There’s hardly anything in the news feed tonight. I guess that means that nothing has been happening in the world for the past 24 hours…
Actually, what it means is that it’s August, and several of our usual tipsters are on vacation. Even Fjordman is sending less than usual.
The most significant story of the day is that ISIS captured the town of Zumar in Kurdistan, defeating a Kurdish force and threatening a major dam on the Tigris River. The dam is in bad condition, and if it breaks, it could send a 65-foot wall of water down the Tigris valley towards Baghdad.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Fjordman, Jerry Gordon, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Finn Appears in ISIS Propaganda Video
A video posted on YouTube on Sunday is being seen as the first definitive evidence of a Finnish recruit to Islamist militant organisation ISIS.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Hospitals Ready for Ebola Patients
Germany’s high-tech isolation wards remained on alert on Friday, ready to receive Ebola patients should they be required to. German airports seemed less prepared for the potential dangers of the viral epidemic, however.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Extortion is on the Rise
Extortion is on the rise in Sweden. In just ten years the number of reports to the police have increased sevenfold — many of them involving youths.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Åkesson: “Islamism is the Nazism of Our Time”
Islamism should be met with disgust, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson told supporters during his traditional summer speech in Sölvesborg.
A couple of hundred supporters had gathered in Åkesson’s home town Sölvesborg on Saturday to hear the leader of the Sweden Democrats deliver his traditional summer speech. Åkesson started off talking about the different conflicts in the Middle East, and gave Israel his support, saying that the right to self-defence is “self-evident”, Swedish television SVT reports.
But the main subject of Åkesson speech was islam. “Islamism is the Nazism and communism of our time. It has to be met with disgust and much stronger resistance than has so far been the case,” Åkesson told his audience. He said that the Sweden Democrats will work to give the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) extended powers to clamp down on islamists in Sweden.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands Join Pro-Palestinian Rallies in France
Thousands of people took to the streets in several cities across France on Saturday to protest Israel’s deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel murderer, Hollande partner in crime,” shouted demonstrators at a rally in Paris, while others gathered in several cities throughout the country, including Marseille, Lyon and Lille, to voice their support for the Palestinians.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The BBC has enraged Muslim staff after holding a hog roast to celebrate the Commonwealth Games — under the windows of the Arabic TV service.
An entire pig was spit-roasted in the courtyard of New Broadcasting House, central London, with wafts of meat drifting up to the predominantly Muslim office.
Staff in the department whose religion bans them from eating pork blasted the ‘horror’ at spotting the carcass on their lunch break.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Outrage! Free Palestine Uses Photo of Murdered Israeli Jewish Family-the Fogels as Propaganda
A European source sent an email with one outrageous example of how the Palestinian propaganda misappropriates pictures of other misfortunes, such as those killed in the Syria conflict and even Hollywood horror films. It also bespoke of the classic al Dura Blood libel that Israel finally put to rest in a 2013 Commission based on forensic evidence from the 55 second France 2 TV news report on September 30, 2000. See our NER interviews with Nidra Poller and Philippe Karsenty.
The Jawa Report (formerly mypetjawa) published a picture of the murdered Israel Fogel family doctored by Free Palestine. An email from Israel contained a picture of the hapless Fogels. They were slaughtered in their sleep at their home in Itamar, Samaria by two Palestinian young men from a nearby village. Fred Leder reviewed the Hebrew associated with the email of the picture noting:
The Hebrew clearly relates to the Fogel family. This is not a co-opting of one atrocity for propaganda purposes. This is a threat. It says we did this to the Fogels and we’ll do it to you if you don’t accede to our wishes.In March 2011, we wrote an article for the NER, A Pledge against Self Destruction of American Jews about a campaign seeking Jewish Federations to pledge not to support BDS, show Palestinian propaganda films or fund trips to the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank for college students. Trips during which these students ‘inadvertently’ met with representatives of Hamas or paid homage at the tomb of the late Yassir Arafat in Ramallah. In our NER article on the Fogel family murders, we briefly described what occurred:
So, while supporters of Hamas protesting at yesterday’s Washington, DC rally said “killing children is a crime,” their Free Palestine colleagues think that Israelis and Jews worldwide deserve the same fate as the hapless Fogel family murdered in their beds at home in Itamar in March 2011…
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Report: Israel Tapped John Kerry’s Phone When He Was Brokering Peace Talks
Several sources in the intelligence community confirm to ‘Der Spiegel’ that Israel listened to US Secretary of State’s unencrypted calls.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic State Captures Iraqi Oil Field, Defeating Kurds
(Reuters) — Islamic State Sunni insurgents have captured the northern Iraqi town of Zumar and a nearby oil field in their first major defeat of Kurdish fighters, witnesses said on Sunday.
The al-Qaeda offshoot, which swept through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the U.S.-trained army, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Militants hoisted the Islamic State’s black flag on buildings, a ritual that has in the past been followed by the mass execution of captured opponents and the violent imposition of an ideology that even al-Qaeda finds excessive.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World
Gen. Petraeus & U.S. Engineers Confirm a Real Surge Would Drown 500,000 People
By Patrick Cockburn
A catastrophic failure of the largest dam in Iraq would send a wave 65ft high hurtling down the valley of the river Tigris, killing up to 500,000 people, US engineers warned yesterday.
The dam, which is near Mosul in the north of the country, was built in 1984 on a bed of water-soluble rock and is in imminent danger of collapse. “In terms of the internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world,” said a report by the US Army Corps of Engineers. “If a small problem [at] Mosul dam occurs, failure is likely.” The collapse of the two-mile long, earth-filled dam would release eight billion cubic metres of water in the lake behind it in a giant wave which would flood Mosul—a city of 1.7 million people 20 miles downstream—to a depth of 60ft.
“A catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam would result in flooding along the Tigris river all the way to Baghdad,” the US military commander General David Petraeus and the US ambassador Ryan Crocker warned the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in a letter on 3 May this year. “Assuming a worst-case scenario, an instantaneous failure of Mosul Dam filled to its maximum operating level could result in a flood wave 20m deep at the city of Mosul, which would result in a significant loss of life and property.”
The frantic debate within the US and Iraqi governments over the failing dam was kept secret for months to avoid public panic and attracting the attention of insurgents. The US Army Corps of Engineers has tried to monitor the deterioration and undertake remedial action.
The state of the dam and the experts’ belief that it is on the verge of collapse was first revealed by this reporter on August 8.
“It could go at any minute,” a senior aid worker, who knew of the struggle by American and Iraqi engineers to save the dam, told this newspaper. “The potential for disaster is very great.”
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia Airlines in Brand Overhaul After MH17 and MH370
Malaysia Airlines is likely to change its name as part of a radical overhaul in the wake of the death of 298 passengers in a missile attack on a flight over Ukraine.
The Malaysian flag carrier, majority-owned by the government, will also seek new investors to rebuild its business after two major tragedies within six months.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Six Arrested Over Finnish Killings in Afghanistan
Six people have been arrested in connection with the shooting of two Finnish women working for an NGO in Herat, in western Afghanistan. A preliminary police report could be available within a week, according to Finland’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ari Mäki.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Almost 100 Killed During Attacks in China’s Xinjiang Last Week
Masked militants attacked civilians, police and officials last week in China’s far western region of Xinjiang leading to almost 100 deaths, the government said on Sunday, giving fresh details on one of the worst incidents of unrest in years.
The Xinjiang government said 59 “terrorists” were gunned down by security forces in Shache county in Xinjiang’s far south, while 37 civilians were killed in the attacks on July 28.
Authorities reported the incident a day later, saying dozens of people had been killed when knife-wielding attackers had staged assaults in two towns in the region.
Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people, who speak a Turkic language, has been beset for years by violence that the government blames on Islamist militants or separatists who it says want an independent state called East Turkestan.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Record-Breaking Pride Parade
This year’s Stockholm Pride Parade is set to become the biggest one the Swedish capital has ever seen. And for the first time, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was among the thousands marching for LGTB rights.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
So, “The BBC has enraged Muslim staff after holding a hog roast to celebrate the Commonwealth Games — under the windows of the Arabic TV service.”
Big Deal! Who cares? If the muslims do not like the cooking of traditional English fare by an English broadcaster in England, that really is too bad. I am sure the Christians of Mosul and Syria will convey their sympathy.
How about flash floods in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains in Southern (y’all) California that buried a van under a wall of mud in Forestville and washed a hot tub (with occupants?) out into the street. It is monsoon season in the California desert area, and the residents there received their just deserts this past weekend
as for Mosul, it looks like the Iraqis got the whole dam thing all wrong when they said to the Tigris River, “Dam it.”
Propaganda directly from the Shifa hospital, Gaza
Dr Gilbert loses his temper as his temperature rises
when faced with critical questions from DR, Danish TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJt4aVTypQs
All of the above makes me want to weep. Why, God, do we not learn?