Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted of paying for sex with an underage Moroccan prostitute known as “Ruby Heart-Stealer” during notorious sex parties at his villa. He has been sentenced to seven years in prison, and barred from political office for the rest of his life.
In other news, in response to last night’s rocket attack, Israeli jets targeted storage areas and launch facilities for rockets in Gaza.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, DS, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, MC, McR, TV, 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.
Busted: Bankers Caught on Tape, Joking About Bailout, And How They’d Never Pay it Back
Once again, we have more embarrassing conversations between bankers …
The Irish Independent, a Dublin-based newspaper, has uncovered tapes of an internal phone conversation from September 2008 between two executives at Anglo Irish Bank during its bailout deal and they sound pretty scandalous. The Irish Independent points out that the recordings show they misled the Central Bank.
The executives from the recording have been identified as John Bowe (head of the bank’s capital markets) and Peter Fitzgerald (director of retail banking).
However, Bowe “categorically denied” that he misled the Central Bank and Fitzgerald, who wasn’t involved in discussions with regulators, said he was unaware of any intention to mislead, the report said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Over Half a Million Italians Temporarily Laid Off
In addition to record 12% unemployed
(ANSA) — Rome, June 21 — Over half a million workers are on benefits in recession-hit Italy after being temporarily laid off by their companies, Italy’s biggest trade-union confederation, the left-wing GCIL, said on Friday.
The CGIL said 524,000 workers were claiming the CIG benefit for people who have been temporarily laid off. This led to a collective loss of around 1.7 billion euros in salaries for the first five months of the year, it said.
The union said almost another half a million more people are on CIG benefits to support their income after having their hours cut by their firms.
This is in addition to close to three million people, 12% of the working population, who are unemployed as Italy struggles to emerge from its longest recession in over 20 years. “These numbers are terrifying,” said the CGIL. “They are the sign of a very deep crisis”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Biggest Ponzi Scheme in the History of the World
Did you know that you are involved in the most massive Ponzi scheme that has ever existed? To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a man named Sam. When he was younger, he had been a very principled young man that had worked incredibly hard and that had built a large number of tremendously successful businesses. He became fabulously wealthy and he accumulated far more gold than anyone else on the planet. But when he started to get a little older he forgot the values of his youth. He started making really bad decisions and some of his relatives started to take advantage of him. One particularly devious relative was a nephew named Fred. One day Fred approached his uncle Sam with a scheme that his friends the bankers had come up with. What happened next would change the course of Sam’s life forever.
Even though Sam was the wealthiest man in the world by far, Fred convinced Sam that he could have an even higher standard of living by going into a little bit of debt. In exchange for IOUs issued by his uncle Sam, Fred would give him paper notes that he printed off on his printing press. Since the paper notes would be backed by the gold that Sam was holding, everyone would consider them to be valuable. Sam could take those paper notes and spend them on whatever his heart desired. Uncle Sam started to do this, and he started to become addicted to all of the nice things that those paper notes would buy him.
Fred took the IOUs that he received from his uncle and he auctioned them off to the bankers. But there was a problem. The IOUs issued by Uncle Sam had to be paid back with interest. When the time came to pay back the IOUs, Uncle Sam could not afford to pay back the debts, pay the interest on those debts, and buy all of the nice things that he wanted. So Uncle Sam issued even more IOUs than before so that he could get enough notes to pay off his debts. As time rolled on, this pattern just kept on repeating. Uncle Sam repeatedly paid off his old debts by taking out even larger new debts.
[Comment: Read it all. Sam = USA, Fred = Federal Reserve ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trend in Falling Italian Real Incomes Reverses
Fall in inflation rate helps wages overtake price increases
(ANSA) — Rome, June 21 — A long trend of falls in real incomes in recession-hit Italy ended in May, Istat said on Friday.
The national statistics agency said hourly wages for contracted employees increased 1.4% in May with respect to the same month in 2012, while the annual inflation rate was 1.1%.
This means real incomes grew by 0.3% as wage rises outstripped price increases.
Istat said the return to positive real incomes was due to a fall in the inflation rate, with the recession limiting price hikes, rather than bigger increases in wages.
Indeed, May’s wage levels were flat on April this year, the agency said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Anchors Away: Is Naval Supremacy a Thing of the Past?
Gabriel Schoenfeld
Is naval power back? Early in June, Russia announced that it would be permanently stationing an armada of ships in the Mediterranean, restoring a deployment that came to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This muscle-flexing is part of Russia’s effort to bolster the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and to stick a finger in the eye of the United States. China, for its part, recently introduced its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and the formation of carrier battle groups will eventually follow, enabling the Chinese military to develop long-range capabilities at sea.
As our major rivals expand their naval capabilities, America’s Navy has been on the way down. Today, the naval fleet is less than half the force it was at the end of the Cold War, and is roughly equivalent in size to what it was during World War I. And thanks to draconian cuts proposed by President Obama, the fleet will contract further in the decades to come.
What does this mean for our future? A well-informed view—and not just a view but a cry of alarm—comes now from Seth Cropsey, my colleague, a former officer in the naval reserve, and deputy undersecretary of the Navy under both Ronald Reagan and George H.?W. Bush. The course we are on, he writes, “promises nothing except advancing powerlessness, the suspicion of allies, and global challenges to American security.” …
| — Hat tip: DS | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) Ten days ago, I publicly stated my belief that the NSA had used its spy apparatus to gather dirt on Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, then used that leverage to force him to change his vote on Obamacare. See the original article here.
Five days later, I also predicted the NSA was using its spy powers to surveil members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. In an article published on June 16, 2013, I wrote, “There could already be countless cases of the NSA using its god-like powers to blackmail people in key positions in the U.S. Senate (which is full of pedophiles and perverts), the House of Representatives, the State Department or even the US Supreme Court. There are virtually no limits to the abuses of this power.”
Suddenly, new revelations prove this to be true. Russ Tice, a Bush-era NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower has sounded the alarm on the true depth of the NSA’s surveillance abuses. In an interview on the Boiling Frogs Podcast, Tice stated:
“They went after — and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things — they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the — and judicial…
“They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of — heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House — their own people…
“Here’s the big one… this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, D.C. That’s who they went after, and that’s the president of the United States now.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
California Senate Passes Bill Requiring Permit to Buy Ammo
Once again, Sacramento proves that to go really over-the-top, you’ve got to go to Democrat California:
The California Senate this week approved a collection of bills, including one (SB 53) that would require background checks, permits, and fees for the purchase of ammunition. All ammunition sales would have to be face-to-face, happening only in the presence of a store clerk; and vendors selling the bullets would have to submit sales records to the California Department of Justice. Those vendors also would need a permit to sell ammunition.
Kira Davis notes that SB 53 also “requires background checks and a $50 ammo purchase fee.”
It wasn’t that long ago that I saw Dick Durbin on one of the Sunday shows, with the stuff-eating grin on his face, joked about taxing bullets until they cost a hundred or a thousand dollars apiece. Wish I could find that video, but no one seems to have grabbed it.
So if you think something like this can happen only in California — think again.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Caveman Look-a-Like Arrested for Throwing Spear at a Car in California
A California man who uncannily resembles a caveman has been arrested after he threw a spear at a passing car.
Jeffery Allen Jones, 56, was booked into a Sacramento jail on Tuesday night after he was spotted launching the unusual weapon into traffic.
A witness called police at around 7:38 p.m. to report that a man standing in the road had thrown a spear at a passing vehicle.
According to Sacramento police, the spear became lodged in the car after hitting its front fender.
It’s unclear who was driving the car or whether Jones knew the motorist. Police presume it was a random attack
The spear is 6-foot long and weighs about 30 pounds.
It was put into evidence, according to officers. Police did not say what the spear was made of.
Jones has had six previous arrests for evading his Regional Transit fare and another time for trespassing, according to Fox News.
In his latest mug shot, Jones has his eyes closed and his mouth wide open. He is sporting long hair and a bushy, greying beard.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Calls Destruction of GMO Sugar Beets in Oregon ‘Economic Sabotage’
When GM pollen blows into a non-GM farmer’s fields and irreversibly contaminates his crop with ‘biopollution,’ who does the law side with? Historically, Monsanto. Also, it’s not called ‘economic sabotage’ but rather ‘copyright infringement,’ and the victim not the aggressor is threatened with economic ruin.
When Monsanto’s unapproved and therefore illegal GM wheat is found years after open field trials growing freely in an Oregon wheat field, the entire state crop’s export fate is held in limbo, jeopardizing the present and future living of thousands of farmers and their dependents, with Monsanto receiving little more than a reprimand, followed by rapid USDA assurance that despite a lack of approval their GM wheat is “safe.”
Given the unfair rules of the game, no wonder some folks in Oregon, having been treated much like feudal peasants, are taking things into their own pitchfork-bearing hands.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Have You Noticed Growing Assaults on Free Speech? Here? And Here? And Here?
by Andrew Malcolm
This will be an unusual column—both to write and to read.
It’s difficult because in the last several years so great has the political polarization become that we’re jeopardizing our sense of nation, as in a collection of united people, and become more of a mere country.
Once upon a time, election campaigns were about dividing voters into one camp or another through the campaign season and election day.
Using fear, economics, self-interest, ethnicity, language, half-truths, untruths, family and regional allegiances, parties herded voters to the polls, instilling voter discipline by drawing lines among groups. After the election, and a finite period of mourning by losers, we re-assembled as a people. And moved forward.
But now, largely because it serves the ongoing self-interest of certain pols who once vowed to unify us, we have a perpetual campaign, a non-stop effort to assemble supporters for various political causes month after month, including but not confined to elections. So, we’re always being divided. The healing time is gone. We lose sight of what we have in common.
This has changed the way Washington works—or fails to. It’s changed friendships, the media, news consumption and so much more.
In reading this seminal speech Friday by a U.S. senator, try your best to ignore party labels and your allegiance and all the superficial left-right nonsense that comes from this permanent election mentality of contemporary American politics.
This senator assembles an impressive array of incidents concerning free speech in America, one of our most hallowed traditions. We remember most of these incident individually. You might too.
Think of a government, a government of any party, and a vast governmental complex united in a common goal not of responding to opposition in the marketplace of ideas, but of silencing it. Individually, these incidents seem minor, instigated by an array of groups.
However, woven together over time, they present a powerfully convincing pattern of attempted suppression of expression that should be disturbing—even frightening—for anyone who holds free speech sacred. And now, given the investigations into reporters and intimidation of some groups by the Internal Revenue Service, the culprits have moved inside the government too.
As usual, we print the entire speech text below. And if you scroll down farther you’ll find the complete C-SPAN video of these remarks. Here’s a sampling of what’s below:
“Last June, I stood here and warned of a grave and growing threat to the First Amendment. That threat has not let up. Our ability to freely engage in civic life and to organize in defense of our beliefs is still under coordinated assault from groups on the Left that don’t like the idea of anyone criticizing their aims, and from a White House that appears determined to shut up anybody who challenges it….”
[…]
“That’s why we need to be vigilant about every one of these assaults. They may seem small and isolated in the particular, but together they reflect a culture of intimidation that extends throughout the government — a culture abetted by a bureaucracy that stands to benefit from it.
“The moment a gang of U.S. Senators started writing letters last year demanding the IRS step in and force more disclosure upon conservative groups, we all should have cried foul.
“The moment the White House proposed a draft order requiring applicants for government contracts to disclose their political affiliations, we all should have called them out.
“When the HHS Secretary told insurance companies they couldn’t tell their customers how ObamaCare would impact them, we all should have pulled the alarm….”
[…]
Why would we even expect a public employee — whose union more or less exists to grow the government — to treat someone who opposes that goal to a fair hearing? When the head of the union that represents unionized IRS workers publicly vilifies the Tea Party, is it any wonder that members of her union would get caught targeting them?
This is something liberals used to worry about.
FDR himself was horrified at the idea of public workers conspiring with lawmakers over how to divide up the taxpayer pie. To him, it was completely incompatible with public service for the public to be cut out of a negotiation in which the two sides are bartering over their money. Even the first president of the AFL-CIO once said it was impossible to bargain collectively with the government.
Yet that’s exactly what we have today. Over the past several decades, the same public employees who’ve arrogated vast powers to themselves have conspired with their patrons in Congress to expand those powers even more, and to endlessly increase the budgets that finance them. This isn’t done in the interest of serving taxpayers; it’s done in the interest of fleecing them.
[…]
…the right to free speech doesn’t exist to protect what’s popular. It exists to protect what’s unpopular.
[…]
[NOTE: much more at the URL above]
| [Return to headlines] |
Nik Wallenda Crosses Grand Canyon on High Wire
Daredevil Nik Wallenda has successfully crossed a gorge near the Grand Canyon on a high wire, becoming the first person to attempt and complete the walk 1500 ft above the Little Colorado River.
A misstep would have meant death for Wallenda, who walked without a safety harness or safety net below him. He carried only a pole for balance and took 22 minutes to walk from one side of the canyon to the other. Despite strong winds and dust blowing into his eyes, Wallenda safely made it across the wire. A microphone attached to his clothing captured his prayers as he slowly advanced along the wire, which measures just two inches across…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Obama to Announce Tuesday He Will Regulate Existing Power Plants as Part of Climate Strategy
President Obama will announce Tuesday in a speech at Georgetown University that he plans to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, according to individuals who have been briefed on the plan but asked not to be identified.
In a statement Saturday afternoon sent via the White House Twitter feed, Obama said that he plans to fulfill the pledge he made in his second inaugural address to “respond to the growing threat of climate change for the sake of our children and future generations.”
“This Tuesday, I’ll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go — a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it,” the president said. “This is a serious challenge — but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Marketing Himself as the One “To Preserve God’s Creation”
If only he could get away with it, President Barack Hussein Obama would claim he created God’s creation. Not having any credibility as our creator, Obama is now moving toward the next best thing: He’s The One “to preserve God’s creation”.
Like millions of others who use YouTube to advance Internet theories, Obama made his own online video on climate change, which the White House released on Saturday. (He can always catch up on shooting hoops and playing golf later, and his estimated $100 million Africa trip doesn’t start until Wednesday).
Obama’s Number One strategy is scaring and demoralizing the masses. Surely Obama, as the preserver of God’s creation, is scarier than any image of him cast to date.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Putting America Under a Magnifying Glass: Stephen King’s ‘Under the Dome’
Stephen King’s “Under the Dome,” a blockbuster novel that’s been turned into a TV series, premiers on CBS tonight at 10 p.m. Labeled as “science fiction” because of the mechanics of the dome itself, it should also be filed on the “Political Science” shelves because it magnifies the government corruption and societal malaise taking place all across America today.
Unlike many of today’s popular TV shows, “Under the Dome” has no sparkling vampires, hunky werewolves or sexy witches. There’s no magic, no sorcery and no “game.” You can’t turn off the show at the end of the hour and say to yourself, “Whew! That was scary. Thank goodness it’s not real!” because this monster IS real and it’s under every bed in every city and every town across America.
The story opens on the sleepy town of Chester’s Mill, Maine, an average little community much like tens of thousands of other communities all over the nation, probably very similar to the town you live in. There’s a grocery store, a post office, a popular diner and bar, even a privately-owned small-town newspaper, and like most small towns, everybody believes that “the government” has everything under control.
Suddenly, on a bright, beautiful October day, Chester’s Mill is blanketed by a huge impenetrable dome that drops from the sky. There is no entry — or exit — by land, water or air. No one gets in, no one gets out, and the people are on their own.
“Under the Dome” asks the question: What would happen in an average, idyllic little town if it were suddenly cut off from the world? What would happen to families? What would happen to trade? What would happen to society as a whole, and how would it affect individuals? And most important, what would happen to the monster under the bed if there were no outside forces available to keep it at bay?
The monster under the bed of course is the government. In this case, it’s “Big Jim” Rennie, a used car salesman and Chester’s Mill’s Second Selectman. Rennie is the most influential person in town and he chooses to be Second Selectman — instead of Mayor — because the position provides him the cover of “plausible deniability.”
You see, Big Jim has his finger in many pies. He’s put together a gang of greedy, corrupt local businessmen and they’re running the biggest meth lab in the country, socking away millions of dollars in offshore accounts. Included in the group are the local pharmacist, local business owners, and the local law enforcement officials.
Big Jim quietly controls who gets a bank loan, who gets arrested, who gets drugs, what local government agencies get new equipment, who gets screwed, and who gets run out of town on a rail. But in all of his nefarious activities he’s safe from prosecution because of his position of plausible deniability. He’s not the one in charge and he can always, always pass the buck.
Sound familiar? Only to those Americans who’ve been paying attention. To most, “Under the Dome” will just be another thrilling Stephen King novel transformed for television. But to informed Americans it’s a mirror image of what’s happening in America and in most towns across the nation…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Supreme Court, 7-1, Orders Lower Court to Reconsider Texas Affirmative Action Case
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that lower courts did not apply a sufficiently high level of scrutiny to the University of Texas’s use of race in admissions decisions, sending the case back to one of those lower courts to be reconsidered.
The decision will most likely have few immediate implications for affirmative action programs around the country, including in Texas. But it may represent the start of a new wave of challenges to the use of race in admissions decisions.
In a 7-to-1 decision, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion, the court ruled that the lower court did not use a legal standard known as strict scrutiny to assess the university’s program.
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The Single Most Important Step to Protect Yourself From Government Spying
Given that the NSA is tapping into your phone calls and spying on your Internet activities, you might have switched to a search engine which is more privacy-conscious.
You might have started using encrypted communications. After all, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowdenand the leading electronic privacy group — the Electronic Frontier Foundation — say that encryption helps to protect privacy. On the other hand, Tech Dirt points out that the NSA might consider you suspicious if you encrypt information, and so hold onto your data until they can decrypt it.
The above are all issues about which you are at least somewhat aware.
But there is a giant type of snooping which you probably don’t even know about. Specifically, ABC News reported in 2006:
Cell phone users, beware. The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when the cell phone is turned off. A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a “roving bug.”
Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Peer-Reviewed Study Finds CO2 Not Responsible for Recent Global Warming
by James M. Taylor, J.D.
Carbon dioxide emissions are not the primary factor driving recent global warming, a newly published peer-reviewed paper reports. To the extent humans are enhancing the natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are the primary driver, according to University of Waterloo (Ontario) physics professor Qing-Bin Lu.
CFC Decline Halting Warming
“Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Lu in a press release accompanying his study.
“My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline,” Lu predicted.
Strong Link with Cosmic Rays
“It was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer was depleted by the sun’s ultraviolet light-induced destruction of CFCs in the atmosphere,” Lu explained. “But in contrast, CRE [cosmic-ray-driven electron-reaction] theory says cosmic rays—energy particles originating in space—play the dominant role in breaking down ozone-depleting molecules and then ozone.”
[…]
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Belgium: Police Near Antwerp ‘Totally Ignored’ Grave Anti-Semitic Aggression
Only after Joods Actueel and the Israeli TV made the case public, the two victimes were questioned by police and a report was written, one month after the aggression.
by Yossi Lempkowicz
ANTWERP (EJP)—-Police in the Belgian town of Artselaar, near Antwerp, have ignored and minimized a grave anti-Semitic attack, said the lawyer of a Jewish women and her friend who last month were hospitalized after being brutally beaten by racist neighbors. In a conversation with Jewish magazine Joods Actueel in Antwerp, lawyer Mischael Modrikamen called for an investigation by a parliament committee monitoring police activities and urged the Interior Minister to react to this incident. Problems started after Ruth Sverdloff, a former Israeli tennis champion, and her Flemish girlfriend, Cindy Meul, took up residence in a building in Aartselaar beginning of May. The next day Ruth put a mezuzah (a parchment prayer tube affixed on the door of every Jewish home) to the door of the apartment. From then on, they were constantly harassed by neighbors yelling every night. “They banged on the walls and shouted the most horrific anti-Semitic slogans,” said Cindy Meul, like “stinking Jews”, “we do not want Jews in this building” or “Jews should f*** off.” Police were called but nothing changed. “I had to send my daughter to her grandparents because the child was too scared to stay here any longer,” said Ruth. The situation escalated after two neighbors invaded the apartment on May 24 and beated Cindy Meul, who at that time was alone at home, leaving her bleeding profusely. The unfortunate woman was taken to hospital with a broken nose and several bruises. She was treated for two weeks. According to Joods Actueel, the situation was really ‘‘hallucinating’’ when it appeared that the police in Artselaar decided to dismiss the case as “unimportant.” ‘‘When the ambulance took Cindy Meul at hospital, she saw a policewoman laughing and chatting with the aggressors,” Modrikamen told the Jewish magazine. When Ruth Sverdloff made her complaint to police, she was reportedly told by a police officer: “This is Flanders and you must speak Flemish,” because she spoke English.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Brussels Takes Holland to Court Over Foreign Student Travel Cards
The European Commission is taking the Netherlands to the EU’s Court of Justice for discriminating against students from other EU countries by not giving them discount travel cards.
Dutch students can get a special travel card entitling them to free transport at either weekends or during the week.
In a statement on Thursday, the commission said that under EU treaties ‘wherever EU students choose to study… they have the same rights to benefits as local students, unless EU law expressly excludes a benefit’.
Equal treatment
By failing to apply this principle of equal treatment to other students ‘all other EU citizens studying in the country, including Erasmus students, are therefore discriminated against’.
The Dutch government is planning to phase out the student travel card in its present form.
A spokesman for the education ministry told the Telegraaf the Netherlands is confident about the outcome of the court case. The Netherlands argues that the student travel card is included in the exceptions to equal treatment rules, he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Counterfeit Italian Food Drains 60 Billion Euros Yearly
Close the legal loopholes, national farmers association says
(ANSA) — Rome, June 24- Counterfeiting the ‘Made-in-Italy’ label loses the national food market 60 billion euros a year, national farmers association Coldiretti said Monday.
The statement comes as State Forestry Corps agents uncovered Modena and Grosseto-area companies were illegally peddling cheese and ham made in Germany and the Czech Republic as Italian.
“National and EU law must close existing legal loopholes in order to back up the excellent work of the police”, Coldiretti said. “Food labels must also say where the raw materials came from”.
“Three out of four Italian hams actually come from pigs that have been raised abroad. Half of all mozzarella cheeses and three out of four milk cartons come from foreign milk”, the statement continued. “But consumers don’t know this, because that information is not mandatory on the label”. Overall, 33% of Made in Italy food products with a total value of 51 billion euros sold on both the domestic and export markets is made with imported raw materials, according to a recent Coldiretti/Eurispes survey.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Bødskov: Why We Hid 100 Fires for You
“Police kept secret more than 100 arson for citizens in Alberton. And they did it for the sake of public safety”, says Minister for Justice Morten Bødskov in response to the Legal Affairs Committee.
The issue [concerns] the many fires over the past six months…hidden from the daily reports that citizens have access to.
“Overall”, explains the Minister in his reply, “the purpose of the day reports is to create confidence among citizens and to prevent and solve crimes through vigilant citizens”…
[…]
And it surprises spokesman Peter Skaarup (DF), who asked the Minister of Justice the question:
“I had thought that there was a misunderstanding in circulation. It [pays] exactly no attention to people when you do not tell the offenses taking place in their local area…
And it [is] also unclear how people can be vigilant and thus help resolve when they are not …informed about what to watch out for. There may very rarely be some …reasons to keep close but it’s not at all [true] in this case.”
Skaarup will take police practices up in the Legal Committee, the Minister of Justice Morten Bødskov “[will be] forced to actually deal with this.”
[…]
NOTE: This is a machine translation. Comments are worth translating also.
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Food Prices in the Netherlands Cheaper Than EU Average
Food in the Netherlands is 4% cheaper than the European average, according to new figures from EU statistics agency Eurostat.
Food prices in Denmark, the most expensive country, are twice as high as in Poland, which is the cheapest. Prices in the Netherlands are slightly cheaper than Slovenia and slightly more expensive than Spain, the Eurostat figures show.
Alcoholic drinks in the Netherlands are slightly cheaper than the EU average while cigarettes are 8% more expensive.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi Sentenced to Jail in Prostitution Case
MILAN — A Milan court on Monday convicted former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of paying for sex with an underage prostitute during infamous “bunga bunga” parties at his villa and then using his influence to try to cover it up.
Berlusconi, 76, was sentenced to seven years in prison and barred from public office for life — a sentence that could mean the end of his two-decade political career. However, there are two more levels of appeal before the sentence would become final, a process that can take months.
Berlusconi holds no official post in the current Italian government, but remains influential in the uneasy cross-party coalition that emerged after inconclusive February elections.
Both he and the Moroccan woman at the center of the scandal have denied ever having sex.
His lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, immediately announced an appeal and said the sentence was as expected as it was unjust.
“This is beyond reality,” Ghedini told reporters outside the courthouse. The sentence was even stiffer than the six-year prison term and lifetime ban on public office that prosecutors had originally requested.
“I’m calm because I’ve been saying for three years that this trial should never have taken place here,” Ghedini said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Muslims Anxious After Attack Leads to Miscarriage
Two years after France passed its so-called “anti-burqa law”, the nation’s Muslim community is rallying around a woman who was beaten by fascists so severely that she suffered a miscarriage. Her attackers tried to pull off her head covering, but it was only a commonplace hejab, and not a banned burqa or niquab. It follows another incident, in the same Parisian suburb, where French police resorted to using tear gas after a group of sympathizers tried to stop a burqa-wearing woman from getting arrested.
Some Muslims at her press conference sharply criticized the French media for using unsubstantiated anonymous sources which cast doubt on the victim’s story. They also asked why the victim herself had not interviewed by any French press. Press TV, however, interviewed the victim shortly after the attack. They also asked why the French coverage was skewed towards the sensational aspects of the crime, instead of relating them to the larger issues of repeated attacks and why they continue to take place.
French politicians have condemned the incident, but many say it’s just empty talk. One Muslim activist covered a baby doll with blood to illustrate the real-life consequences of the state’s repeated failure to protect Muslim women from ethnic violence…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Agricultural Minister Seeks Ban on GMO Cultivation
De Girolamo says will create decree that EU could contest
(ANSA) — Rome, June 24 — The Italian agriculture minister vowed create a ban in Italy on the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in an interview with newspaper Il Corriere della Sera published Monday.
“I will create a three-signature decree to ban the cultivation of GMOs in Italy,” said Italian Agriculture Minister Nunzia De Girolamo, indicating that she was seeking backing from the Italian health and environment ministers as well.
“I believe they think as I do, at least judging from their statements in recent days,” De Girolamo added, explaining that she had written to Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin and Environment Minister Andrea Orlando for their support.
De Girolamo admitted that Europe could contest the measure which, she said, would expose Italy to “a violation of (European) Community rules”. “But in relation to France, which blocked the cultivation of GMOs with a similar measure, Brussels has not yet launched an infraction procedure,” De Girolamo added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Erotic Comics Icon: ‘Valentina’ Creator, Shines on
Guido Crepax: Portrait of an Artist on show in Milan
(By Christopher Livesay) (ANSA) — Milan, June 21 — There’s more to the respected cartoonist Guido Crepax than his famous sultry heroine Valentina, according to the Royal Palace of Milan. Now through September 15, 10 of the most beautiful rooms inside the palace-turned-exhibition center are devoted to the full array of his work, from advertisements, and album artwork to book covers, journals and set designs. The exhibition, Guido Crepax: Portrait of an Artist, covers some 90 displays, with each room devoted to its own theme. One touches on his relationship with his hometown of Milan, for instance, the setting for many of Valentina’s adventures. Another focuses on ‘Valentina and the Others’, from his most iconic femme fatal to the lesser-known Bianca, Anita, Belinda, Giulietta and his last character before his death in 2003, Francesca. There is also a room devoted to his eye for the times, as revealed in his wardrobe choices in his comics that reflected contemporary fashion. As for the book-covers room, his noirish touch is in full stride on novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll & Hyde, as well as an array of works by Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka. The launch of the exhibit marks Valentina’s entree to e-books, with the first of her 100 titles now available on Kindle, soon to be followed by the other 99. “We had been thinking of a digital version of the Valentina saga for a long time,” said the cartoonist’s son Antonio Crepax, joined by his siblings Giacomo and Caterina at the opening this week. Crepax was born on July 15, 1933, in Milan. In 1959 he began designing the front cover of Tempo Medico monthly, the first magazine to publish his comic strips.
His big break came in 1965 when he joined legendary Italian comic book Linus, where he invented his trademark character almost by accident.
“He started with a strip about an art-critic investigator called Rembrandt whose girlfriend was Valentina,” according to the magazine’s founder Giovanni Gandini.
“A few months later we gave the heroine a strip of her own. She quickly became a big success for Crepax both in Italy and abroad. He fully deserved it”.
Valentina, famed for her distinctive bob hair style, slender figure and fleshy, sensuous lips, was inspired by American silent film actress Louise Brooks, who Crepax adored.
She is a sophisticated Milanese photographer who lives in a confusing world of dark forces and erotic fanatasies.
She is pursued by a variety of relentless villains, including Nazis, astronauts, pirates and leather-booted Cossacks, all of whom are determined to have sadomasochistic sex with her.
Given the nature of the subject matter, Valentina shocked many when she first appeared in Italy’s news stands.
Despite being an emancipated modern woman, she nevertheless angered feminists who objected to the way she was portrayed either as a damsel in distress or an object for men’s sexual gratification.
But Crepax insisted that, although his comics were undoubtedly daring, they never exploited graphic violence or sank to the level of cheap pornography.
“I have drawn whips, chains and bonds of every kind,” he once said. “But I hate violence, lack of respect towards oneself and to others, and all forms of excess.
“What interests me more than anything else is that the game never becomes obscene, that it is never trapped by vulgarity…
There is never one single drop of blood”.
Crepax is celebrated by critics for the way he broke both social barriers and artistic new ground.
He was continually experimenting with the layout of his stories and often used a bare minimum of dialogue, letting his graphics speak for themselves. In one Valentina story, the Magic Lantern, dialogue is left out completely.
The show in Milan was made possible by the City of Milan and the Crepax Archive.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Former Finmeccanica CEO Stands Trial for Graft
Busto Arsizio, 19 June (AKI) — Italian aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica’s former chief executive Giuseppe Orsi on Wednesday went on trial for corruption and fraud over a 560 million euro helicopter deal with India.
Bruno Spagnoli, CEO of Finmeccanica’s helicopter division AgustaWestland is also on trial. Neither he nor Orsi were present at the opening of the trial in the town of Busto Arsizio near Milan.
In Italy, defendants are not required to attend court, but Orsi’s lawyer said his client would be present for the next hearings.
The trial was adjourned until 11 July while the court considers a request from Spagnoli’s lawyer to call as witnesses India’s defence minister A.Kurien Anthony and former Indian airforce chief Shashindra Pal Tyagi.
Orsi, who stood down in February denies wrongdoing in the case in which it is alleged that he and Spagnoli paid Indian officials 51 million euros in bribes to win a 2010 contract to supply 12 Agusta-Westland choppers to the Indian government.
Spagnoli has not commented on the case, which industry analysts say has rocked Finmeccanica, tarnished its international image and risks worsening its relationship with the Indian government — an important customer.
Both Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland deny wrongdoing. They have not been charged in the case and have offered to fully cooperate with investigators.
India, which has opened its own probe into the graft allegations, has frozen delivery of the remaining nine AW101 helicopters.
After Orsi’s arrest in February, billionaire media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who was Italy’s prime minister at the time of the 2010 chopper deal, sparked a political row with remarks he made defending bribery.
“Bribes are a phenomenon that exists, you cannot deny the need for them when you negotiate with third world countries or in some regimes,” he controversially stated.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Judges Huddle for Berlusconi Sex-Trial Verdict
Prosecutors requested six-year prison term for ex-premier
(ANSA) — Milan, June 24 — A panel of Milan judges retired for consultations on Monday to decide on a verdict in a trial into allegations ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi paid for sex with an underage prostitute and abused his power to try to cover up the affair.
Prosecutors have requested the media magnate be handed a six-year prison term — five years for abuse of office and one for using an underage prostitute at alleged Bunga Bunga sex parties at his home.
They have also called for Berlusconi to be banned for life from holding public office.
Berlusconi and the woman he is accused of paying for sex before she was 18, a Moroccan former dancer known as ‘Ruby Heart-stealer’, have both denied ever having sex.
They say monies he gave her were gifts to help her set up a beauty salon, a dream she had had since escaping from an allegedly abusive Islam-enforcing father in Sicily.
Defence laywer Niccolo’ Ghedini, who is also a lawmaker for Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party, said the three-time premier should be acquitted because the alleged crime involving Ruby — whose real name is Karima El Mahroug — “does not exist”.
The abuse of office charge regards Berlusconi’s call to a police station on the night of May 27-28, 2010 after she was detained on an unrelated theft accusation.
He said he called to avoid an international incident because he was under the false impression that she was a relative of Egypt’s then president Hosni Mubarak.
Ghedini said his client did not ask police to accelerate procedures for Ruby’s release from police custody.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, claim that Berlusconi, who was premier in 2010, phoned from a European leaders’ meeting in Paris and pressured police in Milan to release her.
Since she was under eighteen, a judge ordered the police to direct her to a shelter for juvenile offenders.
Ruby was released to Nicole Minetti, a Lombardy regional councillor, ex-aspiring showgirl and Berlusconi’s former dental hygienist, who was accompanied by another woman that took part in the parties.
The young woman backs Berlusconi’s version of events and recently showed reporters a passport that was manipulated to make it look like she was a member of the Mubarak family.
In a related trial, Minetti and two other people are accused of providing prostitutes — including Ruby — for parties a Milan prosecutor described as “Bacchic orgies” at the home of the ex-premier. Berlusconi counters that they were ordinary dinner parties and argues the allegations have been invented by left-learning elements in the judiciary who are targeting him for political reasons as in several ongoing and previous trials. Last week Berlusconi failed in a bid to have the Constitutional Court strike down a four-year conviction for tax fraud at his media empire along with a five-year ban from public office.
Senior PdL officials have said the party’s lawmakers will quit if the sentence is upheld by the supreme Court of Cassation and becomes definitive.
The ex-premier is also appealing a one-year term for involvement in the publication of an illegally obtained wiretap and facing indictment for allegedly buying Senators to topple a centre-left government. Lead Milan prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told the sex trial last month that there was “no doubt” Ruby was a prostitute and had sex with Berlusconi.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Crowds Wait for Berlusconi Verdict Outside Milan Court
Protesters verbally clash with supporters of ex-premier
(ANSA) — Milan, June 24 — A crowd of protesters, journalists and onlookers gathered in front of the Milan courthouse on Monday while a panel of judges convened to decide on a verdict in a trial into allegations ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi paid for sex with an underage prostitute and abused his power to try to cover up the affair.
Dozens of TV crews, photographers and reporters from around the world began gathering in the early hours at the entrance to the courthouse.
Arguments also broke out between Berlusconi supporters and protesters against the ex-premier.
Two women carrying signs reading “Thank you Ilda Boccassini”, the prosecutor leading the case against Berlusconi, and “We are tired of being blackmailed by a repeat offender who refuses to resign,” verbally clashed with passersby who returned fire saying that the former premier was a victim being pushed out of politics.
“Berlusconi made a mistake, but he can’t be condemned for these things…this is being done to eliminate him from Italian politics,” the onlookers shouted.
Prosecutors have requested the media magnate be handed a six-year prison term.
Both Berlusconi and the Moroccan dancer he is accused of paying for sex before she was 18, Karima El Mahroug, known as Ruby Heart-stealer, have both denied ever having sex.
Berlusconi has repeatedly charged that judges who have ruled against him are part of a leftist plot to oust him from the political arena.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Leave School Milk: Health and Safety Up to US, Dutch Tell Brussels
The Netherlands has drawn up a list of subjects which it considers should be left to the Dutch rather than Brussels to decide.
The cabinet says a number of policy areas should be left to individual member states because ‘the time for an ever closer union in every possible arena is over’.
The new strategy is outlined in a briefing to parliament by foreign affairs minister Frans Timmermans. The aim is not to renegotiate treaties but to decide if the division of tasks between Europe and member states is as it should be.
‘The Netherlands hopes this initiative will stimulate a process which takes as its starting point: European policy where necessary, national policy where it can,’ the minister wrote.
School milk
For example, the EU should not interfere in ‘media diversity’, there should be no further harmonisation of EU social benefits, and health and safety regulations should only be the subject of a broad European outline, the briefing states.
In terms of flood risks, Europe should only be able to make agreements which affect cross-border rivers and there should be an end to EU programmes for school milk and school fruit.
The list has been compiled following discussions with all cabinet ministers and will now be debated in parliament.
Despite the wish for less interference from Brussels, European cooperation remains essential in a large number of policy areas, including the financial crisis, energy, immigration and defence, the document said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Magician Dynamo Stuns Onlookers as He Levitates From the Roof of a London Bus
He has stunned audiences with jaw-dropping stunts that defy logic and can make the most skeptical cynic believe in magic.
But in an daring new act, Bradford-born Illusionist Dynamo today took his impressive skills to even greater heights.
The 30-year-old entertainer took in London’s sights by levitating beside the roof of a 15ft double-decker bus.
Smiling for the cameras, Dynamo, whose real name is Steven Frayne, travelled alongside the two-storey bus with the palm of his hand placed on the roof.
He hung in mid-air with his other arm outstretched as he crossed Westminister Bridge. A police escort cleared the way for Frayne’s daring feat, ensuring there was no traffic around the bus.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Pension Changes Under Fire
The government’s plans to reduce the amount workers can save tax-free for their pensions are too expensive and raise too many questions, according to the government’s most senior advisory body.
The Council of State, which publishes recommendations on all new legislation, said in a statement it cannot give positive advice about the plans in their present form.
Parliament is due to debate the controversial changes later on Monday. The government wants to reduce the amount workers can put into corporate pension schemes from 2.25% of their gross salary to 1.85%.
Youngsters
Other research published on Monday shows one third of youngsters expect to still need a part-time job to make ends meet when they retire at the age of 72.
The Dutch pension association commissioned the research to try to assess what people consider the impact of the changes in corporate pensions will be.
Earlier this month, the financial services regulator AFM said junior finance minister Frans Weekers is much too optimistic about the impact of changes to the pensions system on young workers.
Continuous work
Weekers says people will still be able to build up a pension equivalent to 70% of their last-earned salary. However, in practice this will never happen, the AFM said in a briefing to parliament. For example. Weekers’ figures assume a worker turning 25 now will be in continuous work until he or she is 71.
But most people currently build up a pension over less than 30 years, the AFM said. This is because many people have a spell without work or in a part-time job and spend periods as self-employed.
According to the Financieele Dagblad, even if the lower house of parliament votes in favour of the changes during Monday’s debate, it is unlikely to get through the senate.
Prime minister Mark Rutte said last week that if people put less money into their pensions they would have up to €1,000 more a year to spend. That, in turn, would be good for the economy, Rutte is quoted as saying.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Regional Governor Asks Italian State Help Against Gmos
Friuli-Venezia Giulia opposes modified foods and seeds
(see related) (ANSA) — Udine, June 24 — The governor of the northeastern Italian region that borders Austria and Slovenia on Monday said she wrote to the Italian agricultural minister asking for state help to block cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which the regional government has little control over.
“I wrote a letter to Minister De Girolamo asking her to intervene in a situation in which (the regional government of) Friuli-Venezia Giulia is certainly in difficulty, not being able to intervene directly,” Friuli Venezia Giulia Governor Debora Serracchiani explained in the town of Palmanova.
The governor said she had read of the minister’s intention to create a decree for a country-wide ban the cultivation of GMOs despite awareness “ of the fact that there is an (EU) norm that appears to go in the opposing direction, or at least to create problems”.
Serracchiani expressed her support of the move, saying, “I believe that Italy should make its specificity be valued on all levels.
I believe that it should do this both on a regional level, where we have clearly set out our view in opposition to the use of GMOs, for the quality of our products, and a national level”.
Serrachiani concluded that although the agriculture sector “is a feather in our cap,” it needs to be watched as well as “helped and accompanied toward serious policies both regarding health and quality”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Report: Belgian Gay Couple Attacked After Installing Mezuzah
(JTA) — A Belgian woman was severely beaten after her Israeli spouse installed a mezuzah on the door frame of their home near Antwerp.
According to the couple’s lawyer, neighbors of Ruth Sverdloff from Israel attacked her life partner, Cindy Meul, on May 24 at the couple’s home in Aartselaar five miles south of Antwerp. She remained hospitalized for 15 days, according to the lawyer, Michael Modrikamen.
The violence on May 24 was preceded by weeks of anti-Semitic harassment on the part of several neighbors, whom Modrikamen did not name due to legal reasons. The harassment, he said, began directly after the women installed the mezuzah on May 1.
Meul told the Jewish Belgian paper Joods Actueel that since the mezuzahs were installed neighbors shouted anti-Semitic insults at her and her spouse, Sverdloff, on a daily basis, including “stinking Jews,” and “Jews out of this building.”
Two of the neighbors appeared at Meul’s doorstep May 24 when she was alone and said they had come “to finish what the Nazis started,” according to her testimony. The two neighbors barged into Meul’s home and proceeded to beat her inside.
Modrikamen complained of foot-dragging on the part of the police, whom he says refused to register a complaint against the neighbors until after the beating. He said one police officer refused to process a complaint by Sverdloff, a professional tennis player from Israel and a Belgian citizen, because she failed to file it in Flemish.
Joel Rubinfeld, the Brussels-born co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament, said: “The reports concerning this case are extremely disconcerting: It sounds like something from 1930s Germany. Especially disquieting is the authorities’ apparent inaction.”
Earlier this month prosecutors in Brussels decided not to file charges in a separate case from 2011, in which a 15-year-old Jewish girl who was identified in the Belgian media only as Oceane was attacked outside her school by five boys who called her a “dirty Jew” before hitting her repeatedly in the face. “A pattern of indifference emerges,” Rubinfeld said.
Claude Marinower, Antwerp’s alderman for education, who is Jewish, told JTA on Sunday he would study the details of Sverdloff’s case and make internal inquiries as necessary.
Report: Mezuzah installation spurs anti-Semitic harassment, assault
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em?
by Bruce Bawer
“Don’t be stupid, be a smarty —
Come and join the Nazi Party.”
— Mel Brooks, “Springtime for Hitler”
What to do? Late last Sunday night, a 23-year-old woman in Oscarshamn, a town of 17,000 people that’s about halfway between Mecca and Medina — sorry, I mean Stockholm and Malmö — was on her way home when she was stopped by three young men of foreign origin. “Are you Swedish?” they asked her. When she said yes, they hit her so hard that she fell to the ground. Then, looking down at her, lying there at their feet, they said: “Welcome to Sweden. It’s our country now, not yours.”…
And even as I write these words, the title of another chilling film comes to mind: the original 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you’ve never seen it, check it out. Like what’s happening in Europe today, it’s terrifying. Its story of a town whose residents, when they fall asleep, are replaced, one by one, by alien creatures that resemble them externally but are nothing like them on the inside might, indeed, have been intended as a parable of what’s going on in Europe right now. The difference is that if the film — unlike the reality of Islam in the West — gets to be too much for you, you can always switch off the DVD and watch a Seinfeld rerun.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Terrible Truth About Germany: Nobody Knows What They’re Doing
There’s an old joke about Europe that goes something like this: In Heaven, the police are British, the cooks are French, the lovers are Italian, the engineers are German and it’s all organised by the Swiss. In Hell, however, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, the cooks are British, the police are German and it’s all organised by the Italians. Of late, the Germans have been doing their best to challenge how others see them, but not in a good way. When it comes to major public sector building projects, Germany is proving anything but a model of teutonic efficiency…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Bomb Left Outside Walsall’s Aisha Mosque
A suspicious package found near a West Midlands mosque was a small home-made explosive device, police have said.
About 150 people were evacuated from homes around the mosque in Rutter Street, Walsall, after bomb disposal experts were called to the scene. The item was found on Friday evening but police were not called until it was taken inside by a member of the public on Saturday…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: EDL Leaders to Complete Woolwich Walk for Amelia-Mae
On Saturday 29th June Tommy Robinson and Kev Carroll will be completing a Walk of Honour from the 51 Pillars in Hyde Park via Buckingham Palace to Woolwich where flowers will be laid in memory of Lee Rigby.
At the same time they will be raising money for Amelia-Mae — a young girl fighting for her life against neuroblastoma.
To sponsor Tommy and Kev please visit their Just Giving Page. Or, to donate by phone, text SUCA50 plus the amount you wish to donate, to 70070.
| [Return to headlines] |
THE curse of Tutankhamen is said to have claimed more than 20 lives. By contrast, the curse of Neb-Senu amounts to little more than an occasional inconvenience for museum curators.
Over several days, the ten-inch Egyptian statuette gradually rotates to face the rear of the locked glass cabinet in which it is displayed, and has to be turned around again by hand.
Those who like tales of haunted pyramids and walking mummies may regard the mystery of the 4,000-year-old relic — an offering to Osiris, god of the dead — as the strangest thing to hit Egyptology in decades.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mosque Bomb: Anti-Terror Police Drafted in
After a home-made device explodes near a mosque in Walsall, counter-terrorism officers join the race hate investigation.
Counter-terrorism police have been drafted in to help with a hate crime investigation after a home-made bomb exploded near a mosque. Around 150 people were evacuated from their homes in the Caldmore area of Walsall on Saturday night while bomb disposal experts dealt with the small device. West Midlands Police said a loud bang heard by residents late on Friday “appeared to be consistent” with the device exploding. No one was injured and it caused minimal damage…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Why These Squalid Cover-Ups? Because No Politician Dare Admit the Terrible Truth About the NHS
So now, having had the inquiry into the inquiry that suppressed facts about the failure of the original inquiry, there is to be a further inquiry into the bullying of the woman who tried to blow the whistle on the uselessness — and worse — of the inquirers.
Really, the saga of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has progressed from tragedy through scandal to farce, and has now plumbed astonishing new depths of moral and political squalor.
For at the weekend, after the revelations of the cover-up over deaths from negligence at Morecambe Bay hospitals, we learned just what happened to Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director at the CQC, when she tried to bring to light failings at the regulator which were putting patients’ lives at risk.
And now we also know — just as had been suspected from the start — that the culture of bullying, intimidation and lies in the NHS reached to the very top.
When Ms Sheldon tried to air her concerns that the CQC wasn’t up to the task of uncovering bad practice in hospitals and care homes, her messages to chief executive Cynthia Bower and other board members were not answered, or were stonewalled.
In despair, Ms Sheldon decided to speak out at the public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire Trust, where 1,200 patients had died needlessly through the incompetence and negligence of the staff.
As a result, the CQC’s chairman, Dame Jo Williams, wrote to then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley asking him to sack her.
Worse still, Ms Sheldon discovered that Dame Jo had commissioned a psychiatric report on her without her permission and that she was described — wholly falsely — as a paranoid schizophrenic.
It was, of course, the old Soviet Union which was given to silencing its critics by certifying them as insane.
[…]
Now, 14 more hospitals are being investigated for unusually high death rates. And we know from example after sickening example that too many elderly patients are treated all too frequently with a callousness that defies belief.
While thousands of NHS staff are highly professional and dedicated, far too many have simply lost the ethic of caring.
And these failings are not being addressed; because what rules in the NHS, from top to bottom, is a culture of ruthless unaccountability in which the buck stops nowhere.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
First Polls of Albanian Elections Give Socialists the Lead
(AGI) Tirana — The results after counting 10 percent of the ballots in Albania show the Socialist opposition in the lead .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Giza: Islamist Mob Attacks Shia Village Killing Four
The lynching took place yesterday afternoon in the village of Abu Zawyat Muslam (Giza). Hassan Shehata, an important leader of the Shia community in Egypt, is among the dead. Apparently, the police stood idly by watching rather than intervening. The military says it is ready to step in the political fray to stop the country from slipping “into a dark tunnel of conflict,” the Defence minister said.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — A mob of 3,000 people lynched four Shia Muslims in Giza (Cairo) accused of proselytising. The incident occurred yesterday afternoon in the village of Abu Zawyat Muslam.
After thousands of people stormed houses and shops led by a Salafist sheikh, four people were taken out of their homes, including Hassan Shehata (an important leader in Egypt’s Shia community) and brought to the town’s centre where they were punched and kicked to death. In the scuffle, at least 30 people were injured.
In order to avoid a massacre, police evacuated the entire village, but some families were still held up in their homes.
The violent incident has alarmed the Armed Forces, which announced that they would intervene if violence broke out during anti- and pro-Morsi demonstrations on 30 June.
“For three weeks the Salafist sheikhs in the village have been attacking the Shias and accusing them of being infidels and spreading debauchery,” Hazem Barakat, a resident in Abu Zawyat Muslam, said. In his view, the attack had been planned for some time.
Barakat, who reported the incident live on Twitter, took photos and videos showing one of the Shias dragged into the street where he was beaten.
“I saw several Shias stabbed several times while they were being dragged in some sort of public lynching,” he added.
The police force came late according to eyewitnesses and did nothing to stop the attack and public lynching.
“They were just watching the public lynching like anyone else and did not stop anything,” said Barakat.
About 3 million Shias live in Egypt. With the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, who follow Wahabi Sunni Islam, incidents of violence and discrimination against the minority have increased.
Salafist Islamist TV host Khaled Abdullah yesterday claimed that Shias in Zawyat Abu Muslam were attacked because they had insulted the Prophet Mohamed.
Several Salafist and conservative Facebook pages bragged about the murder of the Shias, claiming that that was just the beginning of the end of Shiism in Egypt.
Ahead of 30 June, the deadline set for the delivery of the petition by ‘The Rebels’ movement to the Supreme Court, Egypt is bracing for a decisive week for its future. If the Court validates the signatures, Morsi will have to resign and Egyptians will go to early elections. However, Islamists are not likely to give up power after 40 years.
The situation is such that the Egyptian media have been issuing warnings about the possibility of civil war.
At least two thirds of the population is against the Islamist revival imposed by the Justice and Freedom Party with the support of the Salafist movement and the Islamist Jamaa al-Islamiya organisation, which has armed groups in areas of Upper Egypt ready to fight in case the president is ousted.
Yesterday, Defence Minister Abdel Fatah El Sissi said that whilst the military had stayed out the political fray, its patriotic and moral responsibility toward Egyptians would force it to intervene and stop Egypt from “slipping into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal fighting. [. . .] We will not remain silent whilst the country slips into a conflict that will be hard to control,” he said.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egyptians Strive to End Morsi Era: Muslim Brotherhood Frantic to Save the Caliph
Egyptians are united once again by the single yearning to rid the country of its corrupting force, Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, and, unlike two years ago, actualize the dream of democracy. There is a sense that something very significant is about to happen with both fear and hope intermingled.
Revolutionaries, vigilant since January 2011, are today boosted by a motivated Egyptian populace of young, old, urban, rural, religious, atheist, rich, and poor in a fevered pitch toward removing Morsi from office.
A zeal for human rights will lead them to seize this moment and risk everything in order to achieve liberty for Egypt beginning on the one-year anniversary of President Morsi’s term next Sunday, June 30th. In anticipation, the Arabic press is filled with frightening predictions. Islamic groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are restless, ready to defend their President and willing to incite bloodshed. Islamists threaten the peaceful Tamarud (rebellion) campaign aimed at Morsi’s resignation and point to a ready MB militia.
Once Morsi would step down, the Tamarud hopefuls (15 million petition signers) believe that the high constitutional courts alone will become the interim body to hold and cherish the promise of democracy for Egyptians in handling the nations operations (unlike SCAF upon Mubarak’s fall)…
Ordinary Egyptians, resentful of America’s interference in Egypt all along, “thank” the American administration for the anti-democratic MB-backed Morsi administration and cite America’s financial, military, and political support of the MB in its climb to power. Egyptians blame America for the “Arab Spring” media campaign as an invention to facilitate MB rise to power in Egypt as well as across the Middle East. They see this moment as no exception.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islamists’ Long Reach Over Egypt as Suspected Terrorist is Appointed Luxor Governor
President Morsi appoints 17 new provincial governors. Seven are from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. Protests break out in Luxor, Ismailia, Gharbiya and Menoufiya, Mubarak’s birthplace. ‘The Rebels’ pro-democracy movement “collects 13 million signatures to undercut Morsi’s legitimacy.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — The fear that his actions might lose him legitimacy among Egyptian has prompted President Mohamed Morsi to speed up the process of “Islamisation” of government institutions. On 16 June, , the Muslim Brotherhood leader signed a presidential decree appointing 17 new provincial governors.
According to media reports, at least seven of them are affiliated with Egypt’s main Islamist movement, including Ahmed El-Beili, the new governor of Gharbiya, and Ahmed Mohamed Shaarawi, his counterpart in Menoufiya, provinces in the Nile Delta region that are major constituencies for secular parties. Menoufiya is also the birthplace of former President Hosni Mubarak.
Public opinion has to worry however about the appointment of Adel Asaad El-Khayat as the new provincial governor of Luxor. He is a former leading member of the Gama’a al-Islamiya, a radical Islamist group implicated in a terrorist attack against the temple of Deir el-Bahri that claimed the lives of 58 foreign tourists.
Starting yesterday, hundreds of tour operators and employees in tourism, the province’s main industry, are protesting in front of the governorate headquarters to demand the removal of the new governor, waving banners that say: “We do not want terrorists.”
According to experts, Luxor is at risk. After the Muslim Brotherhood took power, the jewel of Egypt’s archaeological tourism has become a ghost town.
What is more, members at the Gama’a al-Islamiya have threatened more than once to blow up statues and temples from Egypt’s ancient civilisation, which they deem symbols of idolatry.
Demonstrations were also held in Ismailia against the new governor Hassan al-Hawy, as well as in Beheria, where Morsi appointed Osama Suleiman, the former secretary of the local branch of the Justice and Freedom party. According to some observers, this appointment is an attempt to provoke clashes in the city between pro-democracy activists and Islamists ahead of planned anti-Morsi protests scheduled for 30 June.
In Gharbiya, hundreds of people blocked the road that runs along the sea, chanting slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood.
Once upon a time, provincial governorships were “reserved” to members of the military or public security apparatus. With his latest move, Morsi now has placed 12 of the country’s 27 provincial governatorates in the hands of his allies. In September 2012, he had already appointed five Islamist militants to the post of provincial governors.
The Salafist al-Nour party, the main ally of the president’s Justice and Freedom party in the 2011 parliamentary elections, has criticised Morsi. For party secretary Shaaban Abdel Alim, the Muslim Brotherhood’s reshuffle will increase conflicts among the population.
Meanwhile, a petition to force the president to resign is gathering momentum. Organised by a group calling itself ‘The Rebels’, the movement has brought together many of the leading figures from the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.
According to its latest figures, some 13 million Egyptians have already signed the petition. The goal is to reach 15 million before 30 June, anniversary of the disputed elections two years ago.
In order to nip the petition in the bud, the Muslim Brotherhood launched an appeal to all its members, inviting them to take to the streets in the coming weeks.
Police remain on alert for possible clashes between opposing factions.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Officials Say Egyptian Sunni Muslims Kill 4 Shiites, Charging They Were Spreading Their Faith
CAIRO — Sunni Muslim villagers killed four Shiite men on Sunday, accusing them of trying to spread their version of Islam, according to Egyptian security officials. The four were beaten to death in Giza province, near the capital, Cairo, in one of the most serious sectarian incidents in Egypt in recent months…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Sectarian Killings Erupt in Egypt as Anti-Morsi Rallies Loom
Hours after Egypt’s army chief on Sunday warned that the military was ready to intervene if necessary in the face of dangerous divisions in Egyptian society, a mob led by Salafist Sunni sheikhs attacked a group of Shi’ites, killing four.
Eyewitnesses told the Al-Ahram newspaper that up to 3,000 people attacked Shi’ites’ houses in a village near Cairo, following weeks of incitement by Salafist preachers. Police put the size of the mob at several hundred.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trail of Benghazi Security Lapses Leads to State Department Senior Leadership, Records Show
The decision to keep U.S. personnel in Benghazi with substandard security was made at the highest levels of the State Department by officials who have so far escaped blame over the Sept. 11 attack, according to a review of recent congressional testimony and internal State Department memos by Fox News.
Nine months before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an internal memo that green-lighted the Benghazi operation.
The December 2011 memo from Jeffrey Feltman — then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) — pledged “to rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures.” However, no substantial improvements were made, according to congressional testimony to the House oversight committee from Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Soldiers Prepare to Deploy Against Egyptian Citizens
Instead of deployment to the U.S. border, American soldiers will be sent to Egypt to protect the border there with Israel. The soldiers will perform “riot control” duties in response to Egyptian citizens upset over the military dictatorship ruling their country.
Following the engineered color revolution overthrowing the regime of former longtime client Hosni Mubarak, the United States bestowed the installed Muslim Brotherhood government with $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer money.
The blue blood skull and bones elitist now acting as the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, said the “aid” should be handed over to president Mohamed Mursi and the thugs in the Egyptian military despite the lack of “more inclusive democratic process and the strengthening of key democratic institutions” in the country, Reuters reported earlier this month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Troops Will Go to Egypt to Train Police
(KCEN) — A group of soldiers are preparing for their deployment to Egypt with riot training on post.
They’re planning ahead for violent protests or riots and the possibility of protecting the country’s border with Israel.
Soldiers encountered Molotov cocktails and other dangerous items in the training.
Lt. Matthew Wilkinson says, “Just what I’ve seen over the course of the past week than we were a week ago.”
PFC Perez Alexander says, “We want to be as professional as possible… Know what we’re doing.”
They wrap up training before preparing to ship out in the near future.
[NOTE: A military blog says September]
| [Return to headlines] |
Gaza: Israeli Air Raid After Rocket Attack
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, JUNE 24 — Israel carried out an air raid against a number of targets in the Gaza Strip after at least six rockets were fired from that area into southern Israel last night. No victims have been reported so far.
After the flare-up, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom border crossing with the Gaza Strip. An Israeli military spokesman said targets hit in Gaza were two weapons storage sites and a rocket-launching facility.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
In Upside-Down Gaza, Rockets Fired at Israel Actually Aim to Hurt Hamas
The latest barrage, launched by Islamic Jihad, is largely due to internal Palestinian strife — not a desire to inflame tensions with Israel
Celebrations of Mohammed Assaf’s victory on “Arab Idol” lasted in the Gaza Strip for just under 24 hours. A volley of rockets fired from Gaza Sunday night and Monday morning at several targets in Israel marked a return to routine in the Strip. The Israeli response wasn’t long in coming: bombs on installations associated with Islamic Jihad, which was apparently responsible for the rocket fire, and on the tunnels in Rafah, and a closing of the border crossings between Israel and Gaza.
But this time, after 40 days of total quiet, the motivation for launching the missiles is not related to Israel. The various Palestinian groups, including Islamic Jihad, didn’t even attempt to claim that the “Zionist enemy” was responsible for the current deterioration. The shooting is rooted in an internal Palestinian incident whose exact circumstances are unclear. What we do know is that a senior Islamic Jihad official was shot to death, apparently by Hamas policemen. The Jihad decided to “avenge” his death by attacking a very sensitive spot for Hamas these days — the ceasefire with Israel.
It’s no secret that Hamas is investing tremendous resources in maintaining the ceasefire with Israel. Last week, The Times of Israel reported that the rulers of the Gaza Strip had established a force of 600 soldiers working around the clock to prevent rocket attacks. Hamas’s desire to preserve the quiet with Israel has even increased recently, after the Egyptian Army launched an operation in an attempt to completely stop the smuggling of goods and people to and from Gaza through the tunnels in advance of the June 30 protests planned across Egypt. The Egyptian Army’s primary concern is that terrorist cells operating in Gaza will pass through the tunnels into Egypt and take advantage of the many protest rallies expected next Sunday against President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in order to carry out terror attacks.
Hence Islamic Jihad’s decision to “punish” Hamas by firing at Israel, sending a message to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s government that there’s a steep price to pay for mistakes like killing a senior official of the organization. The closure of the border crossing to Israel (which was to be expected after the rocket fire) at such a problematic time — when the tunnels are almost completely inoperative, when the shortage of various fuels is worsening (once again hundreds of cars are lined up at the entrance to gas stations) — will only increase the public’s anger toward the Hamas authorities.
The incident on Saturday which brought about the current decline between Islamic Jihad and Hamas was unplanned, despite Islamic Jihad’s claims to the contrary. Hamas police raided the Shuja’iyya home of a drug dealer. Raed Jundiya, an active member of the Islamic Jihad, apparently tried to prevent the arrest, because he knew the dealer. As to what happened after that, the accounts diverge. The Hamas interior ministry said the bullet that killed Jundiya was fired from his own gun, while Islamic Jihad insists that Hamas policemen shot Jundiya to death after he tried to prevent the arrest. Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, announced the formation of a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death.
On Sunday, however, the situation got even worse. During Jundiya’s funeral, with senior Islamic Jihad officials on hand, a Hamas military vehicle hit the commander of the Islamic Jihad’s military wing, Mohammad al-Harazin. Following the incident, Jihad published a message in which it claimed that Jundiya was murdered by “traitors” and announced the cessation of all contact with Hamas.
Palestinian sources in Gaza assess that Sunday night’s escalation was an isolated incident and said they do not expect Islamic Jihad to continue firing rockets at Israel. They also rejected the possibility that the rocket fire was connected to a report published Sunday by Palestinian news agencies to the effect that Israeli forces abducted Hamas activist Mohammad Abu Rida two days ago in the Sinai desert. The actual report seems fantastical, but sources said that it would not have been the first time that Israel arrested Hamas members in the Sinai. They claimed that a year ago, another Hamas activist, Tahir Atwa, was arrested by Israeli intelligence while in the Sinai desert. He was eventually transferred to Israel and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
| — Hat tip: MC | [Return to headlines] |
Israel’s Cabinet Approves Offshore Gas Exports Deal Potentially Worth $60 Billion
Changes the balance in the Middle East?
by Jerry Gordon
The Netanyahu Cabinet on Sunday, June 23, 2013 approved a plan to export 40% of offshore gas production being developed by a US -Israeli consortium in the Tamar and Leviathan fields. That will enhance the Jewish State energy independence that we predicted in a December 2011 New English Review article, “Will Israel Win the Energy Prize in the Levant basin”. According to the Financial Times (FT) report, issued just prior to today’s Israeli cabinet announcement that could mean $60 billion in revenues funding Israel’s sovereign wealth fund approved in March 2012. This should enhance the Jewish nation’s future economic growth, national security and energy independence. The FT noted who would benefit from today’s Israeli cabinet action:…
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
The Netherlands Tried to Broker Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians
The Netherlands spent at least a year trying to broker a breakthrough in the deadlocked peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the NRC reports on Monday, quoting confidential sources.
Last winter an Israeli and Palestinian negotiator were in the Netherlands for talks, the paper says. Efforts were also made to get Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas round the negotiating table.
The secret operation had the codename ‘Bluegreen’ after the colour of the two flags.
The Dutch initiative, centred on VVD parliamentarian Han ten Broeke, began after the peace talks broke down in Amman in January 2012, the paper said.
The Netherlands stopped its efforts in March when US president Barak Obama launched his new peace initiative.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
12 Lebanese Troops Killed in Clashes With Sunni Extremists
(AGI) Beirut — Twelve Lebanese soldiers have been killed in the last 24 hours in clashes with Sunni extremists in southern Lebanon .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
French President Urges Syrian Rebels to Expel Islamists
(AGI) — Doha, Jun 23 — France’s President Francois Hollande has appealed to Syrian rebels to take over areas under the control of extremist Islamic groups and expel them. Hollande was speaking to reporters in Doha and added that if extremist groups take advantage of the chaos, President Bashar al-Assad will use this as an excuse to continue massacring Syrians.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar’s Emir to Transfer Power to Son
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is expected to meet members of the royal family today, with Qatari officials and diplomats saying a transfer of power to his son, Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is imminent.
The sheikh “will meet Monday with the royal family and advisors,” the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television news channel reported, stressing that the meeting would take place in the context of a possible succession. Diplomats and Qatari officials agree that the emir is preparing to hand over control of the oil-rich emirate, which plays a key role in the Arab world. The 61-year-old emir came to power in 1995 in a palace coup against his father . He has since helped build Qatar into a strong voice in the Gulf and on the world stage. Sheikh Tamim, born in 1980, is the second son of the emir and his second wife Sheikha Mozah. The crown prince is joint commander of the armed forces and head of the country’s Olympic committee…
[JP note: He may also be head of the Emirate on the Thames.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Qatar: Emir Ready to Leave Power
Today family meeting. Heir is Prince Tamim
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JUNE 24 — The Emir of Qatar is ready to hand over power to his son, al Jazeera reported on Monday citing well informed sources. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on Monday will reportedly meet the ruling family and could step down and then hand over power to crown prince and heir Sheikh Tamim. According to European and Arab diplomatic sources cited by The Guardian, the emir is handing over power to leave room to the new generation of leaders.
Such a move is unusual in Gulf monarchies where rulers remain in power until their death.
According to sources cited by the British daily, the 33-year-old prince heir will become premier before succeeding his father.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: Idlib: Monk Killed at Franciscan Convent in Al-Ghassaniyah
Fr Fran?ois Mourad, a Syrian hermit, was a guest at the Franciscan monastery of St Anthony of Padua in Al-Ghassaniyah. What happened is still unclear. Some sources say a stray bullet killed him; others claim Islamist insurgents shot him as they plundered and destroyed the religious building.
Damascus (AsiaNews) — The Custody of the Holy Land announced the death of Fr Fran?ois Mourad, a Syrian monk, and the assault of the Franciscan monastery of St Anthony of Padua in Ghassanieh, a predominantly Christian village in the district of Jisr al-Shughur in the province of Idlib, near the border with Turkey.
Fr Halim Noujaim, a Franciscan priest, said in a letter to the Custodian that Frs Hanna and Firas, both Franciscan religious from Kanaieh (Latakia), went to Al-Ghassaniyah to collect Fr Fran?ois’s body, confirming that the convent had been partially destroyed.
In his letter, Fr Halim issued an appeal to the West, underlying the dangers of helping armed anti-Assad rebels, who support religious extremists responsible for several attacks against the Christian minority.
At present, what happened is still unclear. In one version of events, the monk, who had been a guest at the convent for the past few months, was killed by a stray bullet that had come through a window.
Other sources claim that the clergyman was murdered during an assault by Islamist insurgents. After they stormed the building, the latter shot the priest, and took everything of any value in the convent.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Ankara Mayor Accuses BBC Turkish Journalist of Being an ‘Agent’ In Twitter Campaign
Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek, who has been in his post since 1994, is a prolific Twitter user. A number of his tweets had also previously sparked controversy.
Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has launched a Twitter campaign against the experienced BBC Turkish service journalist Selin Girit, over her reporting via the social media network of a forum held among protesters at a small park in Istanbul.
Gökçek, one of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) most controversial figures who has been in his post for almost 20 years, accused Girit of being an “English agent” and of engaging in “treachery to her nation.” He urged his followers to condemn her by sending tweets with the hashtag #ingiltereadinaajanlikyapmaselingirit (“Don’t be an agent on behalf of England Selin Girit”).
“I want that everyone who loves their country to make the hashtag a trending topic. That way, our reaction will be heard abroad,” the Ankara mayor said via Twitter.
Girit had earlier tweeted from Yogurtçu Park in Istanbul’s Moda neighborhood, where people had gathered after the police’s tough evacuation of Taksim Gezi Park last weekend. “A proposition from the forum at Yogurtçu Park: Let’s not be the standing man, but the man that stops. Let’s stop the economy. Don’t consume for six month. They will listen,” she had tweeted, prompting Gökçek to lash out at her with conspiracy theories.
“They want to destroy our economy with an agent rented in England, inside Turkey. They are dreaming of Turkey becoming ‘Europe’s sick man’ again. This is the concrete evidence,” he wrote. He also repeatedly expressed his satisfaction as his hashtag moved upward through Turkey’s most popular trending topics.
Massive indignation and counter-campaign
However, Gökçek’s social media campaign caused huge indignation, and support poured in for the BBC journalist in response, with her supporters using the hashtag #selingiritgazetecidir (“Selin Girit is a journalist”) and #provokatörmelihgökçek (“Melih Gökçek is a provocator”).
The counter-campaign evidently infuriated Gökçek, as he later tweeted that the latter hashtag, which quickly rose to become the number one trending topic in Turkey, was top of the list “on the BBC’s orders.” He then vowed to sue every user who tweeted with the hashtag, a threat that failed to discourage users from continuing to use it. Gökçek also shared his satisfaction as website news portals covered the affair, sharing all published reports on his account.
Selin Girit has only reacted by tweeting herself that she had been targeted by the Ankara mayor for reporting, and issued an appeal for freedom of the press.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Has No Reason to Arrest Edward Snowden
(AGI) Moscow — Russian authorities have no grounds on which to arrest and extradite Edward Snowden to the United States .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Nepal — Pakistan: Nanga Parbat: Taliban Kill 11 Climbers. Sherpas Livelihoods at Risk
The Islamic commando looted and then killed the group. It is the first attack ever against a group of climbers. Three victims were Chinese and Beijing demands protection for its citizens living in Pakistan. The Sherpas (guides) of Nepal: “Our lives and our work at risk.”
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — In an unprecedented attack, last night a commando of Taliban opened fire and killed 11 foreign climbers, engaged in climbing the Nanga Parbat, the second highest mountain in Pakistan. Among the victims there is also a Nepalese Sherpa named Sona Sherpa, a native of the district of Solukhumbu. Those who lost their lives include five Ukrainians, three Chinese, a Sino-American and a Latvian. Other climbers and eight Nepalese Sherpas were injured in the attack.
According to preliminary reports, the commandos captured the climbers and asked them to hand over all the money they had. Once they received the money, the rebels opened fire and killed the group. The survivors were saved because they not seen by the Taliban.
The reactions from the countries involved has been immediate. China has condemned the attack and called on the Pakistani authorities to find the culprits and protect Chinese nationals living in the country. Nisar Ali Khan, Minister of the Interior of the newly elected Pakistani government, called the attack “an attack not only against foreign citizens, but against Pakistan, who lives in a state of war.
The expedition was organized by Seven Summits Treks, a travel and trekking agency based in Kathmandu. Nepal feels most affected by this attack. “What happened on Nanga Parbat — Tali Sherpa, a famous Nepalese guide, says- puts our lives and our livelihood at risk. Hundreds of Nepalese Sherpas will have to rethink their work, now that Islamic militants have decided to attack us.”
That profession of Sherpa is one of the most popular crafts in Nepal and thousands of families depend on excursions like that of Nanga Parbat. 8,126 meters high, the mountain is the second highest peak in Pakistan and the ninth in the world. It is located in the Himalayas, which runs along the border between Pakistan, China and Nepal.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Not Just Singapore: Environmental Pollution Reaches Alarming Levels in Asia
Vast areas of the continent are suffocated by smog. In the city-state it has exceeded the threshold of “potential threat” to health. And they are running out of masks. Women, children and the elderly at risk. In 2010, about 3.2 million premature deaths in the world, of which 2.5 million people in China and India.
Singapore (AsiaNews / Agencies) — For the third consecutive day the rate of detection of pollutants (Psi) in Singapore remains around the critical threshold of 400, constituting a “potential threat” to the lives of sick and elderly. Jakarta has deployed helicopters and air-tanks in an attempt to put out the fires that are devastating large areas of forests of Sumatra. Compounding problems the gradual reduction in emergency masks, stocks of which are now running out and supplies slow in arriving. Initial investigation shows that palm oil companies from Indonesia, Malaysian and Singapore are behind the fires.
The smoke and smog alarm in Southeast Asia confirms once more the severity of air pollution, a continent-wide problem that affects hundreds of millions of people in Asian cities. Those who suffer most are children, the elderly and pregnant women, as well as people with heart disease and respiratory diseases.
The governments in Jakarta and Singapore have launched a series of talks to resolve the emergency. The meetings are focusing on how to fight the fires that continue to devastate entire portions of the forest on the island of Sumatra, causing devastating repercussions in the city-state and in neighboring Malaysia. ..
The environmental crisis in Singapore is just the latest in a long series of critical problems that have characterized the continent of Asia in recent months. In January, Beijing experienced a slump in air quality, an increase equal to 20% of hospital admissions for respiratory crisis. In August 2012 Hong Kong reached the highest levels ever for as environmental pollutants. “The levels [of pollution] in some areas of China, India and other parts of Asia are astronomically high,” points out Bob O’Keefe at Health Effects Institute (HEI). He adds that today it is a clear “threat” that “has been underestimated for too long.”
According to studies by the Global Burden of Disease, in 2010 there were at least 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide caused by smog and air particles. In China and India alone, “there are about 2.5 million victims.” Experts warn that the number of deaths in China grew by a third over the last 20 years and is growing in parallel on a global scale, the number of underweight babies, a factor also linked to environmental problems.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan Taliban Claims Responsibility for Killing Nine Foreign Tourists
Nine foreign tourists and their local guide were murdered when Taliban gunmen dressed as policemen forced their way into a climbing camp during the night in a remote northern region of Pakistan.
Officials said five Ukrainians, three Chinese and one Russian were killed in the attack on Saturday night. A dual American-Chinese citizen was among the dead. Another Chinese tourist survived the raid at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world at 26,660ft, in an area renowned for its breathtaking Himalayan scenery and world-class trekking.
Both the Pakistan Taliban, an umbrella militant group, and a sectarian Sunni group linked to the Taliban both claimed responsibility. Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, said the movement had set up a cell to target foreigners…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
‘Persecuted and Without Rights’, Tibetan Refugees in Nepal Appeal
On World Refugee Day, none of Nepal’s 22,000 Tibetan refugees took to the streets. Targeted by police, they have “no rights”. Thus, “we decided not to demonstrate,” a Christian Tibetan said.
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — Yesterday, World Refugee Day, thousands of Tibetans who had fled to Nepal stayed at home fearing government repression. “We are not free to take part in the demonstrations,” said Tsering Dolma. “When police realise we come from Tibet, they move to arrest us.” Concentrated in the capital, Nepal’s 22,000 Tibetan refugees complain about the authorities’ repressive attitude.
AsiaNews went to meet the small Tibetan community of Bauddha. Lama Dawa, a Tibetan Christian, told us that “Refugees from other countries, such as Bhutan, are free to work and have normal rights. We instead cannot even profess our faith; we are scared. This is why we decided not to manifest.”
China’s growing influence in Nepal is at the root of the government’s harshness against Tibetan refugees. Since 2006, the year when the monarchy gave up power, Maoists have been on the ascendancy, leading Nepali foreign policy to undergone a dramatic shift towards Beijing.
On 18 April, during a meeting with Chinese President XI Jinping, Nepali leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal praised the alliance with the People’s Republic, saying that “national stability and integrity of both countries will not be compromised in the name of religious freedom and human rights.”
Nepal is home to about 70,000 refugees, mostly from Bhutan, Tibet, Somalia and Nigeria.
Nepali Home Ministry spokesman Shankar Koirala said his country does not deny refugees’ rights but is against using Nepali territory against other nations.
“We have good political and diplomatic relations with China,” he said. “Tibetans are free to demonstrate but not against Beijing. This is why we monitor them.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
US-Taliban Talks in Doha: The West’s Capitulation in Afghanistan
After 12 years of war and thousands of deaths on both sides, the US and the Taliban are finally ready to talk peace. While the West hopes to smooth its withdrawal, human rights organizations forecast the return of dark times for women and minorities.
It’s possible that Omar might be back in power before long. The negotiations aim to form a new Afghan government with the Taliban as part of it. In return for official political recognition, Karzai and US President Barack Obama demand that the Taliban profess allegiance to the Afghan constitution of 2004. But the Islamists only recognize a 1,300-year-old document as their constitution: the Koran. This, of course, makes it difficult to find a compromise.
Pakistan will play a decisive role in determining whether the talks bear fruit. The government and the military in Islamabad, and particularly the ISI military intelligence service, continue to exert a major degree of influence on the Taliban. Pakistan has repeatedly declared that its “legitimate interests in Afghanistan” must continue to be protected even after the ISAF troops withdraw. As a result, the talks in Doha will only lead to a breakthrough if Afghanistan’s powerful neighbor is satisfied with its outcome.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Senior military figures have warned David Cameron not to cut the foreign aid budget — even as it emerged British taxpayers will fund a £14million new jail in Somalia.
Nine prominent figures including former chiefs of the defence staff Sir Mike Richards and Lord Stirrup say international aid is ‘crucial to the UK’s national interests.’
They wrote in an open letter that aid addresses the ‘root causes of conflict’ and helps to spread effective government in failing states — to stop them becoming lawless.
[Comment: At last a bit of common sense it costs £40 grand a year to keep a prisoner in jail x 400 Somali criminals currently in UK jails = 16 million. Spend 14 million on a new jail in the long run big savings for tax payers and it gets rid of the scum back to somalia, — mmickk , BLACKBURN, United Kingdom, ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Malawi: Muslims Asked to Propagate Their Religion With Open Arms
A strong call has gone out to Muslims in Malawi to handsomely contribute towards efforts that aims to uplift the status of Islam in the country. The call from Director of a local Islamic NGO, Al-Baraka Charity Trust, Ibrahim Milanzi, was made on Sunday during the prize presentation ceremony to winners of Quran Recitation Competition held at Iqra Propagation Centre in the commercial capital Blantyre…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Argentinean President Kirchner Forges Closer Ties With Iran at the Expense of Justice
by Nancy Menges and Luis Fleischman:
Recently, the Argentinean federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who is in charge of the investigation of the 1994 terrorist attack against the Jewish headquarters in Buenos Aires (AMIA), issued a comprehensive 500 page report with some startling allegations. The report alleged that Iran’s terrorist networks have a presence in several countries in South America and that Iran plans to establish intelligence bases in every country in order to carry out, promote, and sponsor terrorists.
These allegations are based on a number of reports including factual and legal documentation coming from Europe, Latin America and the United States.
Prosecutor Nisman provided details of how the Iranian terrorist machine operates and also pointed out that the Iranians have a presence in countries such as Brazil, the United States, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Trinidad & Tobago and Surinam…
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Brazil’s Woes Are the Wages of Socialism
Brazil’s rulers have been taken aback by the millions of countrymen surging up against them, venting their fury. What we have here is a fresh example of why socialism fails.
Up until now, a million Brazilians in the streets usually had something to do with a soccer match or, perhaps, a samba festival.
This time, it wasn’t about festivities.
What started as a protest against a 9-cent fare hike on public transport fireballed into a gigantic public protest against political corruption, high taxes and lousy public services — and the government itself.
Protesters stormed state legislatures and set at least one on fire. The capital was stormed as well, and President Dilma Rousseff canceled her trip to Japan to call an emergency meeting with her Cabinet.
The New York Times reported that Brazil’s leftist ruling Workers Party — full of 1960s-era guerrillas, community organizers, academics and radicals — “finds itself perplexed by the revolt in its midst.”
After all, hadn’t they been good socialists, shoveling pork to the poor, protecting local industries from foreign “predators,” employing bureaucrats and taxing “the rich”? Yes, they did, and the result is a nation awash in corruption, angry at special interests, poorer from protectionism and beset by high taxes.
Now the people are marching. And the Workers’ Party (PT) philosophy of rule by special interests is at least one reason why.
Brazil’s rulers have been widely praised by everyone from Bill Clinton to Hugo Chavez for their handouts to the poor, in the name of “social justice.” But they have done very little to create opportunity to enable poor people to get off handouts and earn a living.
What’s more, they’ve forced others to pay for it and live with its bad effects, leaving all sides pretty angry.
“The policy of (former President) Lula (da Silva) and Dilma (both PT) focused on income transfer through social programs, but did not include the middle class, so they have taken to the streets,” e-mailed Henrique Sartori, a free-market professor at the Universidade Federal de Grande Dourados in Dourados, Brazil. “All of this is happening as economic policy does not cover most Brazilians, while inflation returns, and high taxes and state intervention in the economy increase.”
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(NaturalNews) As reported by the Associated Press, Edward Snowden managed to evade U.S. authorities and fly to Ecuador where he is apparently being granted political asylum.
As AP reports:
“The former National Security Agency contractor and CIA technician fled Hong Kong and arrived at the Moscow airport, where he planned to spend the night before boarding an Aeroflot flight to Cuba. Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government received an asylum request from Snowden, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said it would help him.”
What AP doesn’t know — and neither do most Americans — is that the U.S. government has a well-established track record of running covert kidnapping and abduction operations in Ecuador to capture anyone they want.
And the reason I know this is because I am the journalist who used to live in Ecuador and who broke the bombshell story of herbalist Greg Caton being kidnapped by U.S. authorities in Ecuador in 2009. He was then stuffed onto a U.S.-bound jet at the airport in Guayaquil and flown to Miami. That full story is published here on Natural News: http://www.naturalnews.com/027750_Greg_Caton_FDA.html
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Amnesty: Danger, Danger, Calling All Tea Parties
Brother and sister patriots, this is it. This is the big one. If we lose this battle, it is game over unless God intervenes. America as founded will be over. Democrats and socialist/progressives will rule forever. Therefore, this is the Tea Party issue of our times. I am talking about the passing of the Amnesty Bill.
The reason and urgency to pass amnesty is rooted in a big fat lie. Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media have convinced Republicans that Hispanics hate them. The Democrat’s and MSM’s tag-team lie is if Republicans do not pass amnesty, the Republican Party is over. Folks, the truth is the polar opposite. Amnesty for over 12 million illegals will usher in the end of the Republican Party, create mega-millions of new democrat voters and secure a new socialist/progressive America.
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Also, I was shocked upon discovering this tidbit of U.S. History. Republicans owned California before the granting of amnesty in 1986. Today, California is owned by the Democrats and far leftists. So, why would the Republicans expect a different result this time around?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Border Security Proposal Gives Napolitano New Waivers
Analysts looking through the new border security deal in the Senate say it includes waivers that would let Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refuse to build any new fencing or install the new technology the plan lays out in close detail.
The senators who struck the deal late this week said they were trying to take the decision-making away from the Obama administration and ensure that new fencing and technology would be deployed, but the latest version gives Ms. Napolitano or her successors the ability to waive or ignore those requirements.
In the case of the fence, the legislation reads that “nothing in this subsection shall require the secretary to install fencing, or infrastructure that directly results from the installation of such fencing, in a particular location along the southern border, if the secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain effective control over the southern border at such location.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Roma and U.S. Illegal Immigration
I have Latino friends who fancy themselves conservatives, even Republicans. But when it comes to illegal immigration, they are rabid Democrats. Any curtailing of illegal crossing of our porous borders, breaking our laws in the process, or discussion of voter ID becomes racism, discrimination, profiling, and sheer hatred.
The Latino lobby is quite powerful not just among our elected officials in Washington who want to cling to power by pandering to higher donors and loud non-English speaking groups, but also in the boardrooms of large and small corporations alike who want cheap labor and no employee healthcare costs to comply with Obamacare. Democrats cannot wait to have 11 million more low information voters without English skills who will vote Democrat in perpetuity. Who can resist Santa Claus?
The pressure is on to pass amnesty immediately for 11 million illegal aliens, “undocumented Americans in the shadows” at Seven Elevens, gas stations, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, the welfare office, the Social Security, WIC, EBT offices, ER, shopping at the mall, in church, and wherever else there is a way to milk the system and get free stuff from the “stupidly-generous gringos.”
The Multiculturalism agenda has warped the minds of many indoctrinated Americans into believing the talking points of the progressive lobby. They are now willing to destroy their economy, their language, their borders, their culture, and drive the last nail in the coffin of what used to be a country of freedom where immigrants fled to for freedom from oppression, equal opportunity to succeed, build, and create, not to become burdens to the welfare system.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Senate Immigration Bill Collects Votes to Advance
The bipartisan push to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws took a major step forward Monday evening when the Senate endorsed a proposal to substantially bolster security along the nation’s southern borders as part of measure that would provide a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country.
The 67-to-27 vote prevented any filibuster of the plan to devote roughly $30 billion to border enforcement measures, including nearly doubling the Border Patrol force to 40,000 agents from 21,000, and completing 700 miles of fencing. Opponents of the enhanced security questioned whether the steps would ever be taken and said that the legislation should require that the border be secure before undocumented immigrants could begin to seek legal status.
But the solid bipartisan support for the border security proposal crafted by two Republican senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, suggested that advocates of the overhaul had the votes needed to clear remaining procedural hurdles and pass the legislation, perhaps before legislators return home during the July 4 recess.
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Trapped in Apulia: Europe’s Deepening Refugee Crisis
A young Liberian refugee arrives in Italy, where he is left to fend for himself and winds up homeless in a filthy slum. When he flees to Germany, the government there invokes EU asylum law and sends him back. It is a cycle of degradation faced by thousands of African refugees living in Europe today.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
WaPo’s ‘Fact Check’ Falsely Slams Sen. Cruz (And Me) On Immigration
In a post awarding Sen. Ted Cruz three Pinocchios, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler broke the first two rules of fact checking:
1. Think before you call someone a liar.
2. Don’t level an attack on someone’s veracity because you doubt his sincerity or question his motives.
Here is the tweet from Cruz that led Kessler to go on the attack:
“If Gang of 8 bill passes, those newly legalized are exempted from ObamaCare. HUGE incentive for employers to hire them instead of Americans.”
Kessler, in his first published draft, said no such incentive exists in the Senate bill to hire provisional immigrants over U.S. citizens. Then, informed of his error by commenters , he acknowledged that this incentive does exist. But Kessler argues it is of little importance and — by failing to retract his Pinocchios — implies that raising concern about it equals a lie.
Before detailing many of Kessler’s mistakes — factual and analytical — here is a disclaimer and a bit of perspective so that readers bring an open mind to the facts.
In truth, my work is under attack as much as Cruz’s comment. Kessler links to three of my articles and blog posts and writes that I have “aggressively pushed” the same line of reasoning articulated here by Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s press secretary:
“The Gang of 8 bill in conjunction with ObamaCare creates de facto affirmative action for illegal immigrants. It’s reflective of how out of touch and broken Washington is, and how important it is that we defund and repeal ObamaCare.”
First of all, I am with Sen. Rand Paul (and pretty much everyone else): Let’s say “undocumented,” not illegal…
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Why Can’t the ‘Gang of Eight’ Get it? They and the Demagogue Senators Are “Drunk on Amnesty”
BETRAYAL BY U. S. SENATE VOTE TODAY!
Many columns and much other discussion about the new AMNESTY plan being cooked up by Harry Reid and his un-American promoters of the socialist-communist liberal Democrat Party and the infamous “Gang of Eight” led by the sleaziest person in our United States Senate, the Senator from New York (naturally) Charles Schumer and his rump-massager, Florida Senator Marco Rubio who almost had Americans convinced that he was a real American instead of the bleeding heart pretender he turned out to be.
But that entire claque of country-killing, communism-practicing, socialist liberal Democrat United States Senators are, as Human Events writer John Hayward says online in his column, “Drunk on Amnesty.” To me, they’re all drunk out of their minds trying hard to push an amnesty bill that they drunkenly insist is NOT amnesty. (If it quacks like a duck.) As Hayward points out, “There’s a storm gathering around one of the provisions in the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, but it needs to gather faster, because the ever consider moving on a bill that would actually help American citizens — say, by reducing the tax and regulatory burden on the private sector to spur job growth.
As all Americans know, the entire gaggle of Democrats in the U. S. Senate is adamantly, yet secretly, opposed to job growth. In what better way can they keep their prison of voters in poverty, on food stamps, and subservient to them? Lately, and primarily on this amnesty bill, they have also succeeded in brainwashing four RINO Republicans into believing that they can accomplish amnesty for more votes for Democrats and hoodwink those gullible former patriotic souls into thinking that some of the illegal aliens might actually vote for a Republican.
Hence the need for speed on this bill. And, of course, they also need to get going before those turncoat RINOs get a small dose of ‘smarts’ and learn that they are not only NOT going to get any illegal alien votes, but this proposed legislation is absolutely NOT NEEDED. We don’t need Immigration Reform; we need Immigration ENFORCEMENT and RINOs need the deserting conservative voters. Our immigration policies and laws worked very well before ultra liberal Democrats were born.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Canadian Court Fines Comic for ‘Verbal Abuse’
In a ruling that could carry implications for comedy clubs across Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the right of a bar patron to receive five-figures in damages from a comedian whose performance she alleges gave her post-traumatic stress disorder.
In 2011, Toronto comedian Guy Earle was ordered by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to pay $15,000 to Lorna Pardy, a homosexual woman who said she suffered “lasting physical and psychological effect” after Mr. Earle directed a string of lesbian slurs at her during a 2007 Vancouver open mic night.
On Wednesday, B.C. highest court ruled against Mr. Earle’s assertion that comedy clubs should remain special places devoted to the “fearless pursuit of free speech” and that the Tribunal’s decision would have a “chilling effect on performances and artists in British Columbia.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
20 Greatest Films of All Time, Selected by Robbie Collin
From Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to Back to the Future, the Telegraph’s chief film critic Robbie Collin lists his 20 greatest films of all time.
Sunrise (1927)
Mainstream cinema as we know it owes almost everything to F.W. Murnau’s staggering wonderwork about an unhappy couple rekindling their spark. It’s archetypal romance as action blockbuster, and for the best part of a century almost nothing has touched it…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The situation in America with regard to the immigration amnesty is similar to what is happening in Britain and all over Europe. The Left brings about mass immigration partly for ideological reasons and partly to ensure itself a shedload of new voters. Hence Mitterand brought the Arabs into France in the 1970s so they would vote for him in gratitude and Hollande has just been elected by their sons and daughters as well. What is the only solution for the Gaullists to return to power? try and woo the immigrants into voting for them and so they have to be softer on immigration than they would have been if only dealing with the ethnic French.
Here in Britain, Cameron is desperate to get the muslim vote off Labour, 25% of their voter base and so he goes soft on condemning Islam. In fact, he is obviously trying to get more of the “ethnic minority” vote off Labour all round by asking for more ethnic minority mps and jumping on the Stephen Lawrence bandwagon.
At the time of the last presidential election Britain’s Daily Mail spoke of the death of white America simply because the non-white, black and hispanic, population , was now so large that the Republicans would never ever get back into power, unless of course they got those votes off the Democrats.
This goes to show one thing on mass immigration, not only the work of the Left as big business wanted it to keep down indigenous wages. Once the stable door is opened the horse has bolted because the immigrant vote becomes so important to all political parties that they feel they can ignore the feelings of their indigenous voter base as they are probably too clueless to do anything but stay loyal ; or they may not vote which means that the immigrant vote becomes even more powerful. Basically, once you have allowed mass immigation then it is difficult to put a halt to immigration at all. Think about this one, the population of Britain is now a massive 62m and growing thanks to 60 years of mass immigration; but the population of Pakistan is 256m with many more anxious to take up residence in Britain. Once they have achieved 8m here then do you think any politician will ignore their demands? It is like the sorcerer’s apprentice, once started it just keeps on flooding us and we begin to sink under the waves. The only solution for those who want to maintain or re-establish any sense of a nation’s traditional identity is to switch to those parties of the “far right” known as identitarian pledged to this end. Either that or civil war is inevitable as the hitherto overwhelmingly majority white population begins to border on minority status.
A shame that nobody could lure Messrs Cameron, Milliband and Clegg into having sex with an under age Moroccan prostitute. Seven years in prison and barred from politics for life, what a godsend that would be to the British people.
Unfortunately, none of them strikes me as being on a par with the 70 plus year old Italian stallion. Cameron might just have the energy. The other two look as if they would need a dose of the smelling salts to recover from the experience, even assuming they could rise to the occasion.
The larger than life, ever smiling Berlusconi is a buffoon, possibly corrupt but has a certain appeal in a strange way. He comes across as a real man in an Italian operetta swaggering, devil may care sort of way. He makes you laugh whilst the shrinking violets of Clegg and Milliband and the snake oil salesman Cameron just make you want to reach for the bucket.