesday former European commissioner Monti suggested Bersani’s party, the Democratic Party, would have to dump SEL to be able to enter a post-election pact with him.
“I imagine that if Bersani is interested in cooperating with the forces that I represent, as he said he is, he will have to make choices inside his pole,” said Monti, who took over the helm of an emergency administration of unelected technocrats in November 2011.
Bersani, who has seen the centre left’s once big lead in the polls whittled down to around 4-5% in recent weeks by ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s centre right, responded that this was out of the question.
“My alliance is my alliance and no one touches it,” Bersani said.
Bersani also came under pressure from the opposite direction on Wednesday when SEL leader Nichi Vendola warned him not to consider allying with Monti.
Vendola, who is also the governor of Puglia, told Bersani that he and Monti were “incompatible”.
“I hope Bersani does not want to take the responsibility of breaking the centre-left alliance,” added Vendola, whose party was staunchly opposed to Monti’s emergency technocrat government unlike Bersani’s Democratic Party, which supported it.
“A vote for the SEL is an insurance policy for centre-left supporters. It’s a guarantee that there won’t be the heavy influence of Monti”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Wants Tax Breaks, Loans for Young Entrepreneurs
‘No taxes, more financing during first five years of business’
(ANSA) — Rome, February 7 — Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi proposed generous tax breaks and financing for young people in Italy who want to start a business or buy a house. Speaking to state broadcaster Rai Webradio, the media mogul proposed offering Italian youth “a tax waiver for the first five years of operating a new business” and “a loan to start a business or buy a house using a special Treasury fund to back up the banks”. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition is roughly five points behind the leading center-left coalition headed by Pier Luigi Bersani. His campaign promise comes as well over a third of Italians aged 15 to 24 are out of work.
Elections are February 24 and 25.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Ligresti Probes Broaden to Include Accounting Fraud
Family homes and offices searched
(ANSA) — Turin, February 7 — Turin investigators said on Thursday that they are broadening probes into members of the Ligresti family, the former majority owners of the nearly-defunct Milano Assicurazioni and Fonsai insurance companies, for damages to the companies’ former shareholders and accounting fraud.
Investigators are looking into alleged consulting and service contracts for “tens of millions (of euros)” with companies’ related to the Ligresti family. The offices and homes of family members are being search, investigators said. The boards of directors of the two companies, which almost collapsed last year, called for shareholder meetings on the 13th and 14th of March to determine actions against former company administrators and auditors.
The meetings will determine what actions to take against Ligresti family members Salvatore, Jonella, Giulia and Paolo, former Chief Executive Fausto Marchionni as well as councilors and auditors who served with the two companies.
In the statement Tuesday Matteo Caratozzolo, Fonsai’s administrator, said that in real estate transactions he investigated the group “was subjugated to the will of the Ligresti family, through the action of yes-men administrators.
The value of the damages caused is “huge, in the order of hundreds of millions of euros,” Caratozoolo said.
Caratozzolo also said in his report that Salvatore Ligresti was paid “abnormal compensation for the purpose of making the Fonsai group purchase real estate owned exclusively by connected companies”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ENI Chief Scaroni Probed for ‘International Corruption’
Energy boss implicated in alleged bribes-for-contracts affair
(ANSA) — Milan, February 7 — The chief executive officer of Italian energy company ENI, Paolo Scaroni, has been placed under investigation for suspected international corruption as part of a probe into alleged bribery in relation to energy contracts in Algeria.
Investigators are looking into an alleged 200-million-euro backhander given in exchange for contracts for ENI subsidiary Saipem, Europe’s largest oil contractor by market value. Judicial sources claim Scaroni met with an intermediary for a Hong Kong company charged with collecting the bribes on behalf of Algerian officials.
The company chief has denied any wrongdoing, saying ENI had “nothing to do” with the affair.
Seven other people are being investigated in relation to the probe, including numerous current and former Saipem managers. ENI shares closed down 4.62% on the Milan exchange on Thursday as a result of the revelations.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Memorial Plaque for Foibe Victims Vandalized in Turin
Second time since 2011
(ANSA) — Turin, February 8 — Italian police in Turin are investigating an act of vandalism that badly damaged a commemorative plaque overnight Thursday dedicated to the victims of the Foibe massacres — the killing of Italians by Yugoslav partisans at the end of World War II in the Istrian peninsula.
The monument has been taken by police as evidence and will be repaired, city officials said.
It is the second time the plaque has been damaged since 2011.
Another memorial was also vandalized in January. A black swastika was found on a Turin memorial plaque commemorating four Italian partisans killed in the city in 1944 and 1945. Police believe the graffiti and insults scrawled nearby were painted on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Rejects Minetti Saying Italians Prefer Bindi
(AGI) Rome, Feb 8 — Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recognised that the choice of ex Lombardy regional councillor and TV personality Nicole Minetti to enter politics was not a happy one. “It is hard for a beautiful woman in Italian politics, because Italians prefer Rosy Bindi,” he said. Tiziana Panella, the presenter of Coffee Break on La7 television, then asked her studio whether he really needed to mention Bindi, a leading member of the centre-left Democratic Party. Berlusconi replied that he did so because she is deputy speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and a close ally of her party leader, Pier Luigi Bersani.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Brescia-Based Moroccan to Stand Trial on Terrorism Charges
(AGI) — Brescia, Feb 7 — Proceedings against twenty-something Mohamed Jarmoune are to begin on May 16. The Moroccan was arrested in Niardo, Valcamonica, on March 15 last year following months of police shadowing and wiretapping operations. Jarmoune is accused of providing explosives training, terrorism and fomenting racial hatred.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
New Attorney General Says Italy’s Legal System Overloaded
Dipace sworn in as chief state attorney
(ANSA) — Rome, February 8 — Newly appointed Italian Attorney General Michele Giuseppe Dipace said on Friday that overloads in the country’s legal system were out of proportion.
More than 1.2 million legal cases are pending in Italy, suggesting problems in the judicial system, Dipace said.
The State Attorney’s Office could also “contribute to the fight against fiscal invasion,” Dipace said at his swearing in ceremony in Rome.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Public Corruption in Italy a Serious Problem, Official Says
Damages national image, deprives EU funding says Audit Court
(ANSA) — Rome, February 5 — Corruption in Italy is a serious problem found throughout public administration, an official with the national Audit Court said Tuesday.
And that corruption causes “serious damage to the public image (of government) and takes away from the peoples’ confidence in institutions,” said Salvatore Nottola, attorney general of the Audit Court.
Earlier, he said that systemic corruption has cost the Italian economy more than one billion euros in European Union funding over the past decade.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Police Defuse Bomb in Madrid Cathedral
Spanish police on Thursday defused a nail bomb found next to a confessional in the Almudena Cathedral in the historic heart of Madrid, officials said.
A priest found the bomb in a bin bag and evacuated the cathedral, a tourist attraction next to the city’s old royal palace, a spokesman for the archbishopric of Madrid told AFP.
A bomb disposal team came and defused the device, “composed of a detonator, 200 grammes (seven ounces) of gunpowder, a metal gas canister-type container full of nails, and an alarm clock,” a police spokesman added.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Council Byelection Results From Yesterday
Berry Hill Ward, Forest of Dean DC
Lab 276 (59.7%, +4.6), Con 101 (21.9%, -23), UKIP 85 (18.4%, +18.4).
Lab hold. Swing of 13.8% from Con to Lab since 2011.
Wormholt & White City Ward, LB Hammersmith & Fulham
Lab 1,419 (66.9%, +6.8), Con 251 (11.8%, -11.5), LD 209 (9.9%, -6.7), UKIP 122 (5.8%, +5.8), Ind 75 (3.5%, +3.5), BNP 45 (2.1%, +2.1).
Lab hold. Swing of 9.2% from Con to Lab since 2010.
Village Ward, Stockton-on-Tees UA
Ind 800 (61.2%, +8.1), Lab 270 (20.6%, -11.6), UKIP 135 (10.3%, +10.3), Con 85 (6.5%, -5.3), LD 18 (1.4%, -1.5).
Ind hold. Swing of 9.9% from Lab to Ind since 2011.
A clear pattern that despite the pledge to an in/out EU referendum from the Conservative Party there is still potential for UKIP to take votes from the Conservatives to the advantage of the Labour Party.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Miliband nods off on Tube with fly undone
Mr Miliband — who rubbed shoulders with the likes of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in his old job — was making a 20-minute trip from Leicester Square. He got off without realising his error. Francis Janjua, 28, was sitting opposite Mr Miliband, brother of Labour leader Ed, and took a photo of the gaffe last month. The electrician said: “He was properly asleep. I was laughing until I noticed his fly — then it was just hilarious. It takes credibility away from him. But he’s still got more than his brother.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Suspended Jail Term Handed to English Defence League Protester
A protester at an English Defence League march in Walsall has been given a suspended jail term and banned from any demonstrations for four years.
Peter Jelley was caught on CCTV gesturing and shouting at a line of police in Walsall as trouble broke out at the rally last autumn. He was sentenced to 20 weeks in custody, suspended by a year, and given a Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Order at the town’s magistrates court. The 24-year-old from Shropshire admitted a public order offence of using threatening or abusive behaviour at a previous court hearing and was sentenced yesterday…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tory MEP Demonstrates Understanding of Islamism
Tory MEP Daniel Hannan shows that there are at least some members of his party who don’t automatically lose their grip on reason when faced with the phenomenon of political Islam (as commentators at, say, Conservative Home invariably do)…
[JP note: Lol.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The D-word was largely taboo: people went to their GPs with ‘nerves’ or ‘anxiety’. Often, doctors put them on tranquilisers such as Valium, which carried a serious risk of addiction and of side-effects such as confusion, amnesia and aggression.
Then came Prozac. When doctors and patients saw that depression seemed to respond to this new medication, the world began to view the condition more as a treatable illness than as a character defect.
Prozac was an instant hit, and prescriptions quickly soared. Within ten years of its launch in 1988, it was responsible for more than a quarter of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s £6 billion annual income.
And its use continues to rise. In the UK between 2010 and 2011, the drug was prescribed 4.2 million times on the NHS, an increase of 100,000 on the previous year. This was at a cost of more than £19 million, according to health service figures.
That sales success is even more astonishing when you consider that it was originally intended as a blood-pressure pill.
Its American developer, Eli Lilly, had found that the chemical constituent of Prozac, fluoxetine, reduced hypertension in some animals. But tests failed in humans. Then it was trialled as an anti-obesity therapy. Again it failed. But when the company tried it on five volunteers with mild depression, they found it had a remarkable power to lighten their moods.
Marketing experts then rebranded fluoxetine as an antidepressant with a name that combined positivity with zap. Prozac was offered to doctors as a one-stop, problem-free fix.
What followed was a marketing strategy that is as old as the pharmaceutical industry itself: if you’ve got a new cure for an illness, make the illness massively more popular.
Lilly printed eight million brochures highlighting the symptoms of depression — and publicising a new no-hassle treatment. Patients quickly began asking for the drug by name. GPs saw a way of clearing their waiting rooms of the intractably miserable…
In fact, we seem well on the way to using Prozac as a medicine to regulate all our emotions. The American Psychiatric Association has just voted to alter its recommendations about SSRI drugs.
The changes, which will be published in a manual known worldwide as the ‘psychiatrist’s bible,’ will make it more likely that doctors will begin routinely to give SSRI drugs to people who are feeling sad because they have just been bereaved.
[…]
But there is a greater concern over this class of drugs. Even after having been prescribed for a quarter of a century, scientists are still not actually sure how they work.
[Comment: Interesting article about anti-depressants and the dangers.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Benghazi Attack: Can You Believe They Said This? (Video)
The attack against the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya which resulted in the murder of four Americans is one of the great failures of leadership in American history. And yet, because it’s the Barack Obama administration, the media are willing to give everyone a pass. Just listen to some of the insane information that has come out during the congressional hearings.
The Weekly Standard put together a collection of videos from the testimony. It actually sounds like a collection of junior high student council representatives rather than supposed leaders of the United States.
In the first video, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reveals that neither he nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, had any contact with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the prolonged attack.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptian Presidency Condemns Cleric Speech Okaying Killing Opposition Leaders
CAIRO, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) — Egyptian presidency on Thursday denounced a cleric’s speech that okays killing of opposition members who seek to topple elected leaders, official news agency MENA reported. In the statement, the presidency invited all national forces, religious institutions and intellectual leaders to stand against such provoking calls. “Such an inciting language is unacceptable, as it represents deviation from the tolerance enjoined by all religions.”…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Fatwa Death Edicts Prompt Egypt to Boost Security for Opposition
Security has been stepped up around leading opposition figures in Egypt after hardline Muslim clerics called for them to be killed. The Islamist government has condemned the so-called “fatwas.”
Egyptian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim on Thursday issued the order for police to deploy extra security at the homes of prominent opposition members.
Prime Minister Hesham Kandil warned that the religious edicts -also known as fatwas — could result in “sedition and disturbance.”
“These extremist edicts are not related to Islam,” the state news agency reported Kandil as saying. “The Egyptian people had a glorious January Revolution for the sake of establishing a democratic society where dialogue prevails, not killing.”
The fatwas came in response to recent violence that followed National Salvation Front (NSF) calls for protest against President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition accuses Morsi of trying to monopolise power.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: General Strike Paralyzes Country
Army controls funeral of opposition member
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS — Tunisia was paralyzed by a general strike called by the country’s main unions on Friday, the day of Chokri Belaid’s funeral. All stores remained closed including supermarkets which had stayed open during previous strikes. Offices, schools and universities also remained closed.
Hospitals are guaranteeing only emergency services. Judicial offices also shut down.
Meanwhile the army is overseeing security at Belaid’s funeral. Dozens of troops are patrolling the area where people have gathered to commemorate the murdered opposition member.
Military police are present, recognizable with their uniforms, and are discretely controlling the situation, also from side streets.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Thousands at Belaid Funeral, Nationwide Unrest
Slogans call on armed forces head, tear gas in cemetery
Funeral of slain opposition politician Chokri Belaid
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS — Thousands of people (one million, according to the Interior ministry) — gathered in the Djellaz cemetery on Friday to attend the burial of assassinated opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Amid the clapping of hands and yelling of slogans praising the politician and against government majority party Ennahdha, an imam chanted Koranic verses in honour of the dead.
However, as the army vehicle bringing his coffin entered the cemetery, tear gas filled the air after police clashed with vandals ransacking and setting fire to a number of vehicles. It was a sign of the dual nature of the day, midway between mourning and rage over the death of the politician and the unrest which continues throughout the country.
A gesture of high symbolic value, Belaid’s coffin was transported in an army open truck. Of those taking part in Friday’s demonstrations to commemorate Belaid, hundreds not only chanted the victim’s name but also that of General Rachid Ammar, head of all of Tunisia’s armed forces, with protestors calling on him to intervene. Ammar is well known in Tunisia for his refusal to comply with Ben Ali’s order two years ago to deploy the army against those demanding the end to his regime.
Out of respect for the Koran, no women were allowed to take part in his funeral — not even Belaid’s wife, Bassma, who followed the coffin in a car. They will instead be able to visit the tomb tomorrow. A symbolic funeral was held for Belaid on Friday in Sfax, with thousands of others who shouted out slogans against the government and Ennahdha as they followed an empty casket covered by a Tunisian flag and a photo of the politician assassinated. Online media and social networks with links to the Islamist party in the government claimed that the mass participation in the funerals had been manipulated by the media and the opposition. Clashes and unrest were seen in the streets throughout the day. The Jendouba governor’s palace was attacked by hundreds of people, though organisers of the demonstration tried to stop the crowd from breaking into it. The Hammam-Lif (a municipality not far from Tunis) police station was attacked by a group which tried to set fire to it. The police, however, were able to prevent them from doing so.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Police Fire Tear Gas at Chokri Belaid’s Funeral — as it Happened
Live coverage as clashes take place between police and groups of youths stealing from mourners and setting fire to cars at funeral of assassinated opposition politician Chokri Belaid
The funeral of assassinated opposition politician Chokri Belaid and a planned general strike today mean political turmoil is set to continue in the wake of the killing of the leftwing secularist lawyer on Wednesday. As Eileen Byrne and Ian Black write here, the killing has opened up the possibility that Tunisia could now see the kind of political polarisation that it has so far managed to avoid since the overthrow of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. Yesterday police fired tear gas to disperse 300 protesters in central Tunis who were chanting the Arab spring slogan “the people demand the fall of the regime”. There were also protests and riots elsewhere in the country, and a policeman was killed in Tunis. Today’s strike has been called by the UGTT, Tunisia’s trade union federation and an alternative, leftwing power base to the government. A dramatic turnout is expected for Belaid’s funeral. The police and army have been put on alert to prevent any outbreaks of violence and to “deal with any troublemakers”, announced presidential spokesman Adnan Mancer in a news conference last night…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Anti-Shiite Attacks in Iraq Kill 21
(AGI) Baghdad, Feb 8 — At least 21 people were killed and over 40 injured in a new wave of attacks on the Shiite community in Iraq, medical sources reported. The Ministry of the Interior has confirmed these figures. The worst attack took place in Baghdad with two car bombs exploding in the northern al-Kadhimiyah district, a predominantly Shiite area. A market, which is usually very crowded on Fridays, was also targeted.
Two car bombs also went off in Shomali, a village in the central province of Babylon, about 40 km from the capital. A bazaar and a suburban area were also targeted.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, DC, turns the spotlight on a story that the mainstream media has missed in Iraq and now Syria; Christians exiting Syria, first to enclaves in Lebanon and ultimately to their Disapora. Ken Timmerman has written about the flight of over half of the Assyrian Christians from the Plains of Nineveh who sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, only to ultimately depart for their Disapora. As Shea notes in this engrossing article in the National Review On-line (NRO) , The Corner, “The Silent Exodus of Syria’s Christians”, the 2 million Syriac Christians have no militias to defend them and flee when Free Syrian Army Muslim militias take over towns where they reside. If the Iraqi and Syrians depart their ancestral homelands, what will be left of Christians in the Middle East, but the dwindling numbers in neighboring Lebanon and the estimated 10 to 12 millions Copts in Egypt . An Egypt devolving into a Muslim Brotherhood dominated failed state with a Sharia laden constitution depriving religious minorities of their civil and huiman rights, subject to extra-judicial violence reported in stunning detail by Shea’s Hudson Institute colleague, Samuel Tadros. As our colleague Dexter Van Zile has written mainstream Christian denominations have repeatedly failed to come to the aid of their beleagured brethren in the Middle East.
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Multiple Car Bombings Kill 26 in Central Iraq
BAGHDAD, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) — At least four deadly car bombs ripped through central Iraq on Friday, killing at least 26 people and wounding scores more, police sources said.
Ten people were killed and 40 others wounded when two car bombs exploded in Shomali area southeast of Hilla city, 100 km south of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Lebanese Teenage Girl Victim of Honor Killing
BEIRUT, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) — A Lebanese man killed his pregnant teenage sister Friday in Lebanese southern area Wazzani, in what investigators said was an honor crime, local media reported. Voice of Lebanon radio said the body of Baghdad Khaled al-Issa, 18, was found with stab wounds in her head and sides in Wazzani. Investigators discovered that her brother Jihad, 21, committed the homicide, the report said, adding that the victim was seven- month pregnant. In 2011, the Lebanese parliament approved a draft-law to cancel article 562 of the penal code, which calls for limited punishments for honor killings.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Railway System to Link Gulf With Europe by 2018
Regional network in the works, GCC
New fast commuter train Mashair (Mecca Metro) [ARCHIVE MATERIAL 20101005 ]
(ANSAmed)- DUBAI, FEBRUARY 7 — Projects underway by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states may lead to an integrated rail link between the oil-rich Gulf and Europe within the next five years, Qatari railways chief Saad Al Muhannadi said at the Middle East Rail Conference underway in Dubai.
“The GCC-Europe network may be up and running already in 2018, but this will depend on the decisions made by heads of state in the countries involved,” Al Muhannadi said. The six member states of the GCC (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman) have all begun building national railway networks that will link up with each other in the direction of Jordan, from where passengers will be able to reach Europe via Turkey. Saudi Arabia has already completed its part of the connection with Jordan, noted the planning director of the oil-rich kingdom’s railway company SAR, Hamad Al Yousef. The Saudi kingdom is the only GCC member with its own domestic railway system. The plans to extend it are for the 1,000 km of the Landbridge, the part between Jeddah on the Red Sea and Damman on the Arabian Gulf and the 1,300 km North-South Railway between the capital Riyadh to Haditha along the Iraqi border.
The rail system around the Islamic holy cities of Medina and Mecca has already been completed. Qatar, which will be hosting the Football World Cup in 2022, has allocated 35 billion dollars for projects to create 130 km of a four-line underground train network expected to be completed in 2019. The projects will be funded by the Qatari government, while the tendering procedures will be finalised between March and August. A call for tenders will instead be made for the 4.5-billion-dollar link between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in April. The United Arab Emirates has signed an accord with Saipem-Maire Tecnimont to build the first section of its railway.
The entire regional project, in which also Kuwait and Oman are taking part, will be developed along main two lines. An approximately 2,000 km line will connect all the countries of the oil-rich bloc, while a second 1,840-km one will loop through the southern part, between Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman. A GCC Railways Authority may also be created by 2014 to organise and coordinate the individual national projects into a vast, unified regional one, it emerged during the conference.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Trabzon’s Hagia Sophia to be Mosque
Trabzon’s Church of Saint Sophia, now the Saint Sophia Museum, is expected to become a mosque. Adnan Ertem, Chairman of the Board at Vakif Emeklilik, General Directorate of Foundations, stated: “There is no obstacle for Hagia Sophia in Trabzon to open its gates as a mosque, something that will happen within the next days.” He said, “We aim at doing the same with Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, but this is not in our hands. The government has to decide for this. This is the responsibility of the government.”
Hagia Sophia was built in Trebizond during the reign of Manuel I between 1238 and 1263. After Mehmed II conquered the city in 1461 the church was converted into a mosque and its frescoes covered in whitewash. During World War I and for a brief period afterward, the city was occupied by the Russian military and as a makeshift hospital and depot. Afterward it was put back into use as a mosque, until 1964 when it was turned into a museum — which it remains to this day. From 1958 to 1964 the frescoes were uncovered and the church consolidated with the help of experts from Edinburgh University and the General Directorate of Foundations.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: MPS With Headscarves, Erdogan’s Final Frontier
Female minister wants ban on ‘turban’ in parliament lifted
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, FEBRUARY 8 — Seen by Turkey’s secular opposition as the highly symbolic final frontier of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “rampant re-Islamisation” of the country, the ban on headscarves in the Turkish parliament is likely to be lifted soon.
Erdogan’s minister for family affairs and social policies, Fatma Sahin, has suggested on television that the MPs of the secular republic founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire should be allowed to wear hijab, or the ‘turban’ as it is known in Turkish. Sahin, the only female minister in the Turkish government, said that “parliament is a mirror of society”, and therefore “all parts of society must be represented”. “If we want democracy to move forward it must also include MPs who wear headscarves.” The ban on the Islamic headscarf in Turkish institutions was introduced by Ataturk to counter the influence of religion in post-Ottoman Turkish society and to foster social progress. However, the Islamic government under Prime Minister Erdogan, in power since 2002, has already lifted numerous bans on headscarves: first for university students, then for teachers and Turkish Airlines flight attendants, and recently for elementary and middle school students during their hours of Koranic studies.
For the moment, the ban on the ‘turban’ is still valid for state employees, but Erdogan’s AKP party (which holds an absolute majority of 327 seats out of the 550 total in the Turkish parliament) is looking into revoking it soon. The ban is also still in force for the parliament of the secular republic, but this will likely change soon. Polls show that opposition to the Islamic headscarf is dropping sharply, and that most people are not against it. After the first, large-scale battle for the lifting of the ban in universities — which the Kemalist front struggled hard against — the subsequent bans were lifted without any political battles being waged in the country. The latest polls show 50% of the population would vote for the Islamic premier’s party. And the army, which Ankara created to be a bulwark against potential re-Islamisation, has been brought to its knees.
Hundreds of officers (one in every five Turkish generals) are now in jail, charged with alleged coup attempts against the ‘sultan’ Erdogan, the unquestioned winner of the contest of wills against the military.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
V. S. Naipaul’s Wriston Lecture on Arab Supremacism Re-Posted
by Hugh Fitzgerald
It has a lot on the theme that I maintain must be discussed far and wide, by non-Muslims, so that Muslims far and wide are forced to hear what we have to say, and will be unable to unhear what they have heard. That theme is Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism, and the “philosophical hysteria” of Muslims in their encounter with the West and the modern world…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
India-Italy: Case in Limbo: No One Knows What is Happening, Defence Lawyer Says
Harish Salve tells AsiaNews that it is unclear when the special court charged with trying the two Italian marines will be set up or whether the case will be tried in India or Italy. The Indian Supreme Court ruled the case be moved from Kerala to New Delhi almost a month ago.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) — The case of Italian marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone “is in a limbo no one knows,” said Harish Salve, head of the legal team defending the two members of the San Marco Marines battalion, who spoke with AsiaNews.
For the past month, the two soldiers have been held in New Delhi, where a special court has to decide whether they will be tried in India or Italy for the shooting of two Indian fishermen, on 12 February 2012, off the coast of Kerala.
“No one knows how the government of India will handle the creation of this court or how the federal policy can investigate the incident,” Salve told AsiaNews.
On 18 January, the Supreme Court ruled that the incident involving the Enrica Lexie occurred in international waters, thus denying Kerala jurisdiction.
However, at the time of the event neither Latorre nor Girone had immunity because they were on duty as security guards on the oil tanker.
For this reason, the justices moved the case to a special court. (GM)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Monash Interfaith Gathering Backs Council’s Decision to Approve Clayton Mosque
ONE of Monash’s most recognised religious organisations has backed Monash Council’s approval of a mosque to be built in Clayton.
The Monash Interfaith Gathering said the council made the right call by passing a proposal for a mosque at 16 Beddoe Ave, Clayton. Chairperson Jim Aylmer said the opportunity to worship a religion was a “basic human right”…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Islamists Kill Nine at Anti-Polio Clinic in Nigeria
(AGI) Kano, Feb 8 — Nine people were killed when an armed group raided a clinic in Nigeria where volunteers were preparing polio vaccines. The group arrived on motorcycles and launched two attacks on the laboratory in the north of the country, said a police spokesman. Muslim leaders in the north have opposed polio vaccinations for years saying they cause infertility.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya: Akaranga is Our Man, Muslims Says
THE Muslim community in Vihiga county has endorsed Progressive Party of Kenya’s (PPK) candidate and former cabinet minister Moses Akaranga, for the governor. The Muslims leaders met yesterday at Mudete Mosque and declared that Akaranga as their choice for the seat. Sheikh Mohammed Ndote from Banja said they will support the former Public Service minister because of his development track record while a minister…
[JP note: I expect he is.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Mali: France Boosted Al-Qaeda in Mali by Paying £11m in Ransoms, Says US Ambassador
France helped al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to “grow strong” by paying ransoms of nearly £11 million for four hostages in Mali, a former US ambassador has said.
Almost a month after France went to war against AQIM in northern Mali, Vicki Huddleston, who served as US ambassador to the country from 2002-05, accused Paris of building up the very threat its soldiers are now fighting against…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Nigeria: Extremists Gun Down Nine Women Giving Polio Vaccines to Children
Drive-by gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on health workers about to give polio vaccines to children in northern Nigeria, killing nine women in twin attacks blamed on Islamic fundamentalists.
Another four people were injured in the two separate incidents in Kano in Nigeria’s majority-Muslim north, where the al-Qaeda-allied militant group Boko Haram operates. The group has previously claimed that inoculations were a Western plot to sterilise Nigerian women, and its members were suspected in another shooting in October that left two guards at a polio vaccine centre dead…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
While our U.S. Constitution supports anyone’s right to their own sexual orientation, let’s examine a bit further into the homosexuals of this country invading the ranks of “straight” Boy Scouts.
When I grew up, my younger brother’s homosexual teacher physically attempted to sexually molest my sibling. My brother never told me about it until years later at college when we both suffered from two homosexuals attempting to sexually assault both of us. When you are straight, young and naïve — you just don’t suspect what’s coming at you.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Goes All the Way Live With His Gay Agenda
Liberals are incrementally moving America towards government-mandated normalization of homosexuality.
Page one of the liberals’ “Silence the Opposition” manual instructs that they gang-assault me, calling me a hater of gays. Liberals take every issue to the ultimate extreme to make their opposition appear to be nutcases. For example: if you oppose Obama imperialistically ignoring the Constitution to ban guns, liberals say you are a redneck racist who approves of and even is responsible for mass murder.
So, because I reject their super-aggressive bullying push to normalize homosexuality, liberals say I hate gays and seek them harm. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I have homosexual longtime friends and family whom I love dearly. God loves gays. But do not demand that I reject my faith by forcing me to declare homosexual behavior “normal.”
And make no mistake about it, folks: liberals are incrementally moving America towards government-mandated normalization of homosexuality. Preachers could find themselves in jail for preaching the biblical take on homosexuality. In the U.K., a preacher was arrested [irl] for saying homosexuality is a sin.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
According to Wikipedia, the term Chrislam originated in Nigeria in the 1980’s. Wiki describes it as “Chrislam uses both the Bible and Quran and sees them both as holy texts.”
In fact, the term Chrislam was first coined much earlier, namely by the British writer G.K. Chesterton in his book The Flying Inn, published in 1914.
Chesterton’s description of the imaginary Chrislamic system in England was, perhaps, visionary. Prohibition (of alcohol) never came about in the UK but in the US it existed from 1920 until it was repealed in 1933. Prohibition, however, is the least of Chrislamic evils you’d imagine to befall you, again. More sinister is the loss of freedom because freedom is essential to drive society at large to new endeavours, to experiment, to explore the boundaries of knowledge and to advance science in general.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
EU and US Plan World’s Biggest Trade Bloc
The world’s two largest economic powers would like to join forces via a free-trade agreement. Yet the hurdles are large. The EU and US are aiming not just for a small trade solution, but for the largest proposal of all.
Economists, politicians and entrepreneurs are practically foaming at the mouth. The planned all-encompassing free-trade agreement between the US and EU would spur growth on both sides of the Atlantic. It would also ensure that the global economic rules of the future are put in place by western countries — and not China.
Economically, a broad free-trade agreement would fundamentally redraw the map of worldwide trade. Goods and services traded between the EU and US constitute the largest bilateral economic partnership in the world. Daily, they amount to more than 1.8 billion euros ($2.4 million). The combined GDPs of the US and EU account for approximately half of worldwide economic output and one-third of the global flow of goods. According to EU estimates, a comprehensive free-trade agreement between the EU and US would raise the EU’s GDP by one-half percent, or 66 billion euros per year. A similar increase is expected for the US.
Within Europe there is broad political support for a trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |