Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/5/2014

Israeli naval commandos boarded and seized a ship carrying advanced rockets from Iran that were bound for the Gaza Strip. The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship will be escorted to the Israeli port of Eilat within the next few days.

In other news, according to the latest census figures, the foreign-born population of Wales rose by 82% between 2002 and 2011.

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

Thanks to ESW, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, KP, 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
» Anger as Europe Demands an Extra £2.5 Billion From Britain to Plug Another Blackhole in the EU’s Budget
» Padoan Says Italy Has Received ‘Severe Warning’ From EC
 
USA
» A Maddow in MSNBCland
» A Nuclear Submarine Captain and the President
» Black Panther Leader, Convicted of Killing Cop, Released From Prison
» Briton Who Flew to Florida to Have Sex With Underage Girl and Get Her Pregnant So He Could Live Out ‘Incest’ Fantasy is Sentenced to 10 Years in Jail
» California Gold Discovery Spurs Rush of Theories
» Calling the Global Warming Charlatans “Nazis”
» College Board Unveils Fundamental Changes to SAT
» Connecticut Carry: State “Does Not Have the Balls” To Enforce 2013 Gun Law
» Greenpeace Drops Co-Founder Over Inconvenient Truths
» Guns, Schools, Mind Control, Revolution
» Maryland to Target 110,000 Citizens With Gun Confiscation
» McDonald’s Sued for $1.5m by Customer Who Wanted More Than 1 Napkin
» Nearly 70% Say They Are Ready for Something/Someone Different This Fall
» Obama Hiring Military Chaplains From Muslim Brotherhood Group Committed to “Grand Jihad”
» Private Property Rights Under Attack by Comprehensive Land Use Plans
» Putin Doesn’t Threaten Our National Security, Obama Does
» Second Success Raises Hope for a Way to Rid Babies of H.I.V.
» Surge in Babies Born Without Brains in Washington State
» Teen Sues Parents for College Money
» Two Oscar Voters Picked ‘12 Years a Slave’ Without Watching it
» Uprooting ObamaCare With Better Ideas
» Which Parts of America Are the Most Contaminated With Arsenic?
 
Canada
» Hubby Disguised Himself in Burka for Honour Killing
 
Europe and the EU
» Bank of England Suspends Worker in Probe Into Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing by Traders
» EC Chides Italy Over Corruption, Tax Evasion, Justice System
» Europe Gets Its Own Version of Tyrannosaurus Rex
» Ferrari Chairman Involved in Potential Alitalia-Etihad Deal
» France: Secret Tapes Reveal How Sarkozy Was a ‘Kept Man’
» France: The Rich Flee Paris, Frightened by Hollande’s Taxes
» Growing Opposition to EU-US Free Trade Deal
» Italy: Undersecretary Quits After Causing Turbulence for Renzi
» Italy: ‘Berlusconi to Wed on Ischia in June’
» Netherlands: Ethnic Minority Voters Abandon Labour in Droves Ahead of Local Vote
» Nordics Report High Abuse Levels Against Women
» Pope Defends Church’s Record on Child-Sex Abuse
» Right-Wing Extremism: Germany’s New Islamophobia Boom
» Somali Girls Aim to Start Bandy Team in Sweden
» Stonehenge is Like a Sacred ‘Prehistoric Glockenspiel’, Researchers Claim
» Study Finds Genetic Link Between Height and IQ
» Sugar Tax May be Necessary, England’s Chief Medical Officer Says
» UK: ‘Jealous Husband Stabbed His Westernised Muslim Wife 19 Times in the Neck After Affair… Leaving Her Six-Year-Old Son to Find Her Body and Dial 999’
» UK: Jealous Husband ‘Killed Westernised Muslim Wife After Her Birthday Sex With Another Man’
» UK: Legoland Closes Resort Hotel Following Threats
» UK: Murder Squad Officers Move to Sex Cases
» UK: Tower Hamlets Mayor Agrees UN Charter of Kids’ Rights in Public Services
» UK: Why Did No. 10 Cover Up Aide’s Child Porn Arrest?
 
Balkans
» Radical Islam’s Intimidation in Kosovo
 
North Africa
» Code Pink: Media Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt
» Egypt: Military Spokesman — 54 Terrorist Elements Arrested
» Libya Blames Terrorists for Benghazi Assassinations
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Can Re-Uniting Israel End the Violence?
» Israel and the Rest of the World
» Saving Al-Aqsa Mosque
» Video: Israeli Commandos Intercept Iranian Rockets W/100-Mile+ Range Meant for Israeli Cities
 
Middle East
» Iran Announces Missiles Equipped With Multiple Warheads
» Iranian Rocket Shipment Bound for Gaza Seized by Israeli Navy Off Port Sudan
» Iraq: 7 Killed, 64 Wounded in Baghdad Bombings
» Israel Fires Rockets Into Syrian Border Towns
» Israel Says Seized Gaza-Bound Rocket Shipment From Iran
» Israeli Naval Raid Nabs Gaza-Bound Arms From Iran
» Leaders Meet in Paris to Win Support for Fragile Lebanon, Burdened by Syrian Refugee Crisis
» Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain Withdraw Ambassadors From Qatar
» Saudis Back Online Campaign Against Child Abuse
» Saudi, UAE, Bahrain Pull Envoys From Qatar in Security Row
» Turkey Permits US Warship to Transit Bosphorus to Black Sea
» Turkish Airlines Flight Lands in Iran With 20 Israelis Onboard
» UAE Announces Visa on Arrival for Nationals of 13 EU Countries
» UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain Recall Their Ambassadors From Qatar
» UAE: Qatari Jailed in the UAE for 7yrs for Backing Islamist Group
» Why I Can’t Stand White Belly Dancers
 
Russia
» Albright: Crimea is Not Kosovo
» An Israeli-Russian Alliance?
» Chinese Investment in Ukraine Could be Costly Casualty of Conflict With Russia
» Crimea River
» European Union to Offer $15 Billion in Aid to Ukraine
» Hillary Clinton Compares Russia Moves to Nazi Aggression
» How to Kick Putin in the Teeth
» Tensions May Harm Tourism in Crimea: Ukrainian PM
» Ukraine: Sajid Javid, Vladimir Putin and the Strange Silence of Downing Street
» Ukraine: Tatar Sunni Muslims Pose a Threat to Russia’s Occupation of Crimea
» Ukraine Crisis: Russian Roulette in Space?
 
South Asia
» Ammunition Warehouse Explodes in Indonesia, Killing 1, Injuring 24
» India: No Country for Single Women
 
Far East
» China’s Muslims Will Pay a Heavy Price for the Kunming Knife Attacks
» China: Xi Vows Opposition Against Words, Actions Damaging Ethnic Unity
» Chinese Premier Vows Firm Crackdown on Terrorism
» Muslim Cleric in China: “Killing You… Slaughtering You… and Cutting Off Your Heads is All Good”
» South Korea Investigating Reports of New North Korea Purge
» What Some in the Chinese Government Might Now be Contemplating
 
Australia — Pacific
» Anti-Islam Party to Contest Next Election
» Racing NSW Left With Long Faces Despite Jockeying for Royals
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Nigeria: Nine Killed in Midnight Attack on Riyom, Plateau
» Sweden Freezes Aid to Uganda Over Anti-Gay Bill
 
Latin America
» Huge Mexican Pyramid Could Collapse Like a Sandcastle
» Mexican Judge Denies Petition From Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ To Prevent Extradition to the US
 
Immigration
» ‘80,000 Illegals at Our Border’ Says Spain
» Immigrant Who Brutally Raped a Woman One Month After Arriving in the UK is Given Life in Prison by Judges Who Say Original 10 Year Sentence Was Too Lenient
» Italian House Speaker: Migrant Women Are Icons of Our Times
» Italy Rescues 5,600 Migrants From the Sea So Far in 2014
» Resolved: Muslim Immigration is No Threat to the West
» Switzerland: Justice Minister Faces EU Peers in Brussels
» The Inevitability of ObamaCare for Illegal Aliens
» UK: Immigration Impact Report Withheld by Downing Street
» Wales’ Foreign-Born Population Rises by 82% in 10 Years
» Wealthy Mainlanders Threaten to Sue After Canada Scraps Visa Scheme
 
Culture Wars
» Is “Taps” Some Secret Nazi Song? Mainstream Media Go Full Godwin on Gay Rights
» Is Racism Making You Fat? Victims of Prejudice Are at Greater Risk of Obesity
» MFM: “If You Don’t Support the Gay Agenda, You’re Pretty Much a Nazi.”
» Tolerance and Apathy: The Last Stage
 
General
» Equations Are Art Inside a Mathematician’s Brain
» ‘Faxing’ Life From Mars: Craig Venter’s Wild, Digital Space Exploration Idea
» Futuristic Moon Elevator Idea Takes Aim at Lunar Lifts
» How the Global Banana Industry is Killing the World’s Favorite Fruit
» Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation
» Monster Black Hole Spins at Half the Speed of Light
 

Anger as Europe Demands an Extra £2.5 Billion From Britain to Plug Another Blackhole in the EU’s Budget

Britain could be forced to hand an extra £2.5billion to Brussels to help plug a massive black hole in the EU budget, it emerged last night.

European Commission says it needs £20billion extra from member states. Demands came just three months after previous demand of an additional £10billion.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Padoan Says Italy Has Received ‘Severe Warning’ From EC

Economy minister says government committed to act on economy

(See related) (ANSA) — Rome, March 5 — The European Commission has sent “a severe warning” over Italy’s economic problems, but the government is committed to act, Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said Wednesday. “We will go in the direction that we have decided on,” including measures to “jump-start” the economy and then employment, he said in a Rai radio interview.

Padoan was responding to an announcement that the European Commission has launched a formal review of the country’s macroeconomic policies.

European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn increased pressure on Rome to adopt urgent measures after the EC said Italy was under “specific monitoring” over its macroeconomic imbalances. Premier Matteo Renzi has said that next week he will unveil his long-awaited Jobs Act to combat record unemployment levels, as well as a two-billion-euro plan for Italy’s schools.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

A Maddow in MSNBCland

By Daniel Greenfield

Excerpt: The playwright and director David Mamet achieved an epiphany while listening to NPR. Unfortunately for NPR the epiphany was that he was no longer a liberal. “I felt my facial muscles tightening,” he described, “and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the f___ up.”

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

A Nuclear Submarine Captain and the President

[NOTE: The following article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily shared by the owners, employees, representatives, or agents of NewsWithViews.]

SIDEBAR: Ladies and gentlemen. We have received some complaints recently that we are being too tough, strident and caustic in our articles. We submit that we aren’t being tough enough. The fact is, if we are not stirring your blood, we aren’t doing our job. If Americans are so timid and afraid of government that they don’t want to hear the truth and from that truth, challenge the government, at any level, then America has absolutely no chance of saving itself … from itself. Fear paralyzes and renders the fearful impotent. Fear is the worst enslaver of all. If you fear the government, local, state, or federal, then we strongly suggest you don’t read our articles. From our perspective the government, at all levels, has become arrogant, abusive and tyrannical and is fair game, especially to those of us with courage, a free mind and an indomitable spirit.

“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” -Stephen King, author

“Power, without honor or trust, is tyranny.” -Ron Ewart, national author and speaker

[…]

When the president of the United States, members of Congress, or any chief executive or members of a legislative, city, county, or state body, willfully lie to the American people to deceive them for political purposes, or ulterior motives, there can be no trust in government, or the rule of law and the system is on its way to breaking down. When law becomes so complex, complicated and undecipherable such that there is no way for the people to reasonably comply with the law, the system HAS broken down. In these trying times of a divided nation over two radically opposing ideologies, America finds itself at the merging of these two conditions. Today, government does lie on purpose for political purposes and ulterior motives to deceive the people, government has become a power unto itself where it does not respect the rule of law, it only respects its rule by fear and intimidation of the people, and finally, the laws have become so complex, complicated and undecipherable that no normal, reasonable and prudent person can comply with them, making virtually every American a lawbreaker in one form or another.

Lying by one person for whatever reason is deceit. Lying by government on purpose for ulterior motives or to increase its power over the masses is racketeering, corruption and quite possibly fascism. As Stephen King stated, “the trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” If the people are so innocent, naive and uninformed, then they have no defense against a lying and corrupt government, nor do they have any redress against unconstitutional or complicated laws for which there is no way to comply.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Black Panther Leader, Convicted of Killing Cop, Released From Prison

Former Black Panther leader Marshall “Eddie” Conway walked free Tuesday after spending four decades behind bars for killing a Baltimore police officer — making his one of the highest-profile cases affected by a high court decision that has cut short prison sentences for dozens of felons in recent years.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Briton Who Flew to Florida to Have Sex With Underage Girl and Get Her Pregnant So He Could Live Out ‘Incest’ Fantasy is Sentenced to 10 Years in Jail

[WARNING: *Disturbing Content*]

A British man who was caught by an undercover agent posing as the father of an underage girl has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Shuhel Mahboob Ali told the ‘father’ online that he wanted to have sex with her and raise a ‘daughters-only’ family so that he could carry out a sick incest fantasy.

Ali believed that the agent was arranging for him to be set up with his daughter, and Ali told how he wanted to ‘settle down with a girl and raise a couple of daughters for “the lifestyle,”‘ according to the criminal complaint.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

California Gold Discovery Spurs Rush of Theories

Word last week that a Northern California couple found $10 million in gold coins while walking their dog has set off a Gold Rush of theories over who left behind all that loot.

One is that Jesse James’ gang deposited it in hopes of someday financing a second Civil War. Another postulates that the gold originally belonged to gentleman robber Black Bart, who wrote poetry when he wasn’t sticking up stagecoaches.

But the theory gaining the most traction this week is that the hoard is made up of most of the $30,000 in gold coins that Walter Dimmick stole from the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1901. The coins were never recovered.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Calling the Global Warming Charlatans “Nazis”

On February 20th, the noted meteorologist, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, fed up with being called a “denier” of global warming, posted a commentary on his blog titled “Time to push back against the global warming Nazis.”

“When politicians and scientists started calling people like me ‘deniers’, they crossed the line. They are still doing it,” said Dr. Spencer. “They indirectly equate (1) the skeptics’ view that global warming is not necessarily all manmade nor a serious problem with (2) the denial that the Nazi’s extermination of millions of Jews ever happened.” The Holocaust happened, but global warming’s latest natural cycle ended about 17 years ago and, as a lot of people have noticed, it has been getting cold since then.

“Like the Nazis,” said Dr. Spencer, “they advocate the supreme authority of the state (fascism), which in turn supports their scientific research to support their cause…” In the case of global warming, this huge hoax was put forth by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…

More than just a spat between scientists, in April 2012, the Congressional Research Service estimated that, since 2008, the federal government had spent nearly $70 billion on ‘climate change activities.’

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

College Board Unveils Fundamental Changes to SAT

Saying its college admission exams do not focus enough on the important academic skills, the College Board announced on Wednesday a fundamental rethinking of the SAT, eliminating obligatory essays, ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong and cutting obscure vocabulary words.

David Coleman, president of the College Board, criticized his own test, the SAT and its main rival, the ACT, saying that both “have become disconnected from the work of our high schools.”

In addition, Mr. Coleman announced new programs to help low-income students, who will now be given fee waivers allowing them to apply to four colleges at no charge. And even before the new exam starts, the College Board, in partnership with Khan Academy, will offer free online practice problems from old tests and instructional videos showing how to solve them.

[Return to headlines]
 

Connecticut Carry: State “Does Not Have the Balls” To Enforce 2013 Gun Law

By Awr Hawkins

Excerpt: With thousands of Connecticut gun owners flouting the new “assault weapons” registration law in their state, Connecticut Carry director Ed Peruta says, “The fact is, the state does not have the balls to enforce these laws.” On February 14 Breitbart News reported that “as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents were registered” by the December 31, 2013 deadline. This left an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 “assault weapons” owners outstanding, effectively committing class D felonies.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Greenpeace Drops Co-Founder Over Inconvenient Truths

By Andre Walker, Breitbart London

Excerpt: [Greenpeace co-founder Mr Patrick] Moore, 67, told a U.S. Senate Committee: “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years.” “Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on Earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species..” He also commented specifically on attempts to side-line his involvement in the establishment of Greenpeace in 1969: “I describe the climate change movement as a combination of an extreme political ideology and a religious cult all rolled into one. It’s a very, very dangerous social phenomenon. It causes them to think they have the right to dictate what we do.”

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Guns, Schools, Mind Control, Revolution

“Padre, these are subtleties. We’re not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime — and. . .with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian: ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly! Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.” — A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962.

Fingers pointed like a gun. A pop tart chewed into the shape of a gun. A toy gun.

All over America, schools are exercising what they call zero tolerance policy to suspend young children packing “suggestions of guns.”

Behind this practice is the idea that populations can be conditioned against owning real guns. Start early, indoctrinate the kids, and society will change…

Maintain surveillance on the entire population, thus convincing millions they may be potential law-breakers…and they will modify their behavior, they will toe the line, they will march straight ahead and keep their mouths shut.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Maryland to Target 110,000 Citizens With Gun Confiscation

Authorities in Maryland are set to target 110,000 citizens with gun confiscation under a new law that would link the state’s gun registry with its criminal database, with new troopers set to be hired to enforce door to door visits of illegal gun owners…

While the law is ostensibly aimed at disarming criminals, we have seen a steady expansion of reasons that are being applied to bar Americans from owning firearms. The law also creates a chilling effect on the second amendment by implying that gun owners are all guilty until proven innocent.

Last year we reported on how US Navy Veteran David A Schmecker had his guns confiscated by police after a forced “psychiatric evaluation” despite him having no criminal or psychiatric history.

In August 2012, we reported on how a veteran in Ohio had his guns taken because he was adjudged to be mentally incompetent, despite the fact that his previous VA psychiatric evaluations were all clear, he was not on medication, and he had no criminal record.

In February 2012, David Sarti, one of the stars of National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers show, visited his doctor complaining of chest pains, only to have the doctor later commit him to a psychiatric ward and alert authorities, before Sarti was declared “mentally defective” and put on an FBI list that stripped him of his second amendment rights.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

McDonald’s Sued for $1.5m by Customer Who Wanted More Than 1 Napkin

In a $1.5 million civil lawsuit, a McDonald’s customer says he suffered “undue mental anguish” after he was given just one napkin when he visited one of the burger chain’s restaurants.

Webster Lucas, 59, claims he was eating on Jan. 29 at a Mickey D’s in Pacoima, Calif., when his hands were left unacceptably dirty.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Nearly 70% Say They Are Ready for Something/Someone Different This Fall

The fix isn’t in yet and the votes haven’t been counted for the fall Mid Terms, but they are coming and so is the Conservative tsunami that will crash across this nation and flood the House and Senate like never before.

Poll after poll even from more liberal sources are reflecting the pain and hardship of the American people, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. The people want real change.

The Washington Post says in their polling that 7-10 — 68% say they will be looking for someone new this fall, regardless of the spin or other perceived ‘positives’ and sound bites of the Democrats. This is said to be the very highest ever recorded in a Post-ABC poll. The perfect storm of real change is on its way this fall. The question is will this wall of conservative water coming clean out the House and Senate and purify the disease of betrayal and UN Constitutional rot thrown against the American people? Or will the water just settle and sit among the buildings, grow putrid and smell like a different brand of sewage? The Conservatives and GOP will get their chance to lead. Will they?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Obama Hiring Military Chaplains From Muslim Brotherhood Group Committed to “Grand Jihad”

By Daniel Greenfield

Excerpt: Instead of just having Muslim soldiers and doctors carrying out insider attacks, we can have Muslim chaplains also carrying out insider attacks.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Private Property Rights Under Attack by Comprehensive Land Use Plans

The idea of Sustainable Development that emerged in 1987 from a conference by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, seemed innocuous. It was defined as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It sounded lofty except for the nagging questions: who decides what the needs are, how are they going to parcel out the needs, how are they going to implement them, and who will police the decision-makers?

This call to Sustainable Development became the blueprint of a myriad of rules and regulations incorporated in the 1992 document called Agenda 21 signed by 179 nations at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This 40-chapter document addresses every aspect of human life, not the least of which is property.

According to Henry Lamb, Bill Clinton’s creation of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (Executive Order #12852, June 29, 1993) “was responsible for instilling sustainable development consciousness throughout every agency of the federal government,” using enormous grant powers. These “vision” and “challenge” grants were given to state and local governments, to NGOs such as the American Planning Association, Sierra Club, and to HUD, DOE, and EPA to develop and implement community plans around the nation.

County-wide or region-wide plans by the years 2020, 2025, or 2030, contain 129 “visions” included in eight categories. These visions were developed at the first Glades County, Florida visioning meeting in February 2, 2006. They are eerily similar to the recommendations in the Agenda 21 document and in any sustainable development pamphlets. (Henry Lamb, Sustainable Development or Sustainable Freedom? pp. 5-6)

[Comment: Must read article.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Putin Doesn’t Threaten Our National Security, Obama Does

Vladimir Putin isn’t the Easter Bunny. On the other hand, he isn’t Joseph Stalin. It takes a truly fevered imagination to see Russian forces in the Crimea as a prelude to Russian tanks rolling across Europe toward Berlin and Paris.

Putin is a power player who cares more about Russia’s national interests, and Russian minorities in his near abroad, than in that mythical force known as world opinion. Would that America had a president who cared more about our interests than in promoting globalism and the left’s social agenda.

The Crimea’s population is 60% ethnic Russian. For most of the past 800 years, the Ukraine has been Russian…

Putin doesn’t want to see the EU — and, possibly, NATO — on his doorstep. Do you blame him? If someone overthrew a democratically elected, pro-American government in Ottawa and replaced it with an interim regime hostile to our interests, that contained neo-Nazi elements and which immediately moved against English-speaking Canadians, it would irritate us too. It would, that is, if there was an American in the White House.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Second Success Raises Hope for a Way to Rid Babies of H.I.V.

When scientists made the stunning announcement last year that a baby born with H.I.V. had apparently been cured through aggressive drug treatment just 30 hours after birth, there was immediate skepticism that the child had ever been infected in the first place.

But on Wednesday the existence of a second such baby was revealed at an AIDS conference here, leaving little doubt that the treatment had worked. A leading researcher said there might be five more such cases in Canada and three in South Africa.

And a clinical trial in which 50 babies who are born infected will be put on drugs within 48 hours is set to begin within three months, the researcher added.

[Return to headlines]
 

Surge in Babies Born Without Brains in Washington State

(NaturalNews) There is something seriously wrong in the fertile Yakima Valley region of Washington. A surging number of babies are being born with major birth defects, and the reasons why are eluding state health officials.

As reported by CNN, a nurse in the area, Sara Barron, was the first to report on a particularly horrifying condition: anencephaly — a condition in which babies are born without much of their brain and skull.

“I was just stunned,” she told the network in an interview. “Three in a couple-of-month period of time… that’s unheard of, and they have such tragic, terrible outcomes.”

Her shocking finding and report eventually prompted an investigation by the state health department. Investigators found some disturbing results:…

“After having now analyzed over 1,000 foods, superfoods, vitamins, junk foods and popular beverages for heavy metals and other substances at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs, I have arrived at a conclusion so alarming and urgent that it can only be stated bluntly.

“Based on what I am seeing via atomic spectroscopy analysis of all the dietary substances people are consuming on a daily basis, I must now announce that the battle for humanity is nearly lost. The food supply appears to be intentionally designed to end human life rather than nourish it.” [www.naturalnews.com/043995_human_civilization_processed_food_stealth_war.html]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Teen Sues Parents for College Money

According to New Jersey’s Daily Record, a high school student who left home when she turned 18 is suing her parents to get them to fund her college education. Depending on whom you ask, she was either thrown out by her mum and dad or departed on her own accord because she didn’t want to live by their rules anymore.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Two Oscar Voters Picked ‘12 Years a Slave’ Without Watching it

In the lead up to the 86th annual Academy Awards, one prevalent meme was that some Oscar voters simply didn’t want to watch “12 Years a Slave.” As it turns out, that was true: at least two anonymous members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences apparently never saw Steve McQueen’s eventual Best Picture winner, this despite placing the film atop their Oscar ballots.

The surprising revelation comes via the Los Angeles Times: “All the same, two Oscar voters privately admitted that they didn’t see ‘12 Years a Slave,’ thinking it would be upsetting. But they said they voted for it anyway because, given the film’s social relevance, they felt obligated to do so.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Uprooting ObamaCare With Better Ideas

By Dr. Ben Johnson, Emeritus Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Excerpt: I share this story to help explain why I have decided to become chairman of the Save Our Healthcare Project, which was organized by a group called the American Legacy PAC. Our mission is to lead a national citizens’ effort to hold Washington accountable, re-center the health care debate around doctors and patients, and begin the process of replacing Obamacare with patient-centered reforms that will allow every American access to the best, most affordable care in the world. If you would like to join us, please visit SaveOurHealthcare.org.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Which Parts of America Are the Most Contaminated With Arsenic?

So where is the bulk of this arsenic, some of which is present in highly toxic inorganic form, hiding? A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report on groundwater contamination, which includes well water and springs, found that it is essentially all over the place. But particular hotspots of contamination include New Jersey, Maryland and surrounding northeastern states as well as Michigan, Idaho, California, Arizona and Washington. Other studies have also identified large swaths of the central South and Southeast where arsenic is being absorbed by rice crops.

The study, which was published in 2000, shows concerning levels of arsenic greater than 10 micrograms per liter all across central Michigan and Idaho, as well as in California’s Central Valley where the bulk of the nation’s fresh produce is grown. Other highly contaminated areas, according to a USGS map, include Nebraska, South Dakota, central Oklahoma and Illinois, and parts of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Many public water supplies are also contaminated with arsenic, according to the report, and public utility filtration systems typically do not remove this toxin before delivering water to customers. This means that untold millions of people who drink unfiltered tap water are also consuming arsenic, just as they are by consuming most commercial rice.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Hubby Disguised Himself in Burka for Honour Killing

TORONTO — A Muslim man wore a traditional woman’s burka and female shoes before he strangled his estranged wife in the company of their toddler son.

Abdul Malik Rustam admitted he donned the headdress — which disguised his face — and wedge shoes when he killed his wife, Shaher Bano Shahdady, after she asked for a divorce.

Rustam, now 30, pleaded guilty on Valentine’s Day to second-degree murder in the July 22, 2011, slaying. He will be sentenced Thursday by Justice John McMahon.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Bank of England Suspends Worker in Probe Into Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing by Traders

A Bank of England employee has been suspended over claims the regulator knew that traders were trying to rig currency exchange rates, it emerged today.

The UK’s central bank has launched an inquiry into how much officials knew about the alleged manipulation of markets by city traders.

It announced today that one member of staff had been suspended from their job pending further investigation.

The decision comes after Bank officials examined 15,000 emails, 40 hours of telephone conversations and 21,000 instant messages sent and received by its workers.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

EC Chides Italy Over Corruption, Tax Evasion, Justice System

Country under microscope for economic imbalances

(see previous) (ANSA) — Brussels, March 5 — The European Commission called Italy out on Wednesday for weaknesses in its public administration, rampant tax evasion, flaws in its justice system, and widespread corruption. “Long-standing inefficiencies in the public administration and the justice system, weak corporate governance, and the high level of corruption and tax evasion (all) reduce the efficiency of the economy and hinder the emergence of benefits of adopted reforms,” said the European Commission in its in-depth review of the Italian economy’s imbalances. (photo: Commissioner for Economic Affairs Olli Rehn)

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Europe Gets Its Own Version of Tyrannosaurus Rex

Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, watch out: there’s a new predator in town. Palaeontologists have discovered a previously unknown dinosaur, which may have been Europe’s largest land predator during the Jurassic period. Called Torvosaurus gurneyi, it was about 10 metres long and weighed in at around 4 tonnes. The first fossilised bones were found in Portugal’s Lourinhã Formation in 2003.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ferrari Chairman Involved in Potential Alitalia-Etihad Deal

‘A pleasure to help my country’ says Montezemolo

(ANSA) — Geneva, March 4 — The chairman of Ferrari said Tuesday he is helping facilitate a deal for Etihad Airways to invest in Italy’s troubled flag carrier Alitalia. “My role is to help bring about a deal,” said Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, when asked if he may become Alitalia chairman if a deal goes through. “It’s a very strong group,” he added of the the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates. “It’s a pleasure to give a hand, to do what’s best for my country, which is to bring about a potential deal that would be important for Italy”. Weeks after hopes had been raised in Italy surrounding potential investment in its ailing liner, reports surfaced Monday that Etihad has not yet made a decision on the venture. Etihad Airways Chief Executive Officer James Hogan told a news conference in the United Arab Emirates that the carrier would make a decision “in the next two weeks” on what action would be most appropriate for his airline’s shareholders as well as “what we can do under European legislation”. European airlines, including German carrier Lufthansa, have complained of disguised State aid in a tie-up between Etihad and Alitalia, in alleged contravention of European Union competition rules. Hogan added that Etihad is “convinced” that the Italian airline can return to profitability. For weeks, intense negotiations have continued between Alitalia and Etihad, which has been carefully scrutinizing the Italian carrier’s books. Last week, Alitalia CEO Gabriele Del Torchio was said to be “optimistic” about the outlook for the deal because it would be “beneficial for both (parties)”. A deal would include conditions set by Etihad on cleaning up the Italian carrier’s finances and reducing labour costs. It is expected that nearly 80 million euros can be saved annually with rotating layoffs and another 40 million euros saved through wage cuts.

A partnership with Alitalia would also deepen Etihad’s existing links with the Italian company’s minority investor and code-share partner Air France-KLM, which previously refused a further investment in the cash-starved Italian carrier. In early February, Etihad and Alitalia issued a joint statement saying they were in the “final phase” of negotiations for a deal that would see the Abu Dhabi carrier buy as much as a 40% stake in its Italian counterpart, the equivalent of a much-needed capital injection of 350 million euros. But the arrangement, as well as other plans to bring Alitalia back to profitability, have been controversial. In addition to Lufthansa’s competition, the owner of British Airways has said that a plan coordinated by the Italian government to rescue Alitalia triggered the same concerns.

The complaints came as Alitalia was poised to sign a 200-million-euro financing deal with banks as part of a 500-million-euro bailout package engineered by the previous Italian government last autumn. This also included a controversial 74-million-euro investment by Italy’s State-owned post office Poste Italiane. International Airlines Group (IAG), the holding company that owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling called that a form of protectionism and is illegal under EU laws governing state assistance to businesses.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

France: Secret Tapes Reveal How Sarkozy Was a ‘Kept Man’

Leaked recordings of meetings involving former president Nicolas Sarkozy, set the French media ablaze on Wednesday, and revealed among other things how the man known as the “bling-bling president” was in fact a “kept man” during his time in the Elysée.

After Sarkozy notes the couple have access to three state-owned apartments as well as a rental house they are paying for, Bruni gently mocks her husband, saying “Oh sure, but that’s because I’m maintaining you,” before she broke into laughter.

She continued: “I thought I was marrying a guy that made some money…I had lucrative contracts and now nothing…”

Sarkozy doesn’t protest much in his response: “In our relationship she picks up the bill. Here I got rich by marriage,” which prompted more laughter from the first couple and the advisors.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

France: The Rich Flee Paris, Frightened by Hollande’s Taxes

Le Figaro — property dumped on the market in chic neighborhoods

(ANSAmed) — PARIS, MARCH 4 — An ever growing number of Parisians are putting their properties and historic residences up for sale in the French capital — following the example of actor Gérard Depardieu — and moving to Belgium or Switzerland to flee French taxes. “Nearly a quarter of the new sales that have been entrusted to us between May 2012 and May 2013, for assets of more than two million euros, are tied to translocations abroad,” Charles-Marie Jottras, president of the Féau agency, specialized in luxury real estate, told the French newspaper Le Figaro. The much gossiped about departure of Depardieu last year thus is not an isolate case. On the contrary, increasing numbers are doing as did the actor, who decreed his divorce with France moving his residence to Nechin, Belgium and putting up for sale — at an astronomical figure — his immense and luxurious residence in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. “France has become synonymous with tax hell,” a real estate agent confided.

The famous 75% tax on incomes over one million euros “has frightened even those who are not directly affected” and comes in addition to many “anti-rich speeches”. Thus the number of grand properties, residences and apartments of more than 250 square metres are becoming more numerous on the market, noted the conservative daily. In the capital, the phenomenon especially concerns the western neighborhoods — the well-to-do 16th and 17th arrondissements as well as the city’s elegant and bourgeois towns at the gates of Paris, such as Neuilly.

Even the beautiful villa Montmorency, a private, high security community in the 16th arrondissement, with roughly a hundred residences occupied by VIPs — among them Carla Bruni — is beginning to empty out. There “a dozen homes are currently for sale. An unprecedented number,” explained Marc Foujols, a real estate agent who works in chic neighborhoods.

If the rich are fleeing the socialist government’s tax policies and putting their assets up for sale, buyers by contrast are increasingly rare even in Paris, and even in a sector like luxury real estate, which until now has always flourished despite economic crisis. Wealthy foreigners, even Russians, seem intent at the moment on distancing themselves from the Ville Lumière. And the direct consequence is that, according to the experts, “For assets of over two million euros, the prices have already fallen about 10%”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Growing Opposition to EU-US Free Trade Deal

Supporters say it is a once in a lifetime deal bringing growth and hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. Detractors claim it will destroy hard-fought consumer protection laws in the EU and is an attack on democracy itself. With a fourth round of negotiations between the EU and US set to begin in Brussels next week, Radio Sweden investigates why TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is dividing opinion.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Undersecretary Quits After Causing Turbulence for Renzi

Gentile accused of pressuring paper to pull story on son

(By Paul Virgo) (ANSA) — Rome, March 3 — A new undersecretary quit on Monday after reports he attempted to stop a damaging newspaper report being published caused turbulence for Premier Matteo Renzi’s young government. Senator Antonio Gentile, who was named transport and infrastructure undersecretary on Friday, bowed to calls to resign following reports he pressured local daily L’Ora di Calabria not to publish a piece about allegations his son was implicated in corruption in health-sector contracts.

In the end the whole edition of the newspaper, including the story about Gentile’s son, did not go out on February 19, officially because of a technical problem at the printers, although many doubt this version of events.

Several members of Renzi’s own centre-left Democratic Party (PD) had been called for Gentile to quit or be removed, along with several top Italian journalists.

And the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) was preparing a motion of no confidence in the Senator, a member of Interior Minister Angelino Alfano’s New Centre Right (NCD) party, the junior partner in Renzi’s coalition government. The NCD had been standing behind Gentile, who initially refused to step down, saying he was the victim of mudslinging. “I didn’t exert influence on the publisher, on the journalist or on the editor of the newspaper,” Gentile said Monday, adding that his son had received no notification that he is being probed. But later in the day Gentile announced his resignation, saying he had made the “tough decision” in the interests of his party and the country.

“I’m not under investigation for anything and yet, I have been meat for butchering,” he said. A long series of corruption scandals have damaged the image of parties from all sides of Italy’s political spectrum in recent years, so the row over Gentile was a potential threat to the ability of Renzi, the country’s youngest premier at 39, to present himself as the face of change.

The government has also been hit by controversy about the appointment of culture undersecretary Francesca Barracciu, a PD member who is under investigation for allegedly embezzling party funds.

The Gentile question also caused tension on the eve of an important test for the government, with a bill for a new election law set to reach the floor of the Lower House Tuesday.

The bill, the fruit of a controversial agreement that Renzi struck with ex-premier and centre-right Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi in January, aims to replace the previous system that was declared unconstitutional in December and produced an inconclusive outcome to last year’s general election.

It was the first reform Renzi set his sights on when he was sworn in 10 days ago after unseating his PD colleague Enrico Letta as premier. However, the NCD and parts of the PD want the new election system only to come into effect after the passing of other institutional reforms aimed at making Italy easier to govern and cutting the cost of the nation’s political apparatus. Renzi also has an agreement with Berlusconi to change the Constitution to strip the Senate of its lawmaking powers to make it easier to pass legislation, turning the Upper House into a leaner assembly of local-government representatives, and to abolish the country’s provincial governments and bring some powers back to central government from the regions.

FI, an opposition party, has said that if the election system is linked to the passing of other reforms, it will consider this a deal-breaker.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: ‘Berlusconi to Wed on Ischia in June’

Fiancee Pascale, 49 years his junior, would be third wife

(ANSA) — Naples, March 5 — Silvio Berlusconi will marry his fianceé Francesca Pascale on Ischia in June, Naples newspaper Il Golfo reported Wednesday.

It would be the third trip to the altar for the media magnate who has dominated Italian politics for the last 20 years despite constant legal woes and sex scandals. Three-time premier and centre-right opposition leader Berlusconi, 77, got engaged to Naples-born Pascale, 28, two months ahead of the February 2013 general election.

Announcing the engagement in mid-December, he said Pascale was “a beautiful girl on the outside but even more beautiful inside”.

The media said it was a bid to persuade conservative voters he had abandoned the playboy lifestyle that landed him in hot water and led to a conviction for paying an underage prostitute and dancer whose stage name was Ruby the Heartstealer for sex.

Pascale, a former shop assistant from Naples, served as a provincial councillor in Berlusconi’s now-defunct People of Freedom (PdL) party before stepping down in July 2012 to devote herself fully to her ‘Silvio, we miss you’ club. Wedding planners have already visited the famed Naples Bay island to set up the ceremony for Berlusconi, now back at centre stage with his revived Forza Italia (FI) Party, and Pascale, who has supplanted the ex-premier’s female entourage and is styling herself as first-lady-in-waiting, Il Golfo said.

Berlusconi and Pascale are regulars on Italian TV and in Berlusconi-owned gossip mags where they project a cosy image of a besotted couple, often petting their dog, Dudù, who has become a celebrity in his own right.

Il Golfo said FI’s chief in the region around Naples, Campania, has been contacted to officiate at the wedding.

But Senator Domenico De Siano denied this Wednesday.

“It’s a load of nonsense,” he told ANSA.

Il Golfo said Pascale’s friendship with the FI Senator led to the Ischia choice after Naples itself, as well as Rome and Berlusconi’s hometown Milan had been ruled out.

The newspaper cited “sources close to Pascale” but the media magnate’s girlfriend has yet to comment.

She has previously said the three most important things in her life are her family, politics and Berlusconi, whose divorce to second wife Veronica Lario was finalised last month, three years after she left him when he attended the 18th birthday party of an aspiring starlet in Naples, accusing him of consorting with minors.

Pascale is said to be jealous of the other women in his inner circle, including Mara Carfagna, a former glamour model whom he appointed equal opportunities minister during his last term as premier.

Berlusconi has been married twice and has five children. In 1965, he married Carla Dall’Oglio, and they had two children, Pier Silvio and Marina, both now top executives in his TV and publishing group.

Berlusconi had three younger children with Lario, 57, whose main claim to fame before her marriage was a scantily clad appearance in a cult film by Italian goremeister Dario Argento.

They are Barbara Berlusconi, 30, a director at his AC Milan soccer club; and two also being groomed for a place in his media empire, Eleonora, 28, and Luigi, 26. He married her in 1990 after being smitten several years previously when he saw her perform topless in a Milan play about a philandering husband called The Magnificent Cuckold.

Lario, who was born Miriam Raffaela Bartolini, completed her divorce from Berlusconi on February 17 after keeping out of the limelight since denouncing her then husband’s eye for the girls in 2009, claiming “maidens are being fed to the dragon”.

The completion of the divorce will not end a dispute over Berlusconi’s alimony payments to Lario, who has been romantically linked to centre-left Last year the ex-premier managed to get her monthly alimony reduced to 1.4 million euros from a previous award of three million per month set in December 2012, but the case has not been definitively resolved.

Over the years, Berlusconi has been linked with a string of glamorous young women, including models, actors, showgirls and prostitutes who attended his notorious ‘bunga bunga’ alleged sex parties at his mansions.

The centre-right leader is appealing a seven-year term and life ban from office for paying Moroccan exotic dancer Karima el-Mahroug for sex when she was 17, a year under the legal age for prostitution, and using his office to cover it up. In July 2012 the former premier was forced to deny allegations by a model who claimed that she was pregnant with his sixth child.

Sabina Began — who earned her nickname ‘Queen Bee’ for her alleged lead role in the supposed bunga bunga parties — claimed she was expecting the controversial politician’s baby but has since lost it. The 38-year-old German model and actress said she was sure it was his child as she had ‘only slept with him’.

Since Berlusconi dissolved the PdL and reanimated FI after failing to unsaddle Italy’s last premier, Enrico Letta, Marina has repeatedly denied ambitions to take the helm of the reanimated party from her father, who is banned from office because of a tax-fraud conviction, his first definitive one.

Marina, head of Italy’s biggest publishing house, Mondadori, said others were more qualified to eventually take over the job from her father, who is steering the opposition to Premier Matteo Renzi from outside parliament.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Netherlands: Ethnic Minority Voters Abandon Labour in Droves Ahead of Local Vote

Voters with a non-western background are no longer automatically prepared to vote Labour and are either undecided or will vote D66 or for a local party in the local elections, according to a new survey.

The Labour party has relied for years on the support of Dutch voters with an ethnic minority background, but is set to lose out to the democratic Liberals D66 on March 19, according to a survey among Turkish, Surinamese, Antillianen and Moroccan voters.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Nordics Report High Abuse Levels Against Women

News agency AFP reports that 46 percent of women in Sweden have suffered abuse and 81 percent said they had been harassed at some point after the age of 15. In neighboring Denmark, 52 percent of women suffered abuse, while the rate was 47 percent in Finland.

However, the numbers could mean that Swedish women are more willing to report and pursue legal action against abuses. “I don’t think Sweden has a bigger problem than other countries,” Angela Beausang, head of the Swedish women’s refuge network Roks, told AFP. “I think other countries have a bigger problem because they don’t have the laws and the awareness.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Pope Defends Church’s Record on Child-Sex Abuse

Perhaps only institution to act with transparency, says Francis

(see related story) (ANSA) — Rome, March 5 — Pope Francis defended the Church’s record on child-sex-abuse scandals in an interview published by Italian daily Corriere della Sera Wednesday ahead of the first anniversary of his election as pontiff next week.

“The cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very deep wounds,” the Argentine pontiff said.

“Benedict XVI was very courageous and he opened a road.

The Church has come a long way. Perhaps more than anyone.

“The statistics about the phenomenon of violence against children are shocking, but they also show clearly that the overwhelming majority of the abuses take place in family or neighbourhood environments. “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more.

“And yet the Church is the only one to be attacked”.

http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/english/2014/03/05/Pope-defends-Church-record-child-sex-abuse_10182086.html

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Right-Wing Extremism: Germany’s New Islamophobia Boom

Across Germany, right-wing organizations are using anti-Islam rhetoric to further their ideas — and finding a receptive audience. Now legal experts are debating whether it’s time for a new kind of hate-crime legislation.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Somali Girls Aim to Start Bandy Team in Sweden

After the successes of Somalia’s first ever national bandy team, now a group of Somali girls are hoping to form a team, too. They say they want to participate more actively in Swedish society. The girls’ initiative follows the formation of a Somali kids’ bandy team in another Swedish city.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Stonehenge is Like a Sacred ‘Prehistoric Glockenspiel’, Researchers Claim

The pillars that form Stonehenge may have been chosen because they were like sacred “prehistoric glockenspiels”, according to researchers.

The study by researchers from Royal College of Art in London tried to record what “Stone Age eyes and ears” would have heard and seen in a prehistoric landscape.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Study Finds Genetic Link Between Height and IQ

A team of researchers at Edinburgh University in Scotland has found a correlation between genes associated with height and those associated with intelligence. In their paper published in the journal Behavior Genetics, the group describes how they studied the DNA of 6,815 unrelated people and discovered what they describe as a direct correlation between height and intelligence—taller people are smarter, they say.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Sugar Tax May be Necessary, England’s Chief Medical Officer Says

A sugar tax may have to be introduced to curb obesity rates, the chief medical officer for England has said.

Dame Sally Davies told a committee of MPs that unless the government was strong with food and drink manufacturers, it was unlikely they would reformulate their products.

She said she believed “research will find sugar is addictive”, and that “we may need to introduce a sugar tax”.

The food industry said it was working on reducing sugar in products.

[Comment: Interestingly, there was a lab test where even rats already addicted to cocaine preferred sugar over cocaine — that’s how strongly sugar affects the brain. articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/23/is-sugar-more-addictive-than-cocaine.aspx]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: ‘Jealous Husband Stabbed His Westernised Muslim Wife 19 Times in the Neck After Affair… Leaving Her Six-Year-Old Son to Find Her Body and Dial 999’

[WARNING: *Disturbing Content*]

A ‘jealous’ husband stabbed his ‘Westernised’ Muslim wife 19 times in the neck after he discovered she was having an affair, leaving her six-year-old son to find her, a court heard.

Farkhanda Younis, 30, known to friends as ‘Jabeen’, was killed in a ‘ferocious’ attack at her home in Chadderton, Oldham, in the early hours of April 19 last year.

Her body was found after her six-year-old son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, rang 999 because he couldn’t rouse her and her bedroom door was locked.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Jealous Husband ‘Killed Westernised Muslim Wife After Her Birthday Sex With Another Man’

Court is told Jahangir Nazar was a possessive, controlling and violent partner who stabbed his wife to death in a “ferocious attack”

A jealous husband killed his “promiscuous” wife after she returned from having “birthday sex” with another man, a court has heard. Farkhanda Younis, 30, known to friends as ‘Jabeen’ was stabbed 19 times in the neck in a “ferocious” attack at her home in Oldham, in the early hours of April 19, 2013…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Legoland Closes Resort Hotel Following Threats

Legoland is to close temporarily in light of safety and security concerns. The theme park in Windsor, Berkshire, will shut this weekend following the cancellation of a private fun day organised by the Muslim Research and Development Foundation.

The resort received threats from far right organisations and the event, due to be held on Sunday, was cancelled following discussions with police. Legoland said the safety of its guests and staff was its “priority”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Murder Squad Officers Move to Sex Cases

Met switches 54 detectives after rise in child abuse and rape claims

A total of 54 Met murder squad detectives are being switched to rape and child abuse cases to deal with the growing number of sex crime allegations in London. The majority of the officers, who include 40 detective constables, eight sergeants and six inspectors, will be redeployed to the “Sapphire” rape investigation team…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Tower Hamlets Mayor Agrees UN Charter of Kids’ Rights in Public Services

Town Hall chiefs are to sign a UN charter of child rights in public services in London’s East End. A Unicef UK project on youngsters’ rights has been agreed by Tower Hamlets and five other local authorities after consultations with youngsters to produce a list of things most important to them.

Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman signs the charter along with the East End’s Young Mayor and a Unicef UK director at a town hall ceremony next Tuesday, pledging to promote the rights in everyday work. The charter is also being signed by representatives of the police, NHS, schools and the voluntary sector.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Why Did No. 10 Cover Up Aide’s Child Porn Arrest?

Downing Street was last night facing allegations of a cover-up over the child porn arrest of one of David Cameron’s oldest friends.

Patrick Rock, 62, deputy director of the No 10 policy unit, resigned and was arrested almost three weeks ago.

But Downing Street said nothing, only choosing to confirm his arrest and departure after being questioned on Monday by the Daily Mail.

Not even senior ministers had been informed.

Officials yesterday confirmed Mr Rock had also previously been the subject of a formal sexual harassment complaint understood to involve a high-flying woman civil servant.

She moved out of No 10 to another department after the case had been examined by Mr Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Radical Islam’s Intimidation in Kosovo

by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

“Society in Kosovo has two options, either to fight the evils within it of crime and corruption, or to remain on the margin of democratic countries… The cause of democracy has been betrayed by many people, including some who won seats without deserving election to them.” — Alma Lama, Member of Parliamentary Assembly from the LDK Party, Kosovo

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Code Pink: Media Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

Excerpt: Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, a frequent teller of tall tales, claims she was detained and physically abused Monday by Egyptian authorities when she flew into Cairo’s airport -on her way to an anti-Israel rally in Gaza. Benjamin, who has close ties to the Obama White House, was traveling to Egypt for a meeting with international delegates before a scheduled trip to Gaza for what Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” described innocuously as a “women’s conference.”

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt: Military Spokesman — 54 Terrorist Elements Arrested

The second Field Army troops, in cooperation with the bodies of the Ministry of Interior, have managed to arrest 54 terrorist elements during a crackdown yesterday against a number of terrorist hideouts in Ismaelia, Damietta, Sharqeya and Port Said…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Libya Blames Terrorists for Benghazi Assassinations

Benghazi — In a first-of-its-type statement, interim Libyan Culture Minister Habib al-Amin on Friday (February 28th) said “radical Islamists” were behind the Benghazi assassinations. “I hope others will be as direct and clear with Libyans, but what’s happening now in Benghazi is the growth of extremist Islamist groups’ influence,” al-Amin said in a talk show on Libya Al Ahrar TV…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Can Re-Uniting Israel End the Violence?

By Daniel Greenfield

Excerpt: While Kerry prowls around Israel trying to sell yet another solution that is not fundamentally different than its failed predecessors, Caroline Glick, a veteran journalist, IDF member, foreign policy adviser and negotiator with the PLO, offers a different sort of solution. Instead of partitioning Israel into a territory run by a democratic government with legal law enforcement and another territory run by terrorists and their militias, she proposes reuniting all of Israel under one legal system and democratic government. The Israeli Solution runs so counter to the conventional political wisdom that has led to twenty years of terror under the guise of peace that much of the first part of the book is dedicated to recapitulating basic facts about the conflict and the territorial division that unfortunately very few policymakers know.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Israel and the Rest of the World

by Denis MacEoin

Everybody hates Israel. That is not just accepted wisdom, it is a reality that chokes all rational debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There are exceptions, of course, such as Canada, but most of Western Europe has slipped from support for Israel to support for the Palestinian cause, as if both sides might not have valid claims to the disputed land.

Most Americans are enthusiastic about Israel, but the U.S. government under Barack Obama, has, in recent years, shown increasing antagonism. Unsurprisingly, not a single Muslim nation likes Israel at all…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Saving Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israel’s right wing politicians and religious extremists are eyeing al-Aqsa for annexation.

It was on February 25, 1994, that US-born Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein stormed into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and opened fire. The aim was to kill as many people as he could…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Video: Israeli Commandos Intercept Iranian Rockets W/100-Mile+ Range Meant for Israeli Cities

By Daniel Greenfield

Excerpt: It would be interesting to learn whether Medea Benjamin and the whole Code Pink Gaza sideshow was an attempt to distract Israel while their Iranian and Hamas allies smuggled more weapons into Israel. If so, it didn’t work.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Iran Announces Missiles Equipped With Multiple Warheads

Iran’s Revolutionary guard unveiled a new class of missiles which it alleges has multiple warhead capabilities. In our March NER article, has Iran Developed Nuclear Weapons in North Korea?, We reported sources suggesting that the Islamic regime, in cooperation with North Korea, were testing a nuclear equipped MIRV warhead and that Iran might have the capability of fitting one on a ballistic missile within 4 to 6 months.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Iranian Rocket Shipment Bound for Gaza Seized by Israeli Navy Off Port Sudan

Credit the Israeli Naval Commandos of Sayeret 13 and missile boats with another coup seizing the Panamanian flagged vessel, the KLOS-C packed with clearly marked Iranian M302 Rockets bound ultimately for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. You may recall the Sayeret 13 boarded the Turkish ferry the Mavi Mamara in the May 2010 Free Gaza Flotilla. This time Iran has used Syria for transshipment of a consignment of M302 rockets via Iraq in the Persian Gulf. The raid on the KLOS-C occurred in the Red Sea off Port Sudan just before off loading for shipment to Gaza via Salafist Jihadist helpers in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula . The M302 rockets have a range of 200 KM threatening all of the populous central Israel.

Watch this IDF video of the KLOS-C seizure of Iranian M302 rockets:…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

Iraq: 7 Killed, 64 Wounded in Baghdad Bombings

BAGHDAD, March 5 (Xinhua) — At least seven people were killed and 64 others wounded in a series of bomb explosions in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Wednesday, a police source told Xinhua.

The attacks occurred on Wednesday morning when up to six car bombs and two roadside bombs detonated almost simultaneously in several districts across Baghdad, the source said…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Israel Fires Rockets Into Syrian Border Towns

DAMASCUS, March 5 (Xinhua) — Israeli forces on Wednesday breached the disengagement agreement of 1973 by firing multiple rockets from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into areas in southern Syria, the official SANA news agency quoted a Syrian military source as saying…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Israel Says Seized Gaza-Bound Rocket Shipment From Iran

Israeli military says forces have raided a ship and seized dozens of advanced rockets from Iran destined for Palestinian militants in Gaza

The Israeli navy seized a ship in the Red Sea on Wednesday that was carrying dozens of advanced Iranian-supplied rockets made in Syria that were intended for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, the military said.

It said the Panamanian-flagged cargo vessel Klos-C was boarded in international waters without resistance from its 17-strong crew, and would be escorted to the Israeli port of Eilat within days…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Israeli Naval Raid Nabs Gaza-Bound Arms From Iran

Israeli naval forces raided a ship in the Red Sea early Wednesday, capturing a shipment of dozens of advanced rockets from Iran destined to Palestinian militants in Gaza that would have given them greater reach to strike much of Israel, the military said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Leaders Meet in Paris to Win Support for Fragile Lebanon, Burdened by Syrian Refugee Crisis

An international support group for Lebanon appealed Wednesday for nations to extend pledges of financial help for the fragile country, which is coping with an influx of Syrian refugees, terror attacks and a struggling economy. Participants at the ministerial meeting in Paris stressed the need “to not only speed up the promised aid but provide additional help.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain Withdraw Ambassadors From Qatar

Too much interference from Doha, ‘stormy’ GCC meeting on Egypt

(ANSAmed) — RIYADH — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain decided on Wednesday to withdraw their ambassadors to Qatar, denouncing the interference of Doha’s authorities in domestic affairs of neighbouring countries. The three countries said they had taken such a decision over the need “to protect their security and stability”, according to a Saudi statement quoted by pan-Arab television Al Arabiya.

This unprecedented rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) follows a meeting defined by a number of media outlets as “stormy” Tuesday night in Riyadh of foreign ministers from the six member countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain).

The controversy was reportedly sparked by the different position of Qatar, compared to other Gulf monarchies, on the latest political developments in Egypt.

Doha allegedly sided with the Muslim Brothers of ousted President Mohamed Morsi while Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE have ensured their support, in particular financially, to the new government.

The three countries moreover suspect that Qatar is supporting Muslim Brotherhood cells active on their territories.

Dozens of Brothers have been served jail terms in the UAE.

The latest to be sentenced to seven years in jail is a Qatari national.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Saudis Back Online Campaign Against Child Abuse

Saudis have launched a social media campaign demanding laws against child abuse in the wake of the death of a 13-year-old girl who died after being chained to a door by her father, it was reported.

Under an Arabic hashtag on Twitter called Reem the Victim, the debate came after the girl died in Asir after choking on a heavy chain used to tie her up to a door, with investigations later confirming that she was tortured…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Saudi, UAE, Bahrain Pull Envoys From Qatar in Security Row

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday in an unprecedented split between the Gulf Arab allies who have fallen out over political turmoil shaking the Middle East.

Qatar’s cabinet voiced “regret and surprise” at the decision by Gulf Cooperation Council counterparts but said Doha would not pull out its own envoys in response and that it remained committed to “the security and stability” of the GCC…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey Permits US Warship to Transit Bosphorus to Black Sea

ANKARA, March 5 (Xinhua) — Turkish has allowed a U.S. warship to pass through the Bosphorus Strait in the next two days amid a growing tension between Russia and Western countries over Crimea, local Daily News reported Wednesday…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Turkish Airlines Flight Lands in Iran With 20 Israelis Onboard

Flight from Turkey to India makes emergency landing in Tehran after one of the passengers fell ill.

           — Hat tip: ESW [Return to headlines]
 

UAE Announces Visa on Arrival for Nationals of 13 EU Countries

Abu Dhabi: The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that citizens of 13 European Union member states, who hold ordinary passports, will be exempted from the need to acquire pre-entry visas to the UAE. with effect from 22nd March, 2014, in implementation of the decision taken by the UAE Cabinet in this regard.

As a result of the above decision, citizens of all 28 countries in the EU will be allowed to enter the UAE. without having to previously apply for a visa.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain Recall Their Ambassadors From Qatar

The move, conveyed in a joint statement by the three countries, is unprecedented in the three-decade history of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman

Qatar has been a maverick in the region, backing Islamist groups in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that are viewed with suspicion or outright hostility by some fellow GCC members.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UAE: Qatari Jailed in the UAE for 7yrs for Backing Islamist Group

A Qatari physician received a seven-year jail sentence from a court in the United Arab Emirates on Monday for supporting an illegal Islamist group, the UAE state news agency WAM said.

The case could further complicate ties between Qatar and the UAE, which both belong to the Western-allied Gulf Cooperation Council, but have diverging views of Islamist political groups that initially thrived after the Arab uprisings of 2011…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Why I Can’t Stand White Belly Dancers

Whether they know it or not, white women who practice belly dance are engaging in appropriation

Randa Jarrar

Google the term “belly dance” and the first images the search engine offers are of white women in flowing, diaphanous skirts, playing at brownness. How did this become acceptable?

The term “belly dance” itself is a Western one. In Arabic, this kind of dance is called Raqs Sharqi, or Eastern dance. Belly dance, as it is known and practiced in the West, has its roots in, and a long history of, white appropriation of Eastern dance.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Albright: Crimea is Not Kosovo

Former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright has commented on the situation in Crimea and the comparisons that have been made to Kosovo.

Asked if the USA is using double standards, given that they allowed Kosovo to separate from former Yugoslavia, while Crimea is not allowed to separate from Ukraine, former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright said that such analogy cannot be made.

“Absolutely not. Kosovo’s situation was entirely different to that in Crimea today. Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia separated. What happened there was a result of domestic developments. Russia never understood what was happening in Kosovo and it constantly tried to block the aspiration of people who wanted independence”, said Albright.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

An Israeli-Russian Alliance?

By Steve Sailer

Excerpt: Russia has long been a baleful state, the biggest, toughest flatheads out on the Eurasian plain. You always hear about two times Russia was attacked—by Napoleon in 1812 and by Hitler in 1941—but Russia didn’t get that big through diplomacy. In late czarist times, the Foreign Office commemorated a royal anniversary by commissioning a research project in the archives. In its ceremonial memorandum to the czar, the foreign minister announced that they had reviewed the last 40 wars the state had fought and were proud to declare that Russia had started 38 of them. This is not to say that Russia is endlessly aggressive, but that it traditionally feels that its vulnerabilities demand its expansiveness.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Chinese Investment in Ukraine Could be Costly Casualty of Conflict With Russia

Ukraine’s escalating tensions with Russia could cost the former Soviet republic billions in aid and investment from China, which has in recent years developed close economic ties with Kiev.

Late last year, Beijing reportedly struck a multibillion-dollar deal to lease vast amounts of eastern Ukrainian farmland to feed its exploding population, and also pledged $8 billion in aid to the cash-strapped nation. Those deals came after the administration of recently ousted President Viktor Yanukovych aggressively courted Chinese investment. But with Yanukovych gone and Kiev locked in confrontation with Moscow, China could be forced to choose sides.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Crimea River

By Ann Coulter

Excerpt: John F. Kennedy was in the White House for less than three years and, if you think he screwed a lot of hookers, just look what he did to our foreign policy. Six months after becoming president, JFK had his calamitous meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna — a meeting The New York Times described as “one of the more self-destructive American actions of the Cold War, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.” (The Times admitted that a half-century later. At the time, the Newspaper of Record lied about the meeting.)

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

European Union to Offer $15 Billion in Aid to Ukraine

A top European Union official said Wednesday that the group is prepared to offer an aid package to Ukraine worth as much as $15 billion over the next two years.

Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the union’s executive arm, said Wednesday it will include 1.6 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in loans and 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in grants from the E.U. as well as 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) in fresh credit from the European Investment Bank.

The aide will buttress the $1 billion in loan guarantees that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pledged to Ukraine while visiting Kiev on Tuesday. The economic lifeline is expected to help Ukraine’s embattled interim government amid spiraling debts and the threat of rising Russian gas prices. The funds will also help cushion the blow as the International Monetary Fund is expected to demand tough austerity measures as a condition of its own expected aide package.

[Return to headlines]
 

Hillary Clinton Compares Russia Moves to Nazi Aggression

Clinton draws a parallel between the Russian government’s issuing passports in Ukraine and pre-World War II actions taken by Germany. The comments are Clinton’s first since Putin’s troops entered Ukraine on Saturday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

How to Kick Putin in the Teeth

By Robert Tracinski

Excerpt: Here is a list of suggested counterpunches. First, we should do something that we are already doing: John Kerry should go to Kiev and stay there until Putin pulls his tanks back from the border. We need to do what we did when Putin invaded Georgia in 2008: send in a rotating contingent of Western foreign ministers and heads of state, letting Putin know that if he wants to advance on Kiev he’s going to have to threaten the top leaders of all the Western powers. It’s a way of extending a de facto military umbrella over the Western half of Ukraine and the central government without having to do it officially. With this implicit defense in place, we should immediately begin helping Ukraine transform itself into a porcupine state capable of filling the Russian bear’s nose with prickles.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Tensions May Harm Tourism in Crimea: Ukrainian PM

KIEV, March 5 (Xinhua) — The crisis in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in southern Ukraine is likely to harm the region’s tourism industry, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said here Wednesday. “In fact, there would be no holiday season, so the government needs to adjust the revenues of the autonomous republic,” Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine: Sajid Javid, Vladimir Putin and the Strange Silence of Downing Street

Social media is a boon for politicians. It gives new channels of communication direct to voters with an intimacy and an immediacy that increases the impact of what is said. And it’s a two-way street so it allows dialogue and deliberation. All good.

Well, not so fast. There’s always the problem of message discipline…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine: Tatar Sunni Muslims Pose a Threat to Russia’s Occupation of Crimea

Pro-Ukrainian Islamic minority could mount a more organised resistance against Russian forces in Crimea peninsula

Russia may be tightening its grip on Crimea, with little resistance to date, but they have yet to face the Crimean Tatar factor. There are 266,000 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, over 13% of the local population. They are Sunni Muslim, traditionally pro-Ukrainian, and much better organised than the local Ukrainians, who make up 23% of the population…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine Crisis: Russian Roulette in Space?

Rocky Russian relations could leave U.S. astronauts without rides to the International Space Station.

Since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in 2011, Russia has had a monopoly on flying crews to the orbital outpost. The only other country currently flying people in space is China, which is not a member of the 15-nation space station partnership.

That leaves the United States in a vulnerable position as it ponders options to defuse a tense standoff between Russia and Ukraine.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ammunition Warehouse Explodes in Indonesia, Killing 1, Injuring 24

JAKARTA, March 5 (Xinhua) — An ammunition warehouse belonging to the navy exploded in North Jakarta on Wednesday, killing one marine and wounding another 86 people, mostly marines, according to the military.

The warehouse storing ammunition for long and short rifles, which belongs to the frogman force for west naval command, exploded at 10:30 a.m. Jakarta time, Indonesian military spokesman Iskandar Sitompul said…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

India: No Country for Single Women

For many young people, India is a land of opportunity. Male or female, if you’re well educated and resourceful there’s the chance of a well-paid career. Just one problem, says Suruchi Sharma — if you’re a woman, you must marry by your mid-20s.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

China’s Muslims Will Pay a Heavy Price for the Kunming Knife Attacks

By Isabel Hilton

There’s no evidence that the Kunming station attack had any connection to global jihad, but that won’t prevent a crackdown

All acts of terror are shocking, but those involving knives — the most intimate of murder weapons — carry a particular horror. Saturday’s murders in Kunming station of 29 people, and the wounding of 129 more, by 10 masked, black-clad men and women, add a dimension of scale to an already gruesome act…

[Reader comment by juanaFulana on 3 March 2014.]

There’s no evidence that the Kunming station attack had any connection to global jihad, but that won’t prevent a crackdown

There is no global jihad, there are a lot of nasty little jihads in many different places that have fundamental Islamic ideology as a common factor. But jihadis’ atrocities are atrocities regardless of whether their jihads are global or local in nature, and regardless of whether the perpetrators have legitimate complaints or not.

The problem with bringing up jihadis’ grievances, legitimate or otherwise, after they have committed their atrocities is that you end up justifying the atrocities whether you intend to or not. “I’m not justifying, I’m just explaining,” is a failed defense of this practice.

There are an infinite number of bad reasons for Muslim fundies to deliberately and brutally butcher innocent people in a train station and exactly zero good (or even adequate) reasons. When you bring up one of their grievances you might feel is legitimate in response to their atrocities, you are implying that their grievance was a good reason, not just “explaining” their motives.

To illustrate why, let’s imagine that that Chinese Muslims’ only complaints are that Chinese non-Muslims eat pork and aren’t converting en masse to Islam. Would you cite these reasons in an opinion piece immediately after they committed an atrocity in order to “explain” their motives? Of course you wouldn’t, because they are bad reasons. The unavoidable implied message when you cite motives that you feel are legitimate grievances — and may very well be — is that they had good reasons. You are saying or implying that their grievances should be addressed, which is exactly what they want you to say. You become, in effect, an accessory after the fact in a small way by pressing their demands for them.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

China: Xi Vows Opposition Against Words, Actions Damaging Ethnic Unity

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for resolute opposition to any words and actions that damage the country’s ethnic unity.

“We will build a ‘wall of bronze and iron’ for ethnic unity, social stability and national unity,” he said while joining a panel discussion with members from the minority ethnic groups of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Chinese Premier Vows Firm Crackdown on Terrorism

BEIJING, March 5 (Xinhua) — Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday strongly condemned the deadly terrorist attack in southwestern Chinese city of Kunming and pledged to crack down hard on terrorism.

“We will firmly crack down on all violent crimes of terrorism as they violate the dignity of law and challenge the bottom line of human civilization,” Li said while delivering his first government work report at the National People’s Congress (NPC), which opened on Wednesday.…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Muslim Cleric in China: “Killing You… Slaughtering You… and Cutting Off Your Heads is All Good”

How did a Muslim cleric get the crazy idea that his jihad against China should have something to do with killing Chinese people? Where did he get the idea that beheading was something “good” in the eyes of Allah? Could it have been from Qur’an 47:4, which tells Muslims to “strike at the necks” of the unbelievers? Naah — that couldn’t be it. To think that would be “Islamophobic.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

South Korea Investigating Reports of New North Korea Purge

The South Korean government is investigating reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has purged the man widely believed to be the new power behind the dictatorial throne after Kim had his uncle deposed and executed late last year.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

What Some in the Chinese Government Might Now be Contemplating

They might be contemplating the following:

Requiring the Uighurs to remove themselves from all major Chinese cities outside of Xinjiang. Closing all the mosques outside of Xinjiang. It could thus contain the security problem largely limiting it to that Western region, so as to avoid having to police the whole country…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Anti-Islam Party to Contest Next Election

AN anti-Islam party based on the hardline views of Dutch politician Geert Wilders plans to field candidates at the next federal election, raising fears among moderate Muslims of a rise in extremism.

Mr Wilders, an influential far-right figure expected to shape the results of this year’s European elections, told followers in a video message that the Australian Liberty Alliance was being formed to “offer civil minded Australians fresh political vision and better policies”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Racing NSW Left With Long Faces Despite Jockeying for Royals

The organising principle behind the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s planning of next month’s royal tour? Always leave them begging for more.

The first visit to Australia by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with nine-month-old Prince George looks like a standing room only affair and a huge shot in the arm for the monarchy. But Buckingham Palace’s announcement of the itinerary has already left some noses out of joint…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Nigeria: Nine Killed in Midnight Attack on Riyom, Plateau

Jos — The Police in Plateau said nine persons were killed on Tuesday night attack on Angwan-Waran in Riyom Local Government of the State.Mr Chris Olakpe, the Commissioner of Police in Plateau, in Jos on Wednesday said that the attackers had fled the area before the arrival of security agents.He said the police and other personnel of the Special Task Force (STF) maintaining the peace in Plateau, had stepped in and restored normalcy to the area…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Sweden Freezes Aid to Uganda Over Anti-Gay Bill

The Swedish government has condemned Uganda’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act and has decided to freeze aid worth SEK 6.5 billion in an effort to “help the Ugandan people”, Sweden’s International Development Assistance Minister Hillevi Engström, told Swedish Television News.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Huge Mexican Pyramid Could Collapse Like a Sandcastle

THE Pyramid of the Sun may fall apart. One side is dry while another side is wet, which could lead to the pyramid’s collapse unless a fix can be found.

Between the 1st and 7th centuries, Mexico’s Pyramid of the Sun was at the heart of the largest city in the Americas. Now known as Teotihuacan, the lost city had a population of more than 125,000, making it one of the biggest in the world. The pyramid itself is among the largest on the planet. Its exterior is covered with 3 million tonnes of volcanic rock, but the interior is a mound of earth.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Mexican Judge Denies Petition From Drug Lord ‘El Chapo’ To Prevent Extradition to the US

A Mexican judge has denied drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman an injunction against any extradition to the United States. The Federal Judicial Council says in a statement that the judge rejected Guzman’s petition because the U.S. government hasn’t filed an extradition request. If the U.S. does file a request, Guzman will be free to go back to court.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘80,000 Illegals at Our Border’ Says Spain

Trying to enter EU through Ceuta, Melilla says interior minister

(ANSAmed) — MADRID, MARCH 4 — Some 80,000 Moroccan and Mauritanian illegal immigrants are seeking enter Europe through the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Tuesday in a speech to 127 new Catalan police officers. The numbers came from Spanish, Moroccan and Mauritanian intelligence, the minister said.

Diaz yesterday called on the European Union to give Spain 45 million euros to handle the “grave crisis” it is facing in its two cities, which are located within Moroccan territory.

The immigrants hail from Morocco and Mauritania in equal measure, and many are being trafficked by criminal organizations, the minister said, qualifying the situation in the two Spanish enclaves as “an absolute emergency”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Immigrant Who Brutally Raped a Woman One Month After Arriving in the UK is Given Life in Prison by Judges Who Say Original 10 Year Sentence Was Too Lenient

[WARNING: *Disturbing Content*]

A convicted rapist who carried out a ‘brutal’ sex attack on a woman one month after arriving in the UK from Lithuania has had his ‘unduly lenient’ prison term overturned and replaced with a life sentence.

Gintas Burinskas, 36, dragged a woman off a street in Northampton and violently assaulted her just four months after he completed he was released from 10-year jail prison sentence in his home country for rape.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Italian House Speaker: Migrant Women Are Icons of Our Times

Boldrini, they give enormous contribution to our society

(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 4 — Italian Chamber Speaker Laura Boldrini called migrant women “an icon of our times”. “They are courageous, increasingly often depart their countries alone, leaving their children,” Boldrini said.

“(Female) immigrants do not have the social recognition that the deserve. They are capable of making an enormous contribution to our country,” Boldrini said by telephone in connection with a public meeting on Capitoline Hill in Rome, organized by the October 3 Committee. The October 3 Committee takes its name from the date on which the lives of 368 people were claimed in 2013 a few meters from the coast of Lampedusa. “They make up for the shortcomings of our welfare (system) with is not up (our needs). It is thanks to them, to their sacrifices, that we can build our careers and go forward”.

The meeting, entitled “Beyond the border — What reception for the migrant women”, took place, with the sponsorship of Roma Capitale — Rome’s city administration — five months after the shipwreck of October 3. Among those who spoke, there was Lampedusa Mayor Giusy Nicolini.

“The history of Lampedusa must make Italy proud,” she said, invoking a law on asylum “to prevent these tragic arrivals”.

“Our reception system must be reexamined. Our migrants can not be crammed into the CARA (migrant reception centres), like that of Mineo where the conditions are not very different from those of CIE (Identification and Expulsion Centres). And the Dublin Regulation must be reexamined, which obliges refugees to stay in the country of first entry. Many leave (their own countries) to reunite with their families located in other European countries. Why not allow them to do it?” Present, among others, were Roman Mayor Ignazio Marino, the Chamber deputy and ex-Integration minister Cécile Kyenge and the Somali-origin writer Igiaba Sciego.

The meeting is part of a bundle of initiatives with which the October 3 Committee is putting forward to keep attention alive on migrants who lose their lives each year in the attempt to reach Italian territory, and to the reception given to those who disembark on its coasts. Analogous initiatives were organized in Italy and Europe also in schools and with the contribution of institutions and associations. The October 3 Committee was born with the objective of recognizing October 3 as ‘National Day of Memory and Reception’ for migrants. A law bill has been presented to the Italian Chamber and has been underwritten so far by 40 parliamentarians.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy Rescues 5,600 Migrants From the Sea So Far in 2014

Work underway for 6000 more places in reception centres

(ANSAmed) — ROME, MARCH 4 — A total of 5,611 migrants have been rescued in the Strait of Sicily and in the seas off of the Italian regions of Puglia and Calabria since the beginning of the year. The number is more than eleven times the 476 migrants rescued in the same period last year. The number was revealed by the central director for immigration at the Italian department of public safety, Giovanni Pinto, in a hearing at the Schengen Commission.

Pinto explained that these numbers “pose a problem for asylum and aid,” and that for this reason “work is underway to create an additional 6,000 places” in Italy’s migrant reception centres.

Pinto underlined that both Frontex, the EU border management and migrant rescue operation, and Mare Nostrum, an Italian operation set up to prevent further deaths at sea following a ship disaster off Lampedusa in October 2013 that cost 366 migrants’ lives, have the same scope.

“Beyond sterile controversies, there isn’t a big difference between the two operations, because in both cases lives are saved,” said Pinto.

Thus “attention needs to be placed elsewhere,” in the countries of departure and transit, since it is not possible to refuse the migrants. “This is a principle we can not part from,” Pinto added.

Thus assisted repatriation agreements with the countries on the other side of the Mediterranean become fundamental.

At the moment the ones that work best are with Tunisia, Egypt and Nigeria, and it is no coincidence that more than half of the more than 300 migrants repatriated since the beginning of the year are returned to those North African countries.

There are 147 illegal immigrants that were repatriated to other countries with 133 airline flights. In 2013, out of nearly 4,500 migrants expelled from Italy, more than 3,000 were Egyptians and Tunisians, while 202 were Nigerians and 1,129 were repatriated to other countries on 943 airline flights.

Pinto then explained that the vast majority of migrants that have arrived in the first three months of the year departed from Libya.

The cause is — once more — instability in the country and Italy’s difficulty in creating relationships with local authorities.

In Libya, increasingly sophisticated “criminal organizations” are able to manage human trafficking from Somalia to Western Africa, Pinto said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Resolved: Muslim Immigration is No Threat to the West

Are immigrants from Muslim-majority countries bringing violence and incompatible values to Canada and other Western countries, or are they following the same integration patterns as earlier waves of religious-minority immigrants?

That question was at the centre of this debate organized by the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Switzerland: Justice Minister Faces EU Peers in Brussels

Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga says it will take time to implement a new system to limit immigration into Switzerland, as demanded by the initiative approved last month. She was in Brussels on Monday to speak to the EU interior ministers gathered there.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Inevitability of ObamaCare for Illegal Aliens

By Michelle Malkin

Excerpt: In Oregon this week, officials confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been “accidentally” steered from the state’s low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in Obamacare in violation of the law. Oopsie. The Oregonian newspaper’s Nick Budnick reported that the health bureaucrats “discovered the problem several weeks ago and are correcting it.” Get in line. The beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange has been riddled with ongoing problems, errors and glitches since last October that have yet to be fixed.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Immigration Impact Report Withheld by Downing Street

Downing Street has withheld publication of a cross-governmental report that suggests one potential impact of immigration is smaller than claimed.

It suggests “displacement” — the number of UK workers unemployed as a consequence of immigration — is well below the figure used by ministers of 23 for every 100 additional immigrants. This was considered potentially incendiary, BBC Newsnight has learned…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Wales’ Foreign-Born Population Rises by 82% in 10 Years

Wales’ foreign-born population rose by 82% in 10 years, new figures show. Polish-born people represent Wales’ largest migrant group during the decade up to 2011.

The figures from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory showed the number of migrants living in Wales has soared in recent years. The population of Wales in 2011 was 3,063,456, with about 167,871 of those born outside the UK.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Wealthy Mainlanders Threaten to Sue After Canada Scraps Visa Scheme

Ottawa cancelled Immigrant Investor Programme that allowed 100,000 Chinese into the country

A group of wealthy mainlanders has criticised the Canadian government for scrapping its investor visa scheme and are threatening legal action if the decision is not overturned. More than 10 people who had applied for the visa met with reporters in Beijing yesterday to air their grievances. The group said they had wasted years of time, effort and money preparing to move to North America.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced last month that the Canadian government was scrapping the Immigrant Investor Programme. The scheme has allowed nearly 100,000 wealthy Hongkongers and mainland Chinese to move across the Pacific since 1986.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Is “Taps” Some Secret Nazi Song? Mainstream Media Go Full Godwin on Gay Rights

By Mollie Hemingway

Excerpt: Now, say what you will about the Associated Press’ decision to use this suggestive photo, or the biased article it’s matched with, but at least the caption to the piece makes their activity abundantly clear: ‘In this Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014 photo, Trail Life members move their arms as they sing “Taps” in a circle during a meeting in North Richland Hills, Texas.’ Is Taps some secret Nazi song? Here are the lyrics to the song the boys were singing, the crime for which a religion reporter went Full Godwin.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Is Racism Making You Fat? Victims of Prejudice Are at Greater Risk of Obesity

There are many reasons why an increasing number of people are classified as obese — and now racism could be one of them. Frequent experiences of racism are associated with a higher risk of obesity among African American women, a new study claims. Scientists found that women who were more frequently victimised for their race, were more likely to be obese.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

MFM: “If You Don’t Support the Gay Agenda, You’re Pretty Much a Nazi.”

Excerpt: Trail Life USA disagreed with the policies of the Boy Scouts (specifically, when they changed their policies to accommodate gays and atheists); and instead of whining about it to the media or suing to make the Government impose their will on people they disagreed with, they started a group more to their own liking. Agree with them or not, this type of solution is much less obnoxious and socially divisive than using Big Government to force their will on others.

           — Hat tip: KP [Return to headlines]
 

Tolerance and Apathy: The Last Stage

As I travel the road of life, I find it very interesting how men who lived so long ago and experienced so much of life were able to see what was coming in the future, not to mention what they saw in their own day. Aristotle could not have hit the nail on the head any closer than this:

“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.”

I remember looking at a book once that was titled “What Men Have Learned from History.” As I opened the 100-page book, I found that the pages were all blank. The point was well made. Men do not learn from history. Unfortunately, society has proven this to be the case over and over again. In America today you can see the clear digression of society. What was once evil in our eyes some now call good. The high standards of virtue and morality that were once considered to be the foundation of our families are now laughed at and called “old fashioned” and “outdated.”

We now live in a nation where “tolerance” has become some sort of virtue, and “intolerance” for the things that go against God’s Word is called “hate.” The truth is God is love (1 John 4:8), and God gave His Law because He loves. Yet, America has now become so wise in her own eyes that its people have become fools (Romans 1:22).

Those who fought, bled, and died for our country to establish our Constitution, those who sacrificed to make us free were looked upon as heroes. Now, those who stick to the Constitution and fight to make sure it is adhered to are demonized, criticized by the state-run media and labeled “intolerant haters.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Equations Are Art Inside a Mathematician’s Brain

A brain area associated with emotional reactions to beauty activates when mathematicians view especially pleasing formulas

When mathematicians describe equations as beautiful, they are not lying. Brain scans show that their minds respond to beautiful equations in the same way other people respond to great paintings or masterful music. The finding could bring neuroscientists closer to understanding the neural basis of beauty, a concept that is surprisingly hard to define.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Faxing’ Life From Mars: Craig Venter’s Wild, Digital Space Exploration Idea

If scientists do find life on Mars, it may be possible to beam Martian DNA back to Earth, according to a new idea growing in popularity. If Martian bugs are found, the idea of “faxing” life from Mars is an enticing prospect, spurred on by scientist, Craig Venter, famous for his early sequencing of the human genome.

Venter proposes that researchers analyze Martian DNA on the Red Planet and then radio back that sequence to synthesize the DNA on Earth. He put forth the notion in a book published last year called “Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of the Digital Age.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Futuristic Moon Elevator Idea Takes Aim at Lunar Lifts

An elevator to the moon might not be as crazy as it sounds.

A moon-based elevator to space could radically reduce the costs and improve the reliability of placing equipment on the lunar surface. Such a lunar elevator would make the transport of supplies and materials from the surface of the moon into the Earth’s orbit and vice versa possible. Indeed, valuable resources could be extracted from the moon, then sent into Earth orbit more easily than if they were rocketed from the Earth’s surface.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

How the Global Banana Industry is Killing the World’s Favorite Fruit

Scientists first discovered the fungus that is turning banana plants into this rotting, fibrous mass in Southeast Asia in the 1990s. Since then the pathogen, known as the Tropical Race 4 strain of Panama disease, has slowly but steadily ravaged export crops throughout Asia. The fact that this vicious soil-borne fungus has now made the leap to Mozambique and Jordan is frightening. One reason is that it’s getting closer to Latin America, where at least 70% of the world’s $8.9-billion-a-year worth of exported bananas is grown.

Randy Ploetz, professor of plant pathology at University of Florida who discovered Tropical Race 4, says it may already be in Latin America.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation

By Raymond Ibrahim

Obligatory jihad is best expressed by Islam’s dichotomized worldview that pits the realm of Islam against the realm of war. The first, dar al-Islam, is the “realm of submission,” the world where Shari’a governs; the second, dar al-Harb (the realm of war), is the non-Islamic world. A struggle continues until the realm of Islam subsumes the non-Islamic world—a perpetual affair that continues to the present day.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Monster Black Hole Spins at Half the Speed of Light

For the first time, astronomers have directly measured how fast a black hole spins, clocking its rotation at nearly half the speed of light.

The distant supermassive black hole would ordinarily be too faint to measure, but a rare lineup with a massive elliptical galaxy created a natural telescope known as a gravitational lens that allowed scientists to study the faraway object.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

2 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/5/2014

  1. A couple of points

    1. 2.5b pounds to plug yet another EU black hole. Isn’t it time the UK left this profligate dictatorship, possibly taking Holland and France with it?

    2. A “British” pervert called Shuhel Mahoob Ali ? Good old British name that!

  2. Regarding the article about the Egyptian-born woman who is offended by white girls “appropriating” belly dancing –
    What rot! On the one hand, Muslims want Christian students penalized if they refuse to wear a head covering, attend a mosque, and recite Islamic verses as part of their public education. On the other hand, Muslims want white girls to feel guilty about “appropriating” belly dancing costumes. Muslim women never feel guilty about “appropriating” western high heels, western skirts and jackets, or western styles of make-up. They never feel guilty about Muslim men appropriating suits and ties. They never feel guilty about appropriating western trains, cars, airplanes and computers.

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