Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/16/2013

Sixteen people were killed, two of them policemen, in rioting that shook the city of Kashgar in the restive western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The province is majority Muslim, and the Chinese government blamed the unrest on Islamic extremists.

In other news, the European Space Agency’s Cryosat spacecraft observed a marked increase in the volume of the Arctic ice sheet this year, estimated to be 50% larger than it was at the same time in 2012. However, experts caution the public not to read any significance into what may simply be an anomalous year.

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

Thanks to Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, LH, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

Financial Crisis
» Almost 30% in Italy Risk Poverty or Social Exclusion
» Cyprus’ GDP to Shrink by a Further 8% in 2014
» Eating or Heating: The Stark Choice for Many Brits as Energy Prices Soar
» France Branded the New ‘Sick Man of Europe’
» French Tax Soars Over 100%
» Half of Italian Families Live Below 2,053 Euros Monthly
» Is the Perfect Storm Coming for Gold?
» Italy: Almost One in Two Pensioners Can’t Make Ends Meet
» Italy: Milan Stocks Lead Europe
» Newspeak From Chairman Ben on Fed’s 100th Birthday
» Ron Paul: After 100 Years of Failure, It’s Time to End the Fed!
 
USA
» “Tsarnaev Brothers Appear Have Been Motivated Less by Islamist Ideology and More by Their Own Personal Failings and Inner Demons”
» Boston Bomber Believed He Was a Victim of Mind Control
» Calif. Gun Owners Warily Eye Rifle, Shotgun Database
» Camden, New Jersey: One of Hundreds of U.S. Cities That Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes
» Chilling Effect for Me, But Not for Thee
» David Horowitz Interview: We Are at War
» Edward Snowden Leaks: NSA Amnesty ‘Considered’
» Enlarging His Rule, Shrinking the Constitution
» For Devout Muslim Cabbies in New York City, Parking Tickets Are the Price of Prayers
» Google Buys Military Robot-Maker Boston Dynamics
» Gun-Free America or the Cancer of Authoritarian “Security”
» In News That Will Surprise No One, NSA Has Cracked Mobile Phone Encryption to Listen in on Calls
» Judge: NSA Phone Program Likely Unconstitutional
» Judge Rules Against N.S.A. Bulk Collection of Phone Data
» Mainstream Media (Fox News) Admits GMOs Are a ‘Real Safety Issue’ (Video)
» Millennials Finally Turn Against Obama, Want Recall
» NSA Task Force Leader: Snowden Took ‘The Keys to the Kingdom’
» Report: 50,000-60,000 Paper ObamaCare Applications Still Haven’t Been Processed
» Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Gun Control Laws
 
Canada
» Mosque Holds Monthly Christian-Muslim Events
» Toronto Star Reporter Sues Ford for Defamation But What Are the Damages?
 
Europe and the EU
» Austria: Worlds Biggest Edible Xmas Decoration
» Belgium: Become a Monk and Save Our Trappist
» Belgium Extradites Six Moroccan Prisoners
» Blackrock Reaches 7.789% Stake in Telecom Italia
» Controlling the Past in Romania
» Denmark: MP’s Cuba Attack Fails
» ESA’s Cryosat Sees Arctic Sea-Ice Volume Bounce Back
» European Left Nominates Greek to Succeed Barroso
» Europe: Islamic Fundamentalism is Widespread
» Fewer Monks Means Less Belgian Beer for Its Fans
» ‘Grand Coalition’ Returns to Germany
» Italy: Letta Govt Approves Decree to End Party Funding
» Italy: Tax Reductions Coming on Energy, Books, Car Insurance
» Italy: CasaPound Leader Sentenced to Jail for Tearing Down EU Flag
» Italy: Knox, Sollecito in ‘Murderous’ Rage in Kercher Slaying
» Italy: Napolitano Lashes Out at ‘Inhumane’ Prison Conditions
» Paris-Barcelona High-Speed Rail Link Finally Opens
» Peter O’Toole Dies at 81: Film Legend and Hollywood Hellraiser Who Shot to Fame as Lawrence of Arabia Had Suffered From Long Illness
» Sebastian Kurz Becomes Youngest Ever Austrian Foreign Minister
» The Evolution of Jihadism in Italy: Rise in Homegrown Radicals
» The Serial-Killer Anatomy of a Swedish Scandal
» UK: Female Students Banned From Speaking at Islam Seminar at University of Leicester
» UK: More on Gender Segregation
» UK: Muslim Protesters Take to London’s Streets to Demand Shops Stop Selling Alcohol
» UK: Miliband Accused of Wanting to ‘Forcibly Rip-Up’ The Countryside Under Plan to Allow Towns and Cities to Expand
» UK: Plans for New Agbrigg Mosque
» UK: Sex Assault on Young Artist at National Gallery: Woman Attacked as She Sketched Masterpiece
» UK: Toys Containing Cancer Chemicals Which Could Cause Infertility Seized From Market
» UK: Tycoon Woos Labour — And Ed’s Old Flame
» UK: Why Are We Giving China £27m in Aid?
» Verdi Labor Union Widens Walkout at Amazon in Germany
» Video — Swedish Nazis Attack Families at Demo
 
Mediterranean Union
» EU-Turkey Sign Readmission Agreement
 
North Africa
» Egypt: Taxi Driver Killed by Lynch Mob After Running Over Pro-Morsi Protester
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» EU Offers ‘Special’ Status to Israel and Palestine
 
Middle East
» Abducted in Syria: Extremist Rebels Target Journalists
» Bahrain: Arrest and Torture of Children Routine, Says Amnesty
» Israel Trades Fire With Lebanese Soldiers
» Israel Blames Beirut for Soldier’s Death and Opens Fire
» Jihad on Jesus: Militants Firebomb New Christ Statue and Ancient Monastery, Syria
» Snow Closes Roads in Israel, Is a Source of Wonder in Egypt
» Syria: Opposition, 83 Dead in Yesterday’s Raid on Aleppo
» Turkey: Credit Card Showing Mecca Direction Issued
» ‘Whole Families Murdered’: Syrian Rebels Execute Over 80 Civilians Outside Damascus
 
Russia
» Russia in Stagnation: Putin Speech Hints at Big Problems
» Russia Moves Missiles in Western Region
» Senator McCain Pimps for CIA-Spawned Color Revolution in Ukraine
» Ukraine Protesters Hold Rival Rallies in Kyiv
 
South Asia
» Australia Withdraws Troops From Afghanistan
» Thailand: The Chilling Moment Girl, Six, Was Led Away Hand-in-Hand by Monster Who Raped and Killed Her
 
Far East
» ‘China Teaches Its Kids to Sit Exams, Sweden Its Kids to Think’
» China Rejects Fifth US Corn Cargo in a Month, Citing GMO Strain
» China: Sixteen Dead as Muslims Riot, Battle Police in Xinjiang
» Kim Jong Un’s Two Turbulent Years at the Helm
» N. Korea Troops Pledge Loyalty En Masse as Seoul on Alert
» Two Police Among at Least 16 Dead After Armed Clashes in Xinjiang, China
» Will China Restart the Space Race?
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Fog Donkey: The Only Honest Man in a Stadium of Fools
 
Latin America
» South Africa “Joined at the Hip” To Cuba
 
Immigration
» Biden: Immigrants, Legal or Not, ‘Are Already Americans’
» EU and Turkey to Sign Migration Deal
» Pelosi Calls for Obama to Halt Deportations
» Sweden Fears Import of Syrian Terrorism
» Ten Syrians Kept Chained in Athens by Pakistani Traffickers
» Turkey, EU Sign Deals on Illegal Immigrants, Visa-Free Travel
 
Culture Wars
» Boy Trouble
» Christmas Under Assault, But Faithful Fight Back
» Norway: ‘Legalize Polygamy’: Progress Youth Wing
» School Bans Display of Christmas Poster by Student Because it “Might be Religious”
» UK: Girl Guide Group Told to Ditch God or be Expelled
 

Almost 30% in Italy Risk Poverty or Social Exclusion

Istat says level up 1.7% on 2011

(ANSA) — Rome, December 16 — Almost 30% (29.9%) of people living in Italy were suffering or risked suffering poverty and social exclusion in 2012, national statistics agency Istat said Monday. It said the level was up by 1.7 points on 2011 and was 5.1% higher than the European average. Italy has been badly hit by the global economic crisis, with unemployment climbing to record highs of over 12% and four in 10 young people under 25 out of work. The country is currently emerging from its longest recession since World War II. After two years of negative growth, Italy’s gross domestic product was flat in the third quarter with respect to the April-June period.

Istat said the percentage- of people suffering serious economic hardship was 14.5% last year, up from 11.2% in 2011.

Another 19.4% were considered at risk of poverty, Istat said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Cyprus’ GDP to Shrink by a Further 8% in 2014

(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, DECEMBER 16 — The Cypriot economy is not expected to return to growth before 2017, according to a winter Eurozone Forecast put together by professional services firm Ernst and Young and reported by Cyprus Mail.

“After falling by an estimated 7.4% in 2013, Cyprus’ Gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to shrink by a further 8% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2015, against a backdrop of shattered consumer and investor confidence, soaring unemployment, and a credit crunch,” Ernst and Young said.

The financial firm predicted that the economy was not expected to return to growth before 2017, at which stage economic activity would be 20% lower than the pre-crisis peak.

Unemployment, the forecast said, was expected to rise to 25%. Meanwhile, soaring unemployment could undermine fiscal consolidation efforts by cutting tax revenues and forcing up social transfers.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Eating or Heating: The Stark Choice for Many Brits as Energy Prices Soar

In the UK thousands are struggling with rising energy costs. After last winter’s record number of deaths from cold weather, pressure is mounting on the government to force energy companies to help the most vulnerable.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

France Branded the New ‘Sick Man of Europe’

Many households in France paid over 100% in taxes.

France was branded the new ‘sick man of Europe’ today amid fears it may become the next Eurozone nation to enter a double-dip recession.

President Francois Hollande is struggling with a faltering economy and unemployment at a 16-year high of 11 per cent while production in Europe’s second largest economy fell by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

French Tax Soars Over 100%

Over 8,000 French households paid taxes topping 100% of their incomes, according to French Finance Ministry data. See Taxes on Some Wealthy French Top 100% of Income. You may scratch your head in disbelief. How is that possible?

Stateside, you might guess it was the alternative minimum tax. In France, it was a one-time 2011 levy on incomes for households with assets over 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). 8,000 families paying 100% may seem a small number, but nearly 12,000 households paid more than 75%. The percentages sure do grate.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Half of Italian Families Live Below 2,053 Euros Monthly

Richest 20% of Italians have almost 38% of total income

(ANSA) — Rome, December 16 — About half of Italian families were living on a net income of just over 24,000 euros per year, or about 2,053 per month, in 2011, the national statistical agency Istat reported Monday. In its latest report on family income in Italy, the agency studied statistics from 2011 — when Italy’s worst recession since the Second World War was just beginning — to find that the richest 20% of Italians accounted for 37.5% of total income.

In the south, family budgets were slightly weaker than the national average, with 50% of households receiving less than 20,129 euros annually, or about 1,677 euros per month.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Is the Perfect Storm Coming for Gold?

Due to western central bank price manipulation, the mining sector is in critical condition, the supply line is all but halted, and the physical supply is being swallowed up by Asia. The last shoe to drop is for major mining companies to start closing down production at major mines. Though this would be perceived as the end for gold, speculators will be happy to know that this would be the beginning of the biggest Fed induced bubble in history! But unlike previous Fed bubbles where they support the price increase, the gold bubble will be a result of western central planners mis-managing the gold price for the past 3 decades and finally losing control. As Peak Resources explains in the brief clip, the perfect storm is coming for gold…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Almost One in Two Pensioners Can’t Make Ends Meet

At least 46.2% of elderly can’t pay their bills

(ANSA) — Rome, December 13 — Almost one in two Italian pensioners have trouble making ends meet each month, new data showed Friday.

At least 46.2% of retirees are forced to put off paying their bills, dip into their savings, or ask family and friends for loans by the end of the month, according to a survey by the Italian Pensioners Union (SPI) and Ipsos research company. Another 24.3% are just able to make their income stretch to the end of the month, spending every penny of their pension, and 29.5% have no financial trouble and are able to save.

The survey also showed that 19.8% of pensioners have cut back “a lot” on buying necessities, 28.4% cut their spending “somewhat”, 31.4% said they gave up on extras, and 20.4% of respondents have not cut their spending in any significant way.

Pensioners are also key in supporting children or grandchildren who have been laid off or can’t find work, with 42.6% supporting their relatives financially, the study showed.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Milan Stocks Lead Europe

Spread falls to 220 basis points

(ANSA) — Milan, December 16 — Italy’s leading financial index was rising at the end of the day’s trading on Monday, topping the list of European stock exchanges.

The Milan bourse closed up 2.34%, followed by Frankfurt’s 1.74%, London’s 1.3%, Paris’s 1.48%, and Madrid’s 1.69%.

The spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their AAA-rated German equivalents, the premium investors pay to hold Italian paper, meanwhile fell Monday to 220 basis points with a 4.03% yield.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Newspeak From Chairman Ben on Fed’s 100th Birthday

On December 23, 1913, the banksters created the private cartel masquerading as a government agency, the Federal Reserve, to manipulate fiat money and engineer asset bubbles designed to level economies.

On December 16, 2013, the current chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, otherwise known as Helicopter or Bubbles Ben, said in a speech celebrating the triumph of financial sector will over the common man and his pocketbook that the cartel will resist all political pressure.

Bernanke took the opportunity to declare himself an inflation warrior just like his predecessors, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan. This is doublespeak in its full glory.

In fact, Bernanke’s legacy is inflation, albeit miscalculated. “The way that inflation is calculated has changed more than 20 times since 1978, and each time it has been changed the goal has been to make it appear to be lower than it actually is,” notes Zero Hedge. “If the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be about 8 percent right now and everyone would be screaming about the fact that inflation is way too high.”

Obama and crew play along with the trick. The government cites something called the “chained consumer price index” (chained CPI) to measure the deleterious effect of inflation on people’s standard of living.

Ron Paul explains:

Chained CPI is an effort to alter the perceived impact of inflation via the gimmick of “full substitution.” This is the assumption that when the price of one consumer product increases, consumers will simply substitute a similar, lower-cost product with no adverse effect. Thus, the government decides your standard of living is not affected if you can no longer afford to eat steak, as long as you can afford to eat hamburger.

“One of the tricks the CPI formula uses to keep the metric low is to remove food and energy from the CPI,” Duane Storey explains. “Unfortunately, since food and energy consume a large portion of most family’s disposable income, the removal of those items from the CPI limits its usefulness in tracking price inflation.”

The government came up with the CPI doozy to avoid raising the cost of living adjustment on the Social Security Ponzi scheme. It does not, however, prevent the government from jacking up taxes on folks who experience a nominal increase in income. Like a skilled Mafia lawyer, the government has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve when it comes to the practice of separating you from your money…

Likewise the value of the dollar, the real mark of inflation. The following chart gets the point across: (CHART)

As you can see, our pathetic dollars are now almost entirely worthless. But that has not stopped the Fed from devaluing what puny worth is left.

In February, 2012, the Federal Open Market Committee said its goal over the next 20 years is to devalue the dollar another 33 percent. As Forbes noted at the time, “an increase of 2% a year over a period of 20 years will lead to a 50% increase in the price level. It will take 150 (2032) dollars to purchase the same basket of goods 100 (2012) dollars can buy today. What will be called the ‘dollar’ in 2032 will be worth one-third less (100/150) than what we call a dollar today.”

In other words, the Federal Reserve has decided to engineer massive inflation while its current chairman insists the bankster cartel is in the business of controlling inflation.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Ron Paul: After 100 Years of Failure, It’s Time to End the Fed!

A week from now, the Federal Reserve System will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Resulting from secret negotiations between bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island, the Fed’s creation established a banking cartel and a board of government overseers that has grown ever stronger through the years. One would think this anniversary would elicit some sort of public recognition of the Fed’s growth from a quasi-agent of the Treasury Department intended to provide an elastic currency, to a de facto independent institution that has taken complete control of the economy through its central monetary planning. But just like the Fed’s creation, its 100th anniversary may come and go with only a few passing mentions.

Like many other horrible and unconstitutional pieces of legislation, the bill which created the Fed, the Federal Reserve Act, was passed under great pressure on December 23, 1913, in the waning moments before Congress recessed for Christmas with many Members already absent from those final votes. This underhanded method of pressuring Congress with such a deadline to pass the Federal Reserve Act would provide a foreshadowing of the Fed’s insidious effects on the US economy — with actions performed without transparency.

Ostensibly formed with the goal of preventing financial crises such as the Panic of 1907, the Fed has become increasingly powerful over the years. Rather than preventing financial crises, however, the Fed has constantly caused new ones. Barely a few years after its inception, the Fed’s inflationary monetary policy to help fund World War I led to the Depression of 1920. After the economy bounced back from that episode, a further injection of easy money and credit by the Fed led to the Roaring Twenties and to the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history.

But even though the Fed continued to make the same mistakes over and over again, no one in Washington ever questioned the wisdom of having a central bank. Instead, after each episode the Fed was given more and more power over the economy. Even though the Fed had brought about the stagflation of the 1970s, Congress decided to formally task the Federal Reserve in 1978 with maintaining full employment and stable prices, combined with constantly adding horrendously harmful regulations. Talk about putting the inmates in charge of the asylum!

Now we are reaping the noxious effects of a century of loose monetary policy, as our economy remains mired in mediocrity and utterly dependent on a stream of easy money from the central bank. A century ago, politicians failed to understand that the financial panics of the 19th century were caused by collusion between government and the banking sector. The government’s growing monopoly on money creation, high barriers to entry into banking to protect politically favored incumbents, and favored treatment for government debt combined to create a rickety, panic-prone banking system. Had legislators known then what we know now, we could hope that they never would have established the Federal Reserve System.

Today, however, we do know better. We know that the Federal Reserve continues to strengthen the collusion between banks and politicians. We know that the Fed’s inflationary monetary policy continues to reap profits for Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street. And we know that the current monetary regime is teetering on a precipice. One hundred years is long enough. End the Fed.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

“Tsarnaev Brothers Appear Have Been Motivated Less by Islamist Ideology and More by Their Own Personal Failings and Inner Demons”

If the Tsarnaev brothers had committed mass murder at the Boston Marathon in the name of any other belief system or ideology, would there be this same rush to exonerate that belief system of any connection to their crime? If the Tsarnaev brothers had been the “right-wing extremists” who hated big government and taxes, as the Leftist media was openly hoping before the killers were identified, would the Boston Globe be running a lengthy piece explaining that they weren’t actually motivated by “right-wing extremism” at all, but by their “personal failings and inner demons”?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had vowed to die for Islam. His brother said that he carried out the Boston jihad attack because he wanted to defend Islam. There is abundant evidence that before the Boston Marathon jihad attack, Tamerlan had become a devout Muslim — but forget about all that. It was all because he heard voices inside his head.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Boston Bomber Believed He Was a Victim of Mind Control

Tamerlan Tsarnaev feared he had been brainwashed to act on trigger phrase

Suspected Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev believed that he was a victim of mind control, according to the results of a five month investigation published yesterday by the Boston Globe.

Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police four days after allegedly carrying out the bombings with his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was thought to have “some form of schizophrenia,” according to family friends, while his mother said Tsarnaev “felt like there were two people living inside of him.”

“He believed in majestic mind control, which is a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist,” Donald Larking, a 67-year-old who attended a Boston mosque with Tamerlan, told the Globe. “You can give a signal, a phrase or a gesture, and bring out the alternate personality and make them do things. Tamerlan thought someone might have done that to him.”

The link between allegations of mind control and violent acts such as political assassinations or terror attacks has been a running theme in numerous different high profile cases.

Aurora theater gunman James Holmes said he was “programmed” to carry out the massacre by an “evil” therapist, according to an alleged inmate of the ‘Batman’ shooter. Steven Unruh claims that Holmes told him he “felt like he was in a video game” during the shooting and that he had been brainwashed with the aid of neuro-linguistic programming.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Calif. Gun Owners Warily Eye Rifle, Shotgun Database

Neither Matt Dittmer nor the people he shoots with are happy about a new law that will preserve information about their gun purchases in a California state database. But he is resigned to it.

“I don’t like it, but I’m living in a state where I don’t have a choice,” Dittmer said as he stopped by Auburn Outdoor Sports on a recent afternoon to buy a sleek black AR rifle.

In the aftermath of a horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, California lawmakers advanced dozens of gun control measures in 2013. Despite that fervor for tougher firearms laws, the most stringent and far-reaching measures largely failed. The discards included a bill by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg , D-Sacramento, that would have outlawed semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Camden, New Jersey: One of Hundreds of U.S. Cities That Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes

All over America, formerly prosperous communities are being transformed into crime-infested wastelands of poverty and despair. Of course the most famous example of this is Detroit.

At one time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it has become a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the planet laughs at. And of course Detroit is far from alone. There are hundreds of other U.S. cities that are suffering a similar fate. In this article, the focus is going to be on Camden, New Jersey, but the truth is that there are lots of other “Detroits” and “Camdens” all over the nation. Jobs and businesses are leaving our cities at a staggering rate, and what is being left behind is poverty, crime and extreme desperation.

Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an article that took a hard look at the nightmare conditions that exist in Camden. A city that once made Campbell’s soup and some of this nation’s most famous warships is now a national disgrace. The following are six of the best quotes out of that article…

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have left this country. The quality of the jobs that remain continues to decline at a frightening pace, and most of the new jobs that are being “created” these days are part-time jobs.

But you won’t hear the mainstream media or our most prominent politicians talk about these things much. You won’t hear them talk about the fact that median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row or about the fact that the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.

The middle class is dying.

Wake up America.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Chilling Effect for Me, But Not for Thee

by Andrew Harrod

“I don’t apply the same standards” as in the United States, the Muslim Harvard Law School professor Intisar A. Rabb stated at a November 21, 2013, Georgetown University conference with respect to “hate speech” restrictions and Islam abroad. In connection with her concern about an American Muslim’s terrorism conviction “chilling speech,” Rabb’s acceptance of “just a different legal regime” abroad revealed troubling double standards towards Islam.

Raab addressed the final panel of “Muslim-Christian Relations in the 21st Century: Challenges & Opportunities,” a controversial conference (see here, here, and here) marking the 20thanniversary of Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Rabb opposed a recent appeals court conviction affirmation for Tarek Mehanna, as elaborated in an amici curia brief in Mehanna’s appeal. Therein Rabb and others warned of a “serious chilling effect” on speech from convicting Mehanna for translating the book 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad for the website at-Tibyan.

The federal government considered the book, website, and Mehanna’s “disfavored political and religious beliefs” all supportive of Al Qaeda. The appellate opinion noted that Mehanna had a First Amendment right to praise Al Qaeda, but Al-Qaeda-coordinated advocacy was terrorism support. “Under the Government’s theory,” amici curia warned, “translating an al-Qa’ida text is lawful, as is espousing beliefs…supporting al-Qa’ida,” but together these “legal acts gives rise to criminal liability,” a particular concern for scholars researching terrorism.

Rabb at Georgetown therefore demanded that action beyond speech underlie any terrorism support conviction. Yet, unmentioned by Rabb, Mehanna had traveled in 2004 to Yemen, irrespective of any translation work charge. The appeals court rejected his “rose-colored glasses” presentation as a “devoted scholar…protected by the First Amendment” and found a jury conclusion “virtually unarguable” that Mehanna “went abroad to enlist in…terrorist training.”

Legal issues aside, amici curiae did not consider Mehanna’s reading and website choices objectionable…

[Return to headlines]
 

David Horowitz Interview: We Are at War

‘We are at war’, David Horowitz told me in a phone interview today, at war with the leftists — Marxist radicals — who, under Barack Obama, are destroying the economy, the healthcare system, the education system, and our standing in the world.

Horowitz is writing an encyclopedic series of books on communism to inform conservatives about the dangerous enemies now seated at the precipice of unfettered power in this country. His books will give us the tools to fight them. His first book is now available and it is a book people need to read. I read it yesterday and it clarified who and what Barack Obama is for me. I will no longer say he is incompetent. He is probably the most competent president we have had. He is succeeding in destroying traditional America.

David Horowitz has published the first book in a series of ten which are aimed at educating conservatives about progressivism and the forces of evil that have been poisoning our culture, our schools, and our government for the last forty years.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Edward Snowden Leaks: NSA Amnesty ‘Considered’

The US National Security Agency is considering offering an amnesty to fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden if he agrees to stop leaking secret documents, an NSA official says.

The man in charge of assessing the leaks’ damage, Richard Ledgett, said he could be open to an amnesty deal. Disclosures by the former intelligence worker have revealed the extent of the NSA’s spying activity.

But NSA Director Gen Keith Alexander has dismissed the idea.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Enlarging His Rule, Shrinking the Constitution

The disaster of Obamacare could prove minor compared to some of President Obama’s other goals. We could lose much of our religious freedom, free speech, free press and more if his other efforts succeed.

Mr. Obama might say that if you like your constitutional rights, you can keep them. His actions, though, reveal a plan to lock in his power by reducing opponents’ rights and restricting their ability to thwart his will. The president wants his agenda to be safely beyond the reach of the people’s constitutional rights. Then we could be controlled permanently by liberal elites.

Mr. Obama’s shows his intent in the pending Supreme Court case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. This case involves more than Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate; it’s being used as a vehicle to limit other First Amendment rights in addition to religious freedom.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

For Devout Muslim Cabbies in New York City, Parking Tickets Are the Price of Prayers

New York City is home not just to a massive fleet of iconic yellow taxis, but to an amazing diversity of cab drivers.

Roughly half of the city’s 40,000-odd cabbies are Muslims who hail from countries all over the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere — and a great number of the drivers are observant, praying five times a day. Which raises the question: How and where do these men on the move pray?

“That’s why we have an app in our iPhone, we know where is the Mecca,” Youssef Kamal told me. “Right now, I’m here, right? I check my iPhone, check which is the Mecca. Straight to Mecca. Like, I am in Mecca right now. Technology!”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Google Buys Military Robot-Maker Boston Dynamics

Google has acquired the engineering company that developed Cheetah, the world’s fastest-running robot and other animalistic mobile research machines. Boston Dynamics, which contracts for the US military, is the eighth robotics company snapped up by Google this year.

Both the price and size of the project, which is led by former Android boss Andy Rubin, are being kept under wraps. However, analysts say the purchases signal a rising interest in robotics use by consumer internet companies. Online shopping portal Amazon, for example, recently announced plans to deploy a fleet of delivery drones.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Gun-Free America or the Cancer of Authoritarian “Security”

Rid America of the AIDS of Liberalism

I could not believe my eyes when I saw a photo of hundred law-abiding Americans waiting obediently in line outside of the Arapahoe High School, with their hands up, to be patted down by armed-to-teeth sheriff deputies in the aftermath of the shooting a few days ago.

That picture reminded me how insignificant We the People are in the eyes of the authorities and their enforcement agencies. Deprived of their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, unarmed and defenseless subjects, the People were treated as if they posed a deadly threat to the sheriff and his deputies armed with assault weapons, many of whom in body armor and Kevlar military-style helmets, that apparently cared much more about their own safety than the safety of people that they were supposed to serve and protect.

I would expect a picture like that to be taken in a Nazi Germany of 1930s and 40s where the authorities did not try to sugarcoat their hostility to the regime’s real and imaginary adversaries. But in America? We have come a long way from the land of the free and the home of the brave to a socialistic-like system in which individual liberties are often referred to as loopholes or outdated reminiscences of the bygone era where the governments were for the people and not the other way around.

Our governments, apparently irritated with our stubborn refusal to give up our Second Amendment rights and to delegate our right to self-defense to the “trained professionals,” become increasingly impatient, if not outright hostile to the majority of Americans.

The law enforcement agencies grew into a privileged class. That class not only is exempted from the draconian “gun-control” laws that the rest of us must obey but has become a major political power, due to potent and vocal police and sheriff’s deputies labor unions (organized in Fraternal Order of Police) that can sway local elections and influence local and state governments that yield to these unions’ demands.

[Comment: Good article. Be sure to check out the photo.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

In News That Will Surprise No One, NSA Has Cracked Mobile Phone Encryption to Listen in on Calls

One of the latest reports from the Snowden documents over at the Washington Post falls more into the “well, duh” category than many previous reports. The NSA has easily cracked the A5/1 encryption used to encrypt mobile phone conversations on many GSM mobile networks. Of course A5/1 has been around forever, and others have shown that it’s not particularly secure for quite some time. But, it’s just a reminder that, yes, of course, the NSA could listen in on calls. Some networks do use more modern encryption, which is much harder for the NSA to crack, and it sounds like the recent revelations are leading at least some mobile operators to upgrade the encryption on their network. Still, at this point, it seems safe to assume that if you want to have a truly private conversation, you shouldn’t use a phone.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Judge: NSA Phone Program Likely Unconstitutional

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Judge Rules Against N.S.A. Bulk Collection of Phone Data

A federal district court judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, and he ordered the government to stop collecting data on two plaintiffs’ personal calls and destroy the records of their calling history.

[Return to headlines]
 

Mainstream Media (Fox News) Admits GMOs Are a ‘Real Safety Issue’ (Video)

The following may just be one of the most hard-hitting GMO (danger) reports ever aired by the mainstream media. Who would have ever thought Fox news would admit the dangers of GMOs? After all, the mainstream media (MSM) have all but done a complete shut-out concerning activist concerns and anti-GMO marches that have happened around the globe. It looks like the evidence was piling up to be far too incontrovertible, though, as Carol Alt (a super model who has been on over 700 magazine covers) and Max Goldberg of LivingWell.com discussed the many studies that articulate the dangers of GMO crops.

If you are going to deliver bad news, it may as well come from a pretty face, right? At least Alt has a history for standing up for true alternative health methods, including raw milk, and the lessening of vaccine use.

Goldberg admits there are no long-term studies on human beings, but that lab tests involving animals are showing atrocious liver damage, kidney problems, and after just three generations of being fed a GMO diet, hamsters are basically sterile. The hosts of the show point out that the main problem is that GMOs are not labeled, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Even if labeling were to occur, it doesn’t change the fact that GMOs are spreading uncontrollably around the world, contaminating non-GM crops and wild plants.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Millennials Finally Turn Against Obama, Want Recall

A majority of 18-to-24-year-olds now say they would recall Obama as president if they could. It is finally happening; young people who overwhelmingly supported Obama are now turning away from him in droves. The hope and change he promised never materialized, instead replaced with deteriorating conditions.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

NSA Task Force Leader: Snowden Took ‘The Keys to the Kingdom’

The head of the National Security Agency task force assessing the effect of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said Sunday that Snowden took “the keys to the kingdom” when he left the U.S. earlier this year and was granted temporary asylum in Russia.

In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Ledgett said that Snowden had taken “an exhaustive list of the requirements that have been levied against— against the National Security Agency. And what that gives is, what topics we’re interested in, where our gaps are. But additional information about U.S. capabilities and U.S. gaps is provided as part of that.”

Ledgett told CBS correspondent John Miller, himself a former employee of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, that he would not dispute an estimation that Snowden had taken 1.7 million documents from the NSA’s hard drives, using his security clearance to get around measures that blocked off access for typical employees.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Report: 50,000-60,000 Paper ObamaCare Applications Still Haven’t Been Processed

While the Obama administration boasts that the front end of healthcare.gov is supposedly working better, the government reportedly still has to process over 50,000 paper applications it took in when the site was all but inoperable.

The stunning number was buried in a Washington Post report Friday.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Gun Control Laws

New gun control laws are unconstitutional, say scores of sheriffs throughout the country, and they are either refusing to enforce the statutes or have signaled that enforcement will be a very low priority, The New York Times reports.

In Colorado, a law passed by the Legislature that requires universal background checks and bans ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds is being challenged in a lawsuit by all but seven of the state’s 62 elected sheriffs who say it’s a violation of Second Amendment rights.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Mosque Holds Monthly Christian-Muslim Events

A local mosque is hoping to promote multiculturalism and inclusiveness through monthly Christian-Muslim events.

Held at the Windsor Mosque, Imam Shaikh Mohamed Mahmoud said the events are something this community needs.

“It’s more to build a bridge and bring the communities together,” said Mahmoud before the third monthly event began Sunday night.

The events are hosted by the Windsor Islamic Association. In October, when the monthly gatherings kicked off, it held an open house for the two communities — Christian and Muslim — to come together. Last month there was a discussion on the Exodus, as described in both the Bible and the Quran…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Toronto Star Reporter Sues Ford for Defamation But What Are the Damages?

The courts are being used in their continued war on Ford

Last week, lawyers for Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale issued a libel notice that was served on the Toronto mayor as well as ZoomerMedia Inc. and Vision TV. Under Ontario law, such a notice must be issued before an actual lawsuit for defamation can be commenced. The defendants in a libel or slander action must be given the opportunity to retract the statements alleged to be defamatory.

The action stems from an interview the mayor gave to Conrad Black on Vision TV, owned by ZoomerMedia Inc. The conversation in question refers to a night in May 2012 when Ford confronted the Toronto Star reporter near his home. According to Ford, a neighbour called him and told him someone was looking over the fence to his property. Ford later went up to the man who turned out to be Dale.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Austria: Worlds Biggest Edible Xmas Decoration

The world’s biggest edible Christmas decoration has gone on display at an Advent market in Austria. It took confectioner Michaela Geier and baker Bernhard Ziegerhofer five weeks to create the gingerbread ball caked in icing which has now gone on display at the Christmas market in St Jakob im Walde in Styria. The ball is more than a metre wide and contains 380 kg of gingerbread and sugar icing.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Belgium: Become a Monk and Save Our Trappist

Several Trappist breweries have raised the alarm. The declining number of monks means that they could soon have to stop brewing. The problem is something of a tough nut to crack. A spokesman for one monastery told the newspaper that “We can hardly employ a head-hunter”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Belgium Extradites Six Moroccan Prisoners

Belgium has sent six Moroccan nationals that were serving prison sentences here back to Morocco to serve the rest of their sentences there. News of the Moroccan convicts’ extradition was given by the Belgian Justice Minister Annemie Turtelboom (Flemish liberal). Ms Turtelboom says that all six convicts had committed serious crimes.

They had been convicted of crimes such as murder, rape, deception and fraud. This is the third time that Moroccan prisoners have been sent back to Morocco to serve their sentences there. A total of 15 Moroccan convicts have been extradited.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Blackrock Reaches 7.789% Stake in Telecom Italia

Consob chief says inquiry launched into rising stake

(ANSA) — Milan, December 16 — Asset management giant BlackRock reached a 7.789% stake in Italy’s largest phone company Telecom Italia (TI), the US-based investor said in a statement on Monday.

BlackRock’s statement shot down reports over the weekend that its stake had risen over a 10% threshold, which sparked alarm at the Italian market regulator Consob.

Consob President Giuseppe Vegas blasted BlackRock for failing to comply with regulatory rules saying it had not providing communication on its growing stake, in an interview with newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore published Sunday.

Vegas added that Consob was investigating.

BlackRock’s December 9 filing with the US market regulator SEC reported a 10.14% stake in TI, Vegas told Il Sole 24 Ore.

BlackRock’s confirmed stake still makes it the second largest single shareholder after Telco, a holding company controlled by the Spanish telecom company Telefonica which owns 22.39% of TI.

Vegas said the last communication Consob had received was on October 2, when BlackRock reported it had broken the 5% threshold to reach a 5.13% stake.

Telecom Italia on Monday said in a note that it had not received any notice of BlackRock’s advancing ownership.

Stock in Telecom Italia rose 4.9% to 0.69 euro per share on Monday.

TI has speculative appeal, an analyst at Equita Telecom Italia wrote.

Equita cited antitrust troubles in Argentina for TI’s shareholder of reference Telefonica, Vegas’s reported receptiveness to a takeover bid for TI by another major telecommunications company, and a possible shake up at a TI board meeting slated for December 20.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Controlling the Past in Romania

Romania is a country whose political life has been profoundly afflicted by a lack of morals from the fall of communism to this day. In this de-facto a semi-presidential republic, it is only the government that gets always criticized by the EU, although the president Traian Basescu himself is a man with a dark past and a contestable present. Basescu has thus been an informer for the Communist secret services, the Securitate, and here we publish the proof.

This week again, in Brussels, the spokesman of the Commission Mark Gray had harsh words for the Romanian ruling coalition of Socialists and Liberals, after the parliament voted on Tuesday to boost the deputies’ immunity from prosecution.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: MP’s Cuba Attack Fails

Søren Pind attacked the new foreign minister for his comment on Cuba but faced a wave of backlash

The same week that Barack Obama’s political rivals feigned outrage after the US president shook hands with Cuban president Raul Castro, the communist island was the focus of a furore involving the new Danish foreign minister.

“So if you don’t have time to go to Cuba, you can lie in the hammock between two trees and listen to the CD and dream of Cuban beaches and the Cuban paradise,” Nielsen told Søvndal.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

ESA’s Cryosat Sees Arctic Sea-Ice Volume Bounce Back

The bounce back in the extent of sea ice in the Arctic this summer was reflected also in the volume of ice. Data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft suggests there were almost 9,000 cu km of ice at the end of this year’s melt season.

This is close to 50% more than in the corresponding period in 2012. It is a rare piece of good news for a region that has witnessed a rapid decline in both area cover and thickness in recent years.

But scientists caution against reading too much into one year’s “recovery”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

European Left Nominates Greek to Succeed Barroso

The European Left Party Saturday nominated Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Greek party Syriza, as its candidate for the post of European Commission president. “We’re sending out a very strong message,” said Pierre Laurent, European Left Party leader. “Anti-austerity is what we are going to stand for in the elections.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Europe: Islamic Fundamentalism is Widespread

by Soeren Kern

The majority of Muslims in Europe believe Islamic Sharia law should take precedence over the secular constitutions and laws of their European host countries, according to a new study, which warns that Islamic fundamentalism is widespread and rising sharply in Western Europe.

The “Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey”—a five-year study of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Sweden—was published on December 11 by the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, one of the largest social science research institutes in Europe.

According to the study (German and English), which was funded by the German government, two thirds (65%) of the Muslims interviewed say Islamic Sharia law is more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.

Three quarters (75%) of the respondents hold the opinion that there is only one legitimate interpretation of the Koran, which should apply to all Muslims, and nearly 60% of Muslims believe their community should return to “Islamic roots.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Fewer Monks Means Less Belgian Beer for Its Fans

Among people in the know, Orval is not only considered a classic Belgian beer, but also rare and difficult to find. And to those aficionados, that’s no surprise: It’s always been brewed in relatively small quantities inside a beautiful, tranquil Trappist monastery, and according to ancient methods.

Now, however, it will be even harder to get your hands on. Due to a shortage of monks at the centuries-old Abbey of Notre Dame d’Orval, in the Gaume region of Belgium, their traditional drink can’t keep up with demand — and it’s about to lose its distinctive and exclusive Trappist “appelation.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Grand Coalition’ Returns to Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her new coalition partners, the Social Democrats, have formally signed a coalition agreement some ten weeks after elections. The new ministers are set to be sworn in Tuesday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Letta Govt Approves Decree to End Party Funding

Letta says power with people, denies taxpayers ‘cheated’

(ANSA) — Rome, December 13 — Premier Enrico Letta said the Italian people have more power after his coalition government approved a decree to phase out public funding of Italy’s political parties at a cabinet meeting Friday.

Letta, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), said the decree was based on a government bill that was approved in the Lower House but was not set to finish its passage through parliament by the end-of-year deadline his executive set when it was sworn in in April.

A decree immediately becomes law after being approved by the government but it needs to be ratified by parliament within two months to stay in force.

It is a response to a long series of high-profile corruption scandals that hit various parts of the country’s political spectrum and contributed to widespread disenchantment with its political class.

The rise of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), which won about a quarter of the vote in February’s inconclusive general election, has been linked to these scandals.

This week Italy has also been hit by violence and disruption after disparate groups joined in nationwide protests by the so-called Pitchfork Movement. Under the terms of the bill that was presented to parliament, party funding will be reduced to 60% in the first year, 50% in the second and 40% the third year before it is subsequently abolished altogether. Public funding will be replaced by private donations, with limits set on how much an individual or firm can give to any party to avoid excessive power going to lobbies.

Individuals will also be able to donate a small fraction on their taxes to a party in their annual returns declaration. “We always felt that going beyond the current regulation of public contributions was absolutely necessary,” Letta told a press conference.

“This is very important to the credibility for the political world and the institutions”. The Internet-based M5S, which has rejected 42 million euros in public financing and campaigned for party funding to be scrapped immediately, has called the government’s move a “moral victory”.

But it also dubbed the original bill a “scam law”, as it stipulated that the individual taxpayer’s money would be split among parties automatically unless the person explicitly declares on their tax return that it should not go to a political party.

Letta said this is not the case in the decree and the money will stay in the State coffers when individual taxpayers opt not to donate their share to a party.

“We are giving all the power to the citizens,” Letta said.

“A citizen who wants to make a contribution can do so via their tax return or via a voluntary contribution.

“The system does not cheat the public as the (tax) money not assigned to a party remains with the State”. However, M5S leader Beppe Grillo was not impressed.

“It you want to get rid of public financing, all you have to do is not accept it, as the M5S did by not accepting 42 million euros,” comedian-turned political Grillo said on his popular blog, which gave life to the movement in 2009. “The decree is the umpteenth time we’ve been taken for a ride”.

Last year a series of public-funds scandals hit regional and local governments across the country, involving parties of both left and right.

They culminated in the October arrest of Franco Fiorito, the caucus leader for Silvio Berlusconi’s now defunct People of Freedom (PDL) party in the Lazio region, for allegedly skimming off millions of euros of public money for personal use.

Letta said the decree will stop the scandals as the parties will be forced to have external auditors check their accounts.

The measure is part of a series of reforms the government plans to cut the cost of Italy’s political machinery and make the country easier to govern. These reforms should include cuts to the number of parliamentarians, the elimination of Italy’s provincial governments, a new election law and stripping the Senate of law-making powers and turning it into a regional assembly.

Letta said his government is in a stronger position to push through reforms after winning two confidences votes in parliament this week.

The votes were called after ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party pulled its support, leaving Letta with a more slender majority in parliament.

It survived as expected thanks to the support of the New Centre Right (NCD) party, a group of pro-government moderates led by Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, who split from Berlusconi loyalists last month.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Tax Reductions Coming on Energy, Books, Car Insurance

Measures under ‘Destination Italy’ package to stimulate growth

(ANSA) — Rome, December 13 — Lower energy costs, a tax credit for research, creation of a new ‘mini-bond’, and a reduction in car insurance bills were all part of a package aimed at improving Italy’s business climate announced Friday by Premier Enrico Letta.

The decree, approved by cabinet, also expands Customs operations for international clients by providing 24-hour service and texts translated into English, said Flavio Zanonato, minister of industry.

Most of the measures are gathered together under the government’s Destination Italy initiative designed to attract greater foreign investment in Italy’s economy, which is struggling to emerge from two years of the worst recession seen here since the Second World War. “It’s a measure that is used to restore the confidence of businesses…and to give opportunities to those who want to invest,” said Letta.

A key feature of Destination Italy is an 850-million euro reduction in the cost of energy bills.

“Such a strong reduction in the cost of energy bills (addresses) one of the most damaging (barriers) to the competitiveness of our businesses,” said Letta.

Further incentives worth 600 million euros for small- and medium-sized businesses to add photovoltaic panels to reduce their energy bills are included in the new decree, as well as tax credits for research, and incentives for businesses that digitize more of their work.

A “mini-bond” process to help small- and medium-sized businesses to issue securities to raise money rather than going to the banks for loans is also included in the Destination Italy decree.

The premier also announced a 19% tax rebate on books, which he described as “an important point that has to do with the dissemination of books and culture,” and is expected to cost the Treasury about 50 million euros.

An investment in the Naples Metro Capodichino line was also announced as well as plans to reduce automobile insurance rates by an average of 7% for consumers.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: CasaPound Leader Sentenced to Jail for Tearing Down EU Flag

Violence feared at large-scale ‘Pitchfork’ protest

(ANSA) — Rome, December 16 — A leader in the neo-Fascist group CasaPound was sentenced Monday to three months in jail and fined 100 euros for tearing down a European Union flag from the EU’s Rome offices over the weekend. Simone Di Stefano, the national vice-president of the club and fledgling political party, was arrested Saturday during a snap demonstration after he erected a ladder, scaled the EU building and removed the EU flag in an attempt to replace it with an Italian tricolor. CasaPound and extreme-right-wing movement Forza Nuova were demonstrating outside the courthouse as it made its ruling in the case Monday. Both groups have participated in the so-called Pitchfork Movement demonstrations, which snarled traffic and blocked commerce in cities across Italy all last week in anti-government and anti-austerity protests. Some leaders in the Movement, which originally consisted primarily of disgruntled truckers and farmers, have blamed “subversive fringes” from the extreme right for infiltrating the movement and spreading violence, looting and destroying public property. On Friday a spokesman from the loose-knit Movement raised suspicions of an extreme-right agenda when he blamed Jewish bankers for “enslaving” recession-weary Italy.

On Monday the Movement was showing signs of losing momentum. Local Pitchfork groups in the Sicily and Veneto regions announced they would not be attending a large-scale demonstration scheduled Wednesday in Rome for fear of violence. Still, Movement leader Lucio Chiavegato was undeterred. While he acknowledged evidence of a “violent fringe” marching alongside his Movement, he said that the group’s “eight million demonstrators” were able to maintain control. Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino said the city was prepared for any outcome during protests and would not tolerate protesters blocking traffic in the way that has typified protests elsewhere in the country. “The city has no intention of its soil being occupied by tents in places like Piazza del Popolo, especially not right before Christmas,” said Marino. “We will not tolerate unauthorized sit-ins of public property nor violence”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Knox, Sollecito in ‘Murderous’ Rage in Kercher Slaying

Lawyer says U.S. student had ‘no inhibitions’ due to drugs

(ANSA) — Florence, December 16 — Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, accused in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, were in the grip of a “murderous rage” fuelled by illegal drugs and alcohol, a lawyer for the victim’s family said Monday.

Knox, Sollecito and a third person definitively convicted of the crime, Rudy Guede, had “no inhibitions” because of the drugs and alcohol they ingested before murdering Kercher in November 2007, charged Vieri Fabiani.

Only later did the “fear take over” and led to false explanations including a simulated break-in and robbery, and a false accusation against a bar owner in Perugia, where the murder occurred, added Fabiani.

A Florence court is trying the case against Knox and Sollecito, who have been on trial twice before for the murder of Kercher.

Both have said they are not guilty of the accusations.

Guede was convicted in a fast-track trial and is serving a 16-year sentence in the murder, but Italy’s top appeal court said it was unlikely he acted alone.

Knox, who is in the United States and has not returned for this trial, and Sollecito each served two years in prison after a lower court convicted them of murder in 2009.

An appeal court overturned those convictions in 2011 and in March, Italy’s highest court sent the case back to the appeals stage over aspects of the evidence it argued had not been properly examined before.

The supreme court ruled that the initial forensic evidence had been wrongly dismissed in the acquittal and a prosecution theory about a sex game that went wrong should be re-examined.

Kercher, 21, was found dead on the floor of an apartment she shared with Knox on November 2, 2007.

Guede’s DNA was found inside Kercher, on her clothes, and elsewhere in the apartment.

Fabiani said that a motive for the murder was “irrelevant” because the crime was committed while the trio were abusing substances.

An Italian prosecutor has requested a 26-year prison term for Knox and Sollecito for the murder, plus a further four years for Knox for allegedly slandering bar owner Patrick Lumumba, whom she initially implicated during tough police questioning before later retracting, saying she had been confused. The new trial opened in Florence in September, and a decision is expected on January 10.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Napolitano Lashes Out at ‘Inhumane’ Prison Conditions

‘Parliament should discuss justice-system reform’

(ANSA) — Rome, December 16 — Italian President Giorgio Napolitano spoke out Monday against the “inhumane conditions” plaguing the country’s jails and asked parliament to bring in justice-system reform.

In May, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to make dramatic improvements to its prison system to stop overcrowding and violations against prisoners’ rights.

Earlier this year, the Strasbourg court rejected Italy’s appeal against a sentence condemning Rome for the state of Italian jails.

The country’s prison conditions have long been a source of criticism from human rights’ groups.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Paris-Barcelona High-Speed Rail Link Finally Opens

After months of delays, the first direct high-speed rail link to connect Paris with Barcelona was opened on Sunday. The joint project from France’s state rail operator SNCF and its Spanish equivalent Renfe will see two TGV (high-speed train) services run between the French capital and the Catalan city each day, with a journey time of just under six-and-a-half hours.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Peter O’Toole Dies at 81: Film Legend and Hollywood Hellraiser Who Shot to Fame as Lawrence of Arabia Had Suffered From Long Illness

The film industry is in mourning after legendary film actor Peter O’Toole died today at the age of 81.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Sebastian Kurz Becomes Youngest Ever Austrian Foreign Minister

Austria’s new Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has become the youngest ever Foreign Minister in the country’s history. Aged just 27 Kurz from the Austrian People’s Party the ÖVP took his new office today (Monday) when the new government was sworn in. Kurz was nominated for the Foreign Minister by Austrian Vice Chancellor Michael Spindelegger.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Evolution of Jihadism in Italy: Rise in Homegrown Radicals

By Lorenzo Vidino

Jihadist terrorism in Italy has recently undergone significant demographic and operational changes. The first generation of foreign-born militants with ties to various jihadist groups outside Europe is still active in Italy, albeit with less intensity than in the past. During the last few years, however, Italian authorities have increasingly noticed a shift toward forms of homegrown radicalization similar to that experienced in other Western European countries.

Two recent incidents highlighted this trend: the conviction of a young man from Brescia who, without any connection to established jihadist groups, formed an online network of jihadist enthusiasts; and a Genoa-born convert to Islam who was killed in Syria. These two incidents marked some of the first cases of homegrown jihadist radicalization in Italy.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Serial-Killer Anatomy of a Swedish Scandal

It is probably Sweden’s worst miscarriage of justice. On Monday, officials decided that Thomas Quick will continue to receive mental treatment but with less restrictions. The Local contributor David Lindén explains how a self-confessed serial killer went on to be cleared of all eight murders.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Female Students Banned From Speaking at Islam Seminar at University of Leicester

Female students were asked to walk through a ‘sisters only’ entrance at the Queen Mary University seminar, in a similar way to those who attended a Leicester University event in February (pictured).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: More on Gender Segregation

Yesterday the Chief Executive of Universities UK, Nicola Dandridge, was interviewed on the Today programme. At one point she said: ‘You’re assuming that we have the right to impose views on participants’ In fact that was exactly what the guidelines she was defending assumed.

In a defence of gender segregated seating, Hizb-ut-Tahrir spokeswoman Shohana Khan writes: ‘First let’s be clear that this voluntary gender separated seating, takes place in events that are specifically designed for Muslim students, for whom this practice is an integral part of their faith.’

This disregards the perspective of many Muslim women and men who do not see this practice as an integral part of their faith. And in fact the Universities UK case study (now withdrawn) featured a speaker demanding segregation, without reference to the views of the audience…

[JP note: See also Nick Cohen at

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2013/12/sexist-extremists-and-borderline-racists-lead-britain-universities-part-two/ ]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Muslim Protesters Take to London’s Streets to Demand Shops Stop Selling Alcohol

Dozens gathered to voice their disapproval and warned retailers they face 40 LASHES if they continue to sell it

Muslim protesters have taken to the streets of London to demand that shops and restaurants refrain from selling alcohol. Dozens gathered on Brick Lane to voice their disapproval, and warned retailers they face 40 LASHES if they continue to sell the product. The sale of alcohol is prohibited by Sharia Law, and the protest, led by former Al-Muhajiroun leader Anjem Choudary, reportedly targeted the area because of the large numbers of revelers who would be there for festive celebrations…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Miliband Accused of Wanting to ‘Forcibly Rip-Up’ The Countryside Under Plan to Allow Towns and Cities to Expand

The Labour leader wants to give places such as Stevenage, Oxford, York and Luton a new ‘right to grow’, over-riding the objections of neighbouring areas.

[Comment: Preparing housing for the massive incoming migration of future Labour voters.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Plans for New Agbrigg Mosque

Muslim men and women will be able to attend prayers at the same time if plans for a new mosque are given the go-ahead.

The Madina Masjid Committee want to knock down their current place of worship on St Catherine Street, in Agbrigg, and replace it with a purpose built mosque…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Sex Assault on Young Artist at National Gallery: Woman Attacked as She Sketched Masterpiece

The 20-year-old told security staff she had been sexually assaulted in a room full of some of the prestigious gallery’ s best-known works.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Toys Containing Cancer Chemicals Which Could Cause Infertility Seized From Market

Toys which contain chemicals which can cause cancer, infertility in men and deformity of unborn children have been confiscated from a market stall.

The ‘fruit-head’ dolls came with strawberry, apple, tomato or blackcurrant-shaped heads and were confiscated after tests showed they contained the harmful phthalates.

The bright toys were reportedly found on sale at a shop in Gillingham earlier this year, and have previously been banned across Europe.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Tycoon Woos Labour — And Ed’s Old Flame

Why today, Andrew Rosenfeld, who is worth £100 million, is one of the most influential figures in ‘Red’ Ed Miliband’s Labour Party.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Why Are We Giving China £27m in Aid?

The revelation comes just two weeks after David Cameron went to Beijing to seek Chinese investment to improve Britain’s ailing infrastructure.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Verdi Labor Union Widens Walkout at Amazon in Germany

German labor union Verdi has intensified its strike action against online retailer Amazon, seeking to slow deliveries in the middle of the crucial Christmas holiday season. Amazon is rejecting a demand for higher pay.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Video — Swedish Nazis Attack Families at Demo

Three people were taken to hospital on Sunday after they were injured by counter-demonstrators at an anti-Nazi demonstration in the suburbs of Stockholm.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

EU-Turkey Sign Readmission Agreement

They also initiated the EU-Turkey Visa liberalisation dialogue

EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström signed with the Turkish Minister of Interior Muammer Güler, the EU-Turkey readmission agreement, and initiated, jointly with the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu, the EU-Turkey Visa liberalisation dialogue.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt: Taxi Driver Killed by Lynch Mob After Running Over Pro-Morsi Protester

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood killed a taxi driver by slitting his throat after he ran over a female protester on Monday in Egypt’s Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya.

According to a preliminary medical report, 24-year-old Mohamed Othman died from a deep cut in his neck, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.

Eyewitness told Al-Ahram Arabic news website that the taxi driver ran over the protester after he demanded a crowd let him pass and they refused. Members of the crowd killed him and torched his car.

The female protester was transferred to a nearby hospital where she remains in critical condition, according to a pro-Brotherhood Facebook page named “Al-Azhar University in Mansoura.”…

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]
 

EU Offers ‘Special’ Status to Israel and Palestine

EU foreign ministers Monday promised Israel and Palestine “an unprecedented package of European political, economic and security support” if they agree on a two-state solution. They said both countries would get “Special Privileged Partnership” status, with easier access to the single market. They also criticised Israel for ongoing settlement construction.

The fake sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service last week was among a group of people accused of assaulting two men found with a stolen television and burning them to death, according to his friends. The interpreter, who sparked outrage when it was revealed that he was using fake sign language during the event, joined others in allegedly setting fire to tires and placing them around the two men’s necks, one of the interpreter’s cousins and three of his friends told the Associated Press.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Abducted in Syria: Extremist Rebels Target Journalists

Radical Islamists embedded among the rebels in Syria are reportedly targeting foreign journalists for abduction. Instead of holding them for ransom, however, they use them as trump cards in their power struggles with more moderate rebel groups.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Bahrain: Arrest and Torture of Children Routine, Says Amnesty

110 minors jailed without trial, human rights watchdog’s report

(by Alessandra Antonelli) (ANSAmed) — DUBAI — Bahrain routinely arrests and tortures minors, Amnesty International said Monday in its new report on young dissidents in the oil emirate.

Scores of young protesters, some as young as 13, have been blindfolded, beaten, tortured, and threatened with rape while in detention over the past two years, the human rights watchdog alleged. Currently, at least 110 minors are behind bars in Dry Dock adult prison on Muharraq Island. They are either in pretrial detention or awaiting formal charges. Most of them are being detained on suspicion of taking part in “unauthorized gatherings” and protests, burning tires or throwing Molotov cocktails at police, Amnesty said.

“By detaining minors, Bahraini authorities are showing an incredible disrespect towards their own commitments to human rights”, commented Amnesty International Deputy Director for MENA Said Aboumedouah. Bahrain is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as anyone under 18, and which explicitly forbids torture and other degrading or inhumane treatment of minors. Bahrain has a majority Shiite population ruled by a minority Sunni monarchy. The frictions between the two exploded on a grand scale during the Arab Spring revolts of February 2011 as Shiites took to the streets to demand more democracy and an end to discrimination. Authorities brutally repressed the protests, leading to the deaths of 40 people, four of them police. The ensuing wave of mass arrests and abuses attracted international scrutiny, resulting in a partial mea culpa by authorities and a dialogue for national reconciliation, which has so far not had concrete results.

“Three years ago security forces used excessive force to quell anti-government protests, and now we are seeing a new wave of repression against children”, Aboumedouah said.

Amnesty International called on Bahrain to put in place alternative sanctions against minors if they are found guilty of offenses that are recognized as such under international standards.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Israel Trades Fire With Lebanese Soldiers

JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers shot at two Lebanese soldiers across the Israeli-Lebanese border late Sunday, apparently killing one, hours after a sniper believed to be from the Lebanese Army shot and killed an Israeli soldier in the same area, Israeli military officials said on Monday. As a result Israeli forces were put on heightened alert along the tense but usually calm border…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Israel Blames Beirut for Soldier’s Death and Opens Fire

Soldier killed by Lebanese one. Unifil calls for mediation

(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV — Israel blames the Lebanese government for the incident last night on the border between the two countries in which an Israeli soldier was killed.

‘A soldier of the Lebanese army is responsible for the shooting’, confirmed on Monday Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon. ‘We consider the Lebanese government and its army responsible’.

‘We will not tolerate any breach on our sovereignty’, concluded the minister.

The cause of the cross-border shooting is still unknown. Two hours after the Israeli soldier was fatally wounded in the Naqura (Rosh ha-Niqra) area, an Israeli patrol unit saw ‘two suspects’ on the other side of the border and opened fire in the second of two — and not one — incidents along the border between Israel and Lebanon in the night between Sunday and Monday, according to an Israeli military spokeswoman cited by the website of Gaaretz. The spokeswoman said the suspects were Lebanese soldiers.

The UN’s border peace-keeping corps Unifil stationed in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel urged the two sides to exercise restraint.

‘The appeal has been accepted and the situation is calm’ Unifil spokesman Andrea Tenenti told ANSA, announcing a meeting between Lebanese and Israeli officials at the border chaired by Italian Gen. Paolo Serra on Monday afternoon.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Jihad on Jesus: Militants Firebomb New Christ Statue and Ancient Monastery, Syria

Earlier this month, the Islamist-led opposition in Syria broadcast a video clip of a militant threatening the nation’s Christian minority, with a focus on the Cherubim monastery and the large Jesus statue recently erected in the region of Saidnaya in Damascus.

In the video, images of militants firing rockets at the ancient monastery and setting the building on fire appear (confirmed elsewhere). The Christ statue also appears being targeted, though it is unclear if it was damaged.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Snow Closes Roads in Israel, Is a Source of Wonder in Egypt

Snow coated domes and minarets Friday as a record Middle East storm compounded the suffering of Syrian refugees, sent the Israeli army scrambling to dig out stranded motorists and gave Egyptians a rare glimpse of snow in their capital.

Nearly three feet of snow closed roads in and out of Jerusalem, which is set in high hills, and thousands in and around the city were left without power. Israeli soldiers and police rescued hundreds trapped in their cars by snow and ice.

In Cairo, where local news reports said the last recorded snowfall was more than 100 years ago, children in outlying districts capered in white-covered streets, and adults marveled at the sight, tweeting pictures of snow-dusted parks and squares. In other parts of the city, rain and hail rocketed down.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Syria: Opposition, 83 Dead in Yesterday’s Raid on Aleppo

Christians trapped in Kanaye, Qaeda militants threaten slaughter

(ANSAmed) — ROME, DECEMBER 16 — At least 83 people, including several children, have been reported dead and dozens wounded in government air raids Sunday on Aleppo, Syrian opposition local committee activists said Monday.

The attacks took place after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought food and medicines to Aleppo’s jail which has been besieged by rebels for the past eight months.

Approximately 2,000 Christians have been trapped since Saturday night in their village of Kanaye which is occupied by Al Nusra and Salafite militants, mostly foreigners. They risk being slain if they will not convert to Islam or abandon their homes.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey: Credit Card Showing Mecca Direction Issued

Holders can shop in installments for pilgrimage packages

(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL — Turkiye Finans, an Islamic participation bank, has launched a new credit card that shows the direction of Mecca with a built-in digital compass as daily Hurriyet reports. The bank’s representatives say the new card is a first in the country “We keep making breakthrough banking innovations. Our new card offers many advantages to its users. We invite all those who are planning a Hajj or Umra visit to use our card,” said Semih Alsar, Finance Bank’s deputy general manager responsible for personal banking, via a written statement. Holders of the card will have the chances to shop in installments from several travel agencies to take advantage of special Hajj and Umra pilgrimage packages.

Turkiye Finans was founded in 2005 following the merger of Family Finans, owned by the Ulker Group, a worldwide giant in biscuit, chocolate and candies, and Anadolu Finans, owned by the Boydak Group, a leading group in the furniture, home textiles and cable sectors. Some 60% of the bank was later acquired in 2008 by the National Commercial Bank (NCB), the largest bank in Saudi Arabia

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

‘Whole Families Murdered’: Syrian Rebels Execute Over 80 Civilians Outside Damascus

[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]

Over 80 civilians in a town northwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus have been executed by Islamist rebels, sources within the Syrian military told RT. Many others were kidnapped to be used as human shields.

Government forces are continuing a large-scale operation against Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwa Al-Islam fighters, who captured the town earlier this week. The area is located some 20 kilometers away from Damascus.

According to SANA news agency, around 1,000 militants were in the town when it was enveloped by the army on Friday.

The military sources said the “armed groups have performed an execution of civilians” in Adra, RT Arabic correspondent Abutaleb Albohaya reported from Syria.

“For now it’s established that over 80 people were killed in the areas now taken over by the army. Often whole families were murdered,” he said.

The number of executed civilians is expected to rise after government troops manage to recover the rest of the town — which has a population of around 20,000 — from the Islamists, the military source added…

According to Al-Said, the rebels committed the atrocities so they could place blame on government forces.

But the resident said that Adra citizens are “waiting for Syrian troops to save us from the terrorists, who came from other countries.”…

Geopolitical analyst Patrick Henningsen sees foreign encouragement of rebel forces as one of the reasons behind the Adra tragedy.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Russia in Stagnation: Putin Speech Hints at Big Problems

In his annual state of the nation address on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the need to rein in corruption and called for technological progress. But he also hinted at the bigger problems that will plague his country in years to come.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Russia Moves Missiles in Western Region

Russia has deployed Iskander missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers in its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania, the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia reported on Monday.

The missiles have been in place “for some time,” according to Izvestia’s source, a high-level Defence Ministry official it did not name. Another unnamed military source said they were deployed about 18 months ago.

The Izvestia report followed a story in German newspaper Bild on Saturday that said secret satellite imagery showed Iskander-M missiles stationed near the Polish border.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Senator McCain Pimps for CIA-Spawned Color Revolution in Ukraine

Globalists work to push Ukraine away from Russia into the European Union

On Sunday, Arizona’s Republican Senator, John McCain, told thousands of protesters in Kiev, Ukraine, that the United States will take “concrete action” against Ukraine’s government if it moves against the demonstrations. McCain said sanctions against Ukraine “would deserve serious consideration” by Congress if Viktor Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government entered into a custom and trade agreement with Russia. Yanukovych has resisted pressure to sign off on a deal to bring the former Soviet Union republic into the European Union. Large and occasionally violent demonstrations occurred after Yanukovych signaled he would not sign the EU agreement…

Although largely forgotten and certainly not mentioned by the establishment media, Ukraine experienced similar demonstrations back in 2004. The so-called “Orange Revolution” was orchestrated by the same players who are busily at work now — the CIA, its modern day surrogates, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department, various subversive NGOs, the IMF and NATO. After the authoritarian government of pro-Russian Leonid Kuchma was accused of election fraud in favor of his preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, tens of thousands of Ukrainians filled the streets of Kiev in protest. The disputed election resulted in Viktor Yushchenko, a former banker favored by Wall Street and the elite, taking over the presidency.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine Protesters Hold Rival Rallies in Kyiv

Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in Ukraine’s capital to protest President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association pact with the EU. The bloc says “work” on the deal has now been put “on hold.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Australia Withdraws Troops From Afghanistan

The last Australian troops have left Afghanistan, the country’s defense force has confirmed. The withdrawal ends the nation’s 12-year military presence in Afghanistan, during which 40 soldiers were killed.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Thailand: The Chilling Moment Girl, Six, Was Led Away Hand-in-Hand by Monster Who Raped and Killed Her

[Warning: * Disturbing Content *]

Chilling CCTV footage of the moment a six-year-old girl was led away by the hand to be raped and violently murdered has been released in Thailand.

The grainy clip, which echoes that of British toddler James Bulger being walked to his death in 1993, shows the girl, nicknamed ‘Nong Cartoon’, strolling with a stranger through the lobby of Bearing skytrain station in Bangkok ten days ago.

Her disappearance sparked a massive police hunt that ended yesterday with the discovery of her strangled and decomposing body in a deserted area near the city’s Suklhumvit Soi 501 motorway in a case that has shaken the nation.

Within hours of the grim find, detectives arrested a 32-year-old music roadie, named only as ‘Nui’, 400 miles away in the northern city of Nong Khai, following a tip-off from a member of public…

Nui’ had only last August been released from jail after serving three years and eight months for the abduction of a child under 15-years-old.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

‘China Teaches Its Kids to Sit Exams, Sweden Its Kids to Think’

In an open letter to the Swedish education minister, Lund high schooler Saga Ringmar asks him not to fear China, despite Shanghai beating Sweden by 37 places on the recent Pisa ranking. Her test-loving school in Shanghai left her disillusioned and her kid sister depressed.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

China Rejects Fifth US Corn Cargo in a Month, Citing GMO Strain

China has blocked a fifth cargo of US corn since mid-November after testing found a strain of genetically-modified (GMO) corn not yet approved for import. Three more cargoes may also be refused.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

China: Sixteen Dead as Muslims Riot, Battle Police in Xinjiang

(Reuters) — Chinese police shot and killed 14 people during a riot near the old Silk Road city of Kashgar in which two policemen were also killed, the local government said on Monday, the latest unrest in a region that has a substantial Muslim population.

China has previously called some of the violence in the far western region of Xinjiang the work of Islamist militants plotting holy war.

The regional government said police were attacked by a mob throwing explosive devices and wielding knives when they went to arrest “criminal suspects” in a village near Kashgar.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Kim Jong Un’s Two Turbulent Years at the Helm

Two years after the death of his father, Kim Jong Un has attempted to assert his authority in North Korea by ordering the execution of his uncle and mentor and filling the regime with apparatchiks loyal to him alone.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

N. Korea Troops Pledge Loyalty En Masse as Seoul on Alert

Tens of thousands of North Korean troops pledged their loyalty to leader Kim Jong-Un Monday as Seoul put its forces on alert for “reckless provocations” after its communist rival staged a political purge.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Two Police Among at Least 16 Dead After Armed Clashes in Xinjiang, China

Armed clashes between “thugs” carrying explosives and machetes and police left at 16 people dead in China’s Xinjiang province late Sunday, including two officers, state media reported.

“Public Security Bureau police went to Sa-Yi-Ba-Ge village to arrest criminal suspects when thugs attacked with explosive devices and machetes suddenly, killing two policemen” according to Tianshan Net, an official website run by the Information Office of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Government.

“Police launched a decisive punishment, killing 14 thugs, and arresting two suspects,” they added. “The case is under further investigation.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Will China Restart the Space Race?

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

On Saturday, a Chinese lunar probe made the first soft landing anyone’s made on the moon since 1976. The Chang’e-3 probe means that China is one of only three countries — joining the United States and the old Soviet Union — to accomplish such a feat. The probe includes an unmanned rover named Yutu that will spend several months exploring “geological structure and surface substances and looking for natural resources.” But will China try to claim the ground it explores? Possibly.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Fog Donkey: The Only Honest Man in a Stadium of Fools

by Richard Poplak

The Memorial Signer—the man standing alongside speakers at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium—was called out as a fake, but was, apparently, suffering from a “schizophrenia attack” brought on by happiness. Which begs the question: who, or what, at FNB Stadium on that fated day, was real?

“Dollhouse. Petrol. Roadsign. Interested nail. Icon. Much cardboard. Weather. Tile. Tiles. Sheet. Poptart.

POPTART!*”

I knew that it would not be long before the industrial mourning machine delivered its ruling metaphor, its Neo, its Christ-figure. It took no time at all before we tumbled down the Cartesian rabbit hole, before we found ourselves in a netherworld governed by topsy-turvy nonsense verse, wherein the man flapping his hands meaninglessly was the only man making any sense at all.

His name is Thamsanqa Jantjie. But for one glorious day, he was beyond the banality of names.

Let’s back up a moment. Thousands of mourners filed into FNB Stadium on Tuesday morning, and they had a very simple role to play—that of background colour. As they arrived, the media asked them the usual groaners—Why are you here? What did Madiba mean to you? How far did you travel to get to the stadium?—and they gave the stock answers—Because I loved Madiba. He was bigger than Jesus. I walked 12000km from Paris over the past three days. These paradoxically smiling, tear-stained faces were meant to provide the backdrop to the proceedings, singing happy songs, singing sad songs, and offering doses of curative African “spirit” for television viewers in Milwaukee and Swansea and Perth.

They had their shot, these good people, and they blew it.

“Many files.

Wiper blade. Banana cheese.”

Arriving next were our local leaders, who roared over in their motorcades with blue lights flashing and sirens bleating: the signs and signifiers of power in this newly gilded age. The media asked them the usual groaners—Why are you here? What did Madiba mean to you? How far did you travel to get to the stadium?—and they gave the stock answers—Because I loved Madiba. He was bigger than Jesus. I flew in a gold plated jet from Nkandla to Waterkloof.

To say that this cohort didn’t quite rise to the occasion would be, in fairness, an untruth, because I’m not sure what occasion they imagined they were rising to. Was this a memorial, a campaign stop, a meet-n-greet? Their words were the carefully measured pabulum served to a sick baby, so tasteless and easily digestible that they steamed through the intellect’s digestive tract to emerge as puffs of noisome air, drifting away with the rain.

They had their shot, these good people, and they blew it.

“Ducting volume. Me.

[redacted]”

Then we had the guests from afar, the super-celebs, the high-wattage smilers. They were here to speak above and beyond the assembled crowd, to measure out small political gestures, to take photographs with the features on their smartphones, to emit enormous words into a cavernous stadium and buff their brands before Clio, History’s muse, who was almost certainly in the stands taking notes. Their words were boxes and boxes of cocoa puffs, served up on the silver of a Versailles dinner set, sugared cereal masquerading as haute cuisine.

The Obamatory was pitched high, so high, in fact, that it laid everything around it to waste, like a Hollywood tent-pole opening a Rwandan film school year-end screening. But what did it all mean? What did it amount to?

They had their shot, these good people, and they blew it.

“Mango tank. Sad chair talks.

Jam angel. Fisheries.

Shiny duck. Shiny ducks.”

And so it was left to one man to make sense of it all. His job, as I understand it, was to interpret the words on stage for those who hear darkness. It is an ingenious process—by an agreed-upon code, spoken sounds are transformed into gestures, which in turn becomes language. The language is a gesture itself: by providing the deaf with a signer, we are saying that everyone must be allowed to participate—everyone, regardless of disability, is part of the polity.

The problem was simple: the signer did not know the agreed-upon-codes. Or rather, the problem is complicated: the signer could not deliver the agreed-upon-codes. The signer strode onto stage, stood alongside the most important people in the world, and made gestures that had no meaning to the hard of hearing—that had no meaning to anyone, it turns out, except perhaps the signer himself…

[…]

* All quotes are pulled from the Twitter feed attributed to @MemorialSigner. Who, I’m guessing, is fake. Which, of course, makes these Tweets and their sentiments no less real.

           — Hat tip: LH [Return to headlines]
 

South Africa “Joined at the Hip” To Cuba

If President Obama’s handshake with Cuban dictator Raul Castro is news, Castro’s featured presence at the Nelson Mandela memorial service and what the South African government said about him are equally newsworthy. South Africa was described as “joined at the hip” to Cuba and in its debt for “liberation.”

Yet, this part of the memorial service has been carefully edited out of most of the “mainstream media” coverage of the event.

The service was organized and orchestrated by officers of the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party of South Africa which operates as a front for the South African Communist Party. Baleka Mbete, ANC chairperson, introduced Raul Castro’s speech by saying, “Comrades, we will now get an address from a tiny island — an island of people who liberated us, who fought for our liberation in Cuito Cuanavale — the people of Cuba.”

Cuito Cuanavale refers to the foreign intervention of thousands of Cuban military troops on behalf of communist Angolan government forces in Africa under the guidance of Soviet military officers during 1987 and 1988. This was a critical time when communist forces backed by the Soviet Union, Cuba and China were determined to crush the non-communist pro-freedom movement UNITA (The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).

As part of his effort to turn the tide against communism in Africa and elsewhere, the “Reagan Doctrine,” President Ronald Reagan strongly supported UNITA and its leader, Jonas Savimbi.

In the end, the communists solidified control of Angola, assassinated Savimbi (shot 15 times, twice to the head and once to the throat), and then took over Namibia and South Africa as the white population — fearing extinction in the face of the onslaught — made deals with the communists.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Biden: Immigrants, Legal or Not, ‘Are Already Americans’

Vice President Joe Biden says Congress has a moral and economic imperative to offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Many of them, he says, “are already Americans,” whether they’re here legally or not. He says immigrants simply want a decent life for themselves and their children, just as his great grandparents did.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

EU and Turkey to Sign Migration Deal

EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are Monday in Ankara to sign a Readmission Agreement, obliging Turkey to accept migrants crossing into EU territory via Turkey. In return Turkish citizens are to get visa-free travel to EU countries within three years.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Pelosi Calls for Obama to Halt Deportations

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi privately has urged the Obama administration to halt deportations for some illegal immigrants, saying that President Obama needs to use more “discretion” to reduce the number of people he’s kicking out of the country.

In an interview with Telemundo over the weekend, Mrs. Pelosi said that just being in the country illegally is not enough of a reason to be deported, and she said illegal immigrants must have something more serious on their records.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Sweden Fears Import of Syrian Terrorism

Sweden’s security police said they fear that terrorism could be imported by some 75 people who have left Sweden for Syria over the last two years to train or fight with al Qaeda-inspired groups.

The Swedish intelligence service Säpo on Monday released several key figures from the past year that testified to an increase in the number of persons commuting between Sweden and the bitter Syrian civil war, where numerous factions are fighting for power. In its last annual report, published in March, Säpo researchers said about 30 Swedes had made the trip south. That figure has now more than doubled.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ten Syrians Kept Chained in Athens by Pakistani Traffickers

Ten Syrian migrants were rescued in Koropi, northeast of Athens, on Sunday after being kept hostage by Pakistani traffickers.

Police said the migrants had paid their captors money to be smuggled from Greece to Italy. Instead, though, they were taken to a house in Koropi, where they were chained up and beaten.

The traffickers demanded that the Syrians contact relatives and convince them to pay between 2,000 and 3,000 euros for each of the migrants being held. Police were alerted when two of the Syrians were able to break their chains and escape the house.

Officers arrested four Pakistan men on Sunday and were seeking another three.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey, EU Sign Deals on Illegal Immigrants, Visa-Free Travel

Turkey and the European Union signed an agreement on Monday allowing EU governments to send back illegal immigrants crossing into Europe from Turkey in a move highlighting a thaw in relations between Ankara and the 28-member bloc.

At a ceremony in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom also signed an accord to enter into discussions on dropping visa requirements for Turks visiting Europe.

Turkey, a candidate for EU membership, lies on a major route for illegal migration into Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Boy Trouble

Family breakdown disproportionately harms young males—and they’re falling further behind.

Kay S. Hymowitz

When I started following the research on child well-being about two decades ago, the focus was almost always girls’ problems—their low self-esteem, lax ambitions, eating disorders, and, most alarming, high rates of teen pregnancy.

Now, though, with teen births down more than 50 percent from their 1991 peak and girls dominating classrooms and graduation ceremonies, boys and men are increasingly the ones under examination. Their high school grades and college attendance rates have remained stalled for decades. Among poor and working-class boys, the chances of climbing out of the low-end labor market—and of becoming reliable husbands and fathers—are looking worse and worse.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Christmas Under Assault, But Faithful Fight Back

It has been a tough road the last few years for those who wish to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas, and thus far this holiday season hasn’t held much hope for an end to the various and sundry attacks on those celebrating the birth of the Savior.

Several weeks ago, a choir director for a high school in Wausau, Wisconsin, threw in the towel on his students’ traditional Christmas concerts after an edict from the school board instituted a nearly total ban on sacred music “as a result of what they claimed were concerns over the amount of religious music being performed by choirs in the district’s schools,” reported The New American. As a result of the crackdown, the school district’s choir directors were limited to “one sacred number for every five secular songs featured at Christmas and other concerts.”

While district officials eventually overturned their poorly considered policy, it was merely the opening salvo for a season on atheist-inspired attacks on Christmas.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Norway: ‘Legalize Polygamy’: Progress Youth Wing

Youth activists from Norway’s governing Progress Party have voted to push for men and women to be allowed to marry as many partners as they desire, in a move described as “a pretty bad idea” by the party’s national leadership.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

School Bans Display of Christmas Poster by Student Because it “Might be Religious”

A school in Minnesota prohibited the display of a Christmas poster designed by a student for fear that it could be interpreted as in some way religious, despite the fact that it features modern day a cartoon character.

Rights Group The Rutherford Institute have taken up the case, noting that the depiction of Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas can in no way be defined as anything but a secular image, and that PACT Charter School officials have violated First Amendment rights by banning it.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Girl Guide Group Told to Ditch God or be Expelled

Troop faces removal from national body after leaders rejected new rules

Glynis Mackie (centre) who has been leading the 37th Newcastle Guide Unit in Jesmond for more than 25 years said the new pledge ‘sidelined’ Christianity.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

6 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/16/2013

  1. I would say the (re)growth of Arctic sea ice is hardly that anomalous. The sea ice decline had got ahead of what science had predicted. Predictions in matters of climate can never be very specific about individual years. The best they can do is come close over a decade or a quarter century.

    In an given year, departures from the trend may occur, but then this thing called “regression to the mean” tends to kick in. An unusually warm (by Arctic standards) year having led to massive ice loss, an ordinary year is colder than its predecessor. And so, we see more ice than last year, though not so much more as to get over on the other side of the trend line.

    • That depends on how much the data has been corrected to show warming, the arctic has been largely ice free a few times last century, in the early 1940s or 1939 the Russians escorted some Nazi ships (raiders to be exact) through the northern passage, to sink allied ships, and there was a large loss of ice in the early 1900s. I wonder if the volcanos under the ice affect it? all we are seeing is the effects of the little ice age melting not global warming!

  2. As to the “perfect storm” gold scenario—commodities trading is extremely complicated. Things almost no one would have thought of can come into the picture. The ones who have their fingers on all the facts make a killing, and the others, having bet on what seemed to them like a sure thing, lose their shirts.

    Taking a flyer in gold could well be reasonable. But please, ladies and gentlemen, keep in mind that much that sounds like a sure thing, is somehow not. In other words, not all that glitters is gold.

  3. Dear God,

    Since time began you have ruled us….Apprently? Please take notice that you no longer exist under Resolution EU/666.

    You are also Islamphobic and so must be desoscialised…..

    If you appear over Christmas you will be arrested under the EAW and deported to the issuing Member State.

    Yours

    EU Commission

  4. The Ice Sheet increase has already been linked to Zionist attempts at closing down the so-called Climate Change Meme and resurrecting their war on terror i.e. merging Muslim and Christian Left forces in Europe to propagate a new front for radcal dissent.

    see: Plessin (2012), Cathan (2011).

    Much has been written on this hoax but it appears clerics of European national churches, primarily Scandinavian and eastern European Orthodoxy, are colluding in some Climate Change scenario. Muslims are already converting and being reassigned clerical positions i.e. pastors, and halal meat trade established. Malmo is central to the demands but also for refugee processing (see whymuslimsdoit.com or fringe sites)

    I personally don’t think this Climate Change fraud will be cleared up till all Muslims converts are purged from these churches and separate states established to cater for displaced religious refugees and also asylum seekers i.e. Syria. Probably Nthn Europe (Danemark, Sweden)

  5. Do not read too much into data, for we are the experts!

    It’s comical innit?

    Could it be that they have read far too much into their data? Made rash predictions? Like courtiers in Canute’s court, claiming that the King could command the tide?

    The utter selfishness of these charlatans. Their eschatology is also a thing to behold. We rationally move away from Ragnarok, Armageddon and the Apocalypse in our culture and then are immediately besieged by tenured cretins who revive the vision of John.

    What a gullible species eh?

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