Gates of Vienna News Feed 5/1/2013

Youth unemployment in Italy rose to more than 38% in March, a sign that the recession there is intensifying. The rate increased 3.2% since the same time last year, and 0.6% since February. The rest of the workforce is also suffering: in March 2013 there were 297,000 fewer jobs in Italy than there were in March 2012.

In other news, the Afghan Taliban ambushed a convoy in Helmand Province, killing three people, including the chief peace negotiator. Meanwhile, three British soldiers were killed by an IED, also in Helmand Province, while traveling in a Mastiff armored carrier, which had previously been thought relatively invulnerable to IED attacks.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, LS, RR, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Financial Crisis
» Almost Four in 10 Young Italians Unemployed
» Austerity is Hurting Our Health, Say Researchers
» EU Parliament Speaker Lauds Letta, Warns Against Austerity
» Federal Reserve Sticks With Stimulus
» Greece: Three Years of Collective Failure
» Hollande Auctions Off Prized Elysee Wines, May 30-31
» Italy: Tax Rumble Sign of Tough Things to Come for Letta
» Italy Has 2.95 Million on the Dole
» Obama Vacations While Economy Tanks
» Pope Condemns Unemployment on Labor Day
» Ratings Agency Moody’s Slashes Slovenia Rating to “Junk Status”
 
USA
» 3 Taken Into Custody in Connection With Boston Bombings, Law Enforcement Officials Say
» Another Cover-Up for the Saudis?
» Boston Bombers During Shootout: “We Didn’t Do it!”
» Bring it on: Author Says Muslim Group’s $30m Libel Suit Will Expose Terror Ties
» DOJ Poised to Enter Norwalk Mosque Battle to Defend Federal Law
» Feds Investigating Possible Human Trafficking at Saudi Diplomatic Compound in Virginia
» GAO Now Investigating DHS Ammo Purchases
» Global Muslim Report Reveals Opposition to Suicide Bombing in US
» How Did Barack Obama Become Monsanto’s Man in Washington?
» Huge Flaw in Pew Survey on Muslim Views About Sharia
» Israeli Family Law Expert Confirms Florida American Law for American Courts Legislation Doesn’t Threaten Jewish Domestic Law
» It’s Not About Guns: Gun Control is People Control
» Nest of Islamic Radicalism in Boston
» Russian Space Junk Almost Destroys NASA Telescope in Orbit
» Saudi Arabia ‘Warned the United States IN WRITING About Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012’
» Secretary of State Huma Abedin?
» Skeleton of Teenage Girl Confirms Cannibalism at Jamestown Colony
» Three More Arrested in Connection to Boston Marathon Bombings
» Word in the News: Jihad
» Yet Another Communication That Never Arrived
» Your Children Belong to the State
 
Europe and the EU
» France-Germany: ‘The Big Chill’
» From ‘Black Hole’ To IOR, A New Book on the Popes’ Coffers
» German Prisoners Find Their Inner Zen
» Greece: Athens Mayor Vows to Prevent Golden Dawn Handing Out Free Food in Syntagma Square
» Italy: Three Arrested in Basilicata Political Funds Probe
» Italy: Three Arrests in Priest Murder
» Italy: Schwazer Gets Three and a Half Years
» Italy: Venice Launches Manners Campaign for Tourists
» Italy: Rome Prosecutors Ask for Bertolaso, Anemone, Balducci Trial
» Italy: Finance Police Search Riccardo Bossi’s House
» Knox Talks of Italy Ordeal in TV Interview as Book Published
» Merkel Says Italy Has Taken Considerable Reform Steps
» Spain: Teen Gatecrashers Trash Plane at Madrid Airport
» UK Ministry of Defence Deems Wind Towers a National Security Threat
» UK: Adolf Hitler: His Part in My Downfall
» UK: Mad Cow Infected Blood ‘To Kill 1,000’
» UK: Nigel Farage vs the Fruitcakes
» UK: North Wales Police Historic Paedophile Ring Probe Reveals 140 Victims Allege Abuse by 84 People at 18 Care Homes
» UK: Priti Patel’s UKIP Candidate Father Says: ‘They Are Not a Racist Party’
» UK: Paedophile Gary Karn Who Abused Two Girls Aged Seven and Eight is Spared Jail — After Judge Says it Would be Unfair to His Family
» UK: Race War Fear After Islamic Terrorists Target EDL
» UK: The UKIP, Far Right and TUSC
» Wales: Arsonist Who Wiped Out a Family is Convicted of Five Murders
 
Balkans
» Croatia: Cardinal Bozanic Nixes Bilingualism in Vukovar
 
North Africa
» Egypt: Death to Churches Under Islam: A Study of the Coptic Church, Part II
» Libya: UN Urges Political Dialogue as Gunmen Overtake Ministries and Other State Institutions
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Israeli Targeted Execution of ‘Key Terror Figure’
 
Middle East
» A Wary, Weary West is Leaving Syria in the Butchers’ Hands
» Kuwait: Bikini Woman
» Turkey: 4 Injured in Istanbul Clashes
» Turkey: Versions of Omar Khayyám
 
South Asia
» Afghanistan: UK’s Best Armoured Vehicle Overcome by Taliban for First Time
» Afghan Taliban Kill Peace Chief Negotiator in Southern Province
» Are Pakistan and Islam Really Inseparable?
» David Cameron: UK Has ‘Paid a Very High Price’ In Afghanistan
» Indian Army Defuses Bomb in Indian-Controlled Kashmir
» Italy: Defence Minister to Visit Marines This Week
» Three British Soldiers Killed by Roadside Bomb in Afghanistan
 
Far East
» Japanese Leader Shows Signs of His Old Self
 
Australia — Pacific
» ‘Concerned Citizens’ Case Against Mosque to Continue
» GM Wheat Could Permanently Damage Human Genetics by Silencing Hundreds of Genes Throughout the Body
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» China Colonizing Africa: Second Biggest Investor
» Fresh Rights Group Challenge to Nigeria Over Islamist Clashes
» Last Rhinos in Mozambique Killed by Poachers
» Mali: Gilles Le Guen, Breton Sailor Who ‘Followed Bin Laden’
» Nigeria: Massive Destruction, Deaths From Military Raid — Satellite Images, Witness Accounts Raise Concerns of Cover-Up
» Nigeria: Jonathan Not Probing Obasanjo — Gulak
» Somalia: Puntland Authorities Executes 13 Al Shabaab Convicts
 
Latin America
» Brazil’s Decision to Lift Limit on Haitian Visas Humanitarian: Official
 
Immigration
» Holding Holder Accountable
» UK: Third of Children Born in England Has Foreign-Born Parent
» UK: The Ethnic Majority
 
Culture Wars
» Homosexual Manifesto: Satire or Reality? (Video)
» Justice Dept. To Appeal Ruling Against Age Limits for Morning-After Pill
» Most Muslims Deplore Violence. Most Think Homosexuality is Wrong. They Sound Like Christians
 
General
» Quantum Mechanics Trick May Detect Invisible Gravity Waves
» The Long and Arduous Quest to Find Flowing Water on Mars May be Over
» Victims of Sharia, The April Report
» What Muslims Talk About When They Talk About Sharia
 

Almost Four in 10 Young Italians Unemployed

New govt pledges to reduce labour costs to boost job creation

(ANSAmed) — Rome, April 30 — Almost one in four young Italian people are unemployed, Istat said on Tuesday, in another sign that the country’s longest recession in 20 years is hitting the new generations especially hard.

The statistics agency said 38.4% of 15-to-24-year-olds were unemployed in March, 3.2% higher than the same month in 2012 and 0.6% higher than February, according to seasonally adjusted provisional data. The statistics agency said 635,000 people in this age bracket were on the dole.

The situation for the population as a whole is alarming too.

The number of unemployed people was 2.95 million in March, 297,000 more than in the same month in 2012, Istat said on Tuesday.

The statistics agency added that the number was 14,000 lower than in February in absolute terms, even though the percentage of the overall working population on the dole was flat at 11.5%.

Istat also reported that in March 22.674 million people were in work, 51,000 (0.2%) fewer than in February and 248,000 fewer than in the same month in 2012.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Austerity is Hurting Our Health, Say Researchers

(Reuters) — Austerity is having a devastating effect on health in Europe and North America, driving suicide, depression and infectious diseases and reducing access to medicines and care, researchers said on Monday.

Detailing a decade of research, Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for health.

In a book to be published this week, the researchers say more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the “Great Recession” and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America.

In Greece, moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 percent since 2011 — driven in part by increasing drug abuse in the context of a 50 percent youth unemployment rate.

Greece also experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programs.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

EU Parliament Speaker Lauds Letta, Warns Against Austerity

‘What hurts Italy hurts rest of eurozone’ says Schulz

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 30 — EU Parliament Speaker Martin Schulz on Tuesday seconded Italian Premier Enrico Letta’s warning against too much austerity amid the euro crisis.

“As Letta stressed in his speech, one-way austerity measures suffocate not only Italy but many eurozone countries,” said Shulz in a letter of congratulations to Letta upon being made premier. “Urgent measures are needed to boost to the economy and help to the young”. Letta, 46, and his left-right coalition government were sworn in Sunday after two months of gridlock and turbulent party politics following inconclusive February elections. In his maiden speech as premier to parliament Monday, Letta earned plaudits from his own centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party with a pledge to focus on stoking growth and creating jobs, especially for the young, after more than a year of austerity which has deepened the recession and pushed unemployment to new heights.

“I hope that this step represents the end of the post-election deadlock, and that Italy comes back to play its rightful role in Europe,” said Schulz. “Today more than ever, Europe needs a courageous Italy…to help rethink, reinforce and give back legitimacy to our Union”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Federal Reserve Sticks With Stimulus

No surprises here: The Federal Reserve will keep its foot on the gas pedal for the foreseeable future, in its controversial effort to stimulate the recovery.

The central bank pointed to a high unemployment rate and low inflation as key reasons why it will continue buying $85 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries.

That policy, known as quantitative easing, has already injected $2.5 trillion into the economy since December 2008. The aim is to keep long-term interest rates low and thereby stimulate spending.

The Fed said it stands ready to either “increase or reduce the pace” of those purchases in response to economic activity. The remarks came in a statement following a two-day meeting that wrapped up Wednesday.

The Fed also reiterated its plan to keep its key short-term interest rate near zero until the unemployment rate falls to 6.5% or inflation exceeds 2.5% a year.

The central bank is still years away from hitting those goals, according to its own forecasts. The unemployment rate was 7.6% as of March, and the Fed’s preferred measure of consumer prices showed inflation is up only 1% year-over-year.

Meanwhile, the Fed pointed to government spending cuts as a key drag on the U.S economy.

“Fiscal policy is restraining economic growth,” the central bank said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: Three Years of Collective Failure

I Kathimerini Athens

On 23 April 2010, the prime minister of the day George Papandreou appealed for international help to prevent Greece’s collapse. But the three years that followed saw a series of blunders by the Troika and the Greek state, according to a series of economic analyses.

Nick Malkoutzis

Three years ago, then Prime Minister George Papandreou stood on Kastelorizo’s harbour as the Aegean glistened in the background and children yelped with joy. The ensuing period has proved anything but sun-kissed child’s play for Greece. The appeal made by Papandreou to the Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund that day has set the tone for almost everything that has happened in Greece over the past three years. Where it will lead is far from clear.

Even though the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF make up the troika of lenders that have provided Greece with some €200bn in bailout funding during the last 36 months, the Washington-based organisation’s role has grabbed the attention of most Greeks. Even now, April 23, 2010 is referred to by many as the day Papandreou “sent Greece to the IMF”. Even though the Fund has provided only a fraction of the loans disbursed so far, its actions often come under the greatest scrutiny.

Although there has been a growing realisation that some of Greece’s partners in the Eurozone and the ECB have been behind some of the troika’s toughest demands, the IMF continues to be a regular target for critics.

IMF Trojan horse

The problem is that these often indiscriminate attacks, dismissing the IMF as Trojan Horse for neoliberalism, mean that proper analysis of the troika’s three elements is pushed aside. In this fog, it has become difficult to work out where there are grounds for genuine criticism of the IMF. In this respect, an op-ed by Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of PIMCO investment firm, on the Fund’s shortcomings is timely and extremely useful….

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Hollande Auctions Off Prized Elysee Wines, May 30-31

To be replaced with cheaper ones, excess goes to state coffers

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, APRIL 30 — French President Francois Hollande wants to do crisis-busting bit by auctioning off 12,000 prestigious vintages from the Elysee’s cellars, which date back to 1947.

The Socialist president wants to replace them with “more modest wines, with excess proceeds going into state coffers”. Among the prized bottles going on the block in a two-day auction on May 30-31 are some Petrus 1990 vintages worth an estimated 2,200 euros, as well as Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Loire, Cotes du Rhone, Alsace, Sud-Ouest and Champagne wines.

Young Elysee sommelier Virginie Routis selected the bottles to be sold, which make up a tenth of the presidential cellars.

In 2006, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe auctioned off 5,000 bottles from the Hotel de Ville municipal cellar. Among them was a 1986 Romanée-Conti, which fetched 5,000 euros.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Tax Rumble Sign of Tough Things to Come for Letta

Berlusconi already threatening to withdraw support

(By Paul Virgo) (ANSA) — Rome, April 30 — Premier Enrico Letta’s left-right government is fully in power after it passed the second of two confidence votes in parliament on Tuesday with an impressive majority in the Senate.

Now comes the hard part for the 46-year-old prime minister — keeping together an apparently unnatural alliance between his Democratic Party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) while addressing what is arguably Italy’s worst economic crisis since World War II.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano hounded the PD to make a pact with Berlusconi, who has been considered an enemy for two decades by many in the party, to end two months of deadlock after the centre-left party came first in February’s general election but failed to win a working majority in parliament.

Many PD lawmakers grumbled about forming a government with the PdL, after saying for so long it was something they would never do.

Almost all of them followed the party line in the end though because, as Napolitano and Letta both said, there was no alternative, with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement refusing to negotiate and problems piling up as Italy endures its longest recession in 20 years.

But even before the second confidence vote was cleared, a rumble was brewing that showed how hard it will be for the government to survive, never mind lift the country out of crisis.

As Senators were debating the pros and cons of the new executive, Berlusconi was threatening to pull the plug if it fails to scrap the widely despised IMU property tax and returning the revenues from 2012 to respect his key pledge in the run-up to the election.

On Monday Letta said in his maiden speech as premier in the House that June’s IMU payments would be suspended as part of a wider review of Italian taxation.

But Letta did not say that the tax would be abolished completely, which prompted the three-time Italian premier to fire a warning.

“I’m confident it will be abolished and the money (from 2012) returned,” said Berlusconi. “We won’t support a government that does not implement these measures. We took up a commitment with the voters in the election campaign and we want to maintain it”. Regional Affairs Minister Graziano Delrio, a PD member, said earlier on Tuesday that June’s IMU payments would be suspended while the government moved to “lighten it for the less well-off”. IMU was instituted among a series of austerity measures under Monti’s emergency technocrat government to restore health to Italy’s public finances.

Berlusconi’s 2008-2011 government scrapped a similar tax.

Abolishing IMU and reimbursing the 2012 revenues from it would create a hole of around eight billion euros in this year’s budget. So even if Letta gives in to Berlusconi on IMU, he will find himself with another big headache regarding how to find the money.

This in addition to the two million euros he will need to meet a pledge to avert an increase in the top rate of value added tax from 21% to 22%, which is planned to take place in June, and another 2.5 million needed to pay for soaring applications for unemployment benefit. Then there is the money needed to help thousands of people who have been left jobless and without a pension because of changes to the retirement law and the cash to cover cuts to labour taxes and fund growth-boosting measures.

Berlusconi is seen as having a stronger position within the alliance as the PdL is ahead in the polls and would probably fare better if the government falls and snap elections are called.

The PD has dropped to third, behind the PdL and M5S, in some polls after internal rifts sank two of its candidates to be president and caused Pier Luigi Bersani to resign as party secretary.

Another challenge for Letta lies on the international front as he starts a European tour with a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday to call for the EU to drop its focus on austerity and be more flexible with budget targets.

So far the message has not been taken in. Asked if Brussels would accept the abolition of IMU, an EC spokesman said: “Italy’s budget targets do not change and the new government will have to say how it plans to meet them without incurring new debt”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy Has 2.95 Million on the Dole

248,000 fewer people in work in March than a year ago

(see related stories) (ANSA) — Rome, April 30 — The number of unemployed people in recession-hit Italy was 2.95 million in March, 297,000 more than in the same month in 2012, Istat said on Tuesday.

The statistics agency added that the number was 14,000 lower than in February in absolute terms, even though the percentage of the overall working population on the dole was flat at 11.5%.

Istat also reported that in March 22,674 people were in work, 51,000 (0.2%) fewer than in February and 248,000 fewer than in the same month in 2012.

Earlier this month the agency stressed that its headline unemployment figures reflect only part of the problem of people being without jobs in Italy.

For example, it said that in 2012 there were 2.975 million people who were willing to work but not actively looking for a job. In most cases these people have stopped looking because they have given up hope of finding a job as Italy endures its longest recession in 20 years.

When added to the people who were unemployed in the traditional sense — those actively seeking work and eligible for unemployment benefits — this took the overall number of jobless in Italy in 2012 up to 5.72 million.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Obama Vacations While Economy Tanks

Obama spent 976 hours on vacation and playing golf, versus just 474.4 hours on economic meetings of any kind.

One in five Americans are on food stamps. The number of Americans in the labor force fell to its lowest level since 1979 in March, when another 500,000 Americans simply gave up hope of finding a job. Median household income has declined 5.6 percent since 2009, when the so-called economic recovery began.

Given these grim realities, Americans might expect President Obama to make the economy his greatest priority. Americans would be wrong. According to a new report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” compiled by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), Obama has spent only 3.6 percent of his total work time on economic issues, during his entire tenure in office.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Pope Condemns Unemployment on Labor Day

Workers angered by low wages, spending cuts and job culls have marked May Day worldwide. Pope Francis has decried unemployment as “socially unjust.” A walkout has crippled Greece. Indonesian workers slammed fuel prices.

The new Argentine head of the Roman Catholic Church underscored May 1 international day of labor rallies in many countries on Wednesday by urging global leaders to “re-launch” the employment sector.

Unemployment and “labor market difficulties in various countries” were caused by economic thinking “based on selfish profit outside the bounds of social justice,” Pope Francis told thousands of followers in St Peters Square in Rome.

Work, said Francis, was “fundamental for dignity.”

Vatican radio later quoted the pontiff as saying during a private mass that the victims of Bangladesh’s recent workplace disasters had worked under “slave labor” conditions.

“Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!” the radio quoted him as saying.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ratings Agency Moody’s Slashes Slovenia Rating to “Junk Status”

Slovenia could be the next eurozone member needing a bailout after a downgrade by the US ratings agency Moody’s. The move has forced Slovenia to abandon a bond auction it hoped would raise 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion).

Slovenia saw its credit rating cut to Ba1 from Baa2 — just two notches above “junk” status — on Tuesday after Moody’s said the small, alpine nation’s banking sector was in “turmoil.” It also cited a “marked deterioration” in Slovenia government finances and “uncertain” funding prospects.

Moody’s assessment prompted Slovenia’s Finance Ministry on Tuesday to rescind a bond auction which had been intended to raise a much-needed 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) in funding.

The US ratings agency warned that Slovenia could soon become the next eurozone member to seek a bailout. Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and adopted the euro currency in 2007.

“Slovenia’s vulnerability to external shocks, like those brought about by the crisis in Cyprus, could make it difficult for the sovereign to fund itself at sustainable rates”, Moody’s said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

3 Taken Into Custody in Connection With Boston Bombings, Law Enforcement Officials Say

Three additional people were taken into custody Tuesday in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings last month, according to Boston police and a federal law enforcement official.

No identities or other information was offered, and the Boston police said more details would be available later.

[Return to headlines]
 

Another Cover-Up for the Saudis?

The possible involvement of a Saudi in the Boston terror attacks is being curiously ignored or downplayed by most of the mainstream media. Steve Emerson, Glenn Beck, and others have pressed for answers, however. Beck has issued a full report with updates on the controversy.

When Rep. Jeff Duncan, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, questioned Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano on the matter, she claimed his questions were “not worthy of an answer” and that much of the reporting has been “wrong.” She later said the Saudi was on a watch list but had no involvement.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Boston Bombers During Shootout: “We Didn’t Do it!”

Audio feeds suspicions brothers may have been set up.

Video footage from the scene of the shootout with the alleged Boston bombers appears to contain audio of the suspects screaming out, “We didn’t do it!” as police fire on the two brothers.

Although by no means clear, the words below appear to be shouted by the suspects as they come under police gunfire.

– — 24 seconds: “chill out” — – 26 seconds: “chill out”, “chill out” — – 31 seconds: “chill out” — – 37 seconds: “we didnt do it” — – 41 seconds: “we didnt do it” — – 45 seconds: “we didnt do it” — – 1 minute 9 seconds: “hey officer”

Despite being described as a “shootout,” the audio suggests that shots are only being fired in one direction by police and that the brothers are not returning fire at this point in the exchange.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Bring it on: Author Says Muslim Group’s $30m Libel Suit Will Expose Terror Ties

By Paul Alster

The shadowy leader of an American Muslim organization accused of running terror training camps in the U.S. could find himself being questioned under oath if his outfit follows through on its $30 million defamation suit against the Christian group that leveled the charges in a best-selling book.

Muslims of the Americas, a group founded in the 1980s by elusive Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, is suing the Christian Action Network for defamation and libel following CAN’s recent publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” Co-authored by CAN founder Martin Mawyer and Patti Pierucci, the book accuses MOA of “acting as a front for the radical Islamist group Jamaat al-Fuqra.”

In the suit, filed this year in federal court in Albany, N.Y., the Muslim group accuses Mawyer, Pierucci and CAN of “malicious, repetitious and continuous pronouncements and publication of defamatory statements against plaintiff.”

“We’re calling their bluff,” said Mawyer. “I would have thought this would have been dropped a while ago, but I guess they feel they have to defend themselves to their own members.”

Many of the book’s allegations are based on the claims of a former NYPD undercover informant who spent eight years posing as a member of the Muslim group, which has secretive bases in rural areas around the country, including Hancock, N.Y., and York County, S.C.

The book alleges organized criminal activity on the part of MOA and claims profits from “street crimes, drugs, brothels, unemployment fraud and other offenses” have been funneled to Jamaat al-Fuqra. Part of the money has been used to establish a series of Jihadi training camps on American soil, according to the book.

Both Muslims of the Americas — made up primarily of African-American converts to Islam — and the Pakistan-based Jamaat al-Fuqra, are guided by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, a highly controversial cleric who lived in the U.S. during the 1980s and who was the subject of an investigation by the late Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

In 2002, Pearl was in Pakistan on his way to a pre-arranged interview with Gilani when he was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and eventually beheaded in a brutal case that shocked the world. Gilani was questioned in relation to the investigation but released without being charged.

“Twilight in America” highlights some 17 purported terrorist training camps inside the U.S. Mawyer said he learned of the camps from NYPD informant Ali Aziz, who said one of the camps — often attended by 100 or more followers — was only 30 miles away from the CAN office in Forest, Va.

Aziz allegedly passed on vital information to authorities about MOA’s plans, its activities across the U.S., and the powerful presence of Gilani.

“If Gilani told everyone, ‘Set yourselves on fire,’ everybody would burn themselves,” Aziz told www.christianaction.org. “This has been going on for 30 years. And people praise him. They give him money. They kiss his feet. It’s crazy.”

Despite the evidence presented in the book, neither MOA nor Jamaat al-Fuqra is currently designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization…

           — Hat tip: LS [Return to headlines]
 

DOJ Poised to Enter Norwalk Mosque Battle to Defend Federal Law

NORWALK — The U.S. Department of Justice is poised to enter the legal fight between the city and Al Madany Islamic Center of Norwalk over the proposed construction of a mosque on Fillow Street. Al Madany sued the city after the Norwalk Zoning Commission rejected the center’s plan to build a 27,000-square-foot mosque and multi-purpose hall at 127 Fillow St…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Feds Investigating Possible Human Trafficking at Saudi Diplomatic Compound in Virginia

Two women were removed from a compound that the Saudi embassy says belongs to the Saudi armed forces. The Department of Homeland Security is looking into it.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a possible case of human trafficking at a Saudi Arabian diplomatic compound in McLean, Virginia, a DHS official confirmed to BuzzFeed on Wednesday.

“I can confirm that DHS did remove two potential trafficking victims this morning,” said Brandon Montgomery, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “

The incident was first reported by the local NBC affiliate, which also reported that Fairfax County records show that the building is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. NBC reports that “one woman reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing.”

“We don’t know anything about that,” said a spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy when reached by phone on Wednesday. “The report that we got is that the house belongs to the Saudi armed forces, like the military office.”

No one answered the line for the Saudi defense attaché on Wednesday afternoon.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

GAO Now Investigating DHS Ammo Purchases

The Government Accountability Office tells Whispers it is now investigating large ammunition purchases made by the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Young, a spokesman for GAO, says the investigation of the purchases is “just getting underway.”

The congressional investigative agency is jumping into the fray just as legislation was introduced in both the Senate and the House to restrict the purchase of ammo by some government agencies (except the Department of Defense). The AMMO Act, introduced Friday, would prevent agencies from buying more ammunition if “stockpiles” are greater than what they were in previous administrations.

Donelle Harder, a spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who introduced the legislation in the Senate, tells Whispers the bill would also require GAO to share the findings of its report on DHS purchases with Congress.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Global Muslim Report Reveals Opposition to Suicide Bombing in US

Pew report based 38,000 interviews showed Muslims in US more opposed to suicide bombs than Muslims in other countries

Muslims in the US are generally more opposed to suicide bombings than their co-religionists round the world, according to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published Tuesday. The findings come in the wake of the Boston bombings in which three people were killed and 264 wounded, attacks blamed on the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, both of them ethnic Chechens and Muslims. No motive has yet emerged for the bombings…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

How Did Barack Obama Become Monsanto’s Man in Washington?

And when are anti-GMO activist groups going to stop saying they’re “shocked and disappointed” by the president?

Shocked and disappointed is polite-speak and politically correct reaction. It’s baloney.

Don’t you get it? Obama has never been on your side. He never deserved your trust.

Disappointment implies he was your buddy and then unaccountably walked away.

The man is a politician. He’s a liar. Different pols have different styles of lying. Some pretend they’re your friend before they screw you over and leave you in the dust.

I’ve previously published Obama’s track record as Monsanto’s number-one political supporter in America.

Meet Monsanto’s prime lobbyist, Barack Obama:

After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

[…]

Records don’t show Monsanto or other biotech giants pouring a landslide of (visible) campaign cash down on Obama, relative to other large donors.

Goldman Sachs was Obama’s number-one $$ donor, and Goldman touts GM-crop commodity contracts, for both buys and sells; but Goldman has its fingers in every significant money pot from Nome to Tierra Del Fuego.

The “Obama riddle” is as plain as the nose on the face of Globalism. Monsanto’s agenda, to monopolize the world’s food supply, is essential to the Globalist blueprint. That blueprint ultimately aims for redistribution of food to the world from a point of Central Planning.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Huge Flaw in Pew Survey on Muslim Views About Sharia

By Andrew C. McCarthy

There will be more to say about the findings of the newly released Pew Survey, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society.” Of course, such revelations as the approval by upwards of two-thirds of Middle Eastern Muslims of the death penalty for apostates, and by one-third of suicide bombings, are depressing — though not at all surprising for anyone who has been paying attention. (I wrote about similar poll results in The Grand Jihad.)

But what is striking is that the depressing state of affairs is manifest despite Pew’s best efforts to make things seem better than they are. Principally, the survey is about Muslim views about sharia, Islam’s legal system and framework for society. It is intimated that Pew’s study is exhaustive, involving interviews with 38,000 Muslims across 39 countries. But, as my friend Andy Bostom pointed out to me this morning, guess which countries are not included in the survey? That would be Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan — perhaps the three most sharia compliant countries in the world, home cumatively to nearly 150 million Muslims.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Israeli Family Law Expert Confirms Florida American Law for American Courts Legislation Doesn’t Threaten Jewish Domestic Law

A leading expert on Family Law and Women’s legal issues in Israel has confirmed testimony by American rabbi and Lawyer Jonathan Hausman, Esq. that pending Florida legislation known as American Law for American Courts, SB58, does not threaten Jewish domestic law as proffered by Rabbinic courts in Israel . Professor Daphna Hacker is Senior Lecturer on the Buchman Faculty of Law and NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of a peer-reviewed journal article, “Religious Tribunals in Democratic States: Lessons From the Israeli Rabbinical Courts”. Professor Hacker’s confirmation of Rabbi Hausman’s opinions and testimony negates the assertions raised in various Senate hearings and media opinion columns by opponents of the legislation. They have falsely alleged that the law, if passed, would jeopardize divorce decrees by Israeli rabbinic courts involving Israeli or dual citizens living in the Sunshine State. Among those who have made such assertions are representatives from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Florida Bar Association’s International and Family Law sections. Given this development, requests have been made for public retractions of prior statements certain opposing groups. In Professor Hacker’s email response to Rabbi Hausman she noted: Yes — the Rabbinical courts are state courts like any civil court and their rulings — in cases in their jurisdiction — are binding like any other. The litigants will not have to go to a civil court to verify the ruling of the rabbinical court — it is binding as it is and should be recognized by foreign courts like any other Israeli judicial decision. This confirmation might aid in combating the apparent misinformation on the application of Israeli rabbinic courts Jewish domestic law decrees that has been conveyed in Florida legislative testimony on ALAC by the ADL, ACLU and state bar association international and family law sections.

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

It’s Not About Guns: Gun Control is People Control

Gun free zones don’t lower crime rates or even prevent mass shootings, so what do they do? Gun control allows megalomaniacal politicians to exercise control over law-abiding citizens through unconstitutional legislation that paves the way towards eroding the Bill of Rights at large.

The simple fact of the matter is that the attacks on the Second Amendment should concern you, even if you don’t own a gun. In fact, I am definitely not someone you would consider a ‘gun nut’. Far from it, I actually grew up with the impression that guns were killing weapons that the average person would never truly need. After all, you could simply call a gun-wielding police officer if anything went wrong. So what drove me to become passionate on protecting the Second Amendment, even to the point of producing the new documentary Disarmed: A History of Gun Control?

It comes down to the fact that gun control and the attacks on the Second Amendment amount to much more than guns themselves. In fact, the Second Amendment’s fall will signify the fall of the Constitution at large — the very fabric of the United States. You see if the government can override the Second Amendment, why can’t they override the First Amendment? Or how about the Constitution as a whole? If we can confiscate all modern firearms and override the Constitution through federal or state law, then the Constitution now becomes a secondary piece of paper.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Nest of Islamic Radicalism in Boston

The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) was established in 1981 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to help local Muslims “preserve their Islamic identity” and “observe their obligations as Muslims.” Promoting “a comprehensive and balanced view” of Islam’s “universal and timeless” teachings, ISB “strive[s] to embody the ‘middle path’ to which the Qur’an calls—a path of moderation that is free of extremism.”

ISB was founded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence on terrorism charges. One of ISB’s original trustees (for at least 19 years) was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. At ISB’s Cambridge library in 2003, an official of the interfaith group Americans for Peace and Tolerance found a number of jihadi texts as well as writings by the late Muslim Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb, who pioneered the ideology that Islamic terror groups like al-Qaeda embrace today.

ISB’s Cambridge mosque is operated by the Muslim American Society (MAS), which federal prosecutors have identified as an American front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, ISB members founded a sister mosque, known as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC), in Boston’s Roxbury section. Saudi funding sources supplied more than half of the $15.5 million that was used to create the new facility. Also key to ISBCC’s successful launch was Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s decision to make available, at a small fraction of market value, the land on which the Cultural Center was to be built.

Over the years, a significant number of ISB officials and attendees (in addition to the aforementioned Abdurahman Alamoudi) have been implicated in terrorist activities and affiliations. For example:

•FBI surveillance documents show that two days before the 9/11 attacks, Suhaib Webb, Imam of ISB’s Boston mosque, joined al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki in headlining a fundraiser on behalf of the Atlanta-based Muslim extremist Jamil al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), who had recently murdered two police officers in Georgia.

[…]

[NOTE: see the many links to a long list of terrorist activities and affiliation at URL, above. Boston area Jihad dates back almost 30 years]

[Return to headlines]
 

Russian Space Junk Almost Destroys NASA Telescope in Orbit

A high-tech NASA telescope in orbit escaped a potentially disastrous collision with a Soviet-era Russian spy satellite last year in a close call that highlights the growing threat of orbital debris around Earth.

NASA’s $690 million Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope — which studies the most powerful explosions in the universe — narrowly avoided a direct hit with the defunct 1.5-ton Russian reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 1805 on April 3, 2012, space agency officials announced Tuesday (April 30). The potential space collision was avoided when engineers commanded Fermi to fire its thrusters in a critical dodging maneuver to move out of harm’s way.

NASA created a video of Fermi’s near miss with space junk to illustrate how high the risk of a space collision really was.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Saudi Arabia ‘Warned the United States IN WRITING About Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012’

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012, long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds, according to a senior Saudi government official with direct knowledge of the document.

The Saudi warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.

Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the source said. Tsarnaev’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.

The Saudis’ warning to the U.S. government was also shared with the British government. ‘It was very specificâ€(tm) and warned that ‘something was going to happen in a major U.S. city,’ the Saudi official said during an extensive interview.

[…]

A DHS official denied, however, that the agency received any such warning from Saudi intelligence about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

[…]

The White House took a similar view. ‘We and other relevant U.S. government agencies have no record of such a letter being received,’ said Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the presidentâ€(tm)s National Security Council.

[Thiis odious, idiotic regime can shut down and bully an entire American city after the terrorist fact, but cannot prevent the fact from happening despite multiple specific warnings from foreign sources. The Feebs dropped the ball before 9/11, too. — PW]

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Secretary of State Huma Abedin?

by Daniel Greenfield

In 2017, Huma Abedin may be the wife of the mayor of New York City or the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. It’s even possible that she might be both…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Skeleton of Teenage Girl Confirms Cannibalism at Jamestown Colony

That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten; a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed); and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists.

The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife.

“Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.”

James Horn, head of research at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and a historian on the colony, said the discovery “adds a significant confirmation to what was reported to have occurred at Jamestown.” Further, it’s the only physical evidence of cannibalism of Europeans in any New World colony, although, as with Jamestown, there are written accounts of the practice in others.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Three More Arrested in Connection to Boston Marathon Bombings

Huge breaking news in the Boston Marathon case, as CBS News reports, “The Boston police department says three additional suspects have been taken into custody in connection with last month’s marathon bombings.”

The Boston police department announced the news via Twitter:

Three additional suspects taken into custody in Marathon bombing case. Details to follow.

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) May 1, 2013

[…]

CBS News in Boston has said Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov are the names of two of the suspects under arrest.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Word in the News: Jihad

The Boston marathon bombing has focused attention on the word “jihad.”

Vice President Biden characterized the alleged bombers as knockoff jihadis.” The Associated Press reported that the elder brother had “vaguely discussed jihad” with his mother over the phone in 2011…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Yet Another Communication That Never Arrived

We’ll never know for sure whether Saudi Arabia really did warn the USA in writing about the terrorist attack intentions of one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but we do know that President Barack Obama slept through the slaughter in Benghazi.

“A senior Saudi government official told Daily Mail that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012. According to the source, the letter was pertaining to Tsarnaev and potential terror threats.” (Daily Mail, May 1, 2013). (Update: Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington now DENIES warning United States)

Is this a Saudi Arabia/USA “You-cover-my-back-and-I’ll-cover-yours” game?

[…]

During the time period of 2012 when a Saudi Arabia official says the letter was sent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was busy nailing returning war vets, “bible thumping” Christian and Tea Party patriots as the real potential terrorists. Don’t Saudi Arabians surf the Internet?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Your Children Belong to the State

Not long ago, one bread winner could support a family, put the children through college, and have enough savings left over to comfortably retire. But then a funny thing happened on the road to serfdom. Suddenly there was a “sexual revolution” and before you knew it both parents were in the workforce, both paying income tax, both struggling to survive. And in all this, their children increasingly became wards of the State. How fortuitous for the oligarchs, hellbent on world domination?

Which leads me to today’s news. In Nazi York, under the rule of Führer Bloomberg, a pilot program is set to begin in middle schools under the auspices of combating abysmal failures in such basics as reading. It calls for an additional 21/2 hours of incarceration per day. I kid you not. While there are homeschoolers sending their children to college by the age of 12, the State is bamboozling the booboisie into thinking this will do anything but make their kids better Prussian soldiers. Not surprising, most tax-slaving parents, happy to have a babysitter, are “on board.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France-Germany: ‘The Big Chill’

Le Figaro, 29 April 2013

Tensions between France and Germany rose yet another notch on Friday, after months of clashing over which policies to adopt in order to end the economic crisis. The most recent conflict concerns a leaked draft of an internal document of France’s ruling Socialist Party, intended for discussion at a party conference.

The draft document rails against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “selfish intransigence”. Although a more watered down tone features in the final document to be adopted on April 30, this is a far cry from the “friendly quibbles” previously mentioned by French President François Hollande.

The point of view expressed in the draft is criticised by French conservative daily Le Figaro, which argues in a leader article that:…

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

From ‘Black Hole’ To IOR, A New Book on the Popes’ Coffers

Players and mysteries of the Vatican bank, by Aldo Maria Valli

(by Elisa Pinna.)(ANSAmed) — ROME, APRIL 30 — First they called it the Black Hole, then it became the Institute for Religious Works (IOR). But the 1887 Vatican nickname for the first office to manage believers’ donations the Commission for Pious Causes, in some way was a harbinger of the future Vatican Bank. A secret black hole, which Pope Francis may radically reform. In his recently published book, TG1 Vatican correspondent Aldo Maria Valli unravels the mystery of ‘The Popes’ Coffer’, published by Ancora. In a fascinating, engrossing narrative, the book begins at the beginning, showing how the Vatican transformed itself into a financial speculator. Like the leaders of any other state, the pontiffs and the church once owned farmland and factories, ruled over a population. In 1870 the Vatican State ceased to exist as such, and with it the pope’s temporal power, the Vatican mint, and its traditional sources of income. But money still flowed in as the new kingdom of Italy legally compensated the Holy See for its loss of land and income, a policy which the state continue in 1929 through the so-called Lateran covenants. Now stripped of the resources of statehood, the Vatican began to speculate. First through Commission for Pious Causes, then through the Special Comnmission for Religious Works, and finally in 1942, through IOR, the Vatican bank founded by Pius XII in an effort to safeguard the Holy See’s legislative autonomy. With an even hand and sparing no gory details, Valli retraces IOR’s tainted history, from Monsignor Marcinkus to its dangerous liaisons with Sindona and Calvi, from the mega Enimont kickback to the Emanuela Orlandi kidnapping.

While these events have been covered and written about before, Valli’s historical perspective is new, for his book contains several pearls. Among these, is future cardinal and state secretary Domenico Tardini’s description of Pius XI: “The first impression is one of wonder that this man, in whose hands so many and such high spiritual interests lie, should speak more heatedly of the fall of the dollar than of moral decay, that he should lament the loss of money more bitterly than the ruin of souls or the persecutions the church is suffering. It’s almost as though Christ’s boatman had become a banker”. Or like the epitaph uttered by Cardinal Francis Spellman, archbishop of New York, in 1958 about Bernardino Nogara, the first real “God’s banker”. Supported by Pius XI, Nogara had enriched the church with a wide range of investments, including in arms manufacturers and Italian colonial enterprises. “After Jesus Christ, the most important thing that happened to the church is Bernardino Nogara”, the US cardinal said several years before fellow American Paul Marcinkus, who was born in the same Chicago neighborhood as Al Capone, became famous for his phrase: “You can’t run the church on Hail Marys”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

German Prisoners Find Their Inner Zen

Feelings of guilt and hopelessness can put extreme pressure on prisoners. In one German prison, inmates are discovering a new sense of calm with regular meditation that also prepares them for life on the outside.

André S. recently celebrated his 32nd birthday behind bars. A father of two, he is allowed to see his family twice a month, each visit restricted to a single hour.

On weekdays, he and the other inmates at the prison in Siegburg, a small town in western Germany, are allowed outside for 60 minutes. They roam the courtyard in small groups, talking loudly, some smoking, others just content to stretch their limbs.

André has made an important discovery during his time in prison: “They can lock you inside here, but they cannot lock your mind, they cannot lock your spirit, they cannot lock your thoughts.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: Athens Mayor Vows to Prevent Golden Dawn Handing Out Free Food in Syntagma Square

Athens Mayor Giorgis Kaminis has vowed to prevent far-right Golden Dawn from handing out free food in Syntagma Square on Thursday.

The neofascists announced that they would be handing out food ahead of the Easter weekend, in a re-run of an event they held in front of Parliament last year, when goods were given only to those who could prove they were Greek.

The party said that Thursday’s event, when it will hand out traditional Easter products such as lamb and eggs, is to help “thousands of Greek families who are being blighted by the genocidal policies of the memorandum.”

Kaminis, however, said the party’s intentions were “provocative” and that he would attempt to stop the event taking place.

“We are making it absolutely clear that the City of Athens believes that tomorrow’s gathering is illegal and it will do what is needed so that it does not take place,” the mayor said in a statement.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Three Arrested in Basilicata Political Funds Probe

Eight others under investigation

(ANSA) — Potenza, April 24 — Three politicians in the southern Italian region of Basilicata were put under house-arrest on Wednesday in a probe into fraudulent use of party expenses. Seven Basilicata regional councillors were prohibited from staying in the city of their workplace, the regional capital Potenza, as part the same probe. A former regional councillor was banned from the town of Valsinni, where he holds a political office. Prosecutors said the probe had uncovered “a scenario of widespread illegality”. Assets worth 100,000 euros were seized in amounts that ranged from 5,000 to 18,000 euros per individual under investigation.

Those facing house-arrest are Work and Education Commissioner Vincenzo Viti, Agriculture Commissioner Rosa Mastrosimone and the regional councillor Nicola Pagliuca.

Pagliuca is the Basilicata regional caucus leader of Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom Party (PdL). Viti belongs to the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), and Mastrosimone to the anti-graft Italy of Values Party (IdV).

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Three Arrests in Priest Murder

Albanians held in Pistoia case

(ANSA) — Pistoia, April 23 — Three Albanians were arrested Tuesday, two in Italy and one in Albania, in connection with the alleged murder of a priest near the Tuscan city of Pistoia in late December.

Father Mario Del Becaro, 63, was found dead in his residence at San Bartolomeo a Tizzana near Quarrata on December 29 after his car was stolen and safe cleaned out.

An autopsy found he had choked on duct tape he was gagged with after being beaten and tied to a chair.

A few days before the alleged murder a man was detained on suspicion of extorting money from the priest.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Schwazer Gets Three and a Half Years

Disgraced race walker can return in Jan 2016

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — Former Olympic walk champion Alex Schwazer got a three-and-half-year ban Tuesday for testing positive for blood-booster EPO ahead of the 2013 London Olympics. Schwazer, 28, will be able to return to competition on January 30 2016, if he decides to reconsider a decision to voluntarily end his career. A sporting prosecutor asked for a four-year ban for Schwazer, who was also charged with possession of testosterone and “other violations”.

In September Schwazer was placed under a criminal investigation for the positive drugs test that led to him missing last year’s Games.

Test results released days before he was due to defend the 50km walk title he won in Beijing in 2008 showed traces of EPO in his urine.

Doping is a criminal offence in Italy.

Schwazer was one of Italy’s most popular athletes, forming a celebrity couple with current world champion ice skater Carolina Kostner.

When the EPO test result emerged Schwazer described it as the “biggest blow of my life.

“My career is finished,” he said.

“I wanted to be stronger for this Olympics, I made a mistake”. He said he was quitting athletics.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Venice Launches Manners Campaign for Tourists

Aims to curb swimsuits in the center, feeding pigeons

(ANSA) — Venice, April 30 — Venice has launched a list of 10 guidelines for respecting the city in its ongoing battle over tourist etiquette. ‘Venice Yours Too, Respect It’ is the name of the new initiative, which encourages visitors to throw away trash, avoid wearing bathing suits in the city center, not to feed pigeons nor buy knock-offs from street vendors. Rather than a list of rules, the new campaign prods visitors to blend in and do as the Venetians do. “We decided not to tell people what’s forbidden,” said quality of life councilor Carla Rey. “Charm attracts more attention”. Guidelines on Venetian decorum will be posted around the city as well as within a variety of local businesses that cater to tourists.

They will be printed in seven languages: Italian, English, Spanish, Japanese, French, Russian and German. The campaign is also using a mascot, a cartoon winged lion, the symbol of the city.

By some estimates Venice attracts 20 million tourists each year, dwarfing the dwindling local population of under 60,000. The city has implemented a number of good-manners initiatives over the years.

In 2007 female ‘guardians of decorum’ were licensed to crack down on tourists going about bare-chested, lounging around in doorways and eating sandwiches in St Mark’s Square.

Dressed in smart blue trousers, white tops and white caps, the ‘hostesses’ watched over the city’s most famous square and tourist magnet, stepping in at the first sign of ‘uncivilised’ behaviour. Those duties were gradually passed on to police officers.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Rome Prosecutors Ask for Bertolaso, Anemone, Balducci Trial

Total of 18 people may be tried in G8 tender bid case

(ANSA) — Rome, April 30; Rome prosecutors have asked for 18 people including former civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso, businessman Diego Anemone, and former head of the state public works office Angelo Balducci, to be tried in relation to a probe investigating illegalities in a G8 summit tender bids.

Their main accusation relates to allegations of corruption, as they contend Bertolaso may have favoured Anemone over other bidders without having valid reasons to do so.

The investigation initially began in Florence in 2010, and after an initial transfer to Perugia the probe was finally assigned to Rome prosecutors.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Finance Police Search Riccardo Bossi’s House

(AGI) Milan, April 30 — Italian financial police searched the Milanese house of Riccardo Bossi, the eldest son of Northern League founder Umberto Bossi. The officers were looking for documents regarding the 2.5 million euro yacht moored in Tunisia, which was allegedly purchased following an embezzlement by the party’s former treasurer, Francesco Belsito.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Knox Talks of Italy Ordeal in TV Interview as Book Published

Says wants to be ‘reconsidered as a person’ as new trial looms

(ANSA) — Washington, D.C., April 30 — Amanda Knox, the US student who was accused and tried for murdering a British roommate in the Italian city of Perugia in 2007, said her experience in Italy was “surreal”.

In her first television interview in the US since publishing “Waiting to be Heard”, the book she wrote on her experience of the Italian justice system, Knox told ABC’s Diane Sawyer, “I want the truth to come out. I’d like to be reconsidered as a person. What happened to me was surreal, but it could have happened to anyone”.

The full interview with Sawyer will be broadcast Tuesday night, but the network has already issued some clips on its website.

Recounting her travails in Italy — Knox was serving a 26-year sentence for the murder of Meredith Kercher when an appeals court overturned a lower court’s ruling in 2011, setting her free to return to the US. “I was in the courtroom when they were calling me a devil.

I mean it’s one thing to called certain things in the media and then it’s another thing to be sitting in a courtroom fighting for your life while people are calling you a devil,” Knox said.

“For all intents and purposes I was a murderer, whether I was or not. And I had to live with the idea that that would be my life,” Knox, who lives in her hometown of Seattle, Washington, said.

Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, was also accused in the murder. Sollecito, who had been sentenced to 25 years in jail, was also acquitted in 2011.

However, both Knox’s and Sollecito’s ordeal is not yet over.

On March 25, Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation overturned the 2011 acquittal, setting the stage for a retrial at the appeals level.

While a new trial is expected to take place by the summer in Florence, US authorities could invoke the principle of double-jeopardy, arguing that a person cannot be convicted of the same offence twice, and so refuse to extradite Knox back to Italy.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Merkel Says Italy Has Taken Considerable Reform Steps

(AGI) — Berlin, April 30 — Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that Italy has taken “considerable” reform steps towards tackling weakness in its economy. Speaking at a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, the German Chancellor stated: “We want to ensure Europe emerges from this crisis stronger than it went into it. As part of that, every country must do its part. Italy has taken considerable steps in this regard.” .

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Spain: Teen Gatecrashers Trash Plane at Madrid Airport

Two young men have caused €30,000 worth of damage to an airplane parked at Barajas airport in Madrid in what they told police was just as a bit of “weekend mischief”.

The youngsters, aged 16 and 19, decided to board the grounded aircraft at 3.45am on Saturday and broke the aircraft’s security door at the end of the gangway at Barajas Terminal 3.

Once on board, they inflated life jackets and played with the flashlights used by crew, Spanish news agency EFE reported.

Their loutish behaviour also caused serious damage to the landing gear lever and the aircraft’s radio transmitter.

By the time airport security and Spain’s Guardia Civil police had picked up on the break in, the pair had already managed to cause a whopping €30,000 worth of damages to the aircraft.

Airport police assured EFE that had it not been for the “immediate” intervention of their security systems, more damage would have been done.

Both young men were arrested; the 16-year-old will stand trial at Madrid’s juvenile court and the 19-year-old is also facing charges.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK Ministry of Defence Deems Wind Towers a National Security Threat

[…]

…Needless to say, security encompasses protecting the country access to energy, so anything that reduces the kingdom’s dependency on foreign energy imports must be a good thing, correct?

Apparently not.

The latest threat to Britain?

Wind power, apparently.

The MOD has come out against two proposed 115 foot wind power towers in Cornwall, which they assert are so big they could look like planes on monitoring equipment.

The MOD assert that the wind towers green energy devices could confuse computer systems designed to protect the UK and identify the turbines as a threat , triggering the MOD to send in fighter aircraft to investigate, and while the RAF was preoccupied, allowing real enemies to sneak into British airspace, and accordingly, are against their construction.

The unpatriotic British citizens attempting to undermine British aerial defense are Richard and Ian Lobb, who want to install the 50 kilowatt towers on their adjacent farms in St Ewe, Cornwall. The ever vigilant MOD which warned the installation would cause “unacceptable interference” to an air traffic control radar 30 miles away in Wembury, Devon.

According to the MOD, “Wind turbines have been shown to have detrimental effects on the performance of MoD ATC radars. These effects include the desensitisation of radar in the vicinity of the turbines, and the creation of ‘false’ aircraft returns which air traffic controllers must treat as real. The desensitisation of radar could result in aircraft not being detected by the radar and therefore not presented to air traffic controllers. The creation of ‘false’ aircraft display on the radar leads to increased workload for both controllers and aircrews and may have a significant operati onal impact. Furthermore, real aircraft returns can be obscured by the turbine’s radar returns, making the tracking of conflicting, unknown aircraft much more difficult.”

A tad of history and geography here.

Radar installations along the English Channel were crucial in Britain winning the crucial Battle of Britain in 1940 against Hitler’s Luftwaffe, so Britain’s RAF is hardly unfamiliar with the principles of radar, more than seventy years later.

Secondly, how does a stationary object generate a hostile radar signature, unlike an incoming aircraft moving at hundreds of miles per hour?

Thirdly, virtually all of the RAF’s interception missions during the Cold War and after were against Soviet, and now Russian military aircraft approaching from the northeast, across the Red Sea.

Cornwall, in Britain’s extreme southwest, is geographically rather distant from this area.

So, who’s to send the threats?

France?

Spain?

Argentina?

The people of Cornwall deserve their green energy, and the MOD officials should be chastised for their ramping up of a non-existent problem.

The Armada was over four centuries ago, World War Two over 70 years ago — the people of Cornwall deserve electricity from renewable energy sources, as it hardly seems to be a threat to national security beyond those MOD boffins who have apparently spent too much time at the pub over lunch hour.

[Return to headlines]
 

UK: Adolf Hitler: His Part in My Downfall

by Dick Delingpole

It’s no secret that I’m currently standing as a Ukip candidate for the forthcoming council elections. What was a secret until now is my Nazi past. As the photo above proves beyond doubt, I was present at one of Hitler’s rallies. I was also clearly part of an early cloning experient. And in case you hadn’t yet worked it out, this is all utter nonsense. But it has been seized upon by my Tory opponent in Thursday’s local election. Moments after tweeting the above image with the words “I’d better get rid of this old Facebook photo before the Tories get hold of it” I received a phone call from a local hack. It went something like this

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Mad Cow Infected Blood ‘To Kill 1,000’

Government experts believe there is still a risk of people contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) through blood transfusions, as about 30,000 Britons are likely to be carrying the brain-wasting illness in a dormant form — double the previous estimate.

They warn the current total death toll of 176 from vCJD could rise more than five-fold as the infection has not been wiped out of the blood supply like it has been in the food chain.

Frank Dobson, a former health secretary, tonight urged ministers to develop a nationwide screening programme for blood donors to stop future infections of vCJD, which has the potential to cause “horrendous deaths”.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Nigel Farage vs the Fruitcakes

Michael Deacon follows Ukip leader Nigel Farage on the campaign trail in South Shields.

So what was it like being on the campaign trail with Nigel Farage, I asked one of the Ukip leader’s team. Do you basically spend all day in the pub? No no, he replied, it wasn’t really like that. That was the image, but in reality, Mr Farage was the hardest-working man you could meet. We were speaking at five to two. Ninety minutes later, we were watching Mr Farage raise a pint of bitter for photographers in the pub. “My day just got a whole lot better!” hooted the hardest-working man, his protuberant amphibian eyes twinkling. “Nice place, this. Few ashtrays round the bar would be nice…”

To be fair, it was half past three, and, as Mr Farage had explained on the stroll to the pub, “a degree of self-restraint is important” with drinking. “I generally don’t drink before midday…” Given the stories about Ukip in the past few days, you couldn’t blame him for leaping at the first available pint. Yesterday he was in South Shields, campaigning for Thursday’s by-election, and all afternoon journalists flocked him like seagulls on dropped chips…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: North Wales Police Historic Paedophile Ring Probe Reveals 140 Victims Allege Abuse by 84 People at 18 Care Homes

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

Detectives involved in Operation Pallial, which was launched last November, said they had identified 140 allegations relating to 18 care homes, including Bryn Estyn in Wrexham (pictured).

One of Britain’s biggest child abuse scandals is likely to have been even larger than previously thought, police revealed yesterday.

Dozens of former residents of North Wales children’s homes have given detectives ‘graphic’ accounts of appalling abuse at the hands of 84 staff — most of whom have never been prosecuted.

Barely a decade after a £13million public inquiry that was meant to uncover the extent of the scandal, police yesterday revealed they had ‘significant’ new evidence of ‘serious and systemic’ abuse…

Claims that 84 people — 75 men and nine women — carried out abuse, mainly through grooming children as young as seven in their care;

[Comments: Remember the bizarre London Olympic opening ceremonies with children in their beds being chased by dark entities and finally showing a huge floating baby with a fractured skull? (fractured skull is symbolic of shattered or split personalities that can occur after childhood abuse.)]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Priti Patel’s UKIP Candidate Father Says: ‘They Are Not a Racist Party’

The father of a Conservative MP is standing as a candidate for the UK Independence Party in Thursday’s local elections.

Sushil Patel, 64, whose daughter is Priti Patel, the MP for Witham, is fighting a council seat in Hertfordshire. Mr Patel’s candidature was disclosed by Ukip leader Nigel Farage during a rally in David Miliband’s former South Shields constituency, ahead of a by-election there on Thursday. In an interview with The Telegraph shortly afterwards, Mr Patel insisted Ukip was not a party which tolerated racism, despite criticism of some of its candidates’ comments in recent days. He said: “Ukip is not a racist party — it is daylight coming through the darkness hours of this country … Ukip is not racist — they are trying to make progress.”…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Paedophile Gary Karn Who Abused Two Girls Aged Seven and Eight is Spared Jail — After Judge Says it Would be Unfair to His Family

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

A victim’s father has criticised Judge Mark Lucraft for being ‘too lenient’ and ‘living in cuckoo land’ for handing factory worker Gary Karn a suspended sentence.

A man who sexually abused two little girls as they picked fruit at his allotment has avoided jail because a judge ruled it would be unfair to the attacker’s own family.

Gary Karn, 48, inappropriately touched his victims, aged seven and eight, after inviting them into his greenhouse to help themselves to raspberries as they played at nearby allotments owned by one of their fathers.

But he escaped with a suspended sentence after a judge decided that it would cause ‘suffering’ for his family.

The father of one of the girls, who both had to give evidence to Norwich Crown Court, said the judge’s decision showed no recognition of the impact the assault had on his eight-year-old daughter.

‘He talks about the effect on the offender’s family, but what about the effects on my family?’ he said…

The decision outraged the victims’ families, who said the girls have been left traumatised from both the incident and the ordeal of having to give evidence in court.

The father of the eight-year-old added: ‘I find it all very disgusting. The judge has been too lenient.’

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Race War Fear After Islamic Terrorists Target EDL

by Esmerelda Weatherwax

I’m glad to see that the authorities and the media have their priorities in order after yesterday’s convictions of the 6 Muslim men who intended to attack the EDL rally in Dewsbury last year. The Telegraph’s Jake Wallis Simpson, not their finest blogger — is pleased that the conviction shows that British justice is impartial, protecting even “the abhorrent EDL”. No comments allowed, although they have been interposed in other blogs, and are very sympathetic to the EDL. The Daily Mail and a few others do understand that many people, including police officers and bystanders as well as men and women of the EDL would have been murdered. Others seem more relieved that a ‘race war’ has been averted. This is typical, from the Telegraph again.

Islamic terrorists could target right wing fanatics to spark a race war in Britain it was feared last night. Violent extremists may focus atrocities on anti-Islamic groups to not only cause death and carnage but fuel religious hatred, experts said.

The warning came as six al-Qaeda inspired terrorists admitted plotting to attack an English Defence League rally with homemade bombs, guns and knives. The planned attack was also timed last year to wreck the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.

It was the first time Islamic terrorists have targeted a specific group in the UK and experts fear it is the start of a new threat for community cohesion. The Government is concerned over growing tensions between Muslim and far right extremists while MI5 accept the EDL could become a target for jihadists. Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “It is a real and live concern and one I know the Government has been worrying about, particularly in light of this case. . . You are going to get more of this” MI5 fear the EDL could now become a target for Islamic extremists especially as they grow in profile, the Daily Telegraph understands…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: The UKIP, Far Right and TUSC

A few weeks ago I received a questionnaire from the Hope Not Hate campaign about taking a position on the UKIP. I did give it some thought and decided to opt for ignoring the UKIP because I did not and do not see it as part of the fascist/neo Nazi far right that I think they should be concentrating on…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Wales: Arsonist Who Wiped Out a Family is Convicted of Five Murders

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

A woman who started a fire which killed five members of the same family — including three children under five — was facing life in jail last night after being convicted of murder.

Melanie Smith, 43, set fire to a baby’s pushchair because she was fed up with it being outside her front door.

But the blaze spread into a devastating inferno which ripped through the first-floor flat in Prestatyn, North Wales, last October.

It trapped and killed Lee-Anna Shiers, 20, her partner Liam Timbrell, 23, their baby son Charlie, 15 months, Miss Shiers’s nephew Bailey, four, and niece Skye, two.

Jobless Smith, who lived in the flat below, was yesterday convicted by a 10-2 majority of five counts of murder, making her one of the most prolific murderesses in modern British history. She will be sentenced next month.

Her ex-husband, Paul Smith, said the killer ‘deserves to rot in hell’.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Croatia: Cardinal Bozanic Nixes Bilingualism in Vukovar

Razed to the ground by Serbs in 1991, Vukovar resents new norm

(ANSAmed) — ZAGREB, APRIL 30 — The archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Josip Bozanic, in a sermon yesterday in Vukovar said the city should be exonerated from promulgating the Serbian language and the Cyrillic alphabet.

Serbians forces and Serbian paramilitary secessionists razed Vukovar to the ground in 1991 after a months-long siege, killing thousands. A coalition of Croatian war veterans and right-wing groups have called for a 30-50 year moratorium on bilingualism.

“Vukovar deserves a special sensibility that should be expressed with special norms on certain sensitive issues”, the cardinal said. “Some forces in Croatian society still try to deny the particular nature of this city, as if it were any other city, as if nothing ever took place here.” This was interpreted as criticism of the center-left government, which has called for the application of the minorities protection law throughout the country.

The issue of officially making Vukovar bilingual arose after a 2011 census showed the city’s minority Serbian population had reached 34.9%. A Croatian constitutional law on ethnic minorities makes bilingual institutions mandatory in any city or commune in which a minority reaches more than 33%.

Tens of thousands of Croatians participated in two demonstrations against official bilingualism, one in Vukovar and one in Zagreb.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt: Death to Churches Under Islam: A Study of the Coptic Church, Part II

by Raymond Ibrahim

[Editor’s note: The following is Part II of an essay originally published by The Inquisitr, with a comprehensive introduction by Wolff Bachner. Part I can be read here.]

The Modern Era

The sort of Muslim attacks on Christian churches described by the historian Maqrizi and conforming to the Conditions of Omar are reoccurring with increased frequency. Again, while the patterns described above are occurring all around the Muslim world—sometimes even in the West—modern day Egypt alone, with its significant Christian population, offers an abundance of recent examples…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Libya: UN Urges Political Dialogue as Gunmen Overtake Ministries and Other State Institutions

The United Nations mission in Libya today said it is following the latest developments in the country where armed gunmen have overtaken the ministries of justice and foreign affairs, and other State institutions, and urged all Libyans to join the country’s democratic transition…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Israeli Targeted Execution of ‘Key Terror Figure’

‘We won’t tolerate trickle of attacks’, says Netanyahu

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, APRIL 30 — Israeli forces on Tuesday killed Haytham al-Masshal in what they said was the “targeted execution” of a “a key terror figure” involved in the April 17 rocket attack on the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eliat, a military spokesperson said.

Masshal was an explosives expert and a jihadist militant, the spokesperson said. The attack on Eliat, which injured no one, was carried out by the Mujahideen Shura Council. “Israel will not tolerate a trickle of attacks, not from Gaza, not from Egypt”, Premier Benjamin Netanyahu said. “Today we hit a person who was involved in the criminal rocket attack on Eilat. I said then we would not stand by. We are determined to defend our citizens, and we will act accordingly”. The premier also offered condolences to the family of a settler who was killed by a Palestinian today in the nearby occupied West Bank in an unrelated incident.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

A Wary, Weary West is Leaving Syria in the Butchers’ Hands

by Benedict Brogan

It is Syria’s misfortune that its torment at the hands of Bashar al-Assad and his murderous cronies had to come after the West’s ordeals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the wake of a global financial crisis that has left accountants in charge of foreign policy. Wearied and broke, we have no appetite for another military adventure…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Kuwait: Bikini Woman

Kuwait: Elsewhere, a woman was seen wearing a bikini beside a swimming pool, which made those who saw her angry and call the police. The woman said she thought nobody was watching her and promised not to repeat her act.

           — Hat tip: RR [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey: 4 Injured in Istanbul Clashes

ISTANBUL, May 1 (Xinhua) — Turkish protesters clashed with the police in Istanbul city on Wednesday, leaving at least four people injured. Each year, Turkish union members, political parties and movements usually hold rallies at Taksim Square in Istanbul on May 1. This year, however, the government banned such rallies, citing security concerns over the ongoing construction work at the iconic square…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey: Versions of Omar Khayyám

by Kaya Genç

Last year the Turkish pianist and composer Fazýl Say retweeted some lines attributed to Omar Khayyám:

You say rivers of wine flow in heaven,
is heaven a tavern to you?
You say two huris await each believer there,
is heaven a brothel to you?

Say was accused of inciting hatred against Islam and taken to court. As a schoolboy fan of Khayyám’s epigrammatic rubais (Persian quatrains) about wine and women, I once wrote an essay entitled ‘From Omar Khayyám to Karl Marx: The Struggle for Freedom’, in which I made some bold claims about the revolutionary role I believed he had played in the middle ages, based on my selective reading of some of the more than thirty Turkish translations of Khayyám that appeared during the 20th century…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Afghanistan: UK’s Best Armoured Vehicle Overcome by Taliban for First Time

The killing of three British soldiers in an explosion in Afghanistan is the first time the Taliban has overcome Britain’s best-protected armoured vehicle, defence chiefs admitted today.

The soldiers were killed while travelling in a Mastiff armoured patrol vehicle, once described by Prime Minister David Cameron as offering “the best-known protection” against bombs, after it was struck by an improvised explosive device in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province. It is the first time British soldiers have been killed while travelling in a Mastiff armoured vehicle, the Ministry of Defence said today.

The £1m Mastiff is widely used by the British Army in Afghanistan, with around 180 in service. It is favoured by troops because it is regarded as being highly resistant to mines and roadside bombs. Lord Dannatt, the former Army chief of staff, said: “The Taliban have found a way of countering the protective qualities and characteristics of the Mastiff. “It would seem that this was an extremely large bomb that was so powerful that actually it was able to cause fatalities within the vehicle itself,” he told BBC Radio 4…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Afghan Taliban Kill Peace Chief Negotiator in Southern Province

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, May 1 (Xinhua) — Taliban militants ambushed and killed three people including the peace chief negotiator in the southern Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Wednesday, a local official said. “A group of Taliban rebels ambushed the car of Malim Shah Wali, the head of High Peace Council, at 10:00 a.m. local time today killing him along with two police on the spot and injured four others,” an official with the High Peace Council in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, Mohammad Daud Farhang, told Xinhua…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Are Pakistan and Islam Really Inseparable?

At a time when the world was hoping to see a shift in Pakistan’s policies towards Islamism, its military chief Kayani made sure that nobody should be under any illusion. Pakistan and Islam can’t be separated, he said.

The Taliban have proven time and again that they can attack anybody anywhere in Pakistan, with impunity.

They have not only targeted civilians but, over the years, have also killed thousands of Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani military is still battling with the Islamist militants in northwestern areas close to the Afghan border. The protracted Islamist insurgency has shaken the Islamic republic, whose economy is already in a shambles.

As the country gears up for the next parliamentary elections on May 11, the Taliban have increased their attacks on the members of liberal parties.

Experts are apprehensive whether the elections will take place on time. They might be postponed for an indefinite time — something the Islamists are believed to want.

Yet, the head of the Pakistani military General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani — arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan — told the world that Pakistan was not ready to change its decades-old policy of supporting the religious right.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

David Cameron: UK Has ‘Paid a Very High Price’ In Afghanistan

The Prime Minister says the country has paid a “very high price” for the work it is doing in Afghanistan after three soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack.

Mr Cameron made the comments on ITV’s Daybreak after the Ministry of Defence announced that the soldiers, from The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, died while on routine patrol when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province. Their next of kin have been informed. The deaths take to 444 the number of UK service members who have lost their lives since operations in Afghanistan began in October 2001. Six have now died in 2013…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Indian Army Defuses Bomb in Indian-Controlled Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India-controlled Kashmir, April 30 (Xinhua) — Indian army troopers Tuesday defused an improvised explosive devices (IED) planted by suspected militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said. The IED was detected under a culvert on main highway at Shalateng, some 8 km northwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Defence Minister to Visit Marines This Week

Mauro will lend sympathy, support

(ANSA) — Rome, April 29 — New Defence Minister Mario Mauro will travel to India later this week to visit two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen. Mauro will voice sympathy and support for the pair, the defence ministry said.

Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone are facing charges oof shooting and killing fishermen Valentine (aka Gelastine) and Ajesh Binki after allegedly mistaking them for pirates while guarding a merchant ship off the southern Indian coast in February 2012.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Three British Soldiers Killed by Roadside Bomb in Afghanistan

A roadside bomb has killed three British soldiers, injuring a further six, in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

The soldiers were from The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Major Richard Morgan, said. They died after their vehicle, a Mastiff armoured patrol vehicle once described by prime minister David Cameron as offering “the best-known protection” against bombs, was struck by an improvised explosive device in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province on Tuesday…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Japanese Leader Shows Signs of His Old Self

Before Shinzo Abe was re-elected prime minister, there were rumblings of discontent among Japan’s neighbors over his nationalistic attitude and conservative track record. Recent events have rekindled the fears.

On Sunday, Yomomi Inada became the fourth member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet to pay his respects at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, triggering an angry response from South Korea’s leader and further jeopardizing Japan’s already strained ties with its immediate neighbors.

However, the government and the Japanese public appear to be relatively unconcerned at the protestations from overseas.

More than 170 politicians from across the political spectrum have visited the shrine this month, the most since records were first kept in 1989.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Concerned Citizens’ Case Against Mosque to Continue

A vocal community group has provided $25,000 to a Canberra court to keep its legal campaign against a northside mosque alive. The Concerned Citizens of Canberra — which had just six members and $2159 in assets in October last year — was ordered last month to pay the security before the case could continue due to fears it did not have the funds to cover court costs if it lost. The 500-capacity mosque, to be built on The Valley Avenue in Gungahlin, was approved by the city’s planning authority last year, amid strong opposition from sections of the community…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

GM Wheat Could Permanently Damage Human Genetics by Silencing Hundreds of Genes Throughout the Body

(NaturalNews) It is one of the only major food crops left without a genetically-modified (GM) counterpart, but this could soon change if the Australian government gets its way in approving a GM wheat variety developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an agency of the Australian government. Despite being hailed by its creators as a breakthrough in food production technology, the GM wheat crop itself, when ingested, has the potential to permanently alter the human genome by silencing hundreds of genes throughout the body.

This disturbing fact, of course, makes GM wheat a major public health threat, which is why a number of scientific experts are urging extreme caution with the human trial and commercial approval process. During a recent press conference with Safe Food Foundation Director Scott Kinnear, two prominent authorities on the subject discussed the inherent dangers of GM wheat, and how the “Frankencrop” threatens to seriously injure and even kill untold numbers of people who could experience dramatic genetic alterations as a result of consumption.

“What we found is that the molecules created in this wheat, intended to silence wheat genes, can match human genes,” explains Professor Jack Heinemann, a Molecular Biologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, about the dangers of CSIRO’s untested GM wheat. “And through ingestion, these molecules can enter human beings and potentially silence our genes.”

Heinemann goes on to explain that he and his team have already identified more than 770 pages’ worth of potential matches between two specific genes in the GM wheat and genes inherent in the human genome that could be altered by them. Beyond this, more than a dozen matches were found to be identical and “sufficient to cause silencing in experimental systems,” according to Heinemann…

“If this genetic modification in the wheat is absorbed into the human body and affects humans in the same way that it affects the wheat, then it’ll mean that there will be some significant changes in the way that we store our carbohydrate, our glucose, in the body, and that could have dire consequences,” adds Prof. Judy Carman, a biochemist and Director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research (IHER) at Flinders University in Australia.

“We need to make what’s called glycogen in the body in order to be able to live, in order to be able to wake up in the morning after an overnight fast and to be able to have a burst of energy to run across a road. And if this silences the same sort of gene in us as it silences in the wheat, then children who are born with this enzyme not working tend to die by the age of about five, and adults with this problem just get kind of more and more sick and more and more tired until they get very, very ill.

[Comment: Sounds like a depopulationist’s wet dream.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

China Colonizing Africa: Second Biggest Investor

The Beijing government is trying to keep the data on its investments in the African continent secret, which for some are a new form of colonialism. A think tank, tallies up the balance: in 10 years more than 75 billion dollars, compared with 90 billion of the United States. The projects range from a barracks for Mugabe to an opera house in Algeria.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) — With a ten-year investment that exceeds 75 billion dollars, China has almost reached the United States in the ranking of countries that contribute most to economic growth in Africa. However, as pointed out by a Center for Global Development report, “the nature of the support of Beijing to the nations of the African continent is very different from that of Washington.”

From 2000 to 2011, China has invested more than 75 billion dollars in Africa. Of these, only 1.1 billion a year are officially declared as “contributions to developing countries” within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The amount of American investments in the same period is estimated at 90 billion dollars.

Beijing is trying by all means to maintain the exact figure regarding their investments in Africa under wraps, as some analysts have described it as “a new form of colonialism.” The researchers, based on Western and African news sources, have identified 1,673 Chinese projects in the continent over the period.

The investment plans vary in purpose and geographical extension. According to the contracts tracked by the Center, they include a military college in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe — who is no longer welcome in Europe — an opera house in Algeria, to Ghana which is the most benefited by Chinese aid.

One of the research participants, the Director of AidData Brad Parks, argues that it contradicts the stereotype that China seeks raw materials especially in Africa, “In addition to the projects in that sector, the Chinese do much in the areas of health, education, civil society: many things most people don’t think are usually supported by the Chinese government. “

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

Fresh Rights Group Challenge to Nigeria Over Islamist Clashes

Satellite images and witnesses are challenging the Nigerian government’s denials of mass casualties and damage which followed fighting between the military and Islamists in mid-April.

The rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released satellite images showing massive destruction in Baga, a town in northeast Nigeria.

Clashes between soldiers and Boko Haram Islamists in the town on 16 and 17 April sparked massive fires that left nearly half of it destroyed.

HRW said it had analyzed satellite images and identified “2,275 destroyed buildings, the vast majority likely residences, with another 125 severely damaged.”

On its website, it posted images depicting aerial shots of the town on April 6 against those of the same neighbourhoods on April 26, 10 days after the clashes.

The before-and-after images appear to show scores of newly burnt buildings.

“The glaring discrepancies between the facts on the ground and statements by senior military officials raise concerns that they tried to cover up military abuses,” the group added.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Last Rhinos in Mozambique Killed by Poachers

The last known rhinoceroses in Mozambique have been wiped out by poachers apparently working in cahoots with the game rangers responsible for protecting them, it has emerged.

The 15 threatened animals were shot dead for their horns last month in the Mozambican part of Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which also covers South Africa and Zimbabwe. They were thought to be the last of an estimated 300 that roamed through the special conservation area when it was established as “the world’s greatest animal kingdom” in a treaty signed by the three countries’ then presidents in 2002. The latest deaths, and Mozambique’s failure to tackle poaching, has prompted threats by South Africa to re-erect fences between their reserves…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Mali: Gilles Le Guen, Breton Sailor Who ‘Followed Bin Laden’

Self-declared jihadist Gilles Le Guen, originally from Brittany, was arrested by French forces near Timbuktu, Mali overnight Sunday. The extent of the Frenchman’s involvement with regional Islamic militants is still unclear. A self-declared jihadist was taken into French custody in northern Mali, a military spokesperson announced Tuesday, as more details emerged about the Frenchman’s murky past.

Gilles Le Guen, a former merchant marine originally from Brittany, was arrested overnight Sunday just north of Timbuktu, according to Colonel Thierry Burkhard of the French army.

Le Guen, believed to be in his 50s, would soon be turned over to Malian authorities, who may then decide to extradite him to France, Burkhard told the AP news agency.

Although Le Guen is well known in his homeland as one of a handful of French nationals fighting against their own forces in Mali, precise details about his background and activities in Mali remain unclear.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Nigeria: Massive Destruction, Deaths From Military Raid — Satellite Images, Witness Accounts Raise Concerns of Cover-Up

Johannesburg — Satellite images reveal massive destruction of civilian property from a military raid on April 16 and 17, 2013, in the northern Nigerian town of Baga, undermining the military’s claim that only 30 houses were destroyed, Human Rights Watch said today. The Nigerian government should thoroughly and impartially investigate allegations that soldiers carried out widespread destruction and killing in the town. Baga residents told Human Rights Watch that soldiers ransacked the town after the Boko Haram militant Islamist group attacked a military patrol, killing a soldier…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Nigeria: Jonathan Not Probing Obasanjo — Gulak

Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Political Affairs, Alhaji Ahmed Ali Gulak has said the president is not probing former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He told newsmen yesterday in Abuja that it was even the Jonathan’s administration that is being probed by the National Assembly through many investigative hearings and other probes into the affairs of governmental agencies and government officials…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Somalia: Puntland Authorities Executes 13 Al Shabaab Convicts

Bossaso — The Puntland Military Judicial Court executed 13 people on Tuesday, convicted of terrorism charges, 6 were executed for their part in the assassination of prominent Islamic scholar Dr. Ahmed Abdirahman, Garowe Online reports.

The 13 convicted Al Shabaab agents were executed by firing squad on Tuesday in the commercial capital of Bossaso. Puntland authorities carried out the execution of six people including one woman, who were convicted in February 2013 of conspiring to assassinate Dr. Abdirahman who was killed as he left a mosque in Bossaso in December 2011…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Brazil’s Decision to Lift Limit on Haitian Visas Humanitarian: Official

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 30 (Xinhua) — Brazil’s decision to throw open its doors to Haitian immigrants by removing a cap on the number of work visas allotted to the country was a humanitarian one, Brazilian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tovar da Silva Nunes said Tuesday. The decision to lift the cap on visas, announced on Monday, is designed to encourage Haitians to apply for a work permit, rather than enter the country illegally, said Nunes. “It’s a humanitarian decision. Our goal is to avoid having these people fall into the hands of smugglers,” said Nunes…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Holding Holder Accountable

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund last week, declared that citizenship in the United States is a “civil right.”

“Creating a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country is essential. The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are undocumented — by creating a mechanism for them to earn citizenship and move out of the shadows — transcends the issue of immigration status. This is a matter of civil and human rights. It is about who we are as a nation. And it goes to the core of our treasured American principle of equal opportunity.”

By using the term “civil right,” he cloaks the invasion of the United States by hordes of aliens with the moral façade of the 1960’s “Civil Rights” era. But there is a difference between treating all Americans equally regardless of race, and making citizenship in our nation a right equally accessible to all humans, regardless of birthright.

Many Americans felt a chill of fear when they learned of Holder’s speech to the Mexican group. This refuge that we know as our homeland is defined by the borders we built to separate ourselves from a world that thinks differently than we do about many things. And, when Holder asserts that citizenship itself is not something that we existing citizens can control and limit, one of the walls that protect us is being torn down.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Third of Children Born in England Has Foreign-Born Parent

Almost one in three children born in England and Wales now has at least one foreign-born parent, with Britain set to become the most ethnically diverse Western nation after 2050.

In 2011, 31 per cent of babies had either one or both parents born outside the UK, a significant rise on the 2000 figure of 21.2 per cent. The figures, obtained by Tory MP Nicholas Soames, also show that 18.1 per cent, or 131,288, of the total number of 2011 births had two foreign-born parents. A further 12.9 per cent — a total of 93,655 — had one parent who was born outside the UK, according to the Daily Mail.

Now a study has shown that the number of immigrants to the UK means Britain has the fastest-rising percentage of ethnic minority and foreign-born populations. The number of foreigners and non-white people living in the UK will double by 2040, making up a third of Britain, while white Britons will be a minority by 2066, according to research…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: The Ethnic Majority

  • 2050: Britain will be most ethnically diverse nation
  • 2066: White Britons will be in the minority in UK

BRITAIN will be the world’s most ethnically diverse Western nation after 2050, a bombshell study has found.

A massive influx of immigrants has given the UK the fastest-rising percentage of ethnic minority and foreign-born populations. The report’s author says foreigners and non-whites living here will DOUBLE by 2040 — to make up a third of the UK. He has even controversially claimed white Brits will be a MINORITY by 2066…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Homosexual Manifesto: Satire or Reality? (Video)

[WARNING: Disturbing content.]

Another example of assault by the pro-homosexual lobby happened this week. The head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, was participating in a debate on blasphemy laws at the ULB University in Brussels. While he was seated with his eyes closed in prayer, four topless women, representing the pro-abortion and homosexual group FEMEN, began assaulting the archbishop with shouts and curses while dousing him with water in bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary. The women disrobed to reveal black-painted mockery slogans on their bare chests and backs, such as ‘my body my rules,’ and ‘anus dei is coming.’ They also held signs reading ‘stop homophobia’. (Galatians 6)

Why the attacks? Let’s look behind the façade…

Back in 1987, the Gay Manifesto was published by Michael Swift in the Gay Community News on February 15-21, 1987. It was also interjected into the Congressional Record (omitting the preface, which I have added below), showing that Congress is well aware of this content.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Justice Dept. To Appeal Ruling Against Age Limits for Morning-After Pill

The Department of Justice said Wednesday that it would appeal a federal judge’s order to make the most common morning-after pill available without a prescription for all ages.

In a scathing opinion handed down three weeks ago, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Eastern District of New York said the Obama administration had put politics before science in restricting access to the drug.

The Justice Department’s decision to appeal was likely based not only on the substance of the judge’s ruling, but also the precedent the ruling would set in countermanding an order by a White House cabinet member, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.

[Return to headlines]
 

Most Muslims Deplore Violence. Most Think Homosexuality is Wrong. They Sound Like Christians

by Cristina Odone

The overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world reject violence. They also hold socially conservative views: 90 per cent think homosexuality is wrong, 84 per cent believe sex outside of marriage is a sin, and 77 per cent think abortion is wrong. Yes, the latest Pew Research could be shrunk to a soundbite: Muslims sound like conservative Christians…

[JP note: The trouble starts when Muslims become pure and this peculiar trigger was pulled a long time ago for an awful lot of them.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Quantum Mechanics Trick May Detect Invisible Gravity Waves

The existence of gravitational waves, or ripples in space and time, has long been predicted, but the elusive phenomenon has eluded scientists for decades. Now researchers are proposing a new method to detect these cosmic wrinkles that relies on the quantum nature of atoms.

Gravitational waves are a consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which posits that massive objects warp the space-time around them, causing other objects, and even light, to travel along curved paths when they pass nearby. Objects with very strong gravitational fields, such as black holes or dense stars orbiting in binary pairs, should create gravitational waves so powerful they are detectable here on Earth.

However, no experiment has yet found definitive proof that gravity waves exist. A group of physicists led by Stanford University’s Peter Graham hopes to change that, though, with a new detection method they call “atom interferometry.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Long and Arduous Quest to Find Flowing Water on Mars May be Over

The surface of Mars changes all the time. Is flowing water one of the causes?

By Alfred S. McEwen

The possible implications of a water-streaked Mars are immense. For now, my colleagues and I are still working to better understand the nature of RSL. We have identified many more sites with active RSL than we reported in our initial Science paper in 2011. Other researchers have conducted laboratory studies and Antarctic fieldwork to try to observe or replicate on Earth what HiRISE sees from orbit around Mars. We hope that our combined efforts will shed light on this newfound phenomenon and on whether flowing water is indeed the best candidate for its origins. Perhaps, among the myriad discoveries of water on Mars, the 1,001st time will be the charm.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Victims of Sharia, The April Report

The first VOS Report (for April 2013) highlight[s] violence from around the world…related to the principles of sharia, the applied version.

There are two sections:

the first covers reported terrorist incidents in the Islamic world, Dar al Islam (where reigns the peace of Allah).

The second section lists atrocities in Dar al Harb, the House of War.

Since this report is done on a monthy basis, it may be updated as new information is available.

[See whole listing at URL, above. There is a contact email also. IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT INCIDENTS NOT BEING REPORTED, PLEASE LET THEM KNOW — D]

[Return to headlines]
 

What Muslims Talk About When They Talk About Sharia

by Joshua Keating

There’s a lot to chew on in Pew’s new survey of global Islam, which is based on more than 38,000 interviews with Muslims in 39 countries, but given that the term is often only vaguely understood in the United States, I was particularly interested in the section on attitudes toward sharia — Islamic law. The survey found several regions where a majority of Muslims favored making sharia law official

[…]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

2 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 5/1/2013

  1. This in from France. French unemployment forms were found in Mali…

    http://lelab.europe1.fr/t/mali-un-depute-ump-ironise-sur-les-djihadistes-francais-sponsorises-par-pole-emploi-8888 MALI: UN DÉPUTÉ UMP IRONISE SUR LES DJIHADISTES FRANÇAIS SPONSORISÉS PAR PÔLE EMPLOI A brief English translation On the phone, Christophe Guilloteau first appears suspicious. Then he confirms the presence of Pôle Emploi forms (unemployment office) in caves jihadists in northern Mali. The Information was relayed by the site maliactu.net and Swiss weekly L’Weekly dated April 18, 2013 in which he is quoted extensively. But he did not acknowledge having granted the interview with the newspaper. Gradually, Christophe Guilloteau is more natural and also more political. Thus, according to the UMP du Rhone, rapporteur of the parliamentary information mission to Mali, money from the Job centers indirectly serves the jihadists to pay their fight. Speaking tothe Lab, he starts off saying: You work on May 1, I guess you pay is surcharged, and it must bother you to know that these charges are also used to pay for the war against our army …

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