Muslims in Australia and Switzerland have been warned to be on the alert for a potential backlash from non-Muslims after the murder of Lee Rigby in London on Wednesday. Because the butchery was carried out by Muslims who cited the Koran to support their actions, it is feared that non-believers may mistakenly assume that the incident had something to do with Islam, and thus react with violence against nearby Muslims.
In other news, a passenger jet en route from Pakistan to Britain was diverted from Manchester to Stansted under fighter jet escort when two male Pakistani passengers became belligerent and attempted to force their way into the cockpit.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Diana West, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Kitman, McR, Papa Whiskey, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Italy: Confindustria Sounds Alarm, Calls for Growth
Jobs, prosperity will follow new economic expansion policies
(By Sandra Cordon) (ANSA) — Rome, May 23 — The government must move very quickly to cut taxes and deliver other growth policies if it is to save the Italian economy from collapse, the head of the country’s powerful industrialists’ association Confindustria said Thursday following a 3% plunge in early trading on Milan’s leading financial market.
The Italian and European markets were weakened over fears triggered by manufacturing reports that Asia’s two largest economies — China and Japan — are showing significant signs of stress.
Growth must be the nation’s single most important objective in order to pull Italy out of the longest recession in recorded history, Confindustria President Giorgio Squinzi said.
Otherwise annual growth will remain stalled at levels of no more than 0.5% — well below the rate of inflation, and well below what is needed to generate employment and higher productivity, he said. “The goal must now be just one: a return to growth,” Squinzi said at the organization’s annual assembly in Rome.
The country’s well-being depends on learning to “leverage its resources,” to boost the economy, he added.
Italy is now stuck in the longest recession on record with seven straight quarterly drops in gross domestic product (GDP) amid rising costs and unemployment all making it harder for individuals and companies to improve their lot.
Last week, national statistics agency Istat reported that GDP fell 0.5% in the first three months of 2013.
Weakness in Italy’s northern industrial base is a harbinger of the trouble to come, warned Squinzi.
“The north is on the brink of an abyss…that would drag our country back a half-century,” Squinzi warned.
That weakness, developing in what has traditionally been the country’s economic and industrial base, is a clear sign that the government of Premier Enrico Letta must develop strong policies to boost growth, he added.
Cutting business taxes is essential to encouraging investment and growth, said Squinzi.
The government’s recent decision to suspend the unpopular IMU property tax was a good start, but more is needed.
“We appreciate the commitment that the government has taken with the IMU decree, (and we) ask for a tax to support those who create and distribute wealth, transparent and respectful of the rights of citizens and businesses,” he said.
Squinzi also called on the government to slash other business taxes, including social security contributions.
He particularly singled out the regional tax on productive activities (IRAP) for reform.
Such measures would help business to grow and add employees, he said, describing unemployment as “the mother of all social evil”. “Joblessness must be countered in a balanced and structural way, adjusting costs, productivity and regulations,” said Squinzi.
“Companies are ready to support government action with investments and employment”. According to forecasts released earlier this month by Istat, unemployment will rise to 11.9% this year, up 1.2% in 2012, and climb further still in 2014 to reach 12.3%.
Youth employment reached 38.4% in March, 3.2% higher than the same month in 2012, the statistics agency said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Millions Falling Into Poverty in Recession-Racked Italy: Report
Millions of Italians cannot afford to heat their homes properly or eat meat as their country is racked by recession and soaring unemployment, said a report which found the number of people considered seriously deprived had doubled in the past two years.
The findings from national statistics institute ISTAT underline the scale of the challenge faced by the new coalition government of Enrico Letta, which has vowed to stimulate growth and tackle a youth jobless rate of almost 40 percent.
A recession that has lasted almost two years has taken a heavy toll on ordinary Italians who are increasingly digging into their savings, ISTAT said in its annual report.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bridge Collapses in Washington State Sending Cars and People in to Water Below
The major highway bridge linking Seattle with Canada and the rest of the Pacific Northwest region has collapsed while in use, dumping at least a handful of vehicles and people into a river. Authorities confirmed that there had been no fatalities.
The four-lane Interstate 5 bridge — more than half a century old — collapsed about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, State Trooper Mark Francis said.
Francis said he did not know how many people were in the water. He did not know what caused the collapse, which came at the start of one of the country’s busiest holiday weekends of the year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Can We Stop Refugee Jihadi Terrorists From Entering the US?
Steve Amundsen, a colleague in The United West, who hails from Southern California, sent me an Investors Business Daily editorial, entitled, “Stop Importing Terrorists”. The byline was “restrict visas issued to hostile Muslim countries.” This came at the conclusion of a bizarre and ghastly week, with the slaughter in London of British Soldier Lee Rigby by two British home grown jihadis , one a second generation and the other a third generation of Nigerian Christian origin, who converted to Islam while at university. The other troubling event was the shooting death by FBI agents in Orlando, Florida of Chechen refugee, Ibrigrim Todashev. He attempted to stab one of the agents during an interrogation in his Florida apartment concerning a triple murder allegedly perpetrated by him and the late Tamerlan Tsardaev on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in Waltham, Massachusetts. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his highly effective counterterrorism program need this broken Refugee Resettlement program fixed by the Senate Judiciary Committee to prevent more refugee jihadis from entering this country. Problem is the Senate Judiciary Committee has been lobbied by 11 voluntary agency (Volags) contractors seeking more refugee clients and fees for processing asylum applications for the likes of the late Ibrigrim Todashev and the Tsarnaev brothers. One of those Volags is the International Rescue Committee whose Boston office may have processed asylum papers for these Chechen terrorists who did us harm.
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Cracks Widen in the IRS Scandal Stonewall
Scandal Watch: New evidence makes it clear that the Internal Revenue Service campaign against conservatives wasn’t the result of two “rogue” agents, but was directed from higher up. The question is, how high up?
The claim that a couple of workers in the bowels of an IRS office in Cincinnati managed to block tax-exempt applications from conservative groups for more than two years, while subjecting them to outrageous, intrusive and improper requests for information, started falling apart days ago.
Last weekend, the Washington Post quoted a staffer saying that “everything comes from the top” at the IRS.
As Colleen Kelley, president of the union that represents IRS agents, told the Associated Press, “No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by frontline employees without any management involvement.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Fiat Chairman on Rupert Murdoch’s New Board
Elkann listed with media magnate’s relatives, Spanish ex-premier
(ANSA) — La Bagnaia (Siena), May 24 — Fiat Chairman John Elkann will be a member of media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s new editorial group New News Corp., a document filed with United States regulators revealed on Friday.
A document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) listed the Agnelli family heir on the board of directors along with a number of Murdoch’s relatives and Spanish ex-prime minister Jose’ Maria Aznar.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Florida Cops Plan to Harass Gun Show Attendees
The Tampa Bay Times reports that the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office plans to “strictly enforce a county law mandating background checks for all customers at gun shows” and close down private firearms sales between individuals.
Working closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office will conduct an undercover operation at the Two Guys Gun Show in Largo, Florida this weekend.
The ATF has conducted numerous investigations of gun shows over the past decade. The ATF and the Justice Department claim gun shows are used by gangs and others, including Mexican drug cartels, to illegally peddle firearms used in murders and other criminal activity.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Holder OK’d Search Warrant for Fox News Reporter’s Private Emails, Official Says
Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.
The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lee Rigby Murder Just a Matter of Time for Canada and the U.S.
Never, ever think, that this will not happen in Canada or the USA. It is only a matter of time.
As a former Scottish soldier now living in Canada, this horrific, cowardly murder of private Lee Rigby in his own country by two Islamo-fascist monsters breaks my heart.
When I left the UK for Canada in 1994, I could see what was coming down the pipeline. The last strong leader of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, was replaced by weak, spineless men like John major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and now David Cameron. We watched as Britain unravelled under political correctnes, EU membership (with its many suffocating “human rights” laws), and an out-of-control immigration policy. In order to understand this cowardly murder of Mr. Rigby, one has to consider the fact that Britain has suffered from a catastrophic loss of national identity over the past 20 years to the point where many Britons now refer to themselves as “strangers” in their own country. in the past decade, over two million young Britons have emigrated to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and even Spain. They are fed up with the ever-increasing cost of electricity, gasoline, basic grocery items, the imminent collapse of the national healthcare system and the lack of job opportunities.
Britain now has Sharia banking, sharia butchers & fishmongers, sharia school meals and even sharia patrols in some London neighbourhoods, where gangs of Muslim youths patrol the streets to ensure that no-one is playing loud music, men aren’t walking home with alcohol from the local liquor store, and women are “appropriately” covered. All these rules are aimed at non-Muslims, of course. In 2010, the End London Gay Pride event was cancelled out of fear of inflaming tensions with local Muslims. The organizer, the notorious homosexual activist, Peter Tatchell, laughingly invited local Muslim leaders to march with him in a united campaign against “homophobia & Islamophobia.” Although the local Muslim leaders ignored Tatchell’s ridiculous invitation, he still “respected” their decision…
There is no question that Britain is undergoing a huge cultural shift, and for the worse. Perhaps the most bewildering aspect of this is the fact that the UK takes in 250,000 immigrants and refugees annually; about the same as Canada. Yet Britain is barely one-third the size of the Province of Alberta with a population of 65.2 million people and growing.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Britain’s public school system, where in the town of Gladstone, 358 out of 440 pupils at a local primary school speak Punjabi Urdu at home, 23 speak Dari (the official language of Afghanistan), while there are also 15 Lithuanians and 11 Latvians. Only one student speaks English as a first language. Muslim only schools are now commonplace, as Muslim parents do not want their children to be educated in “morally questionable” schools. Indeed, in the city of Bristol. Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after strong objections from Muslim parents. Earlier objections from Christian parents were met with threats of legal action against them for “homophobia.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Memorial Day: Those who gave their lives to ensure our freedom are surely worth honoring.
Memorial Day was previously known as Decoration Day, established after the Civil War to honor both the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in that great conflict. By comparison, the Civil War had cost the lives of 625,000, more than the combined dead from World Wars I and II.
On July 4, 1913, veterans of the American Civil War held a reunion at Gettysburg. It was attended by President Wilson, the first Democrat to have been elected since the Civil War had ended in 1865. He would be reelected in 1916 on the campaign motto, “He kept us out of the war.”
In his new book, “1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War”, historian Charles Emmerson takes the reader on a tour around a world that had no idea that it was barely a year away from the most transformative war of the last century, ending the Ottoman Empire and the rule of some European royal families. The Treaty of Versailles gave free rein to the British and French to create new nations in the Middle East (mostly in the interest of controlling their oil), dividing up the region in ways that still reverberate to today. It was a war that set in motion the causes for World War II.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
President of CBS News and Wh Benghazi Fiction-Writer Are Blood Brothers
Just a coincidence. Nothing to see. Move along.
Remember the Benghazi attacks? Remember how the White House rewrote their talking points to scrub out mention of a terrorist attack?
Well, here are some new talking points.
Point one: Star CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Atkisson, has been discussing leaving CBS since April. She can’t get some of her Benghazi stories on the air. Atkisson was hot on the trail of figuring out who, at the White House, rewrote the Benghazi talking points.
Point two: One sure candidate at the White House? Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser and “mind-melding” speechwriter.
Point three: Who is Ben Rhodes’ brother? He is David Rhodes, who happens to be Sharyl Atkisson’s boss, the president of CBS News.
Point four: Read point three again.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Senator Calls Free Cell Phone Providers “Welfare Abusers” And Calls for End of Program
Calling for a complete halt to the government’s free cell phone program, Senator David Vitter (R-Il.) says the system is mired in waste and abuse, the biggest offenders are the companies providing the cellphones, and you, the taxpayer, are footing the phone bill.
In 2008 the cost of the Lifeline program was $143 million. Now, says Vitter, the cost has skyrocketed to more than $2 billion a year. According to Vitter, there are currently 270,000 Lifeline beneficiaries who have more than one free government cellphone, and the FCC found that only 41 percent of folks who are signed up for the program couldn’t even be confirmed as egible.
Vitter blames the “rampant waste and abuse” on the companies providing the free phones. Each time they hand out a free cellphone and turn it on they immediately start collecting $9.25 every month that phone is in service — and that money comes directly from taxpayers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Shut Down the IRS, Repeal Obamacare, Impeach Obama
Obama and his entourage of criminals and America haters all think they can get by and continue their assault against the Tea Party, conservatives and endless Obama enemy list.
In their ‘criminal’ minds, the Obama controlled and directed DOJ and IRS can continue to threaten, stall, marginalize, slander and black ball as many as they want to. They will just continue to pull ‘Sgt. Schultz’ as top IRS official; Miss Lerner did by pleading the 5th in response to the investigation of Congress.
Obama has overplayed his hand of evil and power this time. Benghazi Whistle blowers continue to come forward and are revealing even more damning evidence, cover-ups and connections. These all are tracking back closer and closer to Obama, Hillary Clinton and other high ups.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
State of Connecticut Crafts “Special Act” To Hide Sandy Hook Evidence
If the Connecticut General Assembly is successful, we will never know details of what happened at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown on December 14, 2012.
The Hartford Courant reports that the state’s top prosecutor and the governor’s office are working in secret with General Assembly leaders on legislation designed to withhold records related to the police investigation of the incident. If enacted, the legislation will hide from public scrutiny photos of victims, 911 call records and other evidence.
“There is complete agreement regarding photos etc., and audio tapes, although the act may allow the disclosure of audio transcripts,” a top assistant to Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane, Timothy J. Sugrue, told the Courant.
The bill has not gone through routine committee process or legislative procedures. It has not received a public hearing. It is being worked on in secret by leaders in both the House and Senate…
In December, Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police threatened to prosecute investigative journalists who questioned the official narrative. According to Vance, reports deviating from the official narrative “are crimes, they will be investigated, state-wide and federally, and prosecution will take place when people perpetrating [information at odds with the official version] are identified.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What is life going to look like as our precious water resources become increasingly strained and the western half of the United States becomes bone dry? Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the country in 1000 years, and now things appear to be reverting to their normal historical patterns. But we have built teeming cities in the desert such as Phoenix and Las Vegas that support millions of people. Cities all over the Southwest continue to grow even as the Colorado River, Lake Mead and the High Plains Aquifer system run dry.
So what are we going to do when there isn’t enough water to irrigate our crops or run through our water systems? Already we are seeing some ominous signs that Dust Bowl conditions are starting to return to the region. In the past couple of years we have seen giant dust storms known as “haboobs” roll through Phoenix, and 6 of the 10 worst years for wildfires ever recorded in the United States have all come since the year 2000. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, “the average number of fires larger than 1,000 acres in a year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho and has doubled in every other Western state” since the 1970s. But scientists are warning that they expect the western United States to become much drier than it is now. What will the western half of the country look like once that happens?
A recent National Geographic article contained the following chilling statement…
The wet 20th century, the wettest of the past millennium, the century when Americans built an incredible civilization in the desert, is over.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Green groups and EPA get their way — and you pay.
Green groups are using the courts to co-opt the Environmental Protection Agency, and taxpayers are being forced to cover the activists’ legal fees.
Here’s how it works: Environmental groups craft lawsuits to force the EPA and other agencies to issue regulations. But because the EPA agrees with green groups’ radical environmental agenda, it often chooses not to defend itself, sometimes even providing environmental-advocacy organizations with information that will help them bring the case.
The EPA then settles, negotiating the terms with the environmental groups without including those pesky states or industries sure to be affected by the new regulations. The court approves the consent agreement without analysis, as if it were a simple agreement between private parties. And once a settlement is reached, the court orders the EPA to issue rules according to the terms of its agreement.
The environmental organizations that brought the case then hold the EPA accountable for living up to its settlement, and the EPA then uses funds given to it by Congress to meet the demands of a special interest.
“It’s huge because it allows the EPA to reprioritize agency actions without going through Congress,” says Bill Kovacs, senior vice president of environmental, technology, and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It’s an amazing process that allows the EPA to address the issues the environmental groups want addressed . . . while using congressional appropriations to achieve the goals of private parties.” Furthermore, Kovacs says, the EPA is “able to tell Congress, ‘The court made us do it.’“
And here’s the kicker: The environmental special-interest groups’ legal expenses are often covered by taxpayers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Here is a quote from the most prominent master planner in the United States, a member of the family that actual donated the land for the construction of the United Nations headquarters in New York City: “Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I’m proud of it.” — David Rockefeller
Rockefeller is the lead shareholder of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, the Federal Reserve Bank, just to name a few, and is the proud recipient of every cent you spend on fuel, with the exception of BP Oil and Shell. I have often said Rockefeller owns America and Rothschild owns Europe, each being tens of trillions of dollars strong. As recently as June 2012, Rothschild united with Rockefeller under a common group, as Rothschild Investment Trust and Rockefeller Financial Services became one.
Some writers have analyzed these master planners as psychotic, sociopathic authoritarians. Many have carefully scrutinizing their writings and observed their lifestyle and it is believed that they are so deeply inbred — for fear of contamination by the inferiority of non-blue blood, and commoners — that sadly, many of their births are diagnosed as medically insane.
The United Nations is the apparatus the master planners have established to run the world, and this is a taste of how they are pulling it off. The World Trade Organization (WTO) controls the manufacturing and costs of every product traded on the international market. The World Health Organization (WHO) governs the medical and pharmaceutical fields. The World Food Programme (WFP), along with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are powerful humanitarian bargaining tools to control food and assistance to developing countries. The International Criminal Court (ICC) binds all nations of the world under one set of laws, with one international court and one international enforcer. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) manage the educational system, the sciences, and the structuring of societies around the globe. Agenda 21 was created to maintain a sustainable development throughout the world. Agenda 21 works in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which monitors and micro-manages every element on the planet, including human beings. And last, but surely not least, is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military arm of the United Nations, with a force capable of maintaining a façade of peace throughout the world.
Here is a quote from the most prominent master planner in the United States, a member of the family that actual donated the land for the construction of the United Nations headquarters in New York City: “Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I’m proud of it.” — David Rockefeller
Rockefeller is the lead shareholder of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, the Federal Reserve Bank, just to name a few, and is the proud recipient of every cent you spend on fuel, with the exception of BP Oil and Shell. I have often said Rockefeller owns America and Rothschild owns Europe, each being tens of trillions of dollars strong. As recently as June 2012, Rothschild united with Rockefeller under a common group, as Rothschild Investment Trust and Rockefeller Financial Services became one.
Some writers have analyzed these master planners as psychotic, sociopathic authoritarians. Many have carefully scrutinizing their writings and observed their lifestyle and it is believed that they are so deeply inbred — for fear of contamination by the inferiority of non-blue blood, and commoners — that sadly, many of their births are diagnosed as medically insane.
The United Nations is the apparatus the master planners have established to run the world, and this is a taste of how they are pulling it off. The World Trade Organization (WTO) controls the manufacturing and costs of every product traded on the international market. The World Health Organization (WHO) governs the medical and pharmaceutical fields. The World Food Programme (WFP), along with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are powerful humanitarian bargaining tools to control food and assistance to developing countries. The International Criminal Court (ICC) binds all nations of the world under one set of laws, with one international court and one international enforcer. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) manage the educational system, the sciences, and the structuring of societies around the globe. Agenda 21 was created to maintain a sustainable development throughout the world. Agenda 21 works in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which monitors and micro-manages every element on the planet, including human beings. And last, but surely not least, is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military arm of the United Nations, with a force capable of maintaining a façade of peace throughout the world.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Borghezio Apologizes to Kyenge Over Racist Comments
‘I regret disgracing the European Parliament’ says MEP
(see related) (ANSA) — Strasbourg, May 22 — Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament, apologized Wednesday for racist comments he made about Italy’s first black member of cabinet, Cecile Kyenge. “I feel I must express my apologies to the minister,” Borghezio said.
“I take that my words are considered offensive to a person of colour and towards a woman.
“I regret that I brought disgrace to parliament and the EFD group”.
Borghezio, who triggered an outcry with his remarks about the integration minister, also stepped down from the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group of the European Parliament, where he represented Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League party. Borghezio’s actions come two days after Parliament Speaker Martin Schulz blasted him for making racial slurs against Kyenge.
And earlier this month, an online petition was launched in Italy to oust or at least sanction Borghezio.
All this came after he called Premier Enrico Letta’s new executive a “bonga bonga government” and claimed Kyenge would seek to “impose her tribal traditions from the Congo” on Italy.
Kyenge, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has risen through the ranks of Letta’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) since she came to Italy in 1983.
The case is being further investigated by the EU’s Conference of Presidents which is comprised of Schulz and all political group Whips.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
British Ministers Call for Mass Government Snooping in Wake of Woolwich Attack
Politicians never let a good crisis go to waste
Following the brutal murder of a young soldier in London, British politicians have called for the resurrection of a bill that was shelved last month that would see the creation of a dragnet surveillance database, allowing police and intelligence agencies to effectively monitor the communications of everyone in the country.
The so-called “snoopers’ charter”, a proposed database of everyone’s internet and phone usage, was blocked last month by The Deputy Prime Minister, and Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who cited “significant reduction in personal privacy”.
However, Conservatives in government intentionally left the door open for a revival of the legislation.
Seizing on the horrific Woolwich attack, both Conservative and Labour Party politicians are calling for the plan to be brought back.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Daniel Pipes: Muslim Acts of Beheading in the West
[WARNING: * Disturbing content *]
The gruesome murder yesterday of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes — think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded — this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Drummer Rigby’s Wife Chokes Back Tears in Moving Tribute to Dead Soldier
[WARNING: ** Disturbing content **]
Choking back her tears, the devastated wife of the soldier butchered by Islamic fanatics near his London barracks spoke movingly yesterday of her love for him, despite their marriage split.
Heartbroken Rebecca Rigby, 30, who was estranged from Drummer Lee Rigby, told of her shock at learning he had been hacked to death by extremists wielding cleavers and knives.
Other members of the 25-year-old soldier’s family said that their ‘hearts had been ripped apart’ by his savage murder…
Drummer Rigby’s stepfather Ian Rigby, 54, said: ‘When in Afghanistan, you come to terms with it, you know it’s dangerous. But you don’t expect something like that on your doorstep. It’s very difficult.’
He, too, sobbed as he described how he found out about the killing on TV and tried to contact his stepson.
‘As soon as it came on the news on television, obviously we didn’t know it was Lee but your heart skips a beat when you see something like that on TV, you know your son is in that area,’ he said.
‘As soon as it was on the telly we were attempting to get hold of Lee. Obviously we couldn’t and it was the middle of the night probably when we got confirmed to us it was Lee.’
[…]
An 85-year-old woman has this afternoon been arrested and handcuffed by police allegedly for insulting Muslims outside a mosque.
The pensioner was said to have shouted ‘go back to your own country’ as Muslims gathered for Friday prayers at Gillingham Mosque in the Kent town.
She was standing at a bus stop in the street outside the mosque when the incident took place.
According to eyewitnesses, the elderly woman was spoken to by police officers, before being handcuffed and then put in a police van and driven away at wound 1.45pm.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dutch Anxiety Over ‘Sharia Triangle’ Police No-Go Area in the Hague
Area two kilometres from city centre has become ‘orthodox Muslim territory’ largely ignored by authorities
There have been calls for an urgent debate in the Dutch parliament about the integration of Muslim immigrants amid claims that one area of The Hague, known locally as “the Sharia triangle”, is being run by a form of unofficial Sharia police.
The claims relate to the district of Schilderswijk, about two kilometres from the city centre, where an almost entirely Muslim population of some 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque, fuelling criticism that the government has failed to ensure a proper ethnic mix in schools and local housing. One recent investigation, in which local people were extensively interviewed, concluded that Schilderswijk had become “orthodox Muslim territory” which was now largely ignored by the city authorities, by politicians and even by the police, on the grounds that it had become self-regulating.
The investigation found that orthodox Muslims had become so dominant that they were dictating what people in the neighbourhood wore and how they behaved.
“The norms of the majority are beginning to take over,” it said.
In the case of women, dress was a particular issue. One woman told how her daughter had been approached and told her short skirt was inappropriate, while her son had been called a “kaffir” — a racist term formerly used in colonial South Africa to refer to a black person — for smoking.
A youth who had previously been involved in local gangs said that criminality had dropped off, not because of the police, but because he and his friends were “afraid of the wrath of Allah”.
Another man said he felt he was gradually being driven out of his home because he had a dog, and many traditional Muslims tended not to keep or favour dogs.
A veiled Muslim woman, however, defended Islamic practices, and said dressing modestly would “do the locals good”. She pointed out that women in the Dutch ultra-conservative, largely Protestant, Bible Belt also wore long dresses, and that shops there were closed on Sunday — as many in Schilderswijk were on Fridays.
Local police chief Michel de Roos said: “We have no indications there is a form of Sharia police here. That is not to say it does not happen, but we are unaware of it..”
Last Tuesday, social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher and right-wing Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders paid separate visits to the area, and are to report to parliament.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
France: Hollande Still Down in Polls, Fresh Concern
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, MAY 22 — There is growing concern for French President Francois Hollande and his Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault as the president’s approval rating in surveys is continuing to decline even after a lengthy press conference last week to mark the beginning of his second year in office and his renewed effort to give a positive message to the public opinion.
According to a survey by LH2 for the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, Hollande registered a negative record since he became president losing yet another percentage point along with his premier. The poll showed that only 31% now gave a positive opinion of the head of state — who had already lost four points in April with 32% of those polled supporting him — while Ayrault went from 31% to 30% of support.
The polling institute however noted that Hollande’s press conference had a positive impact as before the event — which was held at the Elysee and broadcast live on television — only 29% percent of those polled expressed trust in the president’s agenda.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Socialist’s Vote-Buying Reveals Marseille Corruption
A French MP was sentenced to jail this week for spending €740,000 of public funds on vote-buying in her Marseille constituency. Yet Sylvie Andrieux is being viewed as a martyr in Marseille, where corruption seems to come with the territory.
Tough-talking and colourful, 51-year-old Sylvie Andrieux had been performing on the political stage of France’s second-largest city for decades. But on Wednesday, the popular Socialist MP was handed a three-year jail sentence and banned from serving in office for five years after she was found guilty of spending taxpayers’ money on vote-buying.
Between 2005 and 2008, during which time she served as both MP and county councillor in the southern Bouches-du-Rhône region, Andrieux is said to have siphoned off some 740,000 euros of public funds. According to prosecutors, Andrieux knowingly allocated grants to phoney associations, which were fashioned to look like social outfits for disadvantaged youths or deprived neighbourhoods. Those funds were then used to sweeten voters in return for their support at the polls.
According to journalist Frédéric Legrand of Marseille-based website Chez Albert, these so-called sweeteners would have ranged from a place at the local crèche to the promise of a council house. “Everybody here knows that in order to get social housing you need to ‘know’ a politician,” he told FRANCE. “In turn, politicians know that if they don’t give anything to their electorate, they won’t get voted for.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: PM Samaras to Tackle Anti-Racism Bill on Monday
(ANSAmed) ATHENS, MAY 24 — With divisions widening in the government coalition over the fate of a controversial anti-racism bill, sources close to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said the issue will be discussed on Monday at 6 p.m.
between the premier and his coalition partners, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left, as daily Kathimerini reports. The premier’s hand appears to have been forced by his coalition partners who raised strong objections following a meeting of conservative New Democracy officials who agreed that the bill is redundant as most of its provisions already exist. ND officials had expressed concerns that the bill could impinge on freedom of expression.
Conversely, PASOK and Democratic Left are keen to push the bill, which aims to impose tougher penalties on racial hatred and to curb the growing influence of the ultra-right Golden Dawn, into law. In a dig at ND, PASOK remarked that “no one has the right to influence Parliament with leaks,” referring to reports that ND officials had decided that the bill could be shelved or at least amended.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Head of the IMF Christine Lagarde in Court Charged With Embezzlement and Fraud
The head of the International Monetary Fund arrived in the dock of a Paris courtroom today as she braced herself to be formally charged with embezzlement and fraud.
Christine Lagarde’s humiliation is not only a massive personal blow which could lead to her resignation, but one which will plunge the world’s banking system into further ignominy.
The clearly nervous 57-year-old said nothing to reporters as she entered the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal set up to judge the conduct of France’s government ministers, shortly after 8.30am.
Lagarde faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail if found guilty of the very serious charges.
It was when she was President Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister that she is said to have authorised a 270 million pounds payout to one of his prominent supporters, so abusing her government position.
The money went to Bernard Tapie, a convicted football match fixer and tax dodger who supported Lagarde and Sarkozy’s UMP party.
It came after Dominque Strauss-Kahn, another senior French politician, was sacked as IMF chief following allegations that he attempted to rape a chambermaid in a New York hotel.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing content **]
MI5 had been monitoring the two fanatics responsible for the slaughter of a young soldier near Woolwich barracks for eight years.
The Security Service is facing an inquiry by MPs amid a raft of devastating revelations about the killers’ known links to Islamist extremism.
One of the pair — Michael Adebolajo — was so high profile he was photographed outside Paddington Green police station six years ago behind notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
He was even intercepted by officials as he attempted to travel to Somalia to fight alongside Islamist terrorists last year.
It also emerged that Adebolajo was a violent ex-prisoner who was a member of a banned terrorist group.
Incredibly, he was said to have been preaching jihad on the streets of Woolwich earlier this week, only a few hundred yards from where 25-year-old Army Drummer Lee Rigby — a married father — was beheaded.
As MI5 faced accusations that they let the men slip through the net, David Cameron ordered a full intelligence review by a Westminster committee…
Adeolajo, 28, and his friend remained under armed guard in separate hospitals being treated for gunshot wounds. They are expected to recover fully…
Residents said the former University of Greenwich student [Adebolajo] was handing out leaflets encouraging locals to support rebels in Syria.
[…]
The second suspect was reported last night by news outlets including Channel 4 News and The Times to be Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, south-east London.
The victim was named yesterday as Drummer Rigby, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who has a two-year-old son…
[Pictured] Weapon: This battered car was used to crush the soldier against a sign in front. The streak of blood in front shows how they dragged his body into the street.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Husby Riots, Sweden: Don’t Follow the Danish Example
Politiken
When the Swedish media report on the the riots that have rocked the Sockholm suburb of Husby, they avoid mentioning the fact that 80 per cent of Husby’s resident’s are from foreign backgrounds, notes Politiken. For the centre-left Danish daily, this amounts to a shortsighted policy which fails to take into account the important fact that entire towns are living a “parallel culture far removed from the Swedish elite.” Adding that there are “worrying” similarities between the Swedish debate on the situation in poor neighbourhoods and the one that took place in Denmark in the late 1990s, the newspaper continues —
For way too long the [Danish] centre-left allowed the most extreme voices in the Danish People’s Party a monopoly on the criticism of a failed integration policy. Instead of confronting them, it sought to ignore what it perceived to be indecent problems that were grist to the mill of the People’s Party.
Today, argues Politiken, the Swedish centre left should realise that coping with “immigration is a challenge for the welfare state, and one that should be openly discussed.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Islamists on the March? Move Along; Nothing to See Here…
The gruesome killing of a British soldier in London this week by Islamists and the attendant reactions by the press and politicians make clear two things: One, that Islam cannot be treated as a legitimate faith in the American tradition and in the context of the First Amendment, and two, Americans must wrest control of our country from liberal-progressives with all due speed, and by any means necessary.
I borrow the phrase “by any means necessary” from 1960s civil rights leader Malcolm X (who ironically, was a Muslim) for the same reason he did. While he knew a call for armed insurgence by blacks would have brought down the wrath of the entire law enforcement machine upon him and his colleagues, he also knew it was important to impart a sense of relational gravity to the struggle. Hadn’t those who initiated the American Revolution done so over less injustice than blacks had suffered under segregation and Jim Crow laws?
It has also been pointed out that those who initiated the American Revolution did so over far less than that which the Federal government currently practices across many fronts — but I digress…
On the heels of this crime, which has understandably drawn international attention, President Barack Obama came under fire from Republican leaders for urging the repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the 2001 law that essentially authorized the War on Terror. The President explained that he wants to fight terrorism without keeping the country on a “perpetual wartime footing.”
Given Obama’s painfully evident affinity for Islam and the goals of Islamists, only a fool would fail to recognize that his intention is to further weaken America’s resolve in fighting Islamists. Like David Cameron, after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, the Obama administration made every effort to play down Islamist connections with regard to the brothers Tsarnaev, despite all evidence supporting same.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Letta Tells EU to Change or ‘Implode’
Premier addresses parliament on eve of European debut
(By Christopher Livesay) (ANSA) — Rome, May 21 — Italian Premier Enrico Letta said Tuesday that the European Union risks imploding if it does not do more to address people’s problems in the midst of the economic crisis. “I have the impression that the EU cannot keep going as it has up to today, with timidness or a lack of decisions,” Letta told the Senate one day before making his first appearance on the European stage at an extraordinary EU summit. “Either it accelerates or it risks imploding. “As things are, I don’t think it can hold up and the people will be the ones who make it implode the next time they vote”. Letta’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) failed to win a working majority in February’s general election after strong showings by ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) lead to a virtual three-way tie. Both the centre-left PdL and the M5S blasted European-imposed austerity policies during the election campaign. Letta, who was sworn in at the helm of an unprecedented PD-PdL coalition government last month, wants the EU to focus more on promoting growth and has said he will present a plan to help boost job creation at a summit of European leaders next month.
He added that the EU must back up its words on solving youth unemployment with strong actions and move rapidly to invest its energy into “policies for growth and jobs”. Solving the crisis of rising youth unemployment must be an “absolute” priority, both for the economy and for the EU’s credibility, he added. “The EU is in a crisis of legitimacy over the lack of results (on previous promises to deal with joblessness among European youth)”, Letta said. He said the EU’s credibility is also on the line if it fails to make immediate and decisive moves towards forging a banking union.
“It is unacceptable that the banking union decided upon one year ago today lacks any precise definition. Such behavior diminishes the credibility of the EU itself, which makes resounding statements but fails to make decisions a year on,” he said. A single eurozone regulator of banks is seen as a way of staving off the banking difficulties that have affected several countries including Cyprus, Iceland, Ireland and Spain, and to a lesser degree Italy. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has said that entrusting the ECB with supervision of European banks is the “only pragmatic solution” to the problem of setting a cornerstone of a future firewall against credit crunches and ensuing monetary disarray. Some countries including Germany have stalled efforts to implement such banking supervision.
Letta assured the Senate that Italy will stand up for itself when it comes to negotiations at the EU level. “The Italian parliament counts in Europe and the decisions it takes are binding,” Letta said. “We can tell our partners that our positions cannot change because our country asks for that. Italy will go with its back straight and negotiate in the name of our country”. Another EU summit focusing on promoting growth and tackling unemployment will be held in June.
With that summit in mind, Letta made the case that creating jobs and stimulating investment could be achieved if the European Union granted governments more room to maneuver within its budget rules. Speaking to the House, Letta said that the EU at its June summit “must recognize spaces (needed) to maneuver national public finances in order to enable member States to invest adequate resources into active labor policies, reducing taxes on labor and creating jobs for young people”. Italy recently forecast its deficit-to-GDP ratio will be 2.9% this year, taking it under the 3% threshold permitted by the EU. Letta’s government is hoping to convince the European Commission to end the excessive-deficit procedure it has against Italy this month or early in June.
Meanwhile it is battling to reduce climbing unemployment, which is especially high among youth at over 38%, according to national statistics agency Istat. At the end of June, the labor ministry plans to unveil a package to reduce unemployment among the country’s 15-to-24-year-olds by 8%. “European decisions will be the framework (for our national job-creation package),” Letta said.
On Monday, Letta discussed issues of economic growth and youth unemployment in a telephone conversation with United States President Barack Obama.
“The president expressed his support for the commitment of Premier Enrico Letta in the fight against youth unemployment and looks forward to further discussions on economic growth at the next G8 summit in June in Lough Erne (Northern Ireland),” said a White House statement.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Only EU Country to Place Ethnic Roma in ‘State Camps’
Rights watchdog ERRC says country ‘systematically segregates’
(ANSA) — Rome, May 21 — The human rights watchdog European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) said in an article published in the Financial Times on Tuesday that Italy is the only European country where the State “systematically practices, organizes and sponsors segregated camps” for ethnic Roma. “Segregated settlements…constructed and authorised by the authorities are supposed to ensure that camps are built in areas beneficial to the Romani community. In practice, these camps are often isolated and segregated, making it extremely difficult for Roma to access their basic rights to education, employment and healthcare,” the ERRC wrote. Camps authorised by the authorities and located on the periphery of cities and towns are home to around one third of the Roma living in Italy, the ERRC said.
According to the organization, the number of camps in the capital have grown under Rome Mayor Gianni Alemmano’s administration.
“Authorities have spent 62 million euros since 2009 on camps, 13 of which were supposed to be completed by 2011, but today there are only eight (organized villages),” human rights association 21 Luglio President Carlo Stasolla said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Judges Say Berlusconi Involved in Fraud Even When Premier
Milan court explain upholding four-year term
(ANSA) — Milan, May 23 — Milan judges said Silvio Berlusconi was involved in fraud at his media empire even during his time as premier in the explanation of their decision to uphold a four-year conviction, which was released Thursday.
Earlier this month Milan’s appeals court rejected Berlusconi’s request for the conviction for tax fraud in relation to deals for TV rights bought by his Mediaset network to be overturned.
The explanation said the 76-year-old three-time premier was involved in the fraudulent system “for many years” and “continued despite the public roles assumed. He conducted it in the highest possible positions”. It added that there was oral and written evidence that Berlusconi “directly managed” the first stages of an “enormous tax evasion” scam using offshore companies. Berlusconi is set to appeal against the ruling, which also bars him from holding public office for five years, to the supreme Court of Cassation.
In Italy sentences for non-violent crimes do not usually become effective until the two-tier appeals system has been exhausted.
Due to a 2006 amnesty law, the media magnate who came second in February’s general election and whose party occupies key positions in the current left-right government, will not have to serve three of the four years of his jail sentence if the ruling is upheld on appeal.
Berlusconi has maintained throughout the trial that he was not involved in any of the suspicious film-rights trades as he was busy working in politics.
But judges at the first trial ruled in October that he indeed “remained at the top of the management” and “there was no other person” capable of managing the fraudulent deals.
This was reiterated by the explanation released on Thursday.
“It was absolutely obvious that the question of (broadcasting) rights, the group’s main cost, was a strategic question and therefore was of interest to the owner, to an owner who remained interested and involved in management decisions, while abandoning the day-to-day operations,” read the explanation. The ex-premier is also on trial for allegedly paying for sex with an underage prostitute and allegedly abusing his power in a bid to cover up the affair. Prosecutors have requested he be sent to prison for six years in this case. He is also appealing a one-year term for involvement in the publishing an illegal wiretap and facing indictment for allegedly buying a Senator to help topple a centre-left government.
In the ongoing and several other previous trials, Berlusconi has always denied wrongdoing, claiming he is the victim of a minority group of allegedly left-wing prosecutors and judges who he says are persecuting him for political reasons.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Grillo’s M5S Preparing Referendum on EU Membership
Wants Italy to follow Britain’s lead
(By Paul Virgo) (ANSA) — Rome, May 23 — Beppe Grillo said his anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) will drive for Italy to have a referendum next year on whether the country should continue to have the euro as its currency and stay in the European Union.
“Europe should be rethought,” said comedian-turned-politician Grillo, whose Internet-based movement captured around a quarter of the vote in February’s general election. “We are considering doing a year of campaigning to then call a referendum to say yes or no to the euro and to say yes or no to Europe”. In Italy it is possible to call for a referendum by collecting 500,000 signatures in a petition if the Constitutional Court rules that the proposal is line with the Constitution. Grillo has mooted the idea of holding a referendum on the euro in the past, prompting criticism that the 64-year-old is little more than a populist rabble rouser advocating policies that would take Italy towards a Greek-style economic meltdown. He said Italy should follow the lead of Britain, after Prime Minister David Cameron promised to hold a referendum on EU membership by 2017.
“The British teach us democracy on the euro (which Britain does not have as its currency) and Europe,” said Grillo. “No party can claim the right to decide for 60 million people”.
The M5S’s sensational success at February’s election was in part out down to Grillo’s rhetoric blasting the EU-imposed austerity policies former premier Mario Monti adopted to steer Italy away from the centre of the eurozone crisis.
Grillo is frequently foul-mouthed and has no qualms about insulting other politicians. He once called former centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani a “dead man talking” and regularly refers to ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi as the “psycho-dwarf” ..
But the M5S is more that simply a populist, anti-austerity protest movement. Grillo’s stated aim is destroy the established party system, which he blames for delivering debt, corruption and recession.
Indeed, Italy endured two month’s of political deadlock because the M5S refused to contemplate forming a government with the centre-left Democratic Party or Berlusconi’s centre-right PdL after the election.
The impasse was eventually ended last month by the swearing-in of Premier Enrico Letta’s unprecedented left-right coalition government. Grillo envisions a different way of doing politics, with people directly involved in decision-making via online votes.
The movement came to life from Grillo’s popular blog in 2009 and its MPs are political novices who were chosen in an online primary of around 20,000 people.
The M5S’s manifesto and its candidate to be Italy head of state were also subject to votes online. Proposed policies include the abolition of public funding for parties — an idea that has been adopted by Letta — a ban on elected officials having other jobs, a two-term limit for public officials and rendering people who have had a criminal conviction ineligible for office.
Indeed, Grillo himself did not stand for parliament because of a manslaughter conviction in relation to a 1981 car accident in which three of his friends were killed while he was at the wheel.
Grillo has been criticised for being his movement’s self-appointed dictator.
He responds that the M5S’s innovative way of making decisions renders irrelevant the issue of who the movement’s leader is. “It’s the end of leaders,” Grillo said at a rally on Thursday. “We have to get used to no longer voting for leaders, for the person or the personality, which is an infantile way of seeing politics. The leader is the 5-Star Movement”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Terror Suspect Arrested in Sicily
‘Part of Islamist cell’
(ANSA) — Palermo, May 24 — Police in Sicily on Friday arrested a suspected terrorist from an alleged Islamist cell. Chamari Ahmdi, 24, was wanted since February for belonging to an what investigators called an extremist group involved in international terrorism and provoking racial hatred. The suspect was born in Italy to Tunisian parents, police said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Seize 8.1 Billion Euros From ILVA Steel Plant Owners
Widespread investigations into Riva family continue
(ANSA) — Taranto, May 24 — Police in the southern city of Taranto confiscated 8.1 billion euros worth of property and goods on Friday belonging to the Riva family, owners of the holding company that owns the troubled ILVA steel plant, as widespread investigations against the Rivas continue.
Milan investigators on Wednesday said they are probing Emilio and Adriano Riva for suspected of fraud against the State and fake money transfers.
Some 1.2 billion euros transferred out of Italy by the Rivas were also confiscated on Wednesday.
Last January, ILVA executive and family member Fabio Riva was arrested in London after two months on the run.
Taranto prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant for Fabio Riva, the deputy chairman of parent-company Riva, on December 10 saying that he was sought as part of a criminal probe into the environmental scandal at the facility.
Several other top managers have been arrested as part of the investigations.
The Taranto plant is the biggest in Europe, and the Riva group is the biggest iron and steel producer in Italy, the fourth-biggest in Europe and the 23rd-biggest in the world.
ILVA has been at the centre of a political and legal battle since July when local magistrates ordered the partial closure of its Taranto plant due to serious health concerns.
Militari della guardia di finanza stanno eseguendo a Taranto e Milano un sequestro di beni mobili e immobili e disponibilità economiche per 8,1 miliardi di euro nei confronti della famiglia Riva. I sequestri riguardano sia l’Ilva sia la Rivafire spa. Il provvedimento è stato disposto dal Tribunale di Taranto.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Connected to British Intelligence Says There Will be More “Lone Wolf” Attacks
Anjem Choudary, described as a “hate preacher” by The Daily Mail, has called the alleged Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo a man of “impeccable character” and has warned there will be more “lone wolf” attacks so long as British troops remain in Afghanistan.
“That is the presence of British forces in Muslim countries and the atrocities they’ve committed, and how the Muslim community in this country are under pressure due to draconian laws which have tried to silence them,” Choudary said following the attack near the Woolwich Barracks. He said he knew Adebolajo and had once attended the same mosque with him.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
RAF warplanes were scrambled to intercept an incoming flight from Pakistan yesterday amid fears of a possible hijacking.
Two Typhoon fighter jets raced through the skies to meet the Pakistan International Airlines plane following reports two men ‘tried to get into the cockpit’.
After the captain activated an emergency signal, they escorted the airliner as it was diverted from Manchester, where it had been ten minutes from landing, to Stansted airport in Essex.
Passenger Umari Nauman said: ‘The cabin crew informed us that basically they tried to come into the cockpit a few times and because they had been asked not to do that they got into a bit of an argument with the crew and made a few threats.’
Captain Nadeem Sufi reported to his bosses at PIA’s headquarters in Pakistan that, 30 minutes before landing, crew members told him that two passengers had threatened ‘to blow up the flight after a heated conversation’…
A Pakistani journalist, Murtaza Ali Shah, who has spoken to a friend on board the plane, Fakhir Iqbal, said: ‘Two guys started a row with a girl and lots of other people. Some people tried to calm them and asked them not to be rowdy and abusive. Fakhir told them to calm down. They said, “Don’t bloody speak to us or we will blow up the plane”.
‘The crew came and spoke to them and they were openly threatening the staff. Fakhir went to other crew members and told them they were making threats.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rain and Snow Chill May in Northern Italy
A stretch of Giro d’Italia cancelled due to weather
(ANSA) — Milan, May 24 — Wintry weather continued to batter much of Italy on Friday.
The 19th stage of Italy’s biggest biking race, the “Giro d’Italia” was cancelled on Friday due to extreme weather.
Snow blanketed northern Italian mountains and fell heavy enough to shut down a piece of highway near the ski resort Bormio, on the Swiss border.
Heavy rain and run-off have swollen the northern Italian Lake Iseo’s water-level to a record high — 20 cm higher than its recorded average since 1933 and just 5 cm away from spilling into surrounding territory.
Meanwhile the lower parts of Venice, like St. Mark’s Square, are being flooded by a series of “high water” tides, typical of cold seasons in the ancient city of canals.
Storms have dumped 24% more rain than average in May for northern Italy, according to the agribusiness association Coldiretti.
Northern Italy’s peak temperature so far this month was 3.2C degrees lower than the historic average temperature for May, Coldiretti added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Reuters: Sweden Riots Expose Ugly Side of ‘Nordic Model’
The scene of Sweden’s worst riots in years, Husby is on the surface at least a typically neat suburb of colorful playgrounds, manicured parks and low rise apartment buildings.
Conversations with residents of this immigrant neighborhood soon bring tales of fruitless job hunts, police harassment, racial taunts and a feeling of living at the margins that are at odds with Sweden’s reputation for openness and tolerance.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Soul Searching in Sweden (1/2): Husby Riots Reveal Profound Failure
Aftonbladet Stockholm
The riots that have broken out in recent days in the suburbs of Stockholm show that the many immigrants who live there have not been integrated. The fault lies with the government and the lack of political will to take action on education and employment.
Lena Mellin
The stone-throwing and torching of cars in Husby [northern suburbs of Stockholm] point to a policy fiasco. It took a long time to come to this. It will take a long time to set things right.
Husby is similar to many other problem suburbs around Stockholm. They all have a large population of immigrant origin, a high number of people on welfare, many young people dropping out of school, and a very high unemployment rate.
According to figures from the Swedish Employment Agency, 20 per cent of youths in Husby had no work at all in 2010. One in five youths aged between 16 and 19 was unemployed or not in education. On paper, they did nothing.
But man is made to create things to do, and these young people — boys for the most part — found new things to keep them busy. For example, taking up positions on the bridges and throwing stones at police cars, or burning down the neighbour’s car. They certainly do not claim that creating mayhem and smashing things is better than doing nothing, but it is nevertheless what they do, and that is the problem.
Ghettoisation of Husby
Of the four youths arrested so far [May 22] following the riots in Husby, the oldest is 18. All but one already have criminal records, including the 15-year-old, who just a short while ago became old enough to be criminally liable for his actions [the age of criminal responsibility is 15 in Sweden]…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Soul Searching in Sweden (2/2): Egalitarianism Isn’t What it Used to be
Göteborgs-Posten Gothenburg
According to the OECD, Sweden is no longer the egalitarian society it once was. The rich are getting richer and the number of poor is growing, even if they are not as poor as before. But this change may not be negative, says Swedish daily Göteborgs-Posten.
The news that the inequality gap is growing, and growing quickly, in Sweden, exploded like a bomb. The number of poor people has doubled in the last few decades, and has causing much newspaper ink to flow. This data is gleaned from a May 14 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on income distribution in the organisation’s 34 member states. Yet, the document does not find that people’s lifestyle has deteriorated.
On the contrary. In the long term, every level of the population has seen an improvement in living conditions. But some people have seen greater change than others, leading to a rise in inequality. Especially between those who work and those who do not. As a result, Sweden plummeted in a list of the world’s most egalitarian countries, from first place to 14th.
This is nothing to be worried about.
The aim of several recent tax reforms was to reward work. The gap in disposable income between workers on the bottom rung of the salary ladder and the unemployed was very slight — and this posed a problem.
Leaving the bosom of the state
The situation was unfair. It was necessary to adopt measures aimed at encouraging people to leave the bosom of the state and to provide for themselves. Although a range of variables influences decisions made by these people, the financial factor must not be under-estimated…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Stakelbeck: Roundup of my on-the-Ground Reporting on Britain’s Islamist Scene
In the wake of the horrific Islamic jihadist attack against a British soldier in broad daylight on Wednesday, the issue of Islamic radicalism, terror and the clash of civilizations in Great Britian is once again at the forefront.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the ground in Britain over the past few years documenting these issues, including in heavily Islamic enclaves where sharia law is being promoted as an alternative to British law.
I’ve also interviewed some of the leading players in Britain’s radical Islamic movement (including two extensive sitdowns with a notorious preacher who has been linked to one of the terrorists involved in Wednesday’s attack).
Click the link above for a roundup of all of my on the ground reports and interview from Britain. I also devoted a chapter of my 2011 book, The Terrorist Next Door, to Britain’s Islamist threat.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish riot police to call in reinforcements
With Swedish police set to call in reinforcements in an attempt to get the now five-day-old wave of arson and vandalism under control, Sweden’s image abroad may have been tarnished.
After a fifth night of violence, police now plan to call in reinforcements to help quell the riots, but parents and volunteer organizations who have patrolled the streets in recent nights have helped decrease their intensity, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said.
The riots have shattered Sweden’s image abroad as a peaceful and egalitarian nation, and sparked a domestic debate about the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population.
Firefighters were dispatched to 70 different locations in greater Stockholm overnight, extinguishing torched cars, dumpsters and buildings, including three schools, the fire department wrote on Twitter.
That was calmer than the previous night, when they handled 90 incidents.
Lindgren said 13 people had been arrested, between the ages of 17 and 26, but no injuries were reported.
One of the rioters in the suburb of Husby told Swedish Radio that racism was rampant where he lived, and that violence was his only way of being noticed.
“We burned cars, threw rocks at police, at police cars. But it’s good, because now people know what Husby is… This is the only way to be heard,” said the rioter, identified only by the pseudonym Kim.
In Rinkeby, one of the city’s immigrant-dominated areas, six cars parked alongside each other were torched, according to a wire photographer on the scene.
A police station and several shops in Älvsjö were set on fire, but the flames were quickly extinguished.
Firefighters said a fire set at a school in another immigrant-heavy suburb, Tensta, was quickly extinguished, as was another at a nursery school in the Kista suburb.
And police in Södertälje, a town south of Stockholm, said rioters threw stones at them as they responded to reports of cars set alight.
Flames from another burning vehicle in the suburb of Jordbro spread to a shopping centre, which suffered significant damage before the fire could be put out.
Twenty to 30 cars have so far been reported torched at each of the big insurance companies If, Folksam and Trygg-Hansa, according to Swedish Radio, quoting an If executive as saying her company would end up paying “millions” of kronor (hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Eric Zemmour, a right-wing French commentator known for his controversial views, said the riots showed that the Swedish “kingdom of social democracy and of political correctness” was little different from countries like Britain and France.
“These are the same suburbs, the same traffic, the same angst, senseless aggression, the same hatred of the host country, the same way of isolating oneself in counter-societies ruled by the religious prescriptions of Islam, the same riots,” he told RTL radio.
Many of the immigrants who have arrived under Sweden’s generous refugee policy struggle to learn the language and find employment, despite numerous government programmes.
The troubles, which began Sunday in the Husby, are believed to have been triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 69-year-old Husby resident last week after the man wielded a machete in public.
Local activists said the shooting sparked anger among youths who claim to have suffered from police brutality and racism.
Stockholm county police chief Mats Löfving said Friday the rioters were local youths with and without criminal records.
In addition, “in the midst of all this there is a small group of professional criminals, who are taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes like this,” he told Swedish Radio.
Official data shows unemployment was 8.8 percent in Husby in 2012, compared to 3.3 percent in Stockholm as a whole.
A 25-year-old who grew in Husby said he didn’t think the riots had anything to do with the shooting.
“I’m not saying there are no problems… but people are glorifying this a little bit,” said the man, who declined to be named, adding that the rioters were often youngsters aged 12 to 17.
“I can imagine they get a big kick out of seeing themselves on TV,” he said.
Due to its liberal immigration policy, Sweden has in recent decades become one of Europe’s top destinations for immigrants, both in absolute numbers and relative to its size.
In the past decade it has welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and the Balkans, among others.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘They Don’t Want to Integrate’: Fifth Night of Youth Rioting Rocks Stockholm
Community leaders insist that a main reason for the violence is the high rate of unemployment in immigrant communities, particularly in the suburb of Husby near central Stockholm, one of the worst affected by the nighttime violence, Peter Oliver reported.
Although Sweden’s unemployment rate is below the EU average, joblessness among those under 25 has reached nearly 25 percent. The RT crew in Stockholm noted that a majority of those taking part in the violence are young.
“In Sweden you’ve got welfare, access to the educational system — up to university level, you got access to public transport, libraries, healthcare — to everything. And still they feel that they [immigrants] need to riot through stones and Molotov cocktails. It’s ridiculous and a bad excuse,” Swedish Democrats MP Kent Ekeroth told RT.
“Police can put down these riots in five minutes — if the politicians were to allow them,” Ekeroth added…
For years, Sweden — one of Europe’s most tranquil countries, famous for its attractive immigration policies and generous welfare system — has been accepting an influx of immigrants, which now make up about 15 per cent of its population. These migrants have failed to integrate into Swedish society, and are only in the country to enjoy the country’s social benefits system, Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist told RT.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
- Michael Adebolajo’s parents are hard-working Nigerian immigrants
- A Christian couple, they believed in assimilating into British life
- He was ‘just a lovely, lovely guy’, former classmate Stephen Cavalier said
- But Adebolajo’s dark side seems to have awakened in his mid-teens
- Friends said he used cannabis and experimented with other drugs
- He descended into a world where he was consumed with jihadism
When his old school friends saw him on the television drenched in blood, waving a cleaver and declaring jihad, they nearly fell off their chairs.
There was no mistaking Michael Adebolajo, their ‘bright and witty’ classmate from a devoutly Christian family.
They remembered his smile, him studying hard, taking the bus to school and playing football with his mates.
But, his athletic frame aside, he bore no resemblance to the ghastly figure now haunting the nation’s television screens…
He is believed to have attended the nearby Lewisham Islamic Centre mosque, which police visited yesterday. In 2006, the mosque’s cleric Shakeel Begg was recorded urging students to wage jihad against Israelis in Palestine…
A friend said: ‘Michael used to preach a lot about Islam. He told me he converted in jail.‘
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Richard III Buried in ‘Hastily Dug Untidy Grave’
The remains of King Richard III, which were discovered under a car park, were buried in a “hastily dug, untidy grave”, researchers have revealed.
Academics from the University of Leicester said the bones were placed in an odd position, with the torso crammed in to the lozenge-shaped grave.
The research also found the casual nature of the burial suggested a lack of respect for the king. But the academics said it may have been the work of gravediggers in a hurry.
Richard died at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, at the hands of forces loyal to the future Henry VII.
Contemporary sources spoke of the body being put on display in Leicester but the exact location of the grave, and even its existence, were the subject of debate.
However a three-week dig at the site of the medieval Greyfriars church — now a council car park — last summer, quickly revealed remains of the church.
When located, the grave was found to be too short for the corpse, leaving the head tilted forward, and the unusual position of the hands suggested the body may still have had its hands tied.
The research came after the announcement in February that archaeologists had confirmed, through DNA and other evidence, the remains as those of the last Plantagenet monarch.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The brave WPC first on the scene at the Woolwich beheading came within inches of death, as this exclusive Daily Mirror footage shows.
The driver, unable to draw her firearm, is saved by a male colleague in the back who fires his machine-gun through his window at a suspect who is charging at her.
The callous Islamic extremists had lured police to the scene by dragging the body of the murdered fusilier — named yesterday as Lee Rigby, 25 — into the middle of the road.
[A couple of good video clips of the bloody-handed beasts getting shot by British coppers. Pity they both survived. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Woolwich Latest: Shocked Eyewitness Tells of Horrific Machete Attack on Soldier
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A rapper who witnessed the shocking Woolwich attack revealed the true horror of the situation as he posted a series of tweets from the scene.
Boya Dee was among a number of eyewitnesses who saw the incident yesterday from start to finish, and described how the suspects tried to attack police officers after hacking at a man with a machete.
He wrote: ‘The two black bredas [brothers] run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!’
In another dramatic tweet, he added: ‘The first guy goes for the female fed [police officer] with the machete and she not even ramping [messing about] she took man out like robocop never seen nutn [nothing] like it.’
It was confirmed by police last night that two men had been arrested and officers from the counter-terrorist unit were leading the investigation into the killing.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Vatican Shows Results of Battle on Financial Crime
Holy See takes steps to get on banking ‘white list’
(By Christopher Livesay) (ANSA) — Vatican City, May 22 — The Vatican’s financial watchdog agency took a step Wednesday to show greater transparency in the Holy See by publishing its first annual report on the Vatican’s efforts to combat money laundering and funding terrorism. In it, the Financial Information Authority (AIF) said it had uncovered six cases of suspect transactions in 2012, a notable increase since 2011 when only one such case was flagged.
Two of those cases were sent onto Vatican prosecutors for a probe. AIF Director Rene’ Bruelhart did not go into the specifics of the transactions, specifying only that “they were not tied to financing terrorism”. Established by Benedict XVI in 2010, the AIF is charged with monitoring the commercial and monetary activities of Vatican agencies, such as the Governorate of Vatican City State and the Vatican Bank, also known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR). The Holy See has been trying without success to join the ‘white list’ of states that meet international standards on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. In a report last July, the Council of Europe’s Moneyval department said that the Holy See had made progress on financial transparency, but added that more reforms were needed.
It furthermore questioned the authority and independence of the AIF, and said the Vatican Bank’s rules for reporting suspicious transactions were not sufficient. According to Bruelhart, who was appointed soon after the Moneyval report went public, the cases flagged in 2012 “are a sign that the reporting system has started to work. It’s rather promising and encouraging”. Of the six transactions flagged by the watchdog last year, one involved the Vatican Bank. Over the years the Vatican Bank has acquired a murky image on transparency. There have been allegations that IOR was used to launder money most notably by ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi, the former head of Italy’s biggest private bank, whose body was found hanging under Blackfriar’s Bridge in London in 1982, a suspected victim of the Mafia.
IOR was also named in kickbacks probes stemming from the 1990 collapse of public-private chemicals colossus Enimont, part of the Clean Hands investigations that swept away Italy’s old political establishment.
More recently, there has been a series of Italian TV reports and a best-selling book claiming to show how individuals have used IOR to squirrel away money, dodging Italian regulations.
Bruelhart said Wednesday a “deep screening process” was “in the works” to identify all of (the Vatican Bank’s) clients. “In the coming months we will have the results,” he said.
A Vatican report to Moneyval is due in September, Bruelhart added. Other efforts to make IOR more transparent include a move to publish its balance sheets online by the end of the year.
The AIF said it would launch new procedures “in the coming weeks and months” aimed at conforming to the European Union’s transparency standards. Bruelhart said the procedures would promote “a new system for strengthening the inspection powers of the AIF”. The annual report did not mention the move by the Bank of Italy to freeze credit cards and other electronic payments inside the Vatican at the end of 2012, forcing the thousands of daily visitors to pay in cash for the first months of this year amid an investigation by Rome prosecutors into an alleged money laundering.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Vigilance Urged for Muslims in Switzerland
The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland is cautioning increased vigilance among Switzerland’s Muslim community following the murder of a soldier in the United Kingdom.
The calls from the Muslim group come after a soldier was beheaded yesterday on a busy London street by what are believed to be Islamist terrorists.
After the murder, one of the perpetrators reportedly spoke to witnesses, warning “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.”
British media report that backlash attacks on Muslims increased as a result of the crime.
Now Switzerland’s Islamic Central Council fears reprisals may happen here.
They are warning Muslims to be more vigilant and arm themselves.
They suggest pepper spray which is a legal form of defense.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Minister Makes Appeal for Italian Tourists
‘Support democratic Tunisia and visit our country’, Gamra
(ANSAmed) — Rome, May 22 — Tunisia’s tourism minister Jamel Gamra has appealed to Italians to visit his country and support its fledgling democracy.
“Who wants to support the process of democracy in Tunisia should come and see us on vacation,” he said on a visit to Rome this week.
The Arab Spring uprising which forced President Ben Ali from power in 2011 had a serious impact on the country’s tourism, one of the key economic sectors in Tunisia. “We have dropped from more than seven million tourists in 2010, the year before the revolution, to four million in 2011,” the minister told ANSAmed.
But 2012 has seen fresh growth — the number of visitors is around six million and now the government of Tunisia, which was elected a few months ago, is determined to take advantage of this positive trend.
“The keys to our strategy to revive the sector are the environment, security, quality of the deals and promotion,” Gamra said. As part of this strategy, the streets of Djerba, one of the most popular tourist spots, have been cleaned but just a few weeks the streets were worse than the garbage emergency in Naples. “Now the situation is much improved,” the minister said.
Gamra also wanted to emphasise the importance of security on his visit.
“I came to reassure you about the security situation in my country,” he said. “There has been a revolution but we have also seen the risk of confusion but now we are on target to create a new democratic Tunisia in which we will not allow anyone to overstep the boundaries of individual liberties”.
Recent conflicts between police and Salafites however would appear to indicate things were different.
“Those people are damaging our image,” he said. “They are a minority, they represent 11 milion Tunisian citizens. “We cannot stop them expressing their opinions, but we can intervene firmly as we have done if they attempt to overstep the mark”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Amina to Go on Trial on May 30
Mother says she is sick, acting out with parents
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, MAY 24 — The first hearing in a trial against Amina Tyler, the 19-year-old Tunisian Femen activist arrested Sunday for writing on a cemetery’s wall and for possession of pepper spray, has been scheduled on May 30. She risks a sentence of up to two years in jail for the graffiti and up to six months over the spray.
Meanwhile in an interview broadcast on television, the girl’s mother said Amina has psychological problems and has been treated for a few years now at the El Razi hospital, showing doctors’ certificates she said proved her claim. The woman said her daughter was angry because she and her husband had moved to Saudi Arabia for work, leaving their children behind in Tunis.
Amina cannot stand the separation and her protests with the topless Femen group are only a symptom of her anger at her parents. She also claimed Amina, who has posted topless pictures of herself online, is being manipulated by someone to adopt ‘obscene’ behavior.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Maariv: Kerry Urges Netanyahu to Freeze Colonies
Hague, window for dialogue about to close
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, MAY 24 — US Secretary of State John Kerry has asked Israeli Premier Benyamin Netanyahu whether he is ready to publicly announce a total freeze of planning and construction of colonies both in the West Bank and in more isolated settlements during a meeting Thursday in Jerusalem, Maariv reported on Friday. The newspaper was unable to report Netanyahu’s response to Kerry’s proposal.
The US secretary of state has been holding bilateral talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials since yesterday, his fourth mission since February as part of US efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. For his part British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who also visited Jerusalem on Thursday, said Israel had lost some of its support in Britain and Europe due to settlement activities.
In an interview to Sky News published on Friday and cited by the Israeli press, Hague said the window of opportunity for a two-state solution was closing. ‘We strongly disagree with settlements in occupied land’, Hague told Sky News. ‘Israel is a country we work with in many ways but we do disapprove of settlements’.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Thank You: Hafez Al-Assad
The threats emanating from Syria have become downright frightening. For the past several days, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan has been warning repeatedly that it is certain that Israeli population centers will be hit by Syrian ballistic missiles and that we have to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, including Scud missile-launched chemical weapons attacks on Israel’s metropolitan centers.
On Wednesday, Air Force commander Maj.- Gen. Amir Eshel spelled out Israel’s concerns from a military perspective. The chance of war breaking out at any time is extremely high. Syria has a massive arsenal that includes advanced anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and surface- to-surface missiles. Syria also has large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, advanced artillery as well as the other components of a large conventional military force.
Eshel warned, “Syria is collapsing before our eyes. If it collapses tomorrow we could find its vast arsenal dispersed and pointing at us.”…
?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Thank+you+Hafez+al-Assad&utm_campaign=20130524_m116144623_Thank+you+Hafez+al-Assad&utm_term=Continue+reading___
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Death toll reaches 23 with 167 wounded. As life goes on, schools are closed and soldiers patrol the streets. Fuelling fears of Syrian involvement, National News Agency reports Syrian troops fired on a Lebanese army patrol.
Beirut (AsiaNews) — A cautious calm fell over Tripoli, occasionally violated by intermittent sniper fire. This comes after clashes broke out between Sunnis from Bab al-Tabbaneh and Alawis from Jabal Mohsen, that left 23 dead and 167 wounded.
Yesterday was the bloodiest day yet in the clashes, with at least 11 people killed in 24 hours this despite the deployment of Lebanese troops.
Voice of Lebanon radio reported that the army was now preparing to enter Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood.
In the city, life has continued as normal to some extent, but with traffic lighter than usual. Schools closed however, but most shops were still open.
The Syrian conflict is the cause for clashes with local Sunnis, who back Syrian rebels, and Alawis, who side with Syrian President Assad, a fellow coreligionist.
Violence broke out after Syrian forces, reinforced by Hizbollah, attacked the town of Qusayr, on the Lebanese border.
This is raising concerns that the conflict in Syria might spillover into Lebanon.
Putting aside the fact that the presence of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing violence at home is putting pressure on Lebanon, the country itself is deeply divided between Sunnis, who side with the rebels, and Shias, who back Assad.
The division, which is also reflected among political parties and the government, is likely to affect Christians, who in principle are not a party to the conflict.
Making matters worse, the Syrian army reportedly opened fire yesterday on a vehicle of the Lebanese joint border security force that was patrolling the northern town of Wadi Khaled, state-run National News Agency reported. No one was hit.
Also on Thursday, Sunni-dominated Future TV also reported clashes between Hizbullah men and the same border security force. (PD)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Syrian Refugees and Jihadism Pose Threat to Jordan
Kerry warns of possible spillover, Italy leads the way in aid
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN — The third largest “city” in Jordan after Amman and Aqaba has risen among the desert sands on the Syrian border: the Zaatari refugee camp. Some 160,000 people — mostly women and children — are living in the camp, which has seen countless episodes of violence and uprisings. Scuffles frequently break out between Jordanian and Syrian soldiers, while hundreds of jihadists cross over into Syria to join the ranks of rebel fighters. Already struggling under the weight of an economic crisis, Jordan is understandably concerned at the prospect of being swept up in the conflict. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry — who made a stop in Amman on Wednesday for the Friends of Syria meeting and arrived in Jerusalem on Thursday — has warned that the war in Syria is spilling over into Jordan and Lebanon. Six more people died in Tripoli over the night in clashes between those supporting Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and those opposing his regime. Meanwhile, about a hundred militants from the Shiite movement Hezbollah, close ally of Damascus and Tehran, have died in fighting in Syria alongside loyalist troops, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Most of the Hezbollah fighters lost their lives in the government counteroffensive in Qusair. Assad’s army is also regaining ground in the south along the border with Jordan, where rebel sources say it has retaken several locations, such as Tel Shihab, Khirbet Ghazal and Sahem Golan. This fact may be why refugees abruptly stopped flowing across the border on Saturday evening, while previously an average of 2,500 had crossed over per day. “We are seeing constant violence along the border, and this seems to be preventing people from reaching Jordan,” said Andrew Harper, UNHCR representative in Amman, underscoring that hundreds of refugees may be stuck just across the border. It was across the 371 kilometers of this border that half a million refugees have entered Jordan in just over two years, the equivalent of almost 10% of Jordan’s population. By the end of the year this number may double, bringing this country already suffering from a financial crisis and a perennial shortage of water and electricity to its knees. Italy, which has excellent economic ties with the Hashemite kingdom and tops the list of its EU exporters, was among the first countries to send humanitarian aid. When the Zataari camp was first opened in the summer of 2012, Italy set up a camp hospital that attends to between 400 and 500 patients every day.
The military situation along the border also poses a threat to Jordan. Since early May there have been three incidents between Syrian soldiers and their Jordanian counterparts. Qatar and Saudi Arabia — which support the Jordanian economy through profits from the gas and oil sector — are putting pressure on Amman to let weapons and fighters pass through its territory, as they are currently doing through Turkey. Jordan is trying to resist the pressure, afraid of what the return of these militants may one day mean. Memories of what happened with Afghanistan remain fresh. Members of some Salafi groups have been arrested but an estimated at least 500 Jordanian jihadists have managed to enter Syria. Meanwhile, wildly divergent speculation is making the rounds on the U.S. contingent of 200 soldiers deployed along the border, possibly alongside other contingents. Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour has tried to deny that they are training members of the Free Syrian Army, saying that they are instead preparing Jordanian forces to deal with a possible emergency connected with Assad’s chemical arsenals.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Cracks Down on Alcohol, Secular Opposition in Uproar
Erdogan accused of re-Islamicizing country
(ANSAmed) — ANKARA — In only 48 hours from the vote in the parliamentary committee, Ankara’s Grand Assembly has approved the latest crackdown on alcoholic beverages proposed by the ruling Islamic AKP party under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Alcohol will be banned near mosques and schools, advertising will be prohibited and liquor will be blacked out in films and soap operas, with fines of up to 230,000 euros.
“The Islamic revolution is underway,” said one secular reader of Hurriyet, ruefully. The secular opposition — which accuses the head of government of having a “hidden agenda” to re-Islamicize the country — has risen up in protest, but the Islamic party with a parliamentary majority won the day. “No one can be obliged to drink or not to drink: this is a religious and ideological imposition,” said Social Democrat deputy Musa Cam immediately after the voting. The recent decision by national carrier Turkish Airlines to stop serving alcohol on many flights had already given rise to much protest. For many secular Turks, the right to drink alcohol or not symbolizes respect for the secularism of the state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Prime Minister Erdogan denied having acted for religious reasons, as Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol. He instead said he wanted to protect the young. “We don’t want a generation walking around drunk night and day. We want a youth that is sharp and shrewd and full of knowledge,” Erdogan said Friday in defense of the legislation. The new law prohibits alcohol advertising and its sale and consumption in places located within 100 meters of the country’s 90,000 mosques and tens of thousands of schools, along roads and highways, in student dorms, hospitals, sports clubs, and educational institutes. Limited exceptions are foreseen in venues that already hold a license and in tourist areas. The sale of alcohol will be prohibited in shops between 10 PM and 6 AM and in automatic distributing machines. “The sale of alcohol is prohibited during the night prayer but not during the morning one,” said one Kurdish deputy ironically. Producers will have to include clear warnings about health risks on their labels and will not be able to sponsor musical or cultural events. It will be illegal to transmit “subliminal” messages promoting alcohol in films and TV serials. Images that show wine and liquor will be blacked out and bottles will not be allowed in storefront windows. Those who violate the regulations will be issues fines of up to 220,000 euros. Last month Erdogan called ayran, a Turkish yoghurt drink watered down with water, “Turkey’s national beverage” in place of raki, the traditional anise-seed flavored alcoholic drink.
The new law may just prove him right, with the options having been narrowed down considerably.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
War in Syria: EU Support for Arming Rebels Wanes
European Voice, 24 May 2013
“The EU struggles for unity on Syrian arms embargo,” notes the European Voice. The weekly explains that “an Anglo-French bid to end the European Union’s ban on the sale of arms to rebel forces in Syria appears doomed to failure,” because “opposition to ending the ban on arms sales has, if anything, hardened.”
In February, the UK and France succeeded in persuading other member states to ease the arms embargo and back a move allowing the supply of non-lethal military items, such as communications and logistics equipment, to rebel forces battling Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Now, following talks between French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron on May 22, even Paris and London seem to have cooled on the idea, principally due to fears weapons could fall into Islamists’ hands. The newspaper continues —
There are significant divisions among member states over Syria, principally on three issues. Austria has been particularly vocal in opposing the easing of arms restrictions on the rebels, questioning the need and the impact. Sweden has been the most reluctant to accept the longer-term trend, towards tougher sanctions against the regime of Assad, arguing that that would limit the space for a political solution. In addition, in recent months, the Czech Republic has been vocal in questioning the quality of the control over rebel forces exercised by the rebels’ major political body, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).
The embargo will be debated at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on May 27 ahead of a June 1 deadline for its renewal or cancellation. Meanwhile a new US and Russian-backed Syrian peace conference has been arranged for early June in Geneva, which could see the SNC attend talks with members of the Syrian government.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
World Bank Provides Jordan With $150 to Host Syrian Refugees
(ANSAmed) — AMMAN, MAY 24 — The World Bank (WB) has agreed to support Jordan with $150 million to help accommodate half a million Syrian refugees, according to a bank statement.
“I saw Jordan’s generous hosting communities struggling with the enormous inflows of people seeking shelter and protection at Zaatari”, said Inger Andersen, WB vice president for the Middle East and North Africa.
“There is acute pressure on local authorities to maintain service delivery and that is where our funding can help,” Andersen said.
The package will take the shape of a programme of emergency support to help the Jordanian authorities finance public service expenditures associated with the influx of refugees from Syria, added the statement.
In addition, the financial package will enable the bank to “leverage donor support to strengthen service delivery in municipalities that are hosting the majority of Syrian refugees”.
Andersen said that a secondary goal of the package is to ensure that Jordanians as well as Syrians benefit from the assistance.
“Witnessing the agony of the Syrian people is heartrending but what we can all do now is step up and make sure that social tensions don’t grow among the various communities who are so generously hosting the refugees,” said Andersen.
“The World Bank’s contribution is part of our broader programme of engagement with Jordan in which we are helping build resilience to the current and future impacts of the regional crisis while supporting the country’s ongoing economic reform programme.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian UN Official Seriously Injured in Kabul Attack
Explosions, gunfire near Emergency hospital
(ANSA) — Rome, May 24 — An Italian employee of the United Nations was gravely injured in an attack by armed militants in Kabul on Friday, the Italian foreign ministry said. The woman was taken with two Nepalese guards, also UN employees, and four members of the Afghan police to be treated at a hospital run by the Italian non-governmental organization Emergency, said sources at the hospital.
Powerful explosions and intense gunfire ripped through downtown Kabul on Friday afternoon in the Shar-e-Naw quarter, near the Emergency hospital.
The source of the blasts was suicide bombing aimed at the headquarters of the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. A spokesman for the Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack. The number of dead or injured is still unclear, though an Afghan interior ministry spokesman said three attackers had died and at least eight people were injured.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
China Incinerates 3 US Shipments of Genetically Modified Corn
China has destroyed a total of at least three genetically modified corn shipments with origins from the United States in a move that echoes the way in which the nation of Hungary actually went and destroyed acres upon acres of Monsanto’s GMO corn fields. Interestingly enough, my article on that subject became one of the most widely shared articles in recent years across the web thanks to the rising number of individuals who are behind the elimination of GMOs across the globe.
And I suspect this move by China will be met with similar applause, as it represents a direct stand against Monsanto — the company that is literally being funded with your taxpayer dollars and directly marketed by the US State Department. Even Reuters and others reported on the leaked information, and journalists were in complete shock when the news came out. The reality explains not only why the US government continues to approve and outwardly support Monsanto’s GMOs despite being linked to a number of serious health conditions, but also explains why the US threatened ‘military style trade wars’ against those who oppose Monsanto.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Monsanto’s major connections in government, like FDA head Michael Taylor, are lending aid to the GMO crusade in ways that even surprise me.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
It’s Airborne: Human Transmission of Deadly H7N9 Virus Now Confirmed
In April of this year researches studying the H7N9 bird flu virus in China advised global governments to get prepared for the worst case scenario. According to the World Health Organization, H7N9 is one the most lethal influenza strains ever identified because it mutates eight times faster than a normal flu virus, and according to official records, has a death-to-infection ratio of about 25%.
It was initially believed that the virus could only be transmitted to humans who have had direct contact with poultry. After 36 H7N9 deaths and 131 of infections officially reported since the virus was first identified, the worst case scenario that many feared may now be on the horizon.
The Sun China Morning Post is reporting that researches have confirmed that, not only can the virus be transmitted from one human to another, but it has gone airborne.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lenovo’s 2012 Profits Soar by 34 Percent
(AGI) Hong Kong, May 23 — Lenovo posted a profit of 635.15 million dollars for FY2012, a 34 percent increase, despite a fall in demand. The Chinese computer manufacturer had revenue of 33.87 billion dollars, an increase of 14.5 percent. Its market share expanded by 2.6 percent to a record 15.5 percent, mostly at the expense of its U.S. competitor, Hewlett-Packard.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
The Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam.
There are countries in the world, mainly in Europe, that are presently undergoing significant cultural transformations as a result of Muslim immigration. France, Germany, Belgium and Holland are interesting examples of cases where immigration from Muslim countries, together with the Muslims’ high fertility rate, effects every area of life.
It is interesting to know that there is a country in the world whose official and public approach to the Muslim matter is totally different. This country is Japan. This country keeps a very low profile on all levels regarding the Muslim matter: On the diplomatic level, senior political figures from Islamic countries almost never visit Japan, and Japanese leaders rarely visit Muslim countries.
The relations with Muslim countries are based on concerns such as oil and gas, which Japan imports from some Muslim countries. The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims.
Japan forbids exhorting people to adopt the religion of Islam (Dawah), and any Muslim who actively encourages conversion to Islam is seen as proselytizing to a foreign and undesirable culture. Few academic institutions teach the Arabic language. It is very difficult to import books of the Qur’an to Japan, and Muslims who come to Japan, are usually employees of foreign companies. In Japan there are very few mosques. The official policy of the Japanese authorities is to make every effort not to allow entry to Muslims, even if they are physicians, engineers and managers sent by foreign companies that are active in the region. Japanese society expects Muslim men to pray at home.
Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers. And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Tokyo there is only one imam.
In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam. If a Japanese woman marries a Muslim, she will be considered an outcast by her social and familial environment. There is no application of Shari’a law in Japan. There is some food in Japan that is halal, kosher according to Islamic law, but it is not easy to find it in the supermarket.
The Japanese approach to Muslims is also evidenced by the numbers: in Japan there are 127 million residents, but only ten thousand Muslims, less than one hundredth of a percent. The number of Japanese who have converted is thought to be few. In Japan there are a few tens of thousands of foreign workers who are Muslim, mainly from Pakistan, who have managed to enter Japan as workers with construction companies. However, because of the negative attitude towards Islam they keep a low profile.
There are several reasons for this situation:
First, the Japanese tend to lump all Muslims together as fundamentalists who are unwilling to give up their traditional point of view and adopt modern ways of thinking and behavior. In Japan, Islam is perceived as a strange religion, that any intelligent person should avoid.
Second, most Japanese have no religion, but behaviors connected with the Shinto religion along with elements of Buddhism are integrated into national customs . In Japan, religion is connected to the nationalist concept, and prejudices exist towards foreigners whether they are Chinese, Korean, Malaysian or Indonesian, and Westerners don’t escape this phenomenon either. There are those who call this a “developed sense of nationalism” and there are those who call this “racism”. It seems that neither of these is wrong.
And Third, the Japanese dismiss the concept of monotheism and faith in an abstract god, because their world concept is apparently connected to the material, not to faith and emotions. It seems that they group Judaism together with Islam. Christianity exists in Japan and is not regarded negatively, apparently because the image of Jesus perceived in Japan is like the images of Buddha and Shinto.
The most interesting thing in Japan’s approach to Islam is the fact that the Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam. They make a clear distinction between their economic interest in resources of oil and gas from Muslim countries, which behooves Japan to maintain good relations with these countries on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Japanese nationalist viewpoints, which see Islam as something that is suitable for others, not for Japan, and therefore the Muslims must remain outside.
Because the Japanese have a gentle temperament, and project serenity and tranquility toward foreigners, foreigners tend to relate to the Japanese with politeness and respect. A Japanese diplomat would never raise his voice or speak rudely in the presence of foreigners, therefore foreigners relate to the Japanese with respect, despite their racism and discrimination against Muslims in the matter of immigration. A Japanese official who is presented with an embarrassing question regarding the way the Japanese relate to Muslims, will usually refrain from answering, because he knows that a truthful answer would arouse anger, and he is both unable and unwilling to give an answer that is not true. He will smile but not answer, and if pressed, he will ask for time so that his superiors can answer, while he knows that this answer will never come.
Japan manages to remain a country almost without a Muslim presence because Japan’s negative attitude toward Islam and Muslims pervades every level of the population, from the man in the street to organizations and companies to senior officialdom. In Japan, contrary to the situation in other countries, there are no “human rights” organizations to offer support to Muslims’ claims against the government’s position. In Japan no one illegally smuggles Muslims into the country to earn a few yen, and almost no one gives them the legal support they would need in order to get permits for temporary or permanent residency or citizenship.
Another thing that helps the Japanese keep Muslim immigration to their shores to a minimum is the Japanese attitude toward the employee and employment. Migrant workers are perceived negatively in Japan, because they take the place of Japanese workers. A Japanese employer feels obligated to employ Japanese workers even if it costs much more than it would to employ foreign workers. The traditional connection between an employee and employer in Japan is much stronger than in the West, and the employer and employee feel a mutual commitment to each other: an employer feels obligated to give his employee a livelihood, and the employee feels obligated to give the employer the fruit of his labor. This situation does not encourage the acceptance of foreign workers, whose commitment to the employers is low.
The fact that the public and the officials are united in their attitude against Muslim immigration has created a sort of iron wall around Japan that Muslims lack both the permission and the capability to overcome. This iron wall silences the world’s criticism of Japan in this matter, because the world understands that there is no point in criticizing the Japanese, since criticism will not convince them to open the gates of Japan to Muslim immigration.
Japan is teaching the whole world an interesting lesson: there is a direct correlation between national heritage and permission to immigrate: a people that has a solid and clear national heritage and identity will not allow the unemployed of the world to enter its country; and a people whose cultural heritage and national identity is weak and fragile, has no defense mechanisms to prevent a foreign culture from penetrating into its country and its land.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Australian Muslims Warned of Possible Backlash After Woolwich Attacks
Australian Muslims are being urged to be aware of the possibility of a local backlash after the deadly terrorist attack in London this week…
| [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Gambia Native Given 12 Years for FGM of Two Daughters
Turned in by gynecologist, father gets 6 years for each offense
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MAY 23 — A Barcelona court on Thursday sentenced a Gambia native to 12 years in prison for having his two daughters, aged 11 and 6, genitally mutilated. A gynecologist who visited the girls turned the family in to authorities, sparking what is one of the first cases of female genital mutilation to be uncovered and prosecuted in Spain.
The children’s father argued that the mutilations had been carried out during a family trip to Gambia years ago. But court testimony proved the girls were still unmutilated in 2010 and had never left the Catalan town of Vilanova, where they live, since then.
A Barcelona judge sentenced the father to six years for each offense, citing the fact that he had lived in Spain for years and knew female genital mutilation is illegal there as an aggravating circumstance.
While recognizing that in Gambia the practice is traditional and not carried out with the intent to harm women physically or morally, “the limit to the respect of indigenous cultures lies in the respect of universally recognized human rights”, the judge wrote in his sentence.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Switzerland: SVP Pol Wants Illegal Kids Registered
Swiss People’s Party MP Oskar Freysinger is calling for schools to register illegal immigrant pupils with cantonal migration authorities.
Freysinger, who has been in office as Education Minister for the Canton of Valais for just over three weeks, called the situation “shocking.”
He added that it was normal for a country to want to know who was resident within its borders: “It’s deporable because the rule of law is being undermined. It’s not about starting a witch hunt but about ensuring authorities are better informed so that these children’s rights are guaranteed.”
Unrestricted access to education for children of illegal immigrant parents is guaranteed by the Constitution, which ensures child welfare takes precedence over residency status.
Freysinger is currently looking at how these laws can be changed, starting with his own canton, Valais.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Digitizing Humanity in the Pipeline
“A Vision for Lifelong Learning-year 2020” a document published by Microsoft with an introduction by Bill Gates, spells it all out with scenarios which could only be described as Orwell’s “1984”on steroids. The paper itself is by Randy Hinrichs, Group Research Manager Learning Science and Technology, Microsoft Research.
Topics among others listed in “A Vision for Lifelong Learning-Year 2020” are: “It Begins at Birth-Intelligent Toys, “Preschool-Games Based Learning,” “The Early Years-social Collaboration and Filtering,” “High School- Increased Community Communication,” “College and Lifelong Learning- Virtual Mentors.”
Remember the term “Virtual Mentors.” The key question becomes who programs the “Virtual Mentors”?
The text of the “Vision for Lifelong Learning 2020” is followed by scenarios of days in the lives of some hypothetical learners as they are awakened by their internet earrings, view wall screens with schedules for the day, as the learners are guided through the day by Virtual Mentors.” Will never happen, you say? But don’t be sure as we read enthusiasm for the google “glasses,” driverless cars, and probably lots we don’t read about in our papers here in Silicon Valley.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Doctor Who Did 1,200 Abortions Tells Congress to Ban Them
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
Dr. Anthony Levatino is a pro-life physician from New Mexico but, before having a change of heart on the issue of abortion he was an OBGYN who also performed abortions.
Levatino did as many as 1,200 abortions — some of them after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Then, after his daughter died in a tragic automobile accident, he re-evaluated his position on abortion and stopped doing abortions.
Today, Dr. Levatino told members of a Congressional committee that they should support a bill sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks that would ban abortions nationwide aft 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Levatino’s full testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice appears below:…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Left Defends Accused Child Molester Because She’s Lesbian
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
HuffPo, ThinkProgress okay with sex with a 14-year-old.
When your 18-year-old daughter is expelled and charged with sexual battery of a child, one option is to go public and declare she’s a martyr under fire from anti-gay bias. That’s the approach taken by the parents of Kaitlyn Hunt, a Florida teen who faces two felony charges of “lewd or lascivious battery” on a child. And sure enough, the tactic has earned Hunt some high-profile left-wing media defenders.
According to the charges, Hunt, a senior at Sebastian River High School who was set to graduate this spring, pressured a 14-year-old girl four years her junior to be her “girlfriend” and engage in sexual activity with her. But when Kaitlyn faced prosecution from her underage partner’s parents, her own parents and gay activists immediately granted her victim status, claiming she was unjustly persecuted for being homosexual.
Not surprisingly, leftie headlines followed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Diana West: From the Brooklyn Bridge to London
Nearly 20 years after a Hasidic Jewish boy riding across the Brooklyn Bridge was killed by a Muslim fighting jihad, a British soldier was hacked to death and reportedly beheaded on the streets of London by Muslims fighting jihad.
Thanks to the happenstance of a passer-by with a video recorder, the world heard almost immediately from one of the two London suspects, Michael Adebolajo. His hands red with blood, Adebolajo confessed to the murder of Lee Rigby, 25, that he had just committed in Koranically correct terms of revenge, presumably for Britain’s efforts against jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also know that cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”) punctuated the knifing and meat-cleavering of the victim.
But if “Allahu Akbar” is the historic cry of Muslims engaged in jihad, it is also the contemporary trigger for Western denial that jihad exists. “We will defeat violent extremism by standing together,” British Prime Minister David Cameron stated, gravely opaque. How? “Above all by challenging the poisonous narrative of extremism on which this violence feeds,” he said, definitely not referring to the verses of the Koran that inspire jihad.
Islam, the prime minister was saying, has nothing to do with this murder in the streets. Furthermore, global jihad is not under way, and no caliphate in which Jews and Christians will defer to Islamic law as “dhimmi” is on the horizon.
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
http://www.zeit.de/politik/2013-05/extremismus-dschihad-syrien-schueler-lamya-kaddor/seite-2
The “song texts” of lies.
Syrian Ancestry “liberal” Muslima in Germany, teacher for “Islam”, “very astonished” that five of her former students joined Dschihad in Syria for causes of
…………………………………. “discussing Islam with weapons”.
Every single part of her “answers” are on the cause of buidling a facade for an interimistic lie-Islam and sorrow about herself, so doing oscillating between lie and self betrayal.
“Die Zeit”- Reporter when asking how she would answer, when asked about Solidarity amongst Muslims for fighting together for their cause part of her reaction to this question was this (first original in German, then my translation)
“Wer legitimiert also diesen Dschihad in Syrien? Irgendeiner, der sich selbst dazu berufen fühlt. Und dann rennen alle wie die Schäfchen los und schalten ihren Verstand aus. Aber ganz ehrlich, um Theologie geht es hier nicht.”
“Who is it who legitimizes this Dschihad in Syria ? Any, who feels himself to be appointed for it. And then ALL start to run as the LAMBS and switsch off their brains. BUT TRULY HONEST, on theology is not their focus.”
Sura 5, Vers 9: When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.
End of Quote.
Sure THIS HAD A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.
BUT is the understanding of “liberal” Muslims really that this was only meant from Allah for “idolaters” in the days of Mohammed ?
And SURE – at least “Allah” had forgotten to tell “Mohammed”.
…….which caused alltogether at least 300 Millions to be murdered in the wake of Islam.
http://www.pi-news.net/2013/05/eu-plant-strafen-fur-anti-eu-parteien/
European (Highest Soviet) SOCIALIST Commissioners plan fines for parties which do not accept the catalogue of “values” of EU Brusslercratics Views, which DOES INCLUDE POSSIBLY ALSO THAT Anti-EU Parties can be fined for thinking on changes or that the “Club of which Hitler was so proud for” (which is Islam) cannot be critised without having to expect a fine…….
Socialistic Leader Ferdinand Lassalle (German, 1825-1864) was greeted by his Socialist fellows: “HEIL DIR LASSALLE” !
Socialistic Leader Adolf Hitler (Austrian, but made it to the German “Führer” 1889-1945) was greeted by his Socialist fellows: “HEIL HITLER!”
Socialistic EU President Martin Schulz (1955-….)… is not greeted with “HEIL SCHULZ!” …..the problem is: To fine someone for thinking OTHER THAN SOCIALISTIC AGENDA seems not only to bring him quite close to the views of his Socialistic Forethinkers, it does brings him exactly in their wake.
Islam and Socialism have a lot of similarities amongst such is:
Islam is in less Islamcountries more “Religion”. Same with Socialism.
When they are many its getting more a political system. Same with Socialism.
Islam has only the “tiny” pieces of being more “Cult” than political system … this is in Socialsm vice versa, but the core of the Cult is very similar: “Killing” (murdering) the ones which do not wish to believe in their system.
So …. the “Islam-Socialistic” “harmony” is for sure restricted to when it comes to the question of final power ……….
And back to the theme:
To fine someone for thinking other is a very steep step into such “”fields”” …. where so many Socialists already have been “protecting” their believe by massive murderings.