Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/4/2014

Tonight’s news feed is a partial accumulation of news items that came in while I was away. Not every item is included, but a lot of them are.

The most interesting news story is that ISIS has now taken over Syria’s largest oil field, giving it effective control of virtually the entire Syrian oil supply.

In other news, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has told the country’s remaining white farmers that they must give up their land and leave Zimbabwe.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, Kitman, MC, 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.

USA
» 19-Year-Old Colorado Woman Shannon Maureen Conley Charged With Aiding Terrorist Group, FBI Says
» Caroline Glick: Ari Shavit and American Jewry
» Homeland Security’s Mohammed Elibiary: Caliphate Inevitable
» Referee Dies After Being Punched at Soccer Match
» ‘Revolutionary’ Physics: Do Sterile Neutrinos Lurk in the Universe?
 
Canada
» Rob Ford on Drug Use: ‘You Name it, I Pretty Well Covered it’
 
Europe and the EU
» As ISIS Threatens Europe, Dutch Cut Intelligence Funding
» Belgian-Jewish Leader: European Jews Must Brace for More Attacks
» British Jihadi: I Want Islamist Black Flag on No 10 and Buckingham Palace
» Danish Companies Advertising During Islamist Executions
» Denmark: Scientists Discover ADHD Gene
» Denmark: Lars Hedegaard Among the Producers of New Anti-Islam Animation
» Denmark: 1,100-Year-Old Amulet Confirms Hammer of Thor Theory
» Dutch Black Pete is ‘Negative Stereotype’ — Court
» EP Socialists Says All Deals With EPP Could be Off
» Erdogan Tells Turks Not to Assimilate Into Austria
» Europe the Target for Master Bombmaker
» France and the Burka Ban: What is the Lesson?
» France: Sarkozy Charged in Corruption Case
» French Police Say Mother Stabs Teacher to Death in Front of Kindergarten Class
» From Prison to Jihad: Islamists Seek Supporters Among German Inmates
» Germany Broke Fiscal Rules First, Renzi to Weber
» German Cabinet Approves Debt-Free 2015 Budget
» German Martin Schulz Wins EU Vote
» Greece: University Professor Beaten in Thessaloniki for ‘Criticizing Left’
» Greece: Council of State Green-Lights Construction of Athens Mosque
» Greece: Council of State Allows for Mosque in Athens
» I Like the Look of This Exciting New Islamic State. But Why Don’t They Take Belgium?
» Italy: Farage Calls Renzi EP Speech ‘Just Passable’
» Mars One Wants to Send Your Experiments to the Red Planet
» Netherlands’ Top Terrorism Official Warns of ‘Growing’ Number of ISIS Supporters
» Netherlands: ‘15-Year-Old Girl Would-be Jihadist May Have Been With Others’
» Sweden: Green MP Likens Jihadists to WWII Freedom Fighters
» Sweden: Police Shooting in Husby Ruled ‘Self-Defence’
» Syrian Chemical Arms Transfer Begins at Italy’s Gioia Tauro
» UK Regulator Probes Facebook’s Psychological Experiment
» UK: Let’s Face it — Ray Honeyford Got it Right on Education
» UK: Man Gunned Down on Birmingham Street After Rival Gangs Clash
» UK: Man Shot Dead and Two Injured in Gun and Knife Attack During Violent Outbreak Involving Hundreds of People on Streets of Birmingham
» UK: Man Calls for ‘Black Flag of Islam’ Over Buckingham Palace
» UK: Police Investigating After Britain First Go to Two Gillingham Mosques Objecting to a Planning Application for a New Place of Worship
» UK: Plans Tabled to Expand Stockport Mosque and Community Centre
» UK: Secret Service Infiltrated Paedophile Group to ‘Blackmail Establishment’
» US Terror Threat: Britain Turning ‘Blind Eye’ To Extremists, Warn American Analysts
 
Balkans
» Police and Albanians Clash in Macedonia Over Murder Trial
 
North Africa
» 17 Extremists Killed in Security Raids in Egypt’s Sinai
» The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi — A Review
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Hamas Editor Links Teen’s Murder With ‘Matzah Blood Libel’
» Israeli Scientists Create Jet Fuel From Water and Air
» Liberman Slams Ceasefire Proposal With Hamas as ‘Huge Mistake’
» Lynch Mob Hurls Rocks at Lost Israelis; One Injured
» Majority of Palestinians Want to Reclaim ‘Historic Palestine From River to Sea’
» Official: Rioting the Product of Premeditated Incitement
» Op-Ed: We, However, Are Guilty
» Parts of Sderot in Darkness After Gaza Rocket Attack
» Violence as Arab Teenager is Buried in Jerusalem
 
Middle East
» 12 Soldiers Killed in Suicide Car Bomb Attack in Iraq
» 8 Killed in Baghdad Bombing as Iraqi PM Declares Amnesty for Tribes
» Chechen Fighter Emerges as Face of Iraq Militant Group
» Expressions of Solidarity With ISIS in the West
» Iraq Detains Sunnis in Baghdad to Pre-Empt Activation of Islamic State ‘Sleeper Cells’
» Iraq: Islamic State Claims Shia Mosque Destruction
» Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki Offers General Amnesty to Undermine Militants
» ISIS Militant Group Takes Control of Syria’s Largest Oil Field
» ISIS Seizes Oil Field and Towns in Syria’s East
» Islamic State Caliph Calls on Muslims Worldwide to Move to His New Caliphate and Wage Jihad Against Infidels
» Jihadists Controls All Main Syrian Oil Fields
» Kurdistan “Engine of Democracy in Middle East”
» Lebanon: Eastern Churches Call on Arab Christians to be “Guides to Citizenship”
» More Than a Million Iraqis Displaced by ISIS Advance
» Surge in People Needing Treatment for Stomach Issues Because of Overeating at Iftar, UAE Doctors Say
» Syria Refugees Set to Exceed a Third of Lebanon’s Population
» The Encouragers: Jihadists’ Agents of Influence
» The Growing Shadow of ISIS
» The Road to Mosul: Searching for the Real ISIS
» Top Kurdish Spy Chief Says French Jihadists Fighting in Iraq
» UN Warns Syrian Refugee Crisis Could Destabilize Region
» ‘We Will Take Spain Back’: Syrian Jihadists
 
Russia
» Eastern Ukraine Shelling: ‘I’m Afraid to Leave My Basement’
» Reuters: Poroshenko Seeks New Crisis Talks on July 5-6, Fighting Rages
» Ukraine Death Toll in Separatist Fighting Issued
» Ukraine Presses Ahead With Post-Ceasefire Offensive
» Ukraine’s New Defence Minister Promises Crimea Victory
 
South Asia
» Bangladesh: Catholics Protest: No Impunity for the Rapist of an 8 Year Old Girl
» Fears Raised Over Pakistan’s Nuclear Dreams
» India: Bikinis to Blame for Sex Crimes on Goa’s Beaches, Says Minister
» Indonesia Overtakes Brazil in Forest Losses
» Pakistan: Two Dead as Suicide Blast Hits Mosque in Karachi
 
Far East
» China Bans Ramadan Fast in Muslim Northwest
» Filipino Activists Call for End to US Defense Pact
» ‘Patriots Must Run Hong Kong’: State Newspapers Hit Back at July 1 Demonstrators
» Tibetans Thrive at High Altitudes Thanks to Neanderthal Cousin
 
Australia — Pacific
» Acceptance Takes Faith
» Jihadist Threat to Diggers
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Biafra, June 12, Boko Haram and the Future of Nigeria
» Ebola ‘Out of Control’ In West Africa as Health Workers Rush to Trace 1,500 Possible Victims
» Mugabe Calls for an End to White Farmers in Zimbabwe
» Red Cross Suspends Ebola Operations in Southeast Guinea After Threats
» Sudan: A New Problem Every Day for Mariam Ibrahim
» Uganda: Terror Fear in City Malls
» W. African Ebola Epidemic ‘Likely to Last Months’, Says UN
» West African Nations Hold Crisis Talks Over Ebola Outbreak
» Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe Tells White Farmers ‘To Go’
 
Latin America
» Argentina to Negotiate Payments on “Vulture Funds” With US Lenders
 
Immigration
» 75 Migrants Lost at Sea Off Italy, Shipwreck Survivors Say
» Ireland Criticised for Not Taking Enough “Refugees”
» Italy Refugee Inflow Swells With 800 More Arrivals
» Italy ‘Not Alone’ With Mare Nostrum, Malmstrom Says
» Refugee Kids Moved on After Swedes Protest
 
Culture Wars
» Burger King in San Francisco Releases Pro-Gay ‘Proud Whopper’
 
General
» ISIS and Its Mappamundi: The Standard to-Do List of Islam
» Time to Eliminate Visa Waivers?
 

19-Year-Old Colorado Woman Shannon Maureen Conley Charged With Aiding Terrorist Group, FBI Says

DENVER — The FBI says a 19-year-old Colorado woman has been arrested while trying to board a flight at DIA with the goal of meeting with a terrorist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.

A federal criminal complaint states that between Sept. 7, 2013 and April 8, 2014, Shannon Maureen Conley, together with others, tried to provide material support and resources, including personnel and expert advice, to a foreign terrorist organization. She’s charged with providing material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization

ISIS insurgents have been fighting to topple the governments of Iraq and Syria.

Authorities began investigating Conley on Nov. 5, 2013 when the pastor at Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada called local police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to report the teen had been spotted suspiciously taking notes at the church’s main campus at 6120 Ward Road on several Sundays at October, according to a federal affidavit supporting the criminal complaint.

Church officials have a heightened awareness about security because Faith Bible Chapel was the scene of a shooting in December 2007 when a man named Matthew Murray opened fire at the church’s Youth with a Mission Training Center, killing two missionaries. A few hours later, Murray went on a shooting spree at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing two more people. He was shot by a volunteer church security staffer and eventually took his own life.

So Faith Bible Chapel staff reacted quickly when they believed Conley was taking notes on various locations and the layout of the campus, the affidavit said.

Church staff approached Conley and asked to see her notes, but she refused.

Conley then became confrontational with FBC staff, citing her own Islamic religious views, church officials told federal investigators.

“Conley made spontaneous statements to church staff to the effect of: ‘Why is the church worried about a terrorist attack?’ and, that terrorists are: ‘…not allowed to kill aging adults and little children,’“ the complaint said.

Church officials told Conley not to return to the church campus.

On Nov. 7, 2013, an Arvada police detective and an FBI agent interviewed Conley, asking her why she has been visiting Faith Bible Chapel.

Conley said, “I hate those people.” She added that she initially started attending Sunday services and taking classes at FBC because she wanted to meet people of other faiths and learn about them.

But Conley said she did not share her Islamic religious views or wear her hijab, a head covering worn in public by Muslim woman.

Conley told the investigators she does not like Israel or FBC’s active and vocal support for Israel.

Conley said she noticed she was being followed by church staff on the campus and felt they treated her like a terrorist. Conley told the investigators that she reasoned that, “If they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am,” according to the affidavit.

She started keeping a notebook and acted like she was diagramming the church to alarm them. Conley soon got into an argument with the pastor and was asked to leave.

Conley said that Jihad to her is war against “kafir” (which the affidavit describes as a derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims) to protect Muslim lands.

The investigators asked her opinion about harming innocent people while waging Jihad and Conley stated that it depended on the circumstances.

“To Conley, it is okay to harm innocents if they are part of a target. She felt that if wives, children, and chaplains visiting a military base are killed during an attack, it is acceptable because they should not have been at a legitimate target. She repeatedly referred to US military bases as ‘targets,’“ an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit.

On Dec. 6, 2013, Conley was again interviewed by FBI Special Agent Karim Khomssi and another agent.

Conley told the FBI she joined the U.S Army Explorers to be trained in U.S. military tactics and in firearms. She said she intended to use that training to go overseas to wage Jihad, according to the affidavit.

Conley said she previously wanted to serve in the U.S. military but no longer wanted to because she felt the military would not accept her because of her religious beliefs and her wearing of a hijab and niqab.

[Return to headlines]
 

Caroline Glick: Ari Shavit and American Jewry

Go into any Jewish community in the United States these days and spend a few hours talking to people. At a certain point in the conversation, at least one person will bring up Ari Shavit’s bestselling book, My Promised Land.

Mention of the book will arouse great enthusiasm. Invariably, a prominent member of the group will say, with utter conviction, and to the nods of all present, “I think that Shavit’s book should be required reading for all American Jewish students.”

The most illustrious American Jewish writers and editors today are all but unanimous in their praise for Shavit’s book, which they proclaim is an “epic,” account of Israel.

As Martin Kramer wrote this week in the online journal Mosaic, “the last ‘epic’ account of [Israel’s birth in] 1948 to seize the imagination of its Jewish and non-Jewish readers,” as Shavit’s has done was Leon Uris’s Exodus, published in 1958.

Uris’s book was an inspirational, historical fiction that told the story of Israel’s birth. Decades of American Jewish readers were profoundly influenced by the narrative. Ask any American Jew over the age of 35 who made aliyah if he read Uris’s Hollywood-style account of the Zionist revolution. The answer is almost always affirmative.

Like Exodus, Shavit’s My Promised Land has been a runaway success. As Kramer noted, Shavit has been embraced by the Jewish establishment’s celebrity intellectuals — sharing stages with New Yorker editor David Remnick, and Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg. He’s been kvelled over by Tom Friedman and Franklin Foer from The New Republic.

Shavit got marquis billing at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington in March, and has been feted by the Jewish Federations and the most affluent synagogues in America.

Unlike Exodus, which is a fictional account of Israel’s founding, Shavit insists that his narrative is the undisputed truth. As Foer put it in his blurb an on the back cover, Shavit’s book is an, “epic history . . . full of moral complexity . . . mind-blowing, trustworthy insights.”

Also unlike Exodus, Shavit’s tale of Israel is not one of heroism, determination, faith and gumption. Rather, Israel’s tale is morally ambiguous. Israel is a country born in sin and its subsequent history has been immiserated by tribalism, fanaticism, displacement, and war crimes…

           — Hat tip: Caroline Glick [Return to headlines]
 

Homeland Security’s Mohammed Elibiary: Caliphate Inevitable

A firestorm has erupted online after senior Department of Homeland Security advisor Mohamed Elibiary tweeted that a “Caliphate” is inevitable and compared it to the European Union.

He also recently criticized “drive-by” attacks on Islamism. Elibiary has a history of pro-Muslim Brotherhood advocacy and has close ties to a Hamas financier.

Elibiary is on the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council. He is also a long-time official in the Texas Republican Party and was a delegate for Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Referee Dies After Being Punched at Soccer Match

DETROIT (AP) — A man who was punched in the head over the weekend while refereeing an adult-league soccer match in suburban Detroit died Tuesday, authorities and a longtime friend of the referee said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Revolutionary’ Physics: Do Sterile Neutrinos Lurk in the Universe?

A completely new subatomic particle — one so reclusive and strange that it passes undetected through ordinary matter — could be lurking in the universe.

If so, a detector set to turn on later this year could find the first convincing evidence for the particle, called a sterile neutrino. The new experiment, whose 30-ton detector was recently lowered into place at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, will look for traces of this elusive particle transforming into another type of neutrino.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Rob Ford on Drug Use: ‘You Name it, I Pretty Well Covered it’

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford admitted today to CBC that he abused alcohol in his city hall office but refused to say whether he would resign if he returns to drinking and using drugs.

Drummond asked Ford for specifics about his substance use — whether it involved “marijuana, heroin, crack, alcohol — the gamut.” Ford answered, “You name it, I pretty well covered it.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

As ISIS Threatens Europe, Dutch Cut Intelligence Funding

by Abigail R. Esman

First, they warn the threat of terrorism has never been so dire.

Then they cut the funds to fight it.

This is what has happened in the Netherlands, where experts say ‘homegrown jihadism” is not only growing, but changing, largely as a result of the war in Syria. More than 100 Dutch Muslims have joined the resistance battling dictator Bashar al-Assad, most of them becoming members of terrorist groups Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaida affiliate, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the most violent of the Islamic terrorist groups, now waging a new war in Iraq.

Now at least 30 of those Dutch youth have returned home, but the country’s intelligence agency can’t track them. Budget cuts have crippled their ability to keep pace.

And yet, despite this, Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk is calling for an additional €70 million in cuts — this when the country’s terror alert is at its second-highest level and the number of Salafist, or radical and often violent Muslims, is on the rise.

Indeed, Europol reports that in 2013, “Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorist groups abroad continued to encourage self-organized attacks within the EU, aiming for indiscriminate casualties.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Belgian-Jewish Leader: European Jews Must Brace for More Attacks

The head of Belgium’s 40,000-member Jewish community and vice president of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Maurice Sosnowski, warned that European Jews should expect more attacks in the wake of the shooting at the Jewish museum in Brussels last month.

“I think that every Jewish community in the world today has to be prepared for such a kind of incident,” he told Haaretz. “From what I’ve heard from all sorts of experts on terrorism, this kind of event will happen probably five times in Europe over the next two years, so that means everyone has to be prepared.”

Sosnowski, who is also a professor of medicine at the Free University of Brussels, was in Israel as part of a delegation of global Jewish community leaders. In the interview, he denied that the greater number of Belgian Jews now relocating to Israel is significant, or that their relocation is due to anti-Semitism in the country.

“When they talk about an increase of 30 percent… that’s sounds like a lot until you realize that it’s 30 percent of 100, which is a very small number,” he said. There must be a future for Jews in Europe, he added, because otherwise “there is no future for democratic societies in Europe. It’s not a question just of the future of the Jews, but of the future of all societies everywhere.”

[…]

[This is the kind of rose tint that got millions of Jews stranded in Europe in 1935-1945, few survived. — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

British Jihadi: I Want Islamist Black Flag on No 10 and Buckingham Palace

A British jihadi vowed today not to return from Syria unless he can raise “the black flag of Islam” over Buckingham Palace and Downing Street. The man, calling himself Abu Osama, attacked Britain as “pure evil”, but was swiftly denounced by a leading imam as having been “brainwashed”…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Danish Companies Advertising During Islamist Executions

It could have been a twisted commercial for an optician. A bearded Islamist points his rifle at a prisoner, shoots and misses his target. A slogan then pops up: “Need glasses?”

But it wasn’t. As far as the Danish optician in question, Profil Optik, was concerned, it had simply signed a deal that included having adverts on the video-sharing site Dailymotion.com.

It — along with Nordea Bank — hadn’t banked on its advert three times interrupting a 12-minute recruitment video for the the Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL), which contained Islamist propaganda and footage of executions.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: Scientists Discover ADHD Gene

More hyperactive kids and young adults get ADHD diagnoses these days, but scientists still have a hard time finding out what is causing the disorder. That is except for a group of Danish researchers who just had a study published in the Neuron science journal.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: Lars Hedegaard Among the Producers of New Anti-Islam Animation

The controversial Danish anti-Islamist Lars Hedegaard is among the backers of a new controversial animation film about the life of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and his marriage to a six-year-old girl

‘Aisha and Muhammad’, which is scheduled to be released tomorrow, was made by Pakistani director Imran Firasat and co-produced by a number of European anti-Islamists, including Hedegaard, who survived an assassination attack last year.

“Here in Europe we live in constant fear of Islamic terrorism,” Hedegaard says in the trailer of the film. “Islam is increasingly robbing us of our freedom of expression and shrinking our liberties.”

The video, which does not flatter the prophet — claims to portray Mohammed as he was conveyed in the Koran, including his beliefs and teachings. That’s how one can understand Islam, Hedegaard contends.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: 1,100-Year-Old Amulet Confirms Hammer of Thor Theory

A runic inscription on an amulet found on the Danish island of Lolland confirms what we’ve all been waiting to know: those thousands of small hammer-shaped metal objects that matched the description of the legendary weapon from the Norse myths were in fact hammers.

What tipped the specialists off was an inscription on one of the hammers that read “Hmar x is”, which rather straightforwardly translates as “This is a hammer”.

This unknown craftsman — who was inexplicably literate — has done archaeologists a favour with his concise inscription and put the debate to rest.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Dutch Black Pete is ‘Negative Stereotype’ — Court

Black Pete, the traditional sidekick to the Dutch St Nicholas is a “negative stereotype of black people”, a court in Amsterdam has ruled.

It said the capital must review the character’s involvement in the annual festivities in November-December.

The Dutch version of the St Nicholas legend has him and armies of Black Petes arriving by steamboat from Spain.

Previous calls to ban Black Petes — with their blackened faces, red lips and Afro wigs — have caused outrage.

On Thursday, Amsterdam’s regional court said the “image of Black Pete with his thick red lips, being a stupid servant, gives rise to a negative stereotyping of black people”.

It said “many black Amsterdammers felt discriminated against”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

EP Socialists Says All Deals With EPP Could be Off

‘Hard to vote for Juncker if flexibility off the table’

(ANSA) — Strasbourg, July 2 — European Parliament Socialist caucus leader Gianni Pittella said Wednesday all deals are off if the European People’s Party reneges on an agreement to allow for flexibility for growth spending within the European stability pact.

“If flexibility is no longer on the table, it will be difficult for us to vote for (Jean-Claude) Juncker”, Pittella said in reference to the candidacy of the former prime minister of Luxembourg to lead the European Commission.

EPP whip Manfred Weber, who is from Germany’s conservative Christian Social Union party, earlier chastised Italy for allegedly seeking too much wiggle room for growth as it took up its duty semester presidency of the European Union.

Weber insisted on the need to cleave to fiscal discipline to cut debts, rather than thinking of limited expansionary spending as envisaged by the stability and growth pact. Pittella said Weber’s words were “a bad move, which could put the collaboration of our parties at risk”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Erdogan Tells Turks Not to Assimilate Into Austria

Turkey’s Prime Minister has been accused of creating unrest by Austrian politicians after he called on Turks in Austria to reject ‘assimilation’.

Speaking in front thousands of Turkish people in Vienna on Thursday, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called on them to say “no to assimilation” and “yes to integration”.

“You will learn to speak fluent German and will carry your relations with the Austrian community to an excellent level but you will not be assimilated,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Europe the Target for Master Bombmaker

Al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker has trained European jihadists to become suicide bombers targeting their home countries, intelligence agencies have discovered.

Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri’s alleged plans to develop “stealth” bombs triggered a worldwide airport security alert that is expected to spell misery for British holidaymakers and commuters flying to America.

Yesterday they were facing more intrusive pat-downs, swab tests on shoes and stringent checks on electronic devices.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

France and the Burka Ban: What is the Lesson?

by Janet Daley

It is scarcely surprising that the European Court of Human Rights has upheld the French ban on the burka. Indeed, it would have been something of a political earthquake if it had overturned it. France is an avowedly secular society whose revolutionary tradition was explicitly anti-clerical: to deny its government’s right to ban overtly (or, as it was thought, divisively) religious display would be a profound break with its historical culture…

[Reader comment by q-pantagruel on 2 July 2014.]

Clothing is not benign. Clothing makes statements to the outside world which may be innocuous but can also be symbolic or highly political. Regardless of one’s true motives, we must accept that others make assumptions about us based on what we wear. One can argue all day that a swastika is actually a pagan symbol that means luck, but in this society if you wear one you are assumed to be a fascist. Fair or not, that is the case. If you visit the doctor and he greets you adorned in a voodoo head dress with a bone through his nose, you are unlikely to feel confident about your treatment. Perhaps such prejudices are unfair. Maybe so, but that is how humans are.

When a woman wears a burka she makes a powerful statement that the single most important aspect of her identity is that she is a devout Muslim. We do not know what she looks like, we do not even know for a fact that she is a woman. We can’t see if she is happy or angry. She is hidden in shapeless black, a ghost, a shadow who deliberately isolates herself from our society. Why? We do not know her true motives. Is she willing or coerced? But to those of us who know something about the tenets of Islam, we can’t help but consider the likelihood that she thinks we are disgusting kuffar and that our uncovered women are prostitutes, and that she is hiding herself from us because in her eyes we are unclean. Cultural relativism won’t wash here. This is not Saudi Arabia and if you wear a burka here—or a swastika—don’t be surprised if you get a negative reaction. And that reaction is perfectly reasonable.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

France: Sarkozy Charged in Corruption Case

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was formally charged in the early hours of Wednesday after 15 hours of questioning by police. He is accused of influence-peddling.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

French Police Say Mother Stabs Teacher to Death in Front of Kindergarten Class

PARIS — Authorities say the mother of a pupil at a French pre-school stabbed a teacher to death in front of her class Friday, the last day of the school year. The education minister said the mother apparently had “serious psychiatric problems.” Police said she was taken into custody…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

From Prison to Jihad: Islamists Seek Supporters Among German Inmates

Radical Islamists have found a new place for recruiting fresh followers: German prisons. In some jails, Muslim chaplains are successfully promoting a more moderate approach to the faith, but many more of them are needed.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Germany Broke Fiscal Rules First, Renzi to Weber

Italy PM replies to EPP caucus chief

(ANSA) — Rome, July 2 — Germany broke the EU’s fiscal rules first and that helped it enact key reforms for growth, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi told EPP caucus leader Manfred Weber Wednesday. “If Weber was speaking on behalf of Germany, I remind him that during the last Italian presidency (in 2003), there was a country that was not only allowed flexibility but was also allowed to breach the limits so as to be a country that is growing today,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

German Cabinet Approves Debt-Free 2015 Budget

German cabinet ministers have approved a 2015 budget that gets by without any new borrowing, thus marking the nation’s first balanced budget since the end of the 1960s, based on strong tax revenue.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

German Martin Schulz Wins EU Vote

German Social-Democrat Martin Schulz was re-elected on Tuesday to head the European Parliament following a May election that saw scores of anti-EU lawmakers enter the 751-seat assembly.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: University Professor Beaten in Thessaloniki for ‘Criticizing Left’

Three youths attacked University of Macedonia professor Nikos Marantzidis in Thessaloniki on Tuesday.

Marantzidis, also an author, was with a student at a local cafe when three young men approached him and voiced their objections to the professor writing articles criticizing the left.

According to Marantzidis, he responded by saying he was willing to discuss the matter with the three men but one of them punched him in the head and the other two kicked him when he fell to the ground.

The three assailants ran off and Marantzidis was taken to the hospital for treatment.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: Council of State Green-Lights Construction of Athens Mosque

The Council of State has approved the government’s decision to construct a mosque in the central Athens neighborhood of Votanikos.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: Council of State Allows for Mosque in Athens

(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JULY 2 — The Council of State gave the green light to the construction of a mosque in Athens, as GreekReporter website writes today. The general assembly of the state council has rejected an appeal to prevent the construction of a mosque in the region of Votanikos as well as the financing of its construction by the Greek state. It approved a state funding of 1.1 million euros for the mosque’s construction on land belonging to the Hellenic Navy in Votanikos. Greece’s highest administrative court ruled that the legislative framework for the construction of the mosque does not violate the principles of equality and freedom of expression of religious belief, but instead it protects the Muslims’ rights.

According to the court, the construction of the mosque is necessary as Greece is engaged by the international treaties it has signed and by its Constitution that foresees the free exercise of religion.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

I Like the Look of This Exciting New Islamic State. But Why Don’t They Take Belgium?

By Rod Liddle

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s planned caliphate should ensure a bit of discipline is imposed on Spain and Portugal

There is something attractive about almost the whole of southern Europe being part of an immense and somewhat rigorous caliphate, as promised by the exciting Sunni Islamic movement formerly known as Isis. This new entity, stretching from Santander in what we currently know as Spain, to Cox’s Bazar on the Bangladesh and Burmese border, would handily encapsulate 98 per cent of the worst countries in the world, as defined by me out of rank prejudice, but also by various more scientific UN criteria…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Farage Calls Renzi EP Speech ‘Just Passable’

‘I don’t think we can work together’, UKIP leader says

(ANSA) — Rome, July 2 — United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage told Italian television on Wednesday that Italian Premier Matteo Renzi’s speech to the European Parliament was ‘just passable’. “I give Renzi a 7. He has a lot of passion but I don’t think we can work together. There is no substance to his speech”, said the UKIP leader to Sky TG24.

Renzi spoke to the European Parliament as Italy begin its six-month duty presidency of the European Union.

Farage added, “Renzi’s only words. All the great leaders, all the UE countries are afraid of an exit by England. They spoke with Cameron at the last summit, the larger part of us do not want to spend 50 million pounds for an institution that talks about anthems”.

Farage’s comments followed his UKIP back-turning protest during the opening anthem at the start of the European Parliament’s Eighth Session in Strasbourg on Tuesday morning.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Mars One Wants to Send Your Experiments to the Red Planet

The nonprofit organization that has raised eyebrows with its plans to send people on a one-way mission to Mars is now accepting proposals for scientific payloads that could fly aboard an unmanned mission to the Red Planet in 2018.

The Netherlands-based Mars One foundation aims to send a total of seven payloads: four demonstration payloads, one payload selected in a worldwide university competition and two payloads for sale to the highest bidder.

The unmanned 2018 mission will serve as preparation for a planned human mission to Mars in 2024, Mars One organizers said. As of May, the nonprofit had whittled down its pool of potential astronauts to 705 candidates. Mars One aims to send four people on a one-way trip to the Red Planet every two years, starting in 2024.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Netherlands’ Top Terrorism Official Warns of ‘Growing’ Number of ISIS Supporters

The Netherlands’ most senior counter-terrorism official has called for more active measures to be taken against Dutch Muslims who support rebel fighters in Syria.

Dick Schoof, the National Co-Ordinator for Counter-Terrorism and Security (NCTV), said the romanticised image of those who joined the conflict was misplaced. “They are not going there to give a helping hand. That’s rubbish,” he told NRC Handelsblad. “They are fighting for a caliphate.”

Schoof’s comments were made in the light of a leaked memo to the Dutch Parliament urging the government to reconsider plans to cut €34 million from the intelligence services’ budget.

He claimed that several thousand Dutch Muslims were sympathetic to the aims of ISIS, the militant group that this week announced the establishment of a Caliphate, or state governed by strict Islamic strictures, in northern Iraq and Syria.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Netherlands: ‘15-Year-Old Girl Would-be Jihadist May Have Been With Others’

The 15-year-old girl from Hilversum picked up in Germany last month on her way to Syria was one of a group of girls planning to travel to the Middle Eastern country, the Volkskrant says on Thursday.

Sources told the paper four or five under-age girls were planning to make the trip and join rebel forces there.

Moezdalifa El Adoui was reported missing on June 21 after leaving a message behind saying she was going to Syria. A day later she was picked up at Dusseldorf airport. The girl is still being questioned by police about her travel plans.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Sweden: Green MP Likens Jihadists to WWII Freedom Fighters

A Green Party MP has caused a stir after likening Swedish jihadists in Syria to Swedish freedom fighters in Finland during World War Two.

The comments came on Tuesday during a seminar in Almedalen about Islamophobia. On hand were Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag and Green Party MP Mehmet Kaplan, who is the former spokesman for the Muslim Council of Sweden.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Sweden: Police Shooting in Husby Ruled ‘Self-Defence’

Prosecutors offered a final ruling on Tuesday for the fatal police shooting of a pensioner in Husby, an incident which many believe was the catalyst to the riots that plagued the Stockholm suburb for a week last year.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Syrian Chemical Arms Transfer Begins at Italy’s Gioia Tauro

Containers with mustard gas loaded first, then sarin precursors

(ANSA) — Gioia Tauro, July 2 — The transfer of a shipment of Syrian chemical arms from the Danish ship Ark Futura to the US container ship Cape Ray began Wednesday in the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro.

The operation was approved after a team of inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspected the cargo, checking the type, quantity and packaging of the chemical arms.

The first container was hooked on a crane and later left on a forklift for loading on the Cape Ray.

The first three containers to be transferred from the Ark Futura to Cape Ray will be those containing 20 tonnes of mustard gas, qualified sources told ANSA. The American ship requested the containers containing mustard gas be transferred first. Stationary cranes were employed.

Seventy-five containers containing precursors to sarin will follow. The Ark Futura had arrived Gioia Tauro at dawn.

The chemical weapons will be neutralised in international waters. The transfer of chemicals might take as long as 20 hours, depending on sea conditions.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

UK Regulator Probes Facebook’s Psychological Experiment

A psychological test carried out by Facebook back in 2012 has now caught the interest of British regulators amid data protection worries. The experiment was all about manipulating the news feeds of users.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Let’s Face it — Ray Honeyford Got it Right on Education

By Roger Scruton

Ray Honeyford was dismissed. He should have been applauded

Thirty years ago, as editor of the Salisbury Review, I began to receive short articles from a Bradford headmaster, relating the dilemmas faced by those attempting to provide an English education to the children of Asian immigrants. Ray Honeyford’s case was simple. Children born and raised in Britain must be integrated into British society. Schools and teachers therefore had a duty, not merely to impart the English language and the English curriculum, but to ensure that children understood and adhered to the basic principles of the surrounding society, including racial and religious tolerance, sexual equality and the habit of settling conflicts by compromise and not by force…

[Reader comment by Gwangi on 3 July 2014.]

Yes, what happened to this man is a scandal.

But it is much MUCH worse in the education system now thanks for oppressive and stifling ‘political correctness’, and diversity worshipped as THE religion which must be obeyed. Our whole school, college and university system panders to the religious, no matter how extreme, especially if they have a dark skin, So half of biology teachers now do not even teach evolution as fact — but one option together with fairytales — because they don’t want to offend the dark-skinned devout ones in their classes or get complaints from parents. Utterly disgraceful!

I would go further too. The blind eye turned by schools, colleges and universities to — amongst others — the horrors the promotion of Islamic extremism, the promotion of backwards and intolerant African quasi-Christianity, the abuse of girls being made to wear headscarves and burkas, the abuse of girls and boys forced into marriage by being sent abroad, the scandal of FGM — is an act of WILFUL blindness and neglect.

It is more than complacent — it is negligent — and it makes people with minority religions and skin colours think they have the right to be extremists and work to destroy this country and kill innocent people, to force children into marriage and kill them if they resist, to spread their vile hatred wherever they can because it is their right to do so in a ‘diverse and multicultural society where all cultures must be respected equally’.

The UK education system has got a lot of blood on its hands. Without its encouragement and collusion, British schools and university would not have produced suicide bombers and Jihadi terrorists. J’accuse.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Man Gunned Down on Birmingham Street After Rival Gangs Clash

A local community were left in shock after witnessing a shooting on a Birmingham street that left one made dead and two others injured. The victim, named locally as Ikram Elahi was gunned down as he walked along the street in the Sparkbrook area of the city at around 7.30pm on Wednesday (2 July). Witnesses described the attack as “heinous” and “inhumane.”…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Man Shot Dead and Two Injured in Gun and Knife Attack During Violent Outbreak Involving Hundreds of People on Streets of Birmingham

Man named locally as Ikram Elahi died after being shot once in Sparkbrook. A different man also shot and another victim stabbed are in hospital. Witnesses said violence erupted between 300 young people in the street. Local MP says that the areas has problems with ‘drugs dens’.

A man in his twenties has been shot dead and two others left in hospital with bullet and knife wounds after 300 youths clashed on the streets of Birmingham.

The main victim, named locally as Ikram Elahi, died in hospital after suffering a single gunshot wound following a street battle over a mystery ‘dispute’ last night.

Three men in total were rushed to hospital after police were called to the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham at 7.30pm on Wednesday. Two of the men had been shot while the third suffered stab wounds…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Man Calls for ‘Black Flag of Islam’ Over Buckingham Palace

A British man who claims he has been fighting in Syria says he will not return until the “black flag of Islam” is flying over Buckingham Palace.

He said he had been fighting alongside the al-Nusra Front, which is linked to al-Qaeda and banned in the UK. Security services estimate 500 Britons have gone to Syria to fight…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Police Investigating After Britain First Go to Two Gillingham Mosques Objecting to a Planning Application for a New Place of Worship

A right-wing group descended on two mosques in Gillingham threatening action if a planning application for a new place of worship is not withdrawn.

It comes after Britain First went to the new Nasir Mosque in Richmond Road, Gillingham, and the Jamia Mosque in Canterbury Street, Gillingham.

The group of seven, clad in green raincoats and flat caps, confronted a solitary man on the doorstep of the Jamia Mosque before going inside and tackling him and another man on issues including the segregation of men and women within the mosque…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Plans Tabled to Expand Stockport Mosque and Community Centre

The Cheadle Muslim Association (CMA), which runs Cheadle Mosque and Community Centre in Heald Green, wants to redevelop the Wilmslow Road site

A mosque and community centre could triple in size.

The Cheadle Muslim Association (CMA), which runs Cheadle Mosque and Community Centre in Heald Green, wants to redevelop the Wilmslow Road site. Bosses say a growing Muslim community in Stockport means it needs to expand its facilities…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Secret Service Infiltrated Paedophile Group to ‘Blackmail Establishment’

[…]

PIE, now considered one of the most notorious (paedophile promotion ) groups of the era, had gained respectability in political circles. Its members are said to have included establishment figures, and disgraced Liberal MP Cyril Smith was a friend of founder member Peter Righton.

In 1981, Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens used Parliamentary privilege to name Sir Peter Hayman, the deputy director of MI6, as a member of PIE and an active paedophile. In 1983 Mr Dickens gave the Home Office a dossier of what he claimed was evidence of a paedophile network of “big, big names, people in positions of power, influence and responsibility”. The Home Office says the dossier no longer exists.”

           — Hat tip: Kitman [Return to headlines]
 

US Terror Threat: Britain Turning ‘Blind Eye’ To Extremists, Warn American Analysts

Britain has been too relaxed about the threat to transatlantic flights from Islamist terrorists, a series of America-based security experts, political analysts and academics warn

The threat by terrorists to blow up airliners travelling to the United States has been ignored for too long by Britain, a series of American-based analysts have said.

American officials on Wednesday publicly demanded enhanced security for airports in Europe and the Middle East which have direct flights to the US. They did not say whether they had intelligence about a specific plot, but their actions suggested alarm, and a Homeland Security Department official said the request was “based on real-time intelligence”.

On Friday, France announced that it was stepping up security checks at its airports, in response to the US warning. But many American security and political experts said that Britain had turned a blind eye to the threat for too long.

“British governments have allowed indoctrination centres in mosques and cultural centres, they have turned a blind eye to recruitment operations and they have asserted the rights of those who want to impose sharia rule in their own areas,” said Frank Gaffney, former assistant secretary of defence under President Ronald Reagan…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Police and Albanians Clash in Macedonia Over Murder Trial

(Reuters) — Police in Macedonia fired teargas and stun grenades on Friday in clashes with around 2,000 ethnic Albanians who took to the streets of the capital to protest against the jailing of six people for murder and terrorism.

A Reuters reporter at the scene said several people were injured and others arrested.

The protesters, who pelted police with stones, were angry at what they say was the unfair conviction of six ethnic Albanians for the murder of five Macedonian fishermen at a lake near the capital, Skopje, in 2012. They were charged with terrorism and given life sentences.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

17 Extremists Killed in Security Raids in Egypt’s Sinai

ARISH, Egypt, July 3 (Xinhua) — At least 17 suspected extremist militants were killed on Thursday in security raids in Rafah city of Egypt’s North Sinai province, a security source told Xinhua.

Egyptian troops killed 12 militants, who are believed members of al-Qaida-inspired Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis group, destroying their vehicles which were used in attacks against Egyptian soldiers in southern of Rafah, the sources said…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi — A Review

Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
ISBN 978-0-06-232119-0
pp. 447
Published June 24, 2014

Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi by veteran investigative author Kenneth R. Timmerman is a gripping expose, replete with evidence of deception and cover up about who perpetrated the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans; Ambassador Chris Stevens, communications aide Sean Smith, ex-Navy Seals CIA-contractors, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty on 9/11/2012. Dark Forces presents a thoroughly researched investigative dossier on the events behind the crime that took the lives of four valiant Americans who perished in the attack that night. Timmerman discloses a major cover-up by the Obama Administration of possible violations of the National Security Act of 1947 related to covert activities in the Libyan rebellion and overthrow of the Qadaffi regime. Those Administration actions opened a literal Pandora’s box spawning dangerous illicit arms trade with jihadist forces in Africa, the Middle East and even Afghanistan. Based on his research, Timmerman believes the Administration engaged in a purposeful diversion about the real facts to deflect inquiries during a critical phase of the 2012 Presidential campaign. That cover up began unraveling with a late night news release by the White House accusing a US made internet video of offending Muslim sensibilities triggering the planned Benghazi terrorist attack. It has subsequently been revealed that former Secretary of State Clinton told the President that the draft statement” was not credible” nevertheless acquiescing to the deception.That cover up by the Administration may not be lost on South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, an experienced former federal prosecutor. His appointment to Chair the House Select Committee on Benghazi was announced on May 2, 2014. Gowdy is charged with conducting investigations and ultimate Hearings about the Benghazi episode. A few days prior to the publication of Dark Forces, Timmerman personally delivered a copy to Chairman Gowdy…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

Hamas Editor Links Teen’s Murder With ‘Matzah Blood Libel’

Once again, Arab media is bringing up the centuries old “matzah blood libel”, that Jews use the blood of non-Jews to make matzah for Passover.

The blood libel originated in 1144 with the fabricated story of William of Norwich, England and is continuously used by Arabs. In the latest incident, the editor of Hamas’s paper Al-Risalah, Wisam Afifa, associated the death of Mohammed Abu-Khder, the Palestinian Arab teen whose body was found on Wednesday in Jerusalem, with the blood libel.

The editorial was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). In it, Afifa claimed that, just as the Jews once killed non-Jews to use their blood for matzahs, today they still engage in “sacred rites” of vengeance.

He further claimed that Israel has adopted the ideology of the Nazis, who distinguished between superior and inferior races.

“The settlers used the body of 17-year-old Mohammed Hussein Abu Khder, from Shuafat in northern Jerusalem, to carry out their sacred [act of] vengeance by torturing him and burning him to death, in a crime reminiscent of their holy matzos that became part of their history of betrayal and murder — for the culture of violence and blood grew among the Jews to such an extent that it seeped into their sacred rites and prayers,” he wrote..

“By holy matzos, I mean those matzos mixed with human blood, the blood of gentiles, namely of the non-Jewish other, [which they baked] to celebrate the Jewish holiday called Passover,” he continued.

“According to historical accounts, they used to murder Christians, preferably children under ten, collect their blood, and then hand it over to a rabbi, so he would mix it into the holiday matzos, and then serve them to the believers, to devour on their holiday.

“These ancient rites are echoed in modern ones, whereby [the Jews] sanctify the blood of [their fellow] Jews, who are considered humans of the first level, and disregard the blood of Palestinians. This obliges [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas to define and classify the martyred boy Abu Khder, after he [Abbas] expressed his rage to the Muslim countries’ foreign ministers [at the June 18, 2014 Jeddah conference] and said that the three settlers who had been kidnapped in the West Bank were human beings like us and we must search for them and return them, thus meeting [the Israeli] demand to endow these three settlers with a halo of divinity and of lofty humanity and describe them as ‘exceptional human beings,” wrote Afifa.

“The unjust world — from the U.S. and the EU to the president of the Palestinian Authority — greatly lamented the death of the three settlers, but it does not lament the death of the Palestinian boy Abu Khdeir, since he belongs to the group whose blood is not [considered] sacred, according to the international community’s classification of human, ethnic and political groups, which places Israel high on the ladder and the Palestinians low,” he charged.

“The international community’s double standard regarding Israeli and Palestinian blood revives the heritage of the Nazi theory. The Jews, with their criminal behavior, adopt the vision of Hitler, which was based on classifying people into superior races, like the Aryan race, versus inferior races, like the blacks, Arabs and Jews, [and held that] the superiority of the white race over all other peoples entitles it to many absolute rights, such as the right to rule over other peoples,” said Afifa…

[Cultural Marxism at work, accuse your victim of what you are guilty of — of course eating the hearts of your enemies wouldn’t occur to members of the Ummah would it? — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Israeli Scientists Create Jet Fuel From Water and Air

In 10 to 20 years — the not so distant future — Israel could commercialize jet fuel made from water and air. It is not science fiction, but a research process launched years ago by a team of scientists at Ben Gurion University led by Professor Moti Herskowitz, who has released a document synthesizing his work.

The creation of hydrocarbons from water and air is technically possible but extremely costly. The Israelis are concentrated on finding innovative production techniques. In substance, the process deals with extracting carbon dioxide molecules from the air and merging them with hydrogen molecules contained in water.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Liberman Slams Ceasefire Proposal With Hamas as ‘Huge Mistake’

“These quiet messages we send to Hamas offering a ceasefire are a huge mistake,” Liberman said Friday while visiting the city of Sderot. “Answering this [terror] with silence is a serious mistake and we in Yisrael Beytenu reject this approach.”

“How can it be that, after we have three boys kidnapped and murdered, and two consecutive weeks of rocket fire, Israel’s approach is: silence will be met with silence?” he asked. “Even while we visit here, Hamas continues to grow stronger, and produce an eight inch diameter rocket that can reach Tel Aviv and Gush Dan.”

“We must accept the reality that this is a mistake,” he added. “Instead of dealing with the problem, we are rejecting the problem.”

Liberman than laid out a plan, saying “we must first destroy the terrorist infrastructure and stop rocket production today,” noting that rockets now “are capable of reaching Netanya.”

He also proposed a ground assault.

“It is impossible to destroy terrorist infrastructures only from the air,” he dismissed. “Most of these plants for missile production are under schools, clinics, and mosques.”

[…]

[Is Israel the only nation that cares where the bomb factories are? yet we are the Apartheid/Fascist State, Lieberman is our Foreign Minister, would Molotov have cared? Would Ribbentrop have cared? Would Kerry care? — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Lynch Mob Hurls Rocks at Lost Israelis; One Injured

The passengers of two Israeli cars barely escaped with their lives on Thursday night, according to the Binyamin Regional Council, after they drove into the Arab settlement of Baytilu.

A crowd of Arab residents began surrounding the vehicles and pummeling them with rocks after two vehicles entered the settlement — presumably by accident — late Thursday night.

The occupants only managed to escape, according to the Regional Council, after stumbling on an IDF patrol unit and several security officers from the nearby Jewish communities of Talmon, Neria, Nahliel, and Dolev.

The patrol team successfully extricated the victims from the settlement; one was transported to hospital with a concussion.

News of the attack surfaces on the heels of a spike in terror against Israelis over the past week.

Rioting and unrest have exploded in Jerusalem since Wednesday in reaction to the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder, who was found in the Jerusalem Forest that morning after allegedly being forced into a black car outside the neighborhood of Beit Hanina.

Israeli leaders — including the mayor of Jerusalem and Prime Minister Netanyahu — rushed to condemn the murder, after rumor circulated that it was the work of Jewish extremists looking for “revenge” over the abduction and murder of three Israeli teens Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Sha’ar and Eyal Yifrah.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, as well as some in the international media, have since repeated those claims as fact.

However, Israeli police have said it is far from clear at this point whether the attack was “nationalistic” or “criminal” in nature, and several reports indicate the abduction was in fact carried out by Arabs as an “honor killing” or another kind of criminal murder, including conflicting testimonies from the boy’s own parents.

[…]

[There is a very clear picture on the site which shows the realities of ‘stone throwing’. — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Majority of Palestinians Want to Reclaim ‘Historic Palestine From River to Sea’

Reclaiming “all of the historic Palestine from the river to the sea” within the next five years should be the region’s national goal, say 60 percent of Palestinians, according to a recent poll.

The study, commissioned by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, found that just 27 percent of those polled favor a “two-state solution” that would begin with the end of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Ten percent of respondents said the goal should be a one-state solution, or a “state in which Arabs and Jews will have equal rights” in one country, the Algemeiner reports.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Official: Rioting the Product of Premeditated Incitement

jerusalem Councilman Aryeh King, who is responsible for security in Jerusalem, stated to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday that he is not surprised at the chaos continuing in Arab neighborhoods.

“We visited Shuafat this morning, and what we have long feared has been realized,” King said. “We have virtually no control, it’s just the collapse of a containment policy. We had neighborhoods this morning that looked like Jabaliya and Shechem.”

King stated that the problem is lack of a police presence.

“We have called for years to properly establish a police station there, which in practice never happened,” King said. “The policy was that police would only go there when there was an incident; in practice, this does not work.”

King also said that the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder — which experts and recent reports increasingly say was the result of family tensions, not nationalism — was planned specifically to incite unrest…

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Op-Ed: We, However, Are Guilty

By: Dr. Mordechai Kedar (senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University)

[…]

Extract:

But the greatest guilt lies on the shoulders of those of us who thought, in 1993, that if they would bring back the PLO and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat at its head to Israel, he would “take care of Hamas without the courts and without Betselem” (a reference to Yitzchak Rabin’s remark that Arafat would destroy Hamas without leftist NGO’s turning to the Supreme Court to limit his activities as they do to the IDF, ed.).

That’s how they sold us the Oslo Accords. They knew perfectly well that Arafat was lying through his teeth, but they ignored all warnings, helping him create a terrorist network in the heart of the Land of Israel. In all of history there has never been a Trojan horse as dangerous and as massive as this one. They allowed him to bring an army of terrorists in the expectation that he — our greatest enemy — would ensure our security. They hid the recording of Arafat’s 1994 speech in Johannesburg, South Africa, in which he admitted publicly that the Oslo Accords are nothing but a temporary peace — a “Hudibaya peace” with heretics to which Muslims are allowed to agree, until such time as the chance to destroy the heretics arrives.

We are guilty for building a system of security cooperation with a terrorist authority, that used it as an opportunity to learn about our intelligence capabilities. We gave them information about terrorists and they created a revolving door for them: play backgammon by day at the police station, plan and carry out terrorist operations at night.

We allowed the terrorist authority to run a school system whose books show “Falestin” without the State of Israel and did nothing about it.

We allowed Arafat to build a communications system — TV and radio — which he used to incite against us, talking openly about “victory”. He inflamed his listeners with the slogan “a million shaheeds will march on Jerusalem” and we did not react.

“Refraining from reacting is [a sign of] strength” they told us, without realizing that in the MIddle East, not reacting is interpreted as weakness and silence as fear. Our side did not want to see what really was going on and did not exact a price for Arafat’s two-faced behavior. “He is only saying it for internal consumption” we were told by the knights of Oslo, whose eyes were on the Nobel Prize they would share with the terrorists…

[Very enlightening and historically accurate piece. — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Parts of Sderot in Darkness After Gaza Rocket Attack

A rocket from Gaza explodes near a home in the city of Sderot, hitting a power line and causing blackouts in parts of the city.

[….]

A rocket fired by Gaza terrorists on Wednesday night exploded near a home in the city of Sderot.

The rocket hit a local power line and caused blackouts in parts of the city, but there were no physical injuries or damages.

Two other rockets exploded in open areas in the Shaar Hanegev region. There were no physical injuries or damages.

[…]

[It whined as it went over, there was a bang and the lights went out 01:05 this morning, they were back within 15 minutes. — MC]

           — Hat tip: MC [Return to headlines]
 

Violence as Arab Teenager is Buried in Jerusalem

A riot erupted in East Jerusalem after Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdair was buried this afternoon.

Thousands of people attended the 17-year-old’s funeral near Shuafat after his burnt body was discovered on Wednesday morning, according to reports.

Israeli news sources said that protestors hailed the victim as a “martyr” and fired gun-shots in the air. After the burial, stone-throwing protestors clashed with Israeli security personnel who responded with tear-gas…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

12 Soldiers Killed in Suicide Car Bomb Attack in Iraq

BAGHDAD, July 4 (Xinhua) — A suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army force in Salahudin province in central Iraq on Friday, killing at least 12 soldiers and wounding some 30 others, a provincial police source said.

The attack occurred near the town of Dijla in south of the provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car near the force, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

8 Killed in Baghdad Bombing as Iraqi PM Declares Amnesty for Tribes

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) — Eight people were killed and 17 were injured Wednesday when an improvised explosive device detonated followed by a suicide bomber’s explosion, according to police and medical officials.

The attacks targeted people leaving al-Mustafa Shiite mosque after night-time prayers in al-Furat neighborhood in western Baghdad, according to the sources

Emboldened by the weakened Iraqi government’s struggle to mount an effective response to their advance, ISIS extremists declared over the weekend that they had set up a caliphate — or Islamic state — spanning large areas of Iraq and Syria.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Chechen Fighter Emerges as Face of Iraq Militant Group

A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in the breakaway Al Qaeda group that has overrun swaths of Iraq and Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement.

Omar al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group’s Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Expressions of Solidarity With ISIS in the West

In April 2013, a rift was created in the global jihadi movement when the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) announced that it was expanding into Syria and that it was changing its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Following this announcement, another jihadi organization in Syria, Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), rejected ISIS’s authority, remaining loyal to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. ISIS even challenged Al-Zawahiri himself, refusing to follow his instructions to restrict itself to operating in Iraq. In early 2014, the rift escalated to violent conflict — ISIS versus JN and other jihadi organizations in both Iraq and Syria.

Having taken control of large areas of Iraq in recent months, ISIS is now enjoying increasing shows of solidarity from the Middle East and from across the Muslim world — and also from Western countries.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Iraq Detains Sunnis in Baghdad to Pre-Empt Activation of Islamic State ‘Sleeper Cells’

Forces loyal to Nouri al-Maliki are rounding up Sunnis amid reports that jihadists in the north of the country control 2,500 sleeper cell members in and around the capital

Residents in Adhamiyah, one of just a handful of Sunni enclaves remaining in Baghdad after the sectarian conflict in 2005, told the Telegraph that government forces have been conducting mass — and at times random — arrests of residents.

During the allied invasion in 2003, Adhamiyah was a hotbed of anti-American sentiment, with al-Qaeda cells allowed to hide out in the area…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Iraq: Islamic State Claims Shia Mosque Destruction

Images posted on social-media sites appear to show religious centres in Iraq’s Nineveh province being demolished.

Fighters from the Islamic State have demolished numerous Shia shrines and mosques in northern Iraq, according to photos published by the group on social media. The images show Shia religious centres being attacked using bulldozers and explosives in the cities of Mosul and Tal Afar, in the northern province of Nineveh.

Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the authenticity of the images…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki Offers General Amnesty to Undermine Militants

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has offered an amnesty to supporters of a jihadist insurgency, in an apparent bid to undermine it. Questions abound over the integrity of Iraq’s military and political structures.

The move is being seen as possible effort to begin a political reconciliation with Sunni Arabs, some of whom are said to have sided with jihadists known as the Islamic State (IS), although it initially remained unclear how many people it might affect.

In televised remarks, Maliki also dismissed an assertion of independence by the country’s autonomous Kurdish region.

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ISIS Militant Group Takes Control of Syria’s Largest Oil Field

ISIS, the jihadist terrorist group that has seized a huge swath of land stretching from Syria to Iraq, has taken control of Syria’s largest oil field from another terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

ISIS Seizes Oil Field and Towns in Syria’s East

Militants from the Islamic State group seized control of Syria’s largest oil field from rival Islamist fighters on Thursday, strengthening its advance across the eastern Deir al-Zor province, an opposition monitoring group said.

The capture of the al-Omar oil field gives Islamic State control of crude reserves which could be useful to its advancing fighters, and underlines how the al Qaeda offshoot has eclipsed its militant rivals by capturing territory and assets across Syria and Iraq in the past few weeks.

It has declared an Islamic ‘caliphate’ on lands it has seized in both countries, and urged Muslims worldwide to flock there and wage holy war.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic State Caliph Calls on Muslims Worldwide to Move to His New Caliphate and Wage Jihad Against Infidels

Here is his full statement. Note yet again the many, many quotes from the Qur’an and the grounding of his whole appeal in Islamic teaching. Will any Western Muslim spokesman explain how he is getting Islam all wrong? None need do so, of course, because the mainstream media will just assume it has been done anyway.

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Jihadists Controls All Main Syrian Oil Fields

The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is now in full control of all main oil and gas fields in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province, bordering Iraq, an activist group said. ISIS declared an “Islamic caliphate” in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq, where it is spearheading an offensive against government troops.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Kurdistan “Engine of Democracy in Middle East”

In June 2012, we published an interview with Dr. Sherko Abbas, founder of the Kurdish National Assembly (KURDNAS), Will There Be Room for Kurds and Other Minorities in a Post-Assad Syria?

The Syrian civil war was in its 16th month. Dr. Abbas was promoting the vision of a secular federal Republic of Syria with autonomy for leading ethnic religious groups and minorities, most especially for the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds had been subjected to ‘arabization’ and denial of their cultural and linguistic heritage under the Ba’athist regimes of Hafez Al -Assad and his son, Bashar al-Assad. In response to a question we posed to him about the prospect of a confederation in a post -Assad Syria Abba said:…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

Lebanon: Eastern Churches Call on Arab Christians to be “Guides to Citizenship”

In response to the challenge posed by the crisis of colonial boundaries and the Western model of democracy, replaced by a model in which one’s culture and/or religion is experienced as a lost paradise, the Antiochian Churches should react by promoting and proposing the concept of citizenship to Sunnis and Shiites.

Beirut (AsiaNews) — As the borders drawn by the Sykes-Picot agreement (with which France and Great Britain divided the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire in 1916) disappears so does the raison d’etre for some borders born from ancient ecclesiastical disputes, of which the future does not know what to do.

Faced with the danger of their disappearance through the exodus of its members or even their physical elimination by dark atavistic instincts, the Eastern Churches seem to awaken finally from their slumber and realise that their prophetic call of the ‘90s ‘In the East we shall be there together or we shall be no more’ is no longer a premonitory elegant and funereal formula, but a programme for survival that includes water, electricity and basic necessities. Syria and Iraq are cases in point.

We are witnessing the disappearance of a world and the birth of another: the collapse of the Western model as a mandatory reference for all democracies, the disappearance of an “old world” that built colonial empires and was the agent of moral decay; the birth of a world marked by the awakening of despised people, for whom the leaven of change is no longer the dried out soulless democracy of the West dehumanised by secularism, but the culture and/or religion experienced as a lost paradise, with the atrocities and barbarism that mark all predictable utopias and anachronisms. We are in the clash of civilisations, but despite what Samuel Huntington’s vision, it is not limited or purely political.

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

More Than a Million Iraqis Displaced by ISIS Advance

(AGI) Geneva, July 2 — About 1.2 million Iraqis have been displaced by the conflict between the army and Sunni jihadist insurgents, said UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos. She said there was extreme concern about their fate. “The families are in urgent need of water, food, shelter, medical aid and protection. Children are particularly vulnerable,” said. There is also a risk of epidemics and infections.

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

Surge in People Needing Treatment for Stomach Issues Because of Overeating at Iftar, UAE Doctors Say

Emergency departments have also had an influx of people with kidney problems because of dehydration during fasting hours, and with food poisoning because of undercooked food: a third of emergency patients at Burjeel Hospital in Abu Dhabi during Ramadan have gastroenteritis.

Doctors say people are coming into hospital doubled over in pain. “You get a lot more suffering with abdominal pain because of the pattern of eating after fasting,” said Dr Biniam Tesfayohannes, head of the emergency department at Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi.

“It is more or less double because of people eating in a very quick way immediately after fasting. Some people eat too huge an amount of carbohydrates. They get bloated. They get abdominal pains and they come in for that.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Syria Refugees Set to Exceed a Third of Lebanon’s Population

(Reuters) — Lebanon faces the threat of political and economic collapse as the number of refugees pouring in from Syria is set to exceed a third of the population, Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said on Thursday.

Derbas said the total was expected to hit 1.5 million by the end of the year, an excessive burden for a country of just 4 million people.

He said the influx of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war will have cost Lebanon’s already fragile economy around $7.5 billion between 2012 and 2014. Border communities hosting Syrian refugees were under particular pressure because of the increase in people willing to work for low wages.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Encouragers: Jihadists’ Agents of Influence

by Douglas Murray

While there are people who mass-murder, one factor especially matters: whether around them are individuals, or a circle of individuals, who encourage them to mass murder.

The young men leaving Britain to go fight in Syria are not going in spite of the teachings of certain religious leaders, but because of them.

When Christians, Jews or even other Muslims and others are targeted around the world by Islamists, we even hope that this urge has nothing to do with any of the texts or books or preachings or encouragements in the milieu from which the perpetrators come.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Growing Shadow of ISIS

by Ilana Freedman and Jerry Gordon

As the chaos in the Middle East continues to churn towards regional meltdown, the complexity of the situation seems to have the West at a total loss. Nations once known as world leaders, most notably the United States, appear unable to even understand the cast of players. No viable policy that could effectively counteract the forces at play has emerged. Into that vacuum has rushed a flood of Islamist terrorist groups, fighting each other as well as the offending governments they have chosen to attack. One of the most notorious of these is ISIS, the Islamic State of al-Sham (Syria) also known as ISIL (Islamic State of the Levant). Its reputation for fearlessness, brutal savagery, and radical Islamist ideology has created a serious new threat to the West.SIS evolved from a group founded by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004. The declaration by ISIS of a Caliphate bestriding Syria and Iraq has been a wakeup call to the West. Israel has ISIS on its doorstep while the Netherlands has realized that Muslim mass emigration has spawned dangerous Jihadis in its midst. The Obama Administration continues to hold a myopic view about the threat, while some in Congress are raising the alarm that it must be addressed in order to protect the country’s national security interests. The question is whether the West has the resolve to take the hard steps suggested by Geert Wilders leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV). The ISIS Caliphate’s declaration means that the West will have to defend itself from jihadis inside and from a veritable terrorist army that has planted itself on their doorstep…

           — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon [Return to headlines]
 

The Road to Mosul: Searching for the Real ISIS

Fault lines in Iraq are widening as ISIS advances: Even as the Shiite government in Baghdad digs it its heels, the country’s Sunnis are losing their faith in a single nation and the Kurds are hoping for independence. But what is ISIS, really?

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Top Kurdish Spy Chief Says French Jihadists Fighting in Iraq

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Masrour Barzani, director of intelligence and security in Iraqi Kurdistan, said European citizens — including French nationals — were fighting with ISIS in Iraq.

ISIS claims to have established a caliphate in the region stretching from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo to the Iraqi town of Diyala, near the Iranian border.

Speaking to FRANCE 24 in Arbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barzani said Kurdish authorities “have information about many Europeans — either people who have dual citizenship or people who are originally from Europe — who have joined Daesh (ISIS). They came into Syria first, to fight in Syria, and some of them have come to Iraq to join the battle here,” he said. “So yes, there are people who have come from most European countries — including France.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UN Warns Syrian Refugee Crisis Could Destabilize Region

The spiraling refugee crisis from Syria’s civil war could pose a serious threat to Lebanon’s security and destabilize the entire region unless donors quickly provide the unfunded 70 percent of the $3.74 billion needed for emergency needs, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said Thursday.

The estimate of how much money will be needed is based on an upwardly revised assessment that Guterres plans to formally present on Friday. It includes a new estimate there will be at least 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the region by the end of the year.

There are now 2.9 million Syrian refugees registered in the region, with 100,000 more added each month

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘We Will Take Spain Back’: Syrian Jihadists

Two Syrian jihadists have posted a video in which they have promised to reclaim Spain in the name of Islam. “Spain is the land of our grandfathers and we are going to take it back,” say the two young men say in Spanish during the brief video.

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Eastern Ukraine Shelling: ‘I’m Afraid to Leave My Basement’

Following Ukraine’s decision not to renew a ceasefire — which had already been broken on numerous occasions — hostilities with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east intensified on Tuesday. Amateur photos taken in the town of Kramatorsk reportedly show a minibus damaged by the shelling, in which four civilians were killed and five wounded Tuesday morning, according to local authorities aligned with Kiev.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Reuters: Poroshenko Seeks New Crisis Talks on July 5-6, Fighting Rages

Ukraine has proposed a time and a place for talks on July 5 on reaching a durable ceasefire with pro-Russian rebels and is awaiting a reply, the president’s website said, as fighting in the east killed 13 servicemen.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine Death Toll in Separatist Fighting Issued

200 killed, 619 injured since April

(ANSA) — Moscow, July 2 — Ukraine counted 200 soldiers killed and 619 injured since fighting began with separatists in April, Andrei Lysenko, spokesperson for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in a statement released by Interfax on Wednesday.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine Presses Ahead With Post-Ceasefire Offensive

Kyiv has pushed on with its drive against separatists in eastern Ukraine despite frantic international efforts to end hostilities. The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russian and Ukraine are to meet in Berlin.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ukraine’s New Defence Minister Promises Crimea Victory

New Ukrainian Defence Minister Valeriy Heletey has promised that the army would retake Crimea, restoring the country’s territorial integrity. Addressing parliament in Kiev, he said: “There will be a victory parade… in Ukraine’s Sevastopol.”

Russia annexed the peninsula — which has a Russian-speaking majority — in March after a controversial referendum.

In eastern Ukraine, a government offensive against pro-Russian separatists is continuing.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Bangladesh: Catholics Protest: No Impunity for the Rapist of an 8 Year Old Girl

The victim, who is disabled, has survived and is in hospital. Catholic, is the niece of a local priest. Her abuser is a young Muslim of 25 is currently in prison.

Mymensingh (AsiaNews) — Catholics in the Diocese of Mymensingh in Bangladesh are calling for a exemplary punishment and no impunity for the man who raped Balsree Chambugong, a disabled 8 years old Catholic girl. She was attacked June 27: the rapist, Sahab Ali, a Muslim of 25, is currently in prison. The little girl has been hospitalized for her injuries.

Initial reports reveal that the young man took advantage of a moment when the child was alone in her home. He dragged her out to a nearby bamboo field, where he raped her. Some neighbors heard Balsree screaming and managed to stop the man, and then call the police.

The little girl, a tribal of Garo ethnicity, is a member of the parish of St. George, Mariamnagar (district of Sherpur) and is the niece of Fr. Biolen Chambugong, a Catholic priest who works in Baluchora, another parish in the diocese.

Yesterday, students and local Catholics organized a protest to demand action. Fr. Shimon Hacha, senior priest of the Diocese of Mymensingh, told AsiaNews: “Christian Women and girls are not safe in their homes. We need security from the local authorities”.

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

Fears Raised Over Pakistan’s Nuclear Dreams

Pakistan’s government is pushing ahead with the construction of two nuclear power plants near Karachi. The reactors aim to ease the country’s energy crisis, but those living in their shadow fear for their livelihoods.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

India: Bikinis to Blame for Sex Crimes on Goa’s Beaches, Says Minister

minister in the Indian state of Goa has warned women against wearing bikinis on beaches or visiting bars wearing short skirts, saying it is against Indian culture.

Sudin Dhavalikar, Goa’s public works department minister, linked bikinis to sexual crimes and called for a ban.

“We should not allow girls with bikinis to enter public places because it is very difficult to control people who arrive in Goa from different states. By the time the victim reaches the police it is too late. It is better to control such type of activities on the beaches,” he said.

Dhavalikar also said women should not visit bars in short skirts.

Dhavalikar is a member of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak party, an ally of India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Indonesia Overtakes Brazil in Forest Losses

Indonesia has for the first time surpassed Brazil in clearing tropical forests and losses are accelerating despite a 2011 moratorium meant to protect wildlife and combat climate change, scientists said on Sunday.

Indonesia’s losses of virgin forests totaled 60,000 sq kms (23,000 sq miles) — an area almost as big as Ireland — from 2000-12, partly to make way for palm oil plantations and other farms, a study said. And the pace of losses has increased.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Pakistan: Two Dead as Suicide Blast Hits Mosque in Karachi

Two people were killed while three others were injured in reportedly a suicide bombing on Friday in Karachi’s area of Saddar, a private news channel reported.

According to details, a suicide bomber struck a mosque in Saddar’s Preedy street and killed two people. Three others were injured…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

China Bans Ramadan Fast in Muslim Northwest

Students and civil servants in China’s Muslim northwest, where Beijing is enforcing a security crackdown following deadly unrest, have been ordered to avoid taking part in traditional fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Filipino Activists Call for End to US Defense Pact

MANILA, Philippines — Protesters clashed Friday with police near the U.S. Embassy in Manila, where about 100 of them marched to mark Philippine-American Friendship day with a call to junk a new defense pact allowing thousands of U.S. troops to be temporarily based in the country.

A policeman and a protester were slightly hurt as demonstrators pushed their way toward the embassy and riot police shoved them back with truncheons and shields.

Vencer Crisostomo, chairman of Anakbayan youth group, said the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed by the two allies in April was an “unequal agreement” that is a “sellout of our national sovereignty.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Patriots Must Run Hong Kong’: State Newspapers Hit Back at July 1 Demonstrators

The central government should make no concessions to pro-democracy demonstrators — and Hong Kong must be run by “patriots”, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily and nationalist tabloid Global Times warned in two strongly-worded editorials on Wednesday.

The state run newspapers hit back following the biggest July 1 protests in the city in a decade.

Patriotism is a natural emotion and putting patriots in charge of the city should be “a matter of course”, the People’s Daily said in a front-page editorial.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Tibetans Thrive at High Altitudes Thanks to Neanderthal Cousin

Genetic mutations from an extinct human lineage help Tibetans and Sherpas live at high altitudes, researchers say.

The new findings add to growing evidence that interbreeding with other human lineages provided genetic variations that helped modern humans adapt as they spread across the world.

As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they had to adapt to many new environments. One noteworthy adaptation was of Tibetans adjusting to the thin air of the Tibetan plateau, which at about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in altitude has oxygen levels just 60 percent that of air at sea level.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Acceptance Takes Faith

Shepparton is a town where unfamiliar faces become familiar. EMMA SCHENK reports.

WITH prayer beads in hand and rushing from a daily service, Imam Hassan Alkhafagi ushers us into his private room. The Qur’an is scrolled on tiles lining the ceiling and as we take off our shoes and sit on the floor, the Muslim leader tells us he understands why some people hate the religion.

“Muslim is (seen as) ugly,” he said. “(People think) our religion is ugly. Because of the media, they see groups killing people and doing nasty things.”

But extremist groups such as Al Quida and ISIS, he said, “just want to kill everyone”.

“They are not Muslim,” Imam Alkhafagi said…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Jihadist Threat to Diggers

Australia’s most notorious jihadists fighting in Iraq have issued a macabre threat to Australian soldiers as their ranks received a boost from a prominent Melbourne-born preacher who has joined them in their new ‘‘caliphate’’.

Underscoring the deep concern the Abbott government has expressed in recent weeks about Australians involved with extremist groups, two prominent jihadists fighting with the al-Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State took to Twitter to issue fresh threats…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Biafra, June 12, Boko Haram and the Future of Nigeria

By Chido Onumah

As a nation, Nigeria doesn’t work. The many crises of the past and current ones provide the evidence. The national conference called to discuss the way forward is yet another failed opportunity. The future of Africa’s giant looks pretty grim…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Ebola ‘Out of Control’ In West Africa as Health Workers Rush to Trace 1,500 Possible Victims

Hundreds of West Africans could be carrying the deadly Ebola virus and not know it, potentially infecting hundreds more, as cash-strapped governments and overwhelmed aid agencies struggle to contain the virus’s spread.

At least 1,500 people have not yet been traced who are known to have come into contact with others confirmed or suspected to be infected with the haemorrhagic fever, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told The Telegraph.

Many more could be moving freely in the three countries battling the virus, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but fear of the illness and mistrust of Western medicine means they refuse to come forward to speak to doctors.

The current outbreak is the worst ever.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Mugabe Calls for an End to White Farmers in Zimbabwe

The president ratchets up his anti-white rhetoric after discovering some of his ministers were leasing back land to farmers that had been revoked in 2000

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, has warned that in future “no white person will be allowed to own land” as he unveiled a new farming settlement scheme west of the capital, Harare.

“We fought these people,” he said. “We can’t be soft on them when it comes to land. We’ve not chased them away from this country — they’re there in the industries, in the cities.”…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

Red Cross Suspends Ebola Operations in Southeast Guinea After Threats

The Red Cross in Guinea said on Wednesday it had been forced to suspend operations tackling Ebola in the country’s southeast after staff there were threatened by a group of men armed with knives.

The incident on Tuesday in Gueckedou, about 650 kms (403 miles) southeast of the capital Conakry, is the latest in a series against health workers, undermining efforts to help the region’s weak health systems fight one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

A Medicins Sans Frontieres center in nearby Macenta was attacked by youths two months ago after staff there were accused of bringing the disease to Guinea.

“Locals wielding knives surrounded a marked Red Cross vehicle. We’ve suspended operations for safety reasons,” a Red Cross official in West Africa said, asking not to be named.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Sudan: A New Problem Every Day for Mariam Ibrahim

Arrested for a second time as she waited for a flight to the United States on charges of travelling with false documents and giving false information, Ms Ibrahim said that her papers were “100% correct and it was approved by the South Sudan ambassador and the American ambassador.” In a telephone interview, she describes the ordeal of giving birth in prison with chains on a table.

Khartoum (AsiaNews/Agencies) — “There’s a new problem every day about me leaving,” said Mariam Yehya Ibrahim during a telephone interview with CNN.

She and her husband Daniel Wani were released last Thursday after they were arrested at Khartoum airport on their way to the United States with their children.

Now, the two are waiting to see what will happen in the light of the latest allegations against her, namely that she was travelling on forged documents and gave false information.

Sudanese authorities accuse Ms Ibrahim of trying to leave without the correct paperwork. Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services said that she had South Sudanese travel documents despite not being a citizen of South Sudan, and that she was heading to the United States, which is not her native country.

She is adamant that she “never forged any papers”. In fact, “How can my paperwork be wrong? My paperwork came from the embassy. It’s 100% correct and it was approved by the South Sudan ambassador and the American ambassador,” she explained.

“The South Sudanese embassy took responsibility and released the papers. It’s in my right to use the papers and have a South Sudanese passport because my husband is a South Sudanese citizen. He has an American passport and a South Sudanese passport.”

She described as “terrorising” the way Sudanese police officers took her and her husband, who uses a wheelchair, from the departures hall as they waited to check in for their flight.

“We were scared and wondering what was wrong. They locked us in that room for four to five hours and the whole time we were trying to figure out what the problem was,” she said.

She claims that the charges were filed in court before the police even investigated the claims against her and her husband. When they finally figured out what the alleged offense was, she was shocked.

“I can’t even decide what I should do right now. I want to travel but at the same time, I don’t want to travel. But the state I’m in right now means that I’m forced to. There’s a new problem every day about me leaving.”

“I’m currently in a safe place. It’s definitely safe but not comfortable,” Ibrahim said during the telephone interview.

Asked how she felt in prison, refused access to a hospital as the birth of her child neared, Ibrahim said, “I was only thinking about my children and how I was going to give birth. I was mostly scared of giving birth in prison.”

“I gave birth chained. Not cuffs but chains on my legs. I couldn’t open my legs so the women had to lift me off the table. I wasn’t attached to the table,” she said.

Doctors fear that the circumstances of the baby’s birth may have lasting consequences. “I don’t know in the future whether she’ll need support to walk or not,” said Ibrahim.

Meanwhile in Sudan attacks against Christian communities continue.

On Monday, Sudanese military forces destroyed a church. “The attack came a day after the authorities sent a letter in which they said they would demolish the church,” the parish priest Fr Kuoa Shimal lamented.

At the same time, the threat of violence is emptying Sudan’s churches. For a Christian activist, “The Church is terrified. No one feels safe praying.”

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

Uganda: Terror Fear in City Malls

US embassy warns of terror attack on Entebbe as Kampala fears for its malls and crowded places

Recent reports warning of a terror attack on Ugandan soil have sent top security officials into overdrive, planning how to keep the country safe, The Observer has established.

According to a source close to Uganda’s intelligence community, authorities have been particularly alarmed to find that most of Kampala’s shopping malls — let alone those in other towns — do not have adequate measures to avert terrorist attacks. Our source went as far as saying that only one shopping centre, the recently-opened Acacia mall, can be said to have a hard-to-breach security system…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]
 

W. African Ebola Epidemic ‘Likely to Last Months’, Says UN

The United Nations health agency said on Thursday it expected the worst Ebola outbreak in history to continue its deadly rampage through west Africa for at least “several months”.

Keiji Fukuda, the UN agency’s assistant director-general of health security, said at the close of a regional summit of health ministers on the crisis it was “impossible to give a clear answer” on how far the epidemic could spread or when it might begin to retreat.

“I certainly expect that we are going to be dealing with this outbreak minimum for a few months to several months,” he told journalists.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

West African Nations Hold Crisis Talks Over Ebola Outbreak

Health ministers from across West Africa have gathered in Ghana to discuss the deadliest-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus. Delegates are aiming to draft response to the epidemic, which has claimed almost 500 lives.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe Tells White Farmers ‘To Go’

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has called on the country’s remaining white farmers to cede land to black people. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go,” Mr Mugabe told his supporters at a rally.

The white farmers union said it was regrettable that racial tensions were flaring up again.

The president’s critics say his policy of seizing most of Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms caused the country’s economic collapse from 2000-2009.

Mr Mugabe, 90, has governed Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Argentina to Negotiate Payments on “Vulture Funds” With US Lenders

To negotiate or not to negotiate. In order to avoid defaulting on its sovereign debt, Argentina has no choice but to sit down with the holdout investors who refused to give the country a discount on its loans in 2005 and 2010. Late President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and incumbent President Cristina Fernández have used various appeals to avoid these negotiations for 10 years. Now, after a ruling from the United States Supreme Court, New York Judge Thomas Griesa has ordered the parties — three “vulture funds” and the Argentinean government — to sit down and negotiate with attorney Daniel Pollack as mediator.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

75 Migrants Lost at Sea Off Italy, Shipwreck Survivors Say

Around 75 migrants are lost at sea in the Mediterranean according to survivors of a shipwreck off Italy who were plucked to safety by the navy, the UN refugee agency said Wednesday.

A group of 27 people rescued on Tuesday off Sicily reported that there another 75 people on board their boat, who are therefore believed lost at sea, the agency said in a statement.

Accounts of the shipwreck were gathered by UN workers in Sicily who spoke to survivors recovered by Italy’s “Mare Nostrum” (“Our Sea”) rescue operation.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Ireland Criticised for Not Taking Enough “Refugees”

Ireland is bottom of the European league table when it comes to offering asylum to refugees — including those from war torn Syria — according to a new report.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy Refugee Inflow Swells With 800 More Arrivals

Italy, which is staggering under a massive inflow of would-be refugees, took in another 800 Friday after they were rescued by its navy off Malta.

Authorities said that three boatloads of migrants were found drifting in the Mediterranean and were taken to the southern port of Reggio Calabria for processing. Dozens of women and children were among them.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 66,000 migrants and refugees, many of them fleeing conflict in Syria and elsewhere, have arrived on Italy’s shores.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy ‘Not Alone’ With Mare Nostrum, Malmstrom Says

(ANSAmed) — ROME — Italy ‘has saved thousands’ of migrants with its Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Mediterranean search-and-rescue operation and is “not alone” in that effort, European Home Affairs Commissioner said at a ceremony at Italy’s Quirinale presidential palace marking the start of Rome’s duty presidency of the EU Thursday.

A European Commission delegation was received by President Giorgio Napolitano.

Italy has been trying to get more help from the EU in its migrant-saving operations.

European Parliament member Nicola Caputo formally tabled a question asking the European Commission Thursday to appoint an ad hoc commissioner to tackle the continent’s mushrooming illegal immigration crisis.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Refugee Kids Moved on After Swedes Protest

Plans to establish housing for refugee children in western Sweden have been halted by protests from residents.

The city council of Torsby, a town in Värmland, western Sweden, planned to use an old vicarage as housing for six refugees children.

However, all eleven nearby residents protested the decision. Now the city must find another solution.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Burger King in San Francisco Releases Pro-Gay ‘Proud Whopper’

A Burger King in San Francisco has taken its support of LGBT pride week to a new level and released a special sandwich — the Proud Whopper.

Burger King is already on record as supporting gay marriage, issuing in the past a “Be Your Way” slogan that played off its popular “Have it Your Way” message. But the specialty sandwich is a new thumbs-up campaign for gays, Time reported.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

ISIS and Its Mappamundi: The Standard to-Do List of Islam

By Hugh Fitzgerald

Here you can find the ISIS map of the conquests it hopes — — absurdly — to make in the next five years. That the hope is absurd does not mean it is to be dismissed; this Muslim To-Do List is itself instructive. For it includes most — not all — of the places where Islam once ruled. Obviously Israel will disappear as a Jewish state and that land be ruled once again by Muslim Arabs, and Christians would be treated in the Holy Land as they are treated now by Muslims wherever Muslims dominate. And Spain and Portugal, Al-Andalus, will once again be subject to that benign Muslim rule, fabled as a place of “convivencia” since Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra and Chateaubriand’s Le Dernier des Abencerages, right up to the vaporings of Maria Rosa Menocal (whose misunderstanding of Islam and Islamic rule can be explained by her failure to consult — see her bibliography — the most important relevant works, including those of Peroncel-Hugoz).

But on the map, too, is Greece (Yunanistan), and Serbia, Croatia, Rumania, Bulgaria, much of Southern and Central Europe up to, and including, Austria. All of the Caucasus is included, and all of the Central Asian area once known, collectively, as Turkestan. Most, or perhaps all (I can’t make out from the map above) of India, as makes sense, and part of Western Asia.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Time to Eliminate Visa Waivers?

by Michael Rubin

Poles last month speculated that terrorists and militants holding European passports returning from Syria could strike soft targets across the Schengen Zone, those countries in Europe who have dismantled their customs and border checks effectively meaning entrance to one is entrance to them all. The result of that, of course, would be the end of the Schengen agreement and the return of passport checks at national borders.

Alas, the threat of European citizen terrorists will not be limited to Europe. Today, security has been ramped up for international flights heading to the United States because of credible threats of new terrorism using explosives not readily detectable by current screening technologies.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

5 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/4/2014

  1. ” President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has told the country’s remaining white farmers that they must give up their land and leave Zimbabwe.”
    That’s a courageous and logical decision. The British cowards must learn from him.

    • Cameron is actually more likely to tell British farmers to get off their land so that more houses and mosques can be built for the 3rd World colonists he allows to flood into the country.

  2. But the liberal/leftist Westerners think that only whites can be “waaaysist.”

  3. “In 10 to 20 years – the not so distant future – Israel could commercialize jet fuel made from water and air.”

    Wow!

    What do the Muslims produce aside from death?

  4. Robert Gabriel Mugabe is not an angel but a devil who will soon burn in hell for his
    murderous crimes.

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