A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military checkpoint in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing five people. The Libyan government, including the military command, is now based in Tobruk after being driven out of Tripoli last year by kinetic activists. Meanwhile, the United Nations has called for a “unity government” in Libya, to consist of a president and a presidential council.
In other news, one of two “black boxes”, the flight data recorder, has been recovered from the wreckage of the Airbus passenger jet that crashed in the French Alps this morning. There’s no word yet on the cockpit voice recorder.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, 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.
“By Any Standard, Wealth Inequality at Historic Levels” Since Recovery From 2008 Economic Crisis
This article was originally published by Charles Hugh Smith at his blog Of Two Minds.
Editor’s Note: The “recovery” since the near-total financial disaster at the end of the Bush era has been nothing more than smoke and mirrors, with the entire market hanging by the thread of Federal Reserve intervention and QE programs that issue free money to the biggest banks. During that time, wealth has consolidated greatly into the hands of a few, entitlements have extended to larger-than-ever-before groups of people and real jobs have disappeared, along with the middle class.
The idea of fixing the underlying issues revolving around jobs by producing more degree holders (floated mainly by student loans) is, of course, absurd and misses the point, if not the elephant in the room. It’s all an illusion…
In other words, wages are declining even in fields where advanced degrees are supposed to inoculate the highly educated from declines in earnings. This is not entirely surprising to anyone who has first-hand knowledge of the tremendous glut in workers with advanced degrees, but it does drive a stake in the heart of the argument that the solution to income inequality is more education.
Ironically, all that minting another 5 million Masters degrees, MBAs, law degrees and PhDs will do is increase the oversupply of highly educated workers and thereby exacerbate the decline in wages paid to these workers.
As I often note, issuing diplomas doesn’t magically create new jobs in the real world.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
European Central Bankto Ban Embattled Greek Banks From Holding Government Bonds
The European Central Bank is set to tighten the noose on Greece a day after the president of the Bank denied the institution was “blackmailing” Athens into agreeing to bail-out conditions.
According to reports in the Financial Times, the ECB will move to officially ban Greek banks from increasing their holdings of the country’s sovereign debt, in a bid to break a potentially toxic link between lenders and the stricken sovereign.
The restriction will place a further squeeze on the cash-strapped Greek government, which could run out of money to pay wages and pensions by the end of next month.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Leads Rise in Manufacturing Activity, Says Report
Trend suggests growth increasing in eurozone
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — Germany is leading a rise in manufacturing activity that suggests the eurozone economy is recovering from a lengthy slowdown, statistics released Tuesday suggested.
Markit’s composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) showed that in March, eurozone activity was its strongest in almost four years.
A flash estimate showed that in March, activity rose to 54.1 from a measure of 53.3 in February.
The manufacturing PMI rose to 51.9 from 51 in February, the best in 10 months, while the services index rose to 54.3 from a measure of 53.7 in February, the highest in 46 months or just under four years.
Germany’s PMI jumped to 55.3 in March from 53.8 the month before, its best in eight months.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.K. on Brink of Falling Prices as Inflation Rate Drops to Zero
Inflation slumped to zero in February, putting Britain on course for its first period of falling consumer prices in more than half a century.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney forecasts that the inflation rate will drop below zero in the coming months, though policy makers have said they’ll look through the slump as it’s driven by temporary factors, particularly cheaper oil. Weak price growth means there’s little pressure on the BOE to raise its key interest rate from a record-low 0.5 percent.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
On Wednesday vandals slapped “Exclusively for White People” stickers on local businesses in Austin, Texas.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
ARMY and MSM Launch Disinfo Psyop Against American People
As Infowars reported last week, a “realistic” military training exercise involving Navy Seals, the Green Berets and the 82nd Airborne Division known as “Jade Helm 15” will be conducted throughout Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Colorado from July 15 to September 15.
The exercise, which will include role-players “wearing civilian clothes and driving civilian vehicles,” lists both Texas and Utah as “hostile” territory.
USASOC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria responded Monday by labeling Infowars’ reporting as “alarmist” while failing to mention the disturbing designation placed on Texas and Utah.
The exercise is one of many in recent years that not only attempts to acclimate the public to seeing military personnel on American streets, but to also condition troops to feel comfortable operating domestically.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
In his latest Op-Ed Gates sends a stark message to political leaders and the general public, claiming that a virus even deadlier than Ebola may be on the horizon. According to Gates, should such a virus start spreading the world is ill-prepared to handle it…
But should we be worried? According to Dave Hodges we should be.
Bill Gates lust for vaccines knows no bounds. At his and other “philanthropists” (i.e. psychopaths) encouraging, global researchers have begun to reconstitute old viruses, presumably for the purpose of developing vaccines for the deadly pandemics of the past.
In the near future, we may wish we would have followed the old axiom, “Let sleeping dogs lie”, because in an act of extreme insanity, the virus has been reconstituted, by the Center for Disease Control researchers. The reconstituted virus was obtained from frozen tissue samples from a female who died from the virus in the 1918 outbreak.
Unfortunately, the Spanish Flu is not the only pandemic which is being reconstituted and this means even more vaccines for Bill Gates. Howe many will die in order that Gates and his partners will realize a hefty return on investment?…
The jury is not out on Bill Gates. He is a man who speaks his mind. In his New York Times editorial, Gates warns us about the return of Ebola as well the re-emergence of other deadly viruses. It would be a grave mistake to not take Bill Gates seriously. What does Bill Gates know that we do not?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
DHS Secretary: Reading Quran Reminds Me of Quintessential American Values
Yeah, you know — quintessential American values like…slaying infidels wherever you find them:
2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Dissolving Illusions About the Measles Vaccine
This article was abstracted from Dr. Humphries’ excellent book Dissolving Illusions, with contributions from Dr. Mercola, Barbara Loe Fisher and Sayer Ji. If you have a sincere interest in this topic I would strongly encourage you to purchase a copy of this excellent book.
This week’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)1 claims that the consensus scientific view is that childhood vaccines are safe and effective, among CDC’s 10 great 20th-century achievements and a World Health Organization “best buy.”
With the elevation of vaccination to a sacred cow status, it is no wonder that ever since about 50 visitors to Disneyland in California were diagnosed with measles earlier this year, the whole country has been subjected to a relentless barrage of mainstream media articles blaming unvaccinated children for a minor measles outbreak that, by March 16, 2015, consisted of a grand total of 176 cases.2 in a population of 320 million people.
The way public health officials and the media have been promoting irrational fear about measles and using it to lobby for laws eliminating all non-medical vaccine exemptions or even criminally prosecuting and jailing unvaccinated people, it sometimes feels like we are living in a dystopian science fiction novel.
I have never seen such a well-coordinated disinformation campaign to vilify virtually anyone who would question the effectiveness and safety of complying with the CDC’s ever-expanding vaccination schedule.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive: 60 Minutes Correspondent Lara Logan Back in Hospital Over 2011 Arab Spring Sexual Assault
CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan is back in the hospital in Washington, D.C., due to years-long complications stemming from the brutal sexual assault she endured in Egypt while covering the Arab Spring in early 2011, several sources close to her—including one family friend who went on the record—confirmed to Breitbart News on Monday evening.
A 60 Minutes spokesman also confirmed to Breitbart News late Monday that Logan was in fact hospitalized.
“Very few people know how stoic and incredibly tough this lady is. In spite of everything she’s had to face in the last two years, people have no idea the physical suffering she has been enduring due to the brutal sexual assault she encountered in Egypt during the Arab Spring while reporting for 60 Minutes,” Ed Butowsky, a close friend and confidante of Lara and her family, told Breitbart News.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
[…]
Facebook recently began playing videos posted to its news feed automatically, rather than waiting for users to click on them. Facebook videos now leap out from your news feed and grab your eyeballs, rather than waiting demurely for your click.
Here’s the catch: Videos only auto-play on Facebook when you upload them directly to Facebook. If you upload them to YouTube—or, I don’t know, yoursite.com—and then share them on Facebook, they’ll appear only as static thumbnails in your friends’ and followers’ news feeds, with an outbound link to the site that hosts them. So if you want to win Facebook’s game, you now have to let Facebook host your videos, rather than hosting them on your own site and posting links to them on Facebook.
As a website owner, perhaps you can already see the dilemma that John Herrman astutely highlighted in the Awl. You know that yoursite.com’s relevance depends on playing Facebook’s game. But Facebook’s game is now cutting your website out of the equation entirely when it comes to videos, the fastest-growing and most lucrative online medium. If you post a video on your site, it is likely to be received poorly on Facebook, and very few people will see it, so you won’t make much money. If you post it on Facebook, it may be seen by millions. But your advertisements are back on yoursite.com, remember? The advertisements in Facebook’s news feed belong to Facebook, not you.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Raid Texas Independence Meeting Even as Ron Paul Says Secession Has Already Begun
A recent “congressional” meeting of a pro-secessionist group called the Republic of Texas at a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall drew more than a few onlookers, as the “senators” and “president” gathered to discuss issues pertaining to the national currency, the development of international relations and to recognize and celebrate the birthday of one of the oldest members.
However, as MySanAntonio.com reported, “this wasn’t 1836” and it would not turn out to an “ordinary legislative session.”
Just minutes into the meeting, a man positioned among onlookers rose and moved to the hall door, opening it for scores of armed and armored law enforcement personnel. The 20-plus officers were members of the Bryan Police Department, the Brazos County Sheriff’s Department, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department, and the Texas Rangers. Also included in the law enforcement group: Agents of the Texas District Attorney and the FBI.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Urge Banks to Call Cops on Customers Who Withdraw $5,000 or More
The Justice Department is ordering bank employees to consider calling the cops on customers who withdraw $5,000 dollars or more, a chilling example of how the war on cash is intensifying.
Banks are already required to file ‘suspicious activity reports’ on their customers, with threats of fines and even jail time for directors if financial institutions don’t meet quotas.
But as investor and financial blogger Simon Black points out, last week, “A senior official from the Justice Department spoke to a group of bankers about the need for them to rat out their customers to the police.” Assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell gave a speech in which he urged banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”…
Back in America, purchasing Amtrak train tickets with cash is being treated as a suspicious activity as part of a number of behaviors that are “indicative of criminal activity”.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FEMA to Withhold Disaster Aid to “Climate Denying” States
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making it tougher for governors to deny the myth of “man-made climate change.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Former EPA Administrator is Clueless About the Constitution and Law
When it comes to basic constitutional and legal principles, there are very few in the establishment that have even the slightest clue about the relationship between state and federal power. Former New Jersey Governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman fits that bill, and a recent article by Jonathan H. Adler in the Washington Post takes her to task.
The critique concerns statements Whitman made in an op-ed in Politico concerning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s suggestion in an op-ed of his own that states should not cooperate with the EPA on their plan to control greenhouse gas emissions coming from power plants, nor should they implement it themselves.
According to Whitman, McConnell’s suggestion “undermines our government as a whole, as well as our deeply held conviction that the rule of law is the foundation of any stable society.”
This is total bunk, Adler correctly notes, stating the Supreme Court has repeatedly and consistently ruled that states are not bound to enforce federal laws, and the EPA is no exception to this. Furthermore, as former administrator of the EPA, Whitman has no excuse to be ignorant about this. The EPA has attempted to coerce state governments into doing just that numerous times, and failed in court.
Alder, who teaches courses in constitutional, administrative, and environmental law at the Case Western University School of Law, ultimately calls her claim “ludicrous,” but that is putting it very kindly.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
GM Soybeans Transfer Mutated DNA to Milk and Decrease Birth Weight of Newborns
For example, the dangers of GM soybeans have once again been brought to light, this time in a study titled, “Genetically modified soybean in a goat diet: Influence on kid performance.” Published in Small Ruminant Research, the official journal of the International Goat Association, the study details how the DNA of otherwise healthy goats was altered and passed on to their kids when they were fed genetically modified soybeans. As a result, the kids were found to have a lower birth weight.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hollywood Making More Anti-Gun Films
Anti-Constitution movie-makers target American gun owners.
Infowars reporter Jakari Jackson breaks down Hollywood’s move to demonize gun owners and the Second Amendment.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama lives in some parallel universe apart from the lessons of history and the realities of what is actually occurring. On May 18, 2009, not long after Netanyahu had been in office and was visiting the White House, Obama was demanding that he endorse Palestinian statehood and freeze the settlements on the West Bank.
Considering that the Palestinians had refused statehood from the day the United Nations endorsed Israel’s independence that has been a fool’s mission no matter who was President or Prime Minister.
As for Obama’s demands about settlements, who is Obama to tell the Israelis in 2009 where and if they can build the housing needed for its growing population? And yet Netanyahu, seeking to accommodate Obama, endorsed Palestinian statehood shortly thereafter and then announced a ten-month freeze on settlement development.
What did Netanyahu get in return? Nothing.
In 2014 when the Israelis responded militarily to months of rocket attacks from Gaza, it contacted the Department of State to request Hellfire missiles and Obama reportedly personally blocked the shipments.
[Comment: Most, if not all, Communists hate Israel.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Judge Napolitano on Self-Ownership and ‘National Defense’
The core concept of Natural Law is the idea of self-ownership and limitless personal liberty … rights, specifically natural rights, are intangible and enforceable legal choices that are inalienable and exist a priori to any political or economic system, and for the exercise of which one does not need government approval.
From this bedrock point, the Judge constructs a remarkable argument. He distinguishes between rights, which cannot be given away or exchanged, and goods, which can be. Security falls into the latter class; and, as such, it cannot be traded against a right. How can one balance a derivative against an a priori right? One cannot. In order to create a social arrangement that validly enacts laws or defines man’s relationship to other persons and their property, the underlying premise of self-ownership and natural rights both precedes and acts as precedent to the lawful acquisition of any good … security, like that provided by the government, is a good, which cannot be freely exchanged between persons or entities, like states, without first recognizing a priori natural rights. Therefore, in considering the good of security and the right of free speech, no balancing act is possible or even conceivable.
From this standpoint, Judge Napolitano reviews security policy throughout the course of American history. Unfortunately, the natural rights approach has rarely guided American policy. To the contrary, “it has largely been ignored by every American government since George Washington. Those governments have all reflected the inevitable growth of the power of government and the shrinkage of personal freedoms.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
While the media headlines shown above may sound convincing, the truth is that the accusations are part of an outlandish hoax. The lawsuit’s claims are blatantly false, and the California wine industry is being unfairly victimized by what I see as a highly irresponsible attempt to extort money from wine makers through a junk science lawsuit that suffers from fatal errors I will explain here.
The group that put out the original press release, it seems, is trying to drum up lab testing business from other wine and beer manufacturers. The mainstream media played right into the hoax, providing them with enormous free publicity even as they conducted what I have to call really BAD science…
To help protect consumers from toxic heavy metals in food and beverages, in 2014 I created www.LowHeavyMetalsVerified.org
At that website, you’ll see that arsenic under 0.62 ppm is rated A+++. Converting the units, that’s the same as 620 ppb.
The California wine lawsuit claims it found up to 50 ppb of arsenic, then it calls that level “dangerous.” Yet even if levels were ten times higher, they would still only be 500 ppb (0.500 ppm), which would still be lower than the safest rating described on LowHeavyMetalsVerified.org, which is A+++.
This rating system, by the way, is far more strict than the FDA. It was designed around many of the very strict limits set by the European Union, where food contamination is far more strictly monitored than in the USA.
If I tested these wines and saw 50 ppb of arsenic, there’s no way at all that I would conclude those levels are dangerous in a product consumed in the same quantities as wine. Whoever reached that conclusion is flatly wrong. They have no idea what they’re talking about. And this comes from a guy who has a history of sounding the (substantiated) alarm over toxic element contamination of other foods which really do pose a danger to human health.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Monsanto Hit With Fine for ‘Genetically Contaminating Wheat Supply’
After paying an original sum of $2.4 million to reimburse farmers for contaminating their fields with genetically modified wheat that had not even yet been approved for farming, Monsanto has been forced to pay another $350,000 in order to settle a class action lawsuit brought upon by numerous farmers from over seven different states.
The news comes amid economic struggles for the biotech juggernaut that have resulted in the loss of share value and poor projections for the long term future. In last year’s fourth quarter, Monsanto reported a loss of $156 million. And for the multi-billion dollar company, it’s not about the monetary figure, but the future of its genetically modified creations that the public just simply isn’t buying.
In the latest legal settlement, we find that Monsanto’s new method of simply paying off farmers just isn’t going to cut it when it comes to international trade. Following the news that GMO wheat had contaminated nearby wheat supplies, Japan and South Korea suspended a number of wheat orders from the United States — a blow towards the national economy in full thanks to Monsanto.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama and Democrats Now Targeting Lawful Business?
Is the Obama Administration now targeting lawful businesses? Mike Hawkins, owner of Hawkins Guns, LLC received a notice from his bank on November 13, telling him his business account was going to be closed because he was a gun dealer. Upon visiting the bank, he was able to record a conversation with the bank official who said,
“We don’t do firearms, ammunition, Uhm, (unintelligible), (unintelligible), auctioneers and check cashing companies.”
Hawkins also owns a private investigative business, and as a result was able to look deeper into the matter and was shocked by what he found. Hawkins said ,
“There are many Americans across the country that have been affected by this. They may not have come forward yet, but the US Consumer Federation are getting numerous calls since my story broke and hopefully more people will come to the table with what has happened to them.”
The Department of Justice released the following statement…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Missing Nuke Now Part of Election Debate
Potential 2016 presidential candidate Rick Santorum was questioned on missing nuclear warheads at a national security summit in South Carolina this week reports media outlet Bloomberg.
According to the report, a woman in the crowd brought the issue up to Santorum in a fiery rant against President Obama and his national security policy.
“Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago, and the three admirals and generals — he’s totally destroyed our military, he’s fired all the generals and all the admirals who said they wouldn’t fire on the American people,” the woman said.
Santorum “pivoted quickly” to instead comment on President Obama’s executive amnesty.
In late 2013, Infowars was contacted by a high level source at the Dyess Air Force base in Texas and informed of an unauthorized nuclear warhead transfer to South Carolina.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cheers erupted in the city council meeting room in Irving, Texas, last week as the city passed an ordinance to make sure foreign laws would never replace Americans or Texas laws — but the city’s Muslim activists weren’t happy.
That’s because the 5-4 vote supported a proposed state law that was inspired by the establishment of a Muslim tribunal in Irving that supporters say is meant only to help local Muslims use Islamic laws to settle domestic disputes, but critics say is the first step to getting Sharia law implemented in Texas.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Psyop Counteroffensive Begins as Army Training Questioned
Mainstream media, the military and neo-conservative think tanks have begun the counter offensive in the information war as news of special forces training for asymmetric warfare in the continental United States (CONUS) goes viral.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
School Cancels ‘American Pride’ Themed Prom After it’s Deemed Not ‘Inclusive’
Students swiftly and roundly criticized the move.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
They Are Slowly Making Cash Illegal
The move to a cashless society won’t happen overnight. Instead, it is being implemented very slowly and systematically in a series of incremental steps. All over the planet, governments are starting to place restrictions on the use of cash for security reasons. As citizens, we are being told that this is being done to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders. Other forms of payment are much easier for governments to track, and so they very much prefer them. But we are rapidly getting to the point where the use of cash is considered to be a “suspicious activity” all by itself. These days, if you pay a hotel bill with cash or if you pay for several hundred dollars worth of goods at a store with cash you are probably going to get looked at funny. You see, the truth is that we have already been trained to regard the use of large amounts of cash to be unusual. The next step will be to formally ban large cash transactions like France and other countries in Europe are already doing.
Starting in September, cash transactions of more than 1,000 euros will be banned in France. The following comes from a recent Zero Hedge article which detailed what these new restrictions will do…
[…]
Well, consider what the feds are doing to one widow in Iowa…
A widow’s bank account was seized by the IRS and she now faces criminal charges for depositing her legal inheritance money in lumps instead of all together.
Janet Malone, 68, had $18,775 seized from her — money that was legally earned and was legally bestowed to her by her late husband, Ronald Malone. The problem, according to the government, was the fact that she deposited it in several lumps instead of all at once.
According to the Associated Press, Mrs. Malone deposited the cash in increments between $5,800 and $9,000. The widow’s private financial affairs evidently set off red flags under the watchful gaze of the federal government.
Remember, she was not guilty of committing any crime other than depositing cash in lumps instead of all at once.
If this is how ruthless the feds will be with an elderly widow, how would they treat you under similar circumstances?
So why are they doing this?
The truth is that they want to discourage the public from using cash. Our government, just like governments all over the planet, is not being shy about the fact that it does not like cash. If they can make people afraid to use cash, that suits their purposes very well.
And with each passing year the restrictions on the use of cash globally will just get tighter and tighter and the role that cash plays in our lives will just become smaller and smaller.
In the end, a transition to an almost entirely cashless society will seem almost natural. Cash is being killed off one slow step at a time, and at this point hardly anyone is objecting.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Too ‘Dramatic’: Monsanto Shuns Who Verdict That Roundup ‘Probably’ Causes Cancer
The active ingredient in the world’s most widely-used Roundup herbicide has been classified as “probably” carcinogenic to humans by a branch of the World Health Organization. The agrochemical giant Monsanto, has immediately rejected the new conclusions.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in their latest study said that there was”convincing evidence” that glyphosate in Roundup can cause cancer in lab animals.
St. Louis-based Monsanto was not pleased with WHO conclusions, claiming that scientific data does not support their assumptions and urging the health watchdog to hold a meeting to explain the findings.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Urban Death Project Seeks to Compost Dead Humans to Feed the Crops: Has it Really Come to This?
(NaturalNews) A Seattle architect named Katrina Spade has proposed a new solution for urban food production: convert the recently deceased into nutritious compost to feed the food crops.
The project is called the Urban Death Project, and it describes the process of turning dead humans into food as follows:…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Woman Imprisoned in Mental Hospital for 8 Days After Claiming Obama Follows Her on Twitter
In a truly bizarre case, a woman was recently locked up in the psychiatric ward of a Long Island hospital, and forced to undergo medical procedures against her will for over a week, after she told police that The President follows her on Twitter.
And it turned out that Obama DOES really follow the woman on Twitter.
The incident is only just coming to light now but took place last September. Kam Brock was attempting to retrieve her car from police after it was impounded
In an attempt to convince police that she was a good citizen, Brock told cops at the Public Service Area 6 NYPD station that Obama was a follower of her Twitter account, which is true. However, the cops decided Brock was insane and had her forcibly committed to Harlem Hospital.
In a truly bizarre case, a woman was recently locked up in the psychiatric ward of a Long Island hospital, and forced to undergo medical procedures against her will for over a week, after she told police that The President follows her on Twitter.
And it turned out that Obama DOES really follow the woman on Twitter.
The incident is only just coming to light now but took place last September. Kam Brock was attempting to retrieve her car from police after it was impounded
In an attempt to convince police that she was a good citizen, Brock told cops at the Public Service Area 6 NYPD station that Obama was a follower of her Twitter account, which is true. However, the cops decided Brock was insane and had her forcibly committed to Harlem Hospital.
“I woke up to them taking off my underwear and then went out again. I woke up the next day in a hospital robe.” she adds.
When the ordeal was finally over, the hospital forced Brock to sign a statement saying she had lied about Obama following her on Twitter. At no point did anyone, police or doctors, actually check her Twitter account to verify her claim.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Zimmerman Blames Obama for Creating Racial Tension in Trayvon Martin Case
Accuses Obama of “pitting Americans against each other solely based on race.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Documents Reveal Canada’s Secret Hacking Tactics
Canada’s electronic surveillance agency has secretly developed an arsenal of cyber weapons capable of stealing data and destroying adversaries’ infrastructure, according to newly revealed classified documents.
Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, has also covertly hacked into computers across the world to gather intelligence, breaking into networks in Europe, Mexico, the Middle East, and North Africa, the documents show.
The revelations, reported Monday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, shine a light for the first time on how Canada has adopted aggressive tactics to attack, sabotage, and infiltrate targeted computer systems.
The latest disclosures come as the Canadian government debates whether to hand over more powers to its spies to disrupt threats as part of the controversial anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Time to Kick Obama Election Campaign Experts Out of Canada
It looks as if a Liberal/NDP Coalition Government could be in the bag for Canada come October.
Why is the Obama campaign team working Canada?
Primarily because current circumstances make The Land of the Maple Leaf easy pickings. The Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party and Tom Mulcair-led New Democratic Party (NDP) — who have tried it twice before and came close — are poised to form a Coalition to rid Canada of Israel-loving Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
To the U.S., Canada is the country next door, to Obama it’s home of the architects of the maligned Keystone XL Pipeline and home to the world’s Number One elected defender of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Harper government shouldn’t waste any time launching the same sort of bipartisan investigation into the 350,000 tax dollars paid out from the U.S. State Department that was part of the recent meddling of the Obama campaign team in Israel.
Canada, unlike the U.S., should not wait until the horse is out of the barn and should not wait for rigged election polls heralding a Liberal/NDP election day coalition victory. All common sense says they.should.start.the.election.fraud.investigation.now.
Now that the dust is settled we know that Obama’s role in the Israel election was even larger than originally reported:…
The following covers the track record of Obama’s campaign team in Canada to date:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
British Royal Pedophile Protected for ‘National Security’ Reasons
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
A royal was in a suspected paedophile ring being investigated by police before an establishment cover up, it was claimed.
A former Metropolitan Police officer said he was told a member of the Queen’s family and an MP had both been identified as part of a major child abuse inquiry.
But the operation is said to have been shut down by the Crown Prosecution Service for national security reasons.
The claim came as the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner made a fresh appeal for victims of historic child sex abuse to come forward, and vowed: “We’ll go where the evidence takes us.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Men Looking to Asia When Marrying Someone From Abroad
When it comes to marrying someone from abroad, Danish men are finding love more frequently in Asia than they are in their own Scandinavian backyards.
According to national statistics keeper Dansk Statistik, Danish men married 276 women from Thailand and 195 women from the Philippines in 2014, compared to just 98 from Sweden and 91 from Norway.
Steen Baagøe Nielsen, a lecturer and researcher of culturally-mixed marriages at the University of Roskilde (RUC), contends there are many reasons why Danish men choose an Asian partner and vice-versa.
Danish men often yearn more traditional gender roles in a relationship and do not want to bother with the hectic Danish dating scene.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Wolf Seen 75 Metres From Where Children Were Playing
A wolf came quite close to a children’s club on the outskirts of Randers last October. A member of the staff at Fritidshjemmet Solgården — a former farm where up to 50 children aged 6-18 attend every day — first observed the animal, and DNA analysis has since shown that it was actually a wolf.
“We sent residue (left by the animal) to researchers at Aarhus University and the Natural History Museum, and they have verified that it was actually a wolf,” Lars Maagaard, a nature and wildlife biologist attached to Randers Municipality, told bt.dk.
The Fritidshjemmet Solgården teacher saw the wolf when he stepped outside during a staff meeting at around noon on a Friday last October. The wolf ran off when it saw the teacher, but not before defecating on the grass. Another teacher — who is a hunter — collected the stool and made plaster casts of the animals paw prints.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Thorning-Schmidt Campaign Racist, Swedish Party Contends
The Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and her party Socialdemokraterne have kicked off their campaign for the election later this year with a new slogans including “Tougher asylum rules and more demands for immigrants” and “If you come to Denmark, you must work”.
But across the Øresund Sound in Malmö, the left-orientated party Vänsterpartiet has blasted the approach and used it to come up with its own slogan, welcoming immigrants to Malmö.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
European Jews Honour Danish Muslim
When the European Jewish Association (EJA) meets this afternoon in Brussels to remember the victims of the shootings in Copenhagen last month, a young Danish Muslim will be in attendance.
Niddal El-Jabri — one of the organisers of the ring of peace initiative around the synagogue in Krystalgade in Copenhagen — will be honoured with a special prize by the EJA for his efforts in uniting Jews and Muslims in the aftermath of the shootings.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Forza Italia ‘Party of Purges’ Says Dissident Fitto
‘We’re in the last days of FI’ says fellow dissident Bianconi
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — Trouble seemed to be brewing among the ranks of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) party on Tuesday after one of its MPs was rapidly relieved of his position on the Lower House justice committee after remarks in parliament in which he accused two Berlusconi loyalists of “purging and destroying the party”.
“They’re not interested in the destiny of our party,” Lower House MP Gianfranco Chiarelli said just before voting took place on the government’s statute of limitations bill. Chiarielli was swiftly replaced on the committee by House whip Renato Brunetta, which in turn sparked a furious reaction from FI dissident and former Berlusconi confidant, MEP Raffaele Fitto.
“What have we become?” he said. “The party of censorship and compulsory administration, of purges and substitutions”.
The 45-year-old MEP has led the opposition to the leadership of FI, which came to a head in January when center-left Premier Matteo Renzi imposed Sergio Mattarella as Italian president without FI’s backing.
Fitto last month called on Berlusconi to scrap all party posts so a new leadership can take charge “as a matter of credibility and political decorum”.
On Tuesday, fellow dissident and Lower House MP Maurizio Bianconi also chimed in.
“This is not the first time I tell Fitto that the Berlusconi caliphate has strangled every impulse to relaunch the center-right…and that (the party) is fraught with idiots, servants, subjects, and hitmen,” Bianconi said. “We are in the last days of FI,” he added.
“Is Tiberius about to withdraw to Capri?” he said in reference to the 1st-century AD Roman emperor who lived his last years on the island off Naples, leaving the Roman empire in the hands of his prefects.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France is Europe’s ‘Big Problem’, Warns Mario Monti
Gallic nation threatens to blow Europe’s Franco-German axis apart, warns former Italian prime minister
France has become Europe’s “big problem”, according to the former prime minister of Italy, who warned that anti-Brussels sentiment and the rise of populist parties in the Gallic nation threatened to blow the bloc’s Franco-German axis apart.
Mario Monti who was dubbed “Super Mario” for saving the country from collapse at the height of the eurozone debt crisis said France’s “unease” with the single currency had already created tensions between Europe’s two largest economies.
“In the last few years we have seen France receding in terms of actual economic performance, in terms of complying with all the European rules, and above all in terms of its domestic public opinion which is turning more and more against Europe,” he told The Telegraph.
France’s strained relationship with Brussels has been borne out through its persistent defiance of EU budget targets and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National party,
“France is the big problem of the European Union because the whole construct has been leveraged on the foundation of a solid Franco-German entente. If it isn’t there then there is a poor destiny for Europe,” said Mr Monti. “We’ve seen that the strong axis is no longer so strong.”
Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s Bundesbank, recently attacked the EU’s decision to give France extra time to sort out its budget .
Mr Weidmann said countries such as France, which has failed to meet a 3pc deficit target for several years, should not be allowed to “perpetually put off” belt-tightening.
Mr Monti said Germany’s willingness “to exercise certain responsibilities” as the bloc’s hegemon had eased the eurozone’s problems.
The respected economist, whose technocratic government was swept into power in 2011, also said the anti-Brussels sentiment in France was greater than many believed. “I’m always struck when I participate in debates in France even the elite is so uneasy about the governance of the eurozone.
“I would not be surprised to hear this tone in Athens or in Lisbon, but I’m very surprised to hear this in Paris.”
France will vote in local elections on Sunday. A recent poll conducted by Le Figaro newspaper put Ms Le Pen (Other OTC: PENC — news) ‘s party out in the lead, with 30pc of the vote.
In a warning to France, Mr Monti said: “Maybe you forgot, but we all remember that France was the country that wanted the euro, not Germany.
“Germany reluctantly accepted the euro to get approval of the other countries for its reunification process. It would have much rather kept to the Deutsche Mark. It was France who insisted to have the single currency and now it’s so uneasy with it.”
Mr Monti, a Brussels veteran who was speaking on the sidelines of a Bocconi University Alumni conference , also said the “humiliating” diktats of the so-called “troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had caused more damage to the Greek economy and should not continue.
While Mr Monti said he was confident Greece would remain in the eurozone, he stressed that more work would need to be done on both sides.
“In a nutshell, Greece has to recognise that most causes of their crisis are not European but are Greek — namely mismanagement for decades,” he said.
“Nevertheless, it is true that one aspect of the cure — the troika — did contribute to make further damage. I fought for the troika to stay out of Italy because they are humiliating for domestic public opinion”.
Mario Monti was prime minister of Italy between 2011 and 2013 (Photo: AFP)
Mr Monti also said governments were letting political ambition get in the way of closer European integration.
“Political leaders in European member states … are obsessed with the next election at home rather than helping the domestic population to see the advantages of the European constructon,” he said.
“In most cases they try to blame the EU for the lack of achievements in their domestic goals, which are only rarely the result of European weaknesses.”
Mr Monti said populist parties were gaining traction across Europe.
“Italy I believe is in the process of making much-needed and much-delayed structural reforms. However, in Italy, there is the turning of several parties in terms of public opinion against the EU,” he said.
“Spain shocks me right now. I was there for a debate a couple of weeks ago. Spain has always been the most ebullient and enthusiastic among the large member states. But [they must use it to] embrace Europe, and not [radical leftist party] Podemos.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
France Moves to Make ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Illegal by Government Decree
Political elites and super-bureaucrats are worried. It’s becoming harder to control consensus reality.
A history stitched together by lies and cover-ups, political assassinations, slight-of-hand false flag deceptions, secret societies, dual loyalties and stolen fortunes — this has been the exclusive privilege of organized crime and the ruling elite for centuries.
Putting aside history’s ‘big ticket’ items though, the real reason for this authoritarian trend is much more fundamental. By knocking out their intellectual competition, political elites and their media moguls hope to minimalize, and thus eliminate any alternative analysis and opinion by applying the completely open-ended and arbitrary label of “extremist” to speech. They want to wind back the clock, where a pre-internet, monolithic corporate media cartel held a monopoly on ideas.
Although France has taken the lead in this inter-governmental effort (see below), the preliminary assault began this past fall with British Prime Minster David Cameron publicly announcing on two separate occasions, that all of these so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ (anything which challenges the official orthodoxy) should be deemed as “extremist” and equivalent to “terrorist” and should be purged from society on the grounds of ‘national security’. The first came with Cameron’s warped speech at the UN, and afterwards, a similar charge was made by the UK leader against anyone who dares press the issue of institutional paedophilia and child abuse.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Further Terror Attacks ‘Inevitable’ — Threat Level Highest Ever in France
Despite maintaining the deployment of legions of soldiers on the streets of French cities, a senior defence official has admitted the threat hasn’t diminished — and isn’t going away anytime soon.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Airbus A320 Plane Crashes in French Alps
Germanwings A320 aircraft flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf goes down in southern French Alps with 150 on board
All 150 passengers and crew on an Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf are believed dead after it rapidly lost height and began an as yet unexplained descent into a remote and mountainous area of southern France.
The chief executive of Lufthansa’s lowcost arm, Germanwings, said the aircraft reached its cruising height of 38,000ft at 10.45am, 44 minutes into the flight, and began the descent just a minute or two later. Contact was lost at 10.53am when the plane was at 6,000ft.
The dead are believed to include 45 Spanish and 67 German nationals. A school party of 16 German teenagers returning from an exchange trip to Spain were booked on the plane but school officials could not say if the group had boarded.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said she would travel to the crash site on Wednesday, said the crash had plunged Germany, France and Spain into “deep mourning”.
Spain’s King Felipe VI said he was cancelling his state visit to France to return to Spain. The country’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, also spoke briefly to the press. “We’re facing a dramatic and very sad accident,” he said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to help, to help the families and give them our support.”
The French weather station said the meteorogical conditions were calm at the time of the accident and that the sky was “completely clear”, with almost no wind.
| [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Sant’egidio Community Promotes Catholic-Shiite Dialogue
Meeting in partnership with Imam al-Khoei foundation
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — The lay Catholic inter-religious and peace-negotiating Community of Sant’Egidio in partnership with the Imam al-Khoei Foundation played host Tuesday to a conference between respected members of the Roman Catholic Church and senior Muslim Shiites discussing “the responsibility of believers in a global world” and ways to create peace.
“In the global world religions live together, they are challenged in a very complex situation of neighbourliness,” said Sant’Egidio founder Andrea Riccardi.
The Imam al-Khoei Foundation is a global foundation linked to Iraqi Shiite Islam’s highest religious authority, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Representing the Shiite community were leading religious dignitaries from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. Leading Catholic figures attending included Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.
Riccardi underlined that dialogue between Catholics and Shiites “is a very difficult path, but it is an important path, a path between two very different religions that are going through a difficult moment, living the challenge of martyrdom, of persecution, of lack of religious freedom in some parts of the world”.
“These are worlds that must meet, that are different but that also have a great respect for each other”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bank Unions Declare Two Days of Strikes
Move follows breakdown of talks for new collective contract
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — Unions representing Italian bank workers on Tuesday decided to call two days of strikes after talks on renewing the collective labour contract for the sector broke down on Monday, ANSA sources said.
The unions have not yet decided when the strikes will take place.
They are planning other forms of protest, including a boycott of overtime, the sources said. Union leaders have decided to take legal action if the Italian Banking Association (ABI) stops applying the existing collective contract following the breakdown of negotiations, sources said. On Monday, ABI chief Alessandro Profumo said that unions made unreasonable requests concerning employment, adding that banks have already made concessions to the workers. At the end of January, some 90% of unionized employees participated in a strike for renewal of a national contract, according to unions involved. That included about 30,000 bank staff from all over the country. ABI said then that it was willing to negotiate but that current staff levels had lowered profitability and productivity.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Organic Farmers Denounce Monsanto Herbicide
‘Glyphosate is carcinogenic’ says AIAB
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — The Italian Orgnic Farming Association (AIAB) on Tuesday called on the government and the European Union to ban the use of glyphosate weed-killer because it may be carcinogenic.
“We call on Italy and the EU to immediately consider the necessary measures to protect farmers and consumers from glyphosate,” the AIAB said in a note.
The Lyon-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization of the United Nations — named glyphosate as a probable carcinogen in a March 21 report. A 2014 article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that workers exposed to glyphosate were about twice as likely to get B cell lymphoma, the most common kind of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. American agribusiness multinational Monsanto discovered the compound in 1970, marketing it as a wide-spectrum herbicide under the trade name Roundup.
Monsanto also genetically engineered seeds to produce plants that are resistant to Roundup, marketing them under the trade name Roundup Ready.
“We have known for years that glyphosate is harmful to human and environmental health and that it accumulates in food and water,” said AIAB President Vincenzo Vizioli.
“We have been fighting for years against (glyphosate) and other pesticides, which are being passed off as harmless”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Neolithic Europe’s Remote Heart
One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney
Nestled between two lakes on the remote Orkney archipelago in Scotland, the site known as the Ness of Brodgar contains a succession of Neolithic stone buildings spanning 1,000 years—and was likely an important ceremonial center.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Old DNA Reveals Viking Impacts on Flora and Fauna
Vikings’ navigational skills and travels led to more than plundering and cultural exchanges. It also spread Scandinavian plants and animals to places abroad — and likewise brought foreign flora and fauna to the Nordic countries.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Searchers Recover ‘Black Box’ After Jet Crashes in French Alps With 150 Aboard
Search teams found a “black box” from the plane that crashed early Tuesday in a remote section of the French Alps, providing the first possible clue as to what caused the Dusseldorf-bound aircraft to suddenly lose altitude and crash, likely killing all 150 people aboard.
The French Interior Ministry Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed searchers had recovered the flight data recorder in a debris field where “everything is pulverized,” according to one local official.
The plane, operated by German carrier Lufthansa’s budget airline, Germanwings, was 44 minutes into its flight from Barcelona in relatively clear weather when it dropped from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to around 6,800 feet over the town of Barcelonnette. The eight-minute descent was described as unusually rapid, but possibly controlled though it left the plane too low to navigate the mountains.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Sweden Has to Act Now to Solve Housing Crisis’
The market alone cannot solve Sweden’s acute housing crisis. In this week’s opinion piece, Sweden’s Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Information Technology, Mehmet Kaplan, argues that the state needs to step up to the plate.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Democrat Leader Confirms Return to Helm
The leader of Sweden’s far-right Sweden Democrats party will return to work in April after a five-month sick leave for burnout, he said in a television interview on Monday.
“I’ll be coming back to work after March 31,” Jimmie Åkesson said during the taping of a television talk show to be aired Friday on Swedish public broadcaster SVT, excerpts of which were published on SVT’s website.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Woman Shot in New Gothenburg Attack
Police say a woman is in hospital following a shooting outside an adult education complex in the Gårda area of Gothenburg, less than a week after two men were shot dead at a restaurant in the city.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Facing “Systemic Collapse” In Dealing With ISIS Recruitment
The capital of European ISIS recruitment remains Gothenburg, however. Sweden’s second largest town produces more ISIS-fighters than the entire United States. This baffling statement sounds made up, but it it’s not.
“A pantry full of cannon fodder for ISIS” is the headline of this remarkably frank (by Swedish standards) article about the muslim-dominated no-go zones around Gothenburg. The headline is an actual quote by one of the residents of the area. I encourage you to use the translate-feature in your browser and read the article in its entirety for a chilling insight into the total meltdown of societal control of these areas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ISIS Militants ‘Highly Likely’ To Launch Chlorine Gas Attack on London Underground
Islamic State (IS) militants returning to the UK could attack London Underground trains or football matches with chlorine gas, a chemical weapons expert has said.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a retired head of chemical and biological weapons for the British Army and NATO, addressed the possibility of such a scenario on 2paragraphs in an article titled, Could ISIS Replicate Tokyo Chemical Attack In New York or London Subway?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lena Mamoun Abdelgadir Praised Charlie Hebdo Attacks and Called for Sharia Law
Private schoolgirl Lena Mamoun Abdelgadir, from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, who is one of nine medical students who has travelled to Syria to treat Jihadi fighters, once praised the Charlie Hebdo murders.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Oxford Union Invites Anjem Choudary to Speak Despite Being Member of Banned Terror Group
Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has been invited to speak at the Oxford Union despite being on police bail on suspicion of being a member of a banned terror group.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Sgt Kevin Williams Went Through 12 Years of Hell Before Being Cleared of Killing an Iraqi
Sergeant Kevin Williams has been left penniless and jobless after being repeatedly hounded by ‘ambulance-chasing’ lawyers over the death of Hassan Abbas Said in Iraq 12 years ago.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘Un-Swedish’ Paint Job Causes Media Swirl
An artist from southern Sweden has been ordered to repaint his home after local officials ruled the new colour scheme for his home in Skänninge wasn’t Swedish enough. The controversial decision has caused a splash across social media.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italian-Tunisian ‘Concern’ On Libya Says Gentiloni
‘Boost border defences’ says FM
(ANSA) — Tunis, March 24 — Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that “Libya is one of the common concerns of the governments of Italy and Tunisia”. “We have an ongoing technical cooperation for the surveillance of borders with Libya and we can boost it,” he said. “So the Tunisian defence minister will meet (counterpart) Roberta Pinotti in Rome in April”. Italy and Tunisia are among the nations that have called for warring militia in Libya to set aside their differences and form a national-unity government in the face of the threat from Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
Gentiloni has warned that Libya might become a base for ISIS to attack Europe.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: UN Calls for Unity Gov’t Led by Presidential Council
‘Independent personalities’
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, MARCH 24 — UN Special Envoy for Libya Bernardino Leon on Tuesday proposed a unity government led by a president and “a presidential council of independent personalities”.
The latter would have to not belong to any party or be affiliated with any group, and be acceptable to all the parties involved and all Libyans, according to the draft proposal drawn up by the UN envoy. The main members of the presidential council would be the president and two vice presidents, it stated. The other four bodies indicate in the proposal are a high council of state, an assembly tasked with writing the constitution and — to be constituted in the second phase of the talks — a national security council and a council of municipalities.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Suicide Bombers in Cars Hit Checkpoint in Eastern Libyan City of Benghazi, Killing 5
A spokesman for the Libyan army says suicide bombers in two cars have attacked an army checkpoint in the eastern city of Benghazi, killing five people and wounding 20.
Col. Ahmed al-Mesmari said it was not immediately clear how many of the casualties were military or civilian. He spoke from Tobruk, where the internationally recognized government has been based since being expelled from Tripoli by Islamist-backed militias last year.
Libya has been mired in months of fighting between rival militias. Extremist groups, including affiliates of the Islamic State group, have exploited the turmoil since the 2011 overthrow and killing of Moammar Gadhafi.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-Hostage Says No Plan to Return to Syria
Reports of planned Middle East trip sparks furore
(ANSA) — Rome, March 23 — One of two young aid workers kidnapped and held for months in Syria by Islamic extremists said Monday she has no plans to return there, even as reports swirled to the contrary.
In fact, Italy’s foreign ministry repeated a warning that Italian citizens should not to travel to the war-torn country.
That was in part triggered by reports that one of the two former hostages, Vanessa Marzullo, had said she and her fellow captive Greta Ramelli planned to return to Syria.
But Ramelli told ANSA that she had “no intention of returning to Syria”.
She said that she planned instead to “intensify my voluntary activities in Italy”.
Rumours have suggested that the Italian government paid a ransom for the release of Ramelli and Marzullo, who were freed in mid-January after almost six months in captivity.
The two young women had arrived in Syria July 28 to volunteer on health and water-related humanitarian aid projects, and were abducted just three days later.
They have said they were held in various prisons in northern Syria.
Their jailers always covered their faces, but never threatened to kill them.
The conditions of their captivity were tough but bearable, and the women said they were not abused or subjected to violence.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS: NGO: 400 Minors Recruited in Syria Since Start 2015
Offices for ‘Caliphate’s lion cubs’
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT — At least 400 children and teens under 18 have been recruited since the start of 2015 in Syria by ISIS, which has opened for this purpose special offices for the ‘lion cubs of the Caliphate’ (Ashbal al Khilafah), UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday. Some of the minors are reportedly recruited as they watch public executions. Jihadists promise them money, weapons and cars in order to attract them within the group.
Cities where such offices have been reported include Al Mayadin and Al Bokamal, according to the NGO.
Witnesses reportedly came into contact with jihadists who work to recruit children and teens who attend school and a local mosque to join the Islamic State and some are persuaded to become members without their parents’ consent.
In other cases, instead, ISIS convinced the parents to send their children to military training camps where they are taught Sharia and trained militarily. Also, the Islamic State reportedly takes care of children with genetic malformations. The monitoring group said it was able to verify that ISIS on January 25 sent a battalion of 140 militants, most of them minors, fight against Kurdish militias in the city of Kobane in northern Syria. Six jihadists under 18 were reportedly killed on that occasion.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
School friends Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, left east London for Turkey last month before crossing into an ISIS-controlled area of Syria.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Marking 70th Anniversary of Defeat of Nazism, Russia to Open First Museum Dedicated to Stalin
Moscow (AsiaNews) — A cabin in the village of Khoroshevo — Tver region near the town of Rzhev — where between 4 and August 5, 1943 Stalin spent a night, during the Great Patriotic War (World War II for the Russians ) will become the first museum in Russia dedicated to the Soviet dictator.
As Radio Free Europe reports, the 1943 visit was the closest Stalin ever got to the front. Rzhev was the location of one of the fiercest battles, between January 1942 and March 1943 that led to the liberation of the city from the occupation of Hitler’s troops.
This cottage, overlooking the river Volga, has been chosen by the Russian military history society — chaired by the Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky — the Russian Communist Party and the local Rzhev administration as the site for the first museum dedicated to Stalin.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesia: Authorities Seize Schoolbook That Praises Islamic Radicalism
The text contained notions taken from Wahhabi doctrine that encourage the killing of non-Muslims. The authorities have set up a team to contain widespread online extremism.
Jakarta (AsiaNews/Agencies) — The Religious Affairs Ministry banned the distribution of an Islamic religious textbook for high school grades that contain radical religious notions.
Alarm bells were set off after controversial content was found in an exercise book for 11th graders in Jombang, East Java.
Indonesia’s Minister of Education and Culture Anies Rasyid Baswedan gave the order to pull all the copies of the textbook and announced an investigation into the case. The government’s quick response prevented it from being distributed to the country’s schools.
The textbook contained notions based on the radical Wahhabi school of thought (which is dominant in Saudi Arabia). Page 78, for example, says, “People who worship anything other than Allah are infidels and it is permitted to kill them.”
Moderate Muslim leaders slammed the textbook. Kamaruddin Amin, director general for Islamic education at the Ministry, said he was disturbed by the story. “Just imagine if the book had been distributed throughout Indonesia and had been read by 57 million children.”
According to Kamaruddin, the textbook’s authors (whose identity has not been revealed yet) do not understand the democratic identity that Indonesia has developed in recent decades. “The authors have to understand Indonesia’s diversity.”
Even Salahudin Wahid, an Islamic cleric, condemned the Wahhabi doctrine contained in textbooks. In his view, they contradict the values of Islam. “Killing people is not allowed,” he added.
According to Minister Baswedan, the inclusion of extremist material in textbooks is the result of a rushed job. “The quality of the book has been compromised. This should not have happened,” he said.
The fight against Islamic extremism is one of the biggest challenges the Indonesian government is currently facing. Not only are some Indonesians eagerly joining the Islamic State group, but domestic extremist groups have been battling government troops at home.
Faced with threats of extremist influence in communication media, Rudiantara, the minister of Communication and Information, also set up a task force to counter websites containing material glorifying Islamic radicalism.
The team will also include Islamic clerics, some from the Ulema Council.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Attacks in Lahore, Police Arrest 200 Christians
After the Taliban attacks against two churches on March 15, a mob had lynched two suspects. The police conducted an indiscriminate raid in the Christian quarter, without ascertaining the identity of those arrested. Religious leaders and political activists demand the immediate release of the innocent.
Lahore (AsiaNews) — Police arrested about 200 people today in Youhanabad, the Christian district of Lahore, for the lynching of two people that took place on March 15 following Taliban attacks against the two churches. The police have not disclosed where they have brought those arrested.
For the moment, families have been denied the chance to get in touch with their loved ones.
The situation in the district is tense and many people have started to leave the area. Religious leaders and political activists are demanding that the innocent be released immediately.
On 15 March two Taliban blew themselves up at the entrance of two churches, killing 19 people and injuring more than 70. In response to the attacks of a crowd of people took and killed two Muslims, suspected of being involved in explosions but later proved to have been unrelated to the events.
Police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) against 600 Christians in relation to lynching. However Fr. Srif John, of the diocese of Lahore, told AsiaNews: “The police conducted a raid in the district and indiscriminately arrested people without identifying them based on names in the FIR. We are not opposed to the arrest of those who have done something wrong, but the arrest of innocent people is unacceptable”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands Protest Woman’s Mob Killing in Afghanistan Capital
Thousands marched through the Afghan capital on Tuesday, demanding justice for a woman who was beaten to death by a mob after being falsely accused of burning a Koran. Men and women of all ages carried banners bearing the bloodied face of Farkhunda, a 27-year-old religious scholar killed last week by the mob.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution
Beijing, where pollution averaged more than twice China’s national standard last year, will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants next year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Miss Universe: Half-Black Miss Japan Criticized for Not Being ‘Japanese Enough’
Ariana Miyamoto, the first ever biracial woman to be crowned Miss Japan, is fighting off critics who say she “isn’t Japanese enough” to represent her country in the upcoming Miss Universe Pageant, because her father is black.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Boko Haram Islamic Insurgents ‘Kidnap 400 Women, Children’
Abductions reported in ‘liberated’ city of Damasak
(ANSA) — Rome, March 24 — Islamic fundamentalists from the Boko Haram insurgency reportedly kidnapped over 400 women and children in the northwestern Nigerian city of Damasak, Reuters news agency cited eyewitnesses as saying Tuesday.
Damasak was recently liberated from Boko Haram by troops from Niger and Chad.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Terror Triumvirate: ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram Training Together in Mauritania: Analyst
The world’s three most infamous terrorist organizations are working together at Al-Qaeda-run training camps in the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, where dozens of recruits from the U.S., Canada and Europe are being indoctrinated into violent jihad and training for attacks that could expand the so-called caliphate across North and West Africa, according to analysts.
ISIS, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda all have links to two camps in the remote sands of the expansive North African country, according to Veryan Khan, editorial director for the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, which tracks international terrorism and had a source on the ground in Mauritania. The sparsely populated Islamic Republic weathered Arab Spring demonstrations to remain stable, but shares a border with troubled Mali and is not far from Nigeria, where Boko Haram is based.
“The situation in Mauritania is a powder keg very few people are talking about,” Khan said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Police Find Torture Clips on Refugee Phones
Norwegian Police have found video clips of torture, mutilation, and executions saved on the mobile phones of those seeking asylum in Norway, the Police Immigration Service has told the country’s Dagsavisen newspaper.
The Police Immigration Service confirmed to the paper that people connected to terrorist groups such as Islamic State, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram had all tried to come to Norway to claim asylum.
“It can be very expensive to find out who they are and what they have done,” Hanne Jendal at the Immigration Directorate told the newspaper.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
According to a story in USA Today by Alan Gomez, a number of law enforcement departments throughout the United States — including some in major urban areas, such as Chicago — are hiring non-citizens as officers. The article tells us that a few don’t even demand that the individual be a permanent resident alien; they simply require that the alien have permission to work.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Common Core: Pliant Proletariat Workers for Crony Capitalist Corporations
If you want to transform American students into pliant proletariat workers for crony capitalist corporations, Common Core is the way to indoctrinate them into the collectivist utopian mindset.
A Chinese American mom from Colorado was pleading with the school board in her county to reject Common Core because it is the same curriculum as the Communist Core in China. Lily Tang Williams, who came to America for freedom, grew up under Mao’s China. Nationalized standards represent communist indoctrination, she said, preparing students to be good little workers and not to think critically and independently.
“Chinese children are not trained to be independent thinkers; they are trained to be cash machines and trained workers for corporations.” She asked rhetorically, “What happened to individual rights and individual freedom in America? Where are the parents? Why Common Core, this top down education from the federal government with corporations holding the carrots and the federal government the sticks? Do you want your children to be cheap workers for American corporations? Do not follow China’s model! Their system produces great test-takers but not critical thinkers!” Pleading with the board, Lily said that it took her ten years to get rid of the brainwashing she suffered in her native China.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The prophetess of women’s liberation has been revealed as a liar and spouse abuser. If the personal is political — as feminists have long contended — what are the implications of this for feminism?
Friedan accused her ex-husband Carl Friedan of beating up on her, in her recent memoir Life So Far. The media ran with the story. Now Mr. Friedan has responded with a website, carlfriedan.com, in which he charges that his ex-wife was mentally disturbed and given to fits of violent rage. It was she who abused him, says Mr. Friedan, not the other way around.
The ex-Mrs. Friedan, meanwhile, has softened her charges, telling Good Morning America, “I almost wish I hadn’t even written about it, because it’s been sensationalized out of context. My husband was no wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me.”
If I am more inclined to believe Mr. Friedan’s side of the story, it is only because his ex-wife has a long and well-documented history of lying.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Fox, CNN and MSNBC Agree: “We’re for Gay Rights”
The SPJ ethics code urges the media to “avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.”
But apparently that ethical standard doesn’t apply to media involvement in the homosexual movement.
Meanwhile, the media-supported Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is ecstatic that the ABC Family network show “The Fosters” has aired a kiss between two 13-year-old boys. The show features two lesbians as “parents” and includes a “transgender teen.”
Media sponsors of the 26th Annual GLAAD Media Awards include 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News; Comcast/NBC Universal; Time Warner, parent of CNN; CBS Corporation; and Bloomberg.
Don’t expect the media to trumpet the news in any headlines or stories about their financial involvement in the homosexual movement. It is a secret that has to be kept hidden from the public because it constitutes a blatant violation of acceptable standards of journalistic behavior and media ethics.
The pro-gay bias in the media is not a big secret, of course. But the involvement of Fox News in the cause may come as a surprise to some. You can be sure Fox News will not admit on the air that the news channel has taken sides in the ongoing debate and that it financially supports the NLGJA.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Bologna Easter Prayer Controversy Reaches New York Times
Controversial blessing latest episode in Church-State debate
(ANSA) — Bologna, March 24 — Controversy surrounding an Easter blessing held at a State school in the northern city of Bologna last week found its way onto the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday in the latest episode in a continuing debate in Italy over the confines between Church and State.
Tension broke out after a group of parents and teachers filed a legal action against a decision by the 16-member board of governors of the Giosuè Carducci Elementary School in Bologna to authorise an Easter blessing for children and their families after school hours, arguing the prayers were unconstitutional.
“Everything has a place, and the school is not the place for these blessings,” Angela Giardino, a mother of a Carducci student who is opposed to the prayers, told the newspaper. The board set the dates for the blessing on March 20 and 21, before the case was scheduled to come before the local administrative court on Thursday. “In Bologna, like so many of Italy’s ancient cities, the history and landscape are intertwined with Catholicism,” the NYT wrote. “Yet here, as elsewhere in Italy, Catholicism has long been in retreat,” it continued.
In this context, “the case over the blessing at the school is part of a continuing debate in Italy over where exactly the Church-State boundary lies”.
The relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and Italian State is regulated by the 1929 Lateran Pact, which allows religious instruction in public primary and secondary schools among other things. The pact was updated by an 1984 agreement which ended Catholicism’s status as State religion but confirmed a raft of privileges.
There has been a string of rows in recent years over the presence of crucifixes in public buildings like schools and courthouses.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Kerry Washington Demands More LGBT Employment in Hollywood
Scandal star Kerry Washington was honored with the Vanguard Award at Saturday night’s GLAAD Media Awards in Beverly Hills, and used her acceptance speech to call for the employment of more LGBT people in the entertainment industry.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
MSNBC: Starbucks Cups Should Say ‘America Founded on White Supremacy’
A prime example of why network’s rating are in the toilet.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why Do We Believe Such Terrible Things About Men That Can’t be True?
Femicide has been identified globally as ‘a leading a cause of premature death for women’, but does such a dramatic statement stand up to scrutiny, asks Neil Lyndon
Every year in Britain greater numbers of women die from falling down the stairs, drowning in the bath and choking on their chewing gum than are murdered by their men.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UN Report Warns of 40% Water Shortage by 2030
If serious measures are not taken and current trends continue, the world will have 40% less water by 2030, according to a United Nations World Water Assessment Program report released in New Delhi, India ahead of World Water Day.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
On Russia celebrating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism – Nazism was not defeated by Russia only the German Military Machine – just like Communism was not defeated with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Question: where did the “kinetic activist” newsspeak originate? Liberal apologetics? Muslim apologetics?
“Kinetic activist” is definitely newsspeak – it came from the perfervid imagination of the Baron himself. His little joke about jornolists who can’t say “terrorist”, never mind “Muslim terrorist”. So he created a neologism and will track how far it moves from here – Gates of Vienna being its Ground Zero, so to speak.
I coined the term “kinetic activism” last month for this post, to poke fun at the euphemism “violent extremism”.
After I thought of it, I googled the term (and also “kinetic activists”) to see if anyone else had used it. Sure enough, there were a couple of hundred hits from the early 2000s, back in the “Bush lied and people died” days — it was evidently used briefly by the Left to describe hands-on action of the type associated with Antifa, UAF, International ANSWER, Occupy, etc.