I haven’t had the time or the eye power to do much posting tonight, but Vlad, Fjordman, JD, Papa Whiskey, and the other tipsters have done the work for me. Among the stories worth looking at are the Saudi military operations against Yemen, and the arrest in Italy of a recruiter for the Islamic State.
The biggest story, of course, is the crash of Germanwings 9525. In order to accept any explanation that does not involve deliberate and malicious human intervention, one must believe in no fewer than four coincidences:
| 1. | The captain happened to leave the cockpit. | |
| 2. | The copilot happened to have some sort of medical emergency that prevented him from letting the captain back into the cockpit, but not until after | |
| 3. | the copilot had overridden the passcode system by which the captain could have opened the cockpit door. | |
| 4. | While the captain was locked out and the copilot was incapacitated, the computer happened to malfunction, directing the plane to begin a controlled descent that ended on the side of a mountain. |
I’ll let Occam’s razor do the rest. The French authorities are still maintaining that terrorism is an “unlikely” explanation. Keep trying, boys!
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, Papa Whiskey, Steen, 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.
ECB to Tighten Noose on Greek Government
The European Central Bank is set to make it illegal for Greek lenders to increase their purchases of short-term government bonds in a move that will tighten the funding noose on the Greek government.
The decision, which has reportedly been formalised in a letter sent on Tuesday (March 24) to Greek authorities, the Financial Times reports, comes just two days after the bank’s president Mario Draghi rejected suggestions that the bank was effectively blackmailing Greece by making it tougher for its cash-strapped government and banks to access ECB funding, during a European Parliament hearing on Monday.
“We are not creating rules for Greece … we are simply using existing rules. Greek bonds are below the normal level of collateral,” said Draghi.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
George Soros Warns Greece “Is Going Down the Drain”
“Right now we are at the cusp,” billionaire George Soros tells Bloomberg TV in this brief clip, the chances of Greece leaving the euro area are now 50-50 and the country could go “down the drain.” The 84-year-old fears that talks between Greece and ‘the institutions’ could “break down,” adding that “Greece is a long-festering problem that was mishandled from the beginning by all parties,” concluding that the chances of Greece leaving the euro area are now 50-50 and the country could go “down the drain.” Finally, Soros notes, what worries him the most is Ukraine.
[Comment: Worried…Soros is the ones that financed the coup d’etat in Ukraine. His only “worry” is that his puppets in Ukraine will get caught in the “blowback”, and his “investment” will be for naught.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
IMF, World Bank Throw Weight Behind China-Led Bank
“China is now the leader of the world,” managing director of the World Bank told CNBC on Sunday.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
IMF: Ukraine Must Now Steal $1.5 Billion+ From Russia to Buy Arms
In December, a multi-billion-dollar loan [variously stated as $3-$3.5 billion] to Ukraine comes due, which Ukraine had received from Russia. The IMF has provided a new debt plan, however, dictating that existing loans to Ukraine that have an expiration-date are to be subjected to a haircut. Thus, the resource gap of the country totaling $40 billion is to be reduced…
The IMF has developed a program for Ukraine, under which the current financial hole is to be filled in the amount $40 billion. The due debts [the senior debt] are part of the plan, and will be restructured, according to the IMF. Exactly how it is to happen, the IMF does not explain. Experts say that the IMF believes that Russia should participate in a haircut. The Financial Times reports [“Bailout projections indicate Ukraine will not repay Russia debt” 5:21 PM, 22 March 2015] that the IMF requires that Russia’s $3.5 billion bond issue be included in the restructuring. Charles Blitzer, a former IMF employee, has informed the FT of this.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Just Another Tale From the Oligarch Recovery — $100 Million Homes Being Built on Spec
More developers and investors are racing to build increasingly lavish homes on spec. Built on prime lots with master suites larger than most homes and spas and entertainment spaces comparable with those in hotels, many of these homes are also attempting to break new price records. Real-estate agents say the surge reflects an ultraluxury housing market that is at an all-time high, fed in part by overseas buyers and house hunters looking to invest in trophy properties.
“These are people who are going to buy these homes to park money,” says Jeff Hyland, of Beverly Hills-based Hilton & Hyland.
Mr. Hadid declines to say what he’s spending on the home, but says the listing price will likely be in the $200 million range when the house is completed next year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
4 Charged After Running Over Waitress Who Chased Them Over Unpaid Bill
Four people were charged Tuesday after allegedly skipping out on a bill in a restaurant near Anaheim and then running over with their car the waitress who had rushed to the parking lot to confront them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Amtrak/DHS is Spying on Passengers and Letting Police Access Records Without Warrants
Amtrak/DHS are checking your ID’s just like they did in Nazi Germany.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Apple Wants You to Get Accustomed to Real-Time Tracking
Tech giant Apple is not coy about it. They want you to get used to real-time tracking. That’s why they are changing Find My Friends to Track My Friends.
A patent granted to the company on Tuesday by the government describes a process that allows a user of a mobile device to view a visual representation of the movement of a person with another device.
“For example, someone is going for a hike or a trip and wants you to stay informed of his or her whereabouts,” CNet explains. “That person would enable a feature on a mobile device to allow you to see and track in real time the path being taken on your own mobile device or computer. On the flip side, you could also share your route so the two of you can stay abreast of each other’s ongoing location.”
Also on the flipside, this information could be “shared” with the NSA and possibly local police. The mega-surveillance agency already has a number of tracking programs in place — such as “Boundless Informant,” a tool that tracks information across the internet — and police departments are using Stingray and Hailstorm technology to track cell phone calls.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Army Betrays One of Their Own — Video
Alex Jones talks with Infowars reporter retired Army Staff Sergeant Joe Biggs about operation Jade Helm.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Attorney General Threatens to Prosecute Reporters for Doing Their Job
Following a trail blazed by Maryland councilman Kirby Delauter, a Virgin Islands Attorney General is making an ass of herself by threatening journalists for having the audacity to do their job. Delauter infamously publicly attacked a reporter for daring to publish his name in her paper, apparently unaware that this sort of thing happens to public officials roughly all the damn time. The ensuing internet maelstrom forced a retraction and apology from Delauter.
The Virgin Islands Daily News is still waiting for an apology from acting Attorney General Terri Griffiths for this wholly inappropriate response to acts of journalism. [via Jim Romenesko]
Acting Attorney General Terri Griffiths told executives of The Virgin Islands Daily News on Thursday morning that she will prosecute the newspaper on criminal charges because of its telephone calls to obtain comment and information from her.
“I’ll be filing criminal charges against you,” Griffiths said as she abruptly left a meeting at The Daily News’ offices on St. Thomas.
She also claimed a quote appearing in one of the paper’s stories was “fabricated.” This is the quote:
“I will not comment on the Parole Board hearings.”
This quote seems like something an attorney general would be very likely to say. In fact, the refusal to comment has long been a hallmark of law enforcement-press relations. Not commenting is the national pastime of law enforcers, who are often the first party to issue a solid “no comment” after controversial incidents. But Griffith claims this completely innocuous and completely boring quote was fabricated.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘Beautiful Mind’ John Nash Adds Abel Prize to His Nobel
Mathematician made famous by Hollywood will share US$765,000 award with Louis Nirenberg for work in the field of geometric analysis.
Although some consider the Abel Prize to be the ‘Nobel of mathematics’, its winners are hardly ever household names. But this year’s prize, announced on 25 March, includes a notable exception: John Nash, the subject of the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe — and a previous winner of a Nobel prize for economics.
Nash, who spent most of his career at Princeton University in New Jersey, shares the prize with Canadian-born mathematician Louis Nirenberg of New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences for work on partial differential equations. Nash’s contributions to this field are widely considered more profound than the research in game theory that earned him a Nobel.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Bergdahl to be Charged With Desertion, Official Says
Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will be charged with desertion, a senior U.S. official told Fox News.
The confirmation comes as the U.S. military plans an announcement on the case Wednesday afternoon. Bergdahl left his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years before being released in a prisoner exchange a year ago.
U.S. Army Forces Command, based in North Carolina, said it will discuss the “next planned steps” Wednesday afternoon.
Gen. Mark Milley, head of U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, has been reviewing the case and had a broad range of legal options, including desertion charges.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Blacks in Chicago Far More Likely to be Subject of “Stop and Frisk, “ ACLU Says
Blacks in Chicago are more likely to be subjected to a “stop and frisk” by police than any other race, a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois indicates. The report, released Monday, also says officers in the Second City used the controversial technique far more often than did officers in New York City.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Clinton Hit With Racketeering Lawsuit Over Emails
The conservative group Freedom Watch has filed a racketeering lawsuit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that accuses her of failing to produce documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The civil suit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, argues that Clinton used her private emails to sell access to other officials in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.
It alleges that, during her tenure, Clinton withheld documents requested under FOIA regarding State Department waivers given to businesses or individuals doing business with Iran, possibly undermining U.S.-imposed sanctions.
The complaint, which lists Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation as defendants, alleges the Clintons sold access to other U.S. government officials in return for donations to their organization, which they concealed, allegedly, by using a private computer server for her emails operated from their home in Chappaqua, New York.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cornell Dean Says ISIS Welcome on Campus in Undercover Video
This guy is either the dumbest Ivy League bigwig ever or politically correct to a fault — for welcoming offers to bring ISIS and Hamas to Cornell University.
A video sting operation shows Cornell’s assistant dean for students, Joseph Scaffido, agreeing to everything suggested by an undercover muckraker posing as a Moroccan student.
Scaffido casually endorses inviting an ISIS “freedom fighter’’ to conduct a “training camp” for students at the upstate Ithaca campus — bizarrely likening the activity to a sports camp.
Is it OK to bring a humanitarian pro-”Islamic State Iraq and Syria” group on campus, the undercover for conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas asks.
Sure, Scaffido says in the recorded March 16 meeting.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Cruz: Running for Presidente of North American Union?
Questions arise over presidential candidate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
DHS Report: 1.13m Foreign Students Study in US
Financially hard-pressed public universities, but also comparatively well-off private schools, are intensively recruiting foreign undergraduates who pay premium tuition fees. Some 1.13 million international students are enrolled in U.S. colleges, the Department of Homeland Security reported on Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
States have been cutting the amount of money they set aside for higher education. This obliges colleges to have students pick up a higher share of their education costs in tuition fees, Bloomberg reported.
Some colleges even send emissaries abroad to recruit foreign students. The University of Colorado-Boulder has a foreign student population of 6.5 percent. Administrators want to boost the figure to 10 percent. Most of the schools international students are from China, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. These students pay $35,231 annually in tuition compared with $10,971 for in-state residents, according to the Journal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Expert: FBI Manipulated Crime Stats to Show Increase in Mass Shootings
The Federal Bureau of Investigation purposely distorted its latest round of annual crime statistics in an attempt to make mass shootings appear more prevalent, an expert criminologist says.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, says the agency, which has strayed from bias in the past, appears to have edited the numbers for political reasons.
“The FBI put out a clearly incorrect set of numbers on public shootings shortly before the November election last year,” Lott told Fox News. “I have been reading FBI reports for 30 years and I have never seen anything like this.”
The statistics, published last September, claim that “mass shooter” incidents have seen a drastic rise between the years 2000 and 2013.
“FBI figures released last September appear to show so-called ‘mass shooter’ attacks and deaths have dramatically increased since 2000,” journalist Perry Chiaramonte writes. “The report asserted there were a total 160 such incidents in public places between 2000 and 2013, with attacks dramatically increased to 17 in 2013 from just one in 2000. The statistics also showed murders jumping to 86 from just seven over the span.”
According to Lott, all reports of standard “active shooting incidents” were combined with actual mass shooting events, making the latter appear to be vastly more frequent.
[Comment: Massaging the data to justify growing police state.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Facebook Reveals Its Master Plan — Control All News Flow
In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.
The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.
And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites. — From the New York Times article: Facebook May Host News Sites’ Content
Last night, I came across an incredibly important article from the New York Times, which described Facebook’s plan to provide direct access to other websites’ content in exchange for some sort of advertising partnership. The implications of this are so huge that at this point I have far more questions than answers.
Let’s start with a few excerpts from the article:…
Let me try to address this the best I can from several different angles. First off, what’s the big picture plan here? As the number two ranked website in the world with 1.4 billion users, Facebook itself is already something like an alternative internet where a disturbing number of individuals spend a disproportionate amount of their time. The only thing that seems to make many of its users click away is content hosted on other people’s websites linked to from Facebook users. Other than this outside content, many FB users might never leave the site.
While this is scary to someone like me, to Facebook it is an abomination. The company doesn’t want people to leave their site ever — for any reason. Hence the aggressive push to carry outside news content, and create a better positioned alternative web centrally controlled by it. This is a huge power play move.
[Comment: That’s the real purpose of all these “gateway portal” websites. To control where you go and what you see.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
George Zimmerman Accuses Obama of Inflaming Racial Tensions
By Jethro Mullen
(CNN)George Zimmerman says he bears a grudge against President Obama, accusing him of inflaming racial tensions around the Trayvon Martin case.
Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder in 2013 over Martin’s death, made the allegations against Obama in a video posted on his lawyers’ website.
The February 2012 killing of Martin, an unarmed black teenager, by Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer, stirred fierce debate about race and the justice system.
Zimmerman, who is now 31, said he shot Martin in self-defense during a confrontation in Sanford, Florida. But critics allege the death was spurred by racial profiling.
In the new video, Zimmerman claims it was Obama who stoked racial tensions surrounding the case.
He cites the President’s remarks in March 2012, when the case was still being investigated, in which Obama said, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
“To me, that was clearly a dereliction of duty, pitting Americans against each other solely based on race,” Zimmerman says in the conversation with his lawyer Howard Iken, who does not appear on camera.
[…]
Zimmerman says he has a clear conscience over Martin’s death.
“Only in a true life or death scenario can you have mental clearness to know that you cannot feel guilty for surviving,” he says.
[Hear! Hear! This guy was getting murdered and stopped it. Good on him! — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
How the EPA Killed the Muscle Cars
There was a time — some of you will remember it — when the car companies would actually resist government intrusions into their business, even going so far as to attempt end-running some of Uncle’s edicts. A story (true) comes to mind that will give you an idea how far we’ve come since then.
It was 1972 and GM’s Pontiac division — which back then still had an engineering division that designed and manufactured Pontiac engines — was trying to figure out how to keep the muscle car alive. Washington — and the insurance mafia — had been systematically working toward the extermination of powerful cars via the one-two punch of impossible-to-meet (while maintaining high power) emissions edicts and impossible-to-pay insurance premiums. You probably know this part of the story.
Pontiac management did something inconceivable in today’s corporate car culture: They brazenly ignored Uncle.
Under development was a new high-performance engine, known internally as the Super Duty 455. This engine shared a superficial commonality (its displacement, a function of its bore and stroke) with the existing line of Pontiac 455 engines (in those days, engines were known by their cubic inch displacement rather than by liters, as today). But it was an entirely different — a new — engine. Unique block (heavily reinforced and with provisions for dry-sump oiling, making it race-ready for those so inclined), special heads and valvetrain. Here’s where it gets interesting.
[Comment: Recommended reading.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Judge Rejects FBI Claims in Muslim Case
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The FBI can no longer withhold thousands of pages of surveillance files of Muslim communities by claiming the “law enforcement” exemption of the Freedom of Information Act, a federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg found that the exemption “is not the appropriate umbrella under which to shield these documents from public view.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2010 requested records concerning the FBI’s investigation and surveillance of Muslim communities in Northern California.
“Given the impact of the surveillance on national security and the exercise of core civil liberties, it is imperative that the public gain a better understanding of the methods and scope of the FBI’s surveillance of Muslim communities in the United States and the use of racial and ethnic ‘mapping’ for law enforcement purposes,” the complaint states .
Among other things, the ACLU was concerned about whether the FBI was infiltrating Muslim communities and mosques through informants, using race and religion in deciding whom to investigate, and recruiting Muslim and Arab children to serve in the agency’s Junior Agent program…
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Judge: Controversial Dearborn Cleric Must Disclose Where His Money is Coming From
(WXYZ) Detroit — A controversial Dearborn cleric, on probation for fraud, and on the U.S. government’s radar for his extreme views, must tell the feds where and from whom his income is coming from.
They believe he is hiding assets and information.
Ahmad Jebril has failed to pay the majority of the nearly $250,000 in restitution he owes after facing 42 charges of financial fraud, they say.
Jebril’s probation is set to come to an end in mere days. He has refused to answer the U.S. Attorney’s questions, they claim. His attorney was fighting the call that he be forced to testify to his financials. Its believed he may have lied to his probation officer, and testifying could lead to new charges.
Judge Rosen said today—too bad. He wants Jebril to testify, but with some protections. That’s to be discussed tomorrow in further detail.
Jebril, who was reading what appeared to be a copy of the Quran in court, refused to comment, and walked away from 7 Action News cameras after court.
The 7 Investigators have reported extensively on Jebril over the past year. He is known for advocating Jihad and influencing hundreds of thousands of ISIS followers on social media.
Today, Judge Rosen made it clear, he does not trust Jebril, who has violated his parole on other occasions, lying about his whereabouts and his online activity.
[And why should he not? After all, “the prophet” Muhammad declared that “war is deceit,” and Qur’an 33:21 says that “in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the Last Day.” — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
The United States military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies are planning a two-months long exercise later this year. The government claims this is an effort to protect the American people, but Alex Jones has a different take.
In the following video Jones provides extensive documentation sourced over the last twenty years. The evidence is clear… and frightening.
The exercises taking place this summer in states like Texas, Utah and California are designed not for the protection of Americans, but rather, the intimidation of an entire nation. Members of the military and law enforcement are being desensitized to deployments on U.S. soil and the public is being conditioned to accept soldiers on every street corner as normal.
Sounds like a conspiracy, right?
The real conspiracy is the story we’re being told by “official” sources.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
More States Added to ‘Jade Helm’ Military Exercise
‘Realistic Military Training’ exercise expands to as many as ten states.
Speaking of the exercise at the Brazos County Commissioners Court in Texas last month, Jade Helm Operations Planner and retired Green Beret Thomas Mead told an audience that the drill, which will run from July 15 to September 15, will now include the states Mississippi and Florida.
“The exercise is actually an eight-week exercise taking place across seven states,” Mead explains. “As you can see right there, it spans the whole southwest of the United States. We’ve also added Mississippi and we have a group also working out of Florida.”
“We’ll have Navy Seals that’ll be conducting targets and training down in the Mississippi area,” Mead also says.
The interagency, unconventional warfare exercise, lasting eight weeks, will utilize 1,200 special forces personnel from multiple branches of the US military, including Army Green Berets, Navy Seals, Marine Special Operations Command and the 82nd Airborne Division, according to a Powerpoint presentation regarding the exercise.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NASA’s Opportunity Rover Wins 1st Marathon on Mars
NASA’s Opportunity rover has completed the first-ever Mars marathon, clocking in with a winning time of 11 years and 2 months.
The golf-cart-size Opportunity rover has now traveled 26.221 miles (42.198 kilometers) since touching down on the Red Planet on Jan. 24, 2004, NASA officials announced today (March 24). The length of a marathon race is 26.219 miles (42.195 km).
“This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world,” John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Nebraska Senator Compares Police to ISIS, Suggests He’d Shoot a Cop
A Nebraska state senator compared American police to Islamic terrorists and suggested he’d shoot a cop if only he had a weapon.
State Sen. Ernie Chambers said during a legislative hearing on March 20 that you don’t have to go halfway around the world to find an ISIS mentality. It can be found in America because police terrorize blacks every day.
He was referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has beheaded journalists and brutally executed Westerners and others.
“My ISIS is the police,” Chambers, an independent, said, adding police can get away with shooting people if they “think” they’re going to do something — like pull a weapon.
“The police are licensed to kill us — children, old people,” he said.
Nebraska’s longest serving senator, Chambers represents north Omaha, a high-crime area where racial tension simmers and sometimes erupts after encounters with police.
[…]
“I wouldn’t go to Syria, I wouldn’t go to Iraq, I wouldn’t go to Afghanistan, I wouldn’t go to Yemen, I wouldn’t go to Tunisia, I wouldn’t go to Lebanon, I wouldn’t go to Jordan, I would do it right here,” Chambers, who is black, said. “Nobody from ISIS ever terrorized us as a people as the police do us daily.”
Chambers then added fuel to the fire, saying if he had a gun, he would use it on police, not his political opponents.
“If I was going to carry a weapon, it wouldn’t be against you, it wouldn’t be against these people who come here that I might have a dispute with. Mine would be for the police,” he said.
[Black racist officials like this one are analogous to the peckerwood demagogues of old, like Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Theodore Bilbo. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Regime is Precisely What it Accuses America of Being
White House occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.
With the mega ironies of our tumultuous times in competition for top spot, it must be The Irony of Ironies that Obama and his minions are down to a ‘Tee’ exactly what they accuse America of being: despicable bullies of the world.
First seizing, then standing on sanctimony and Projection 101 are Commandments 1 and 2 in Marxist ideology.
History shows that whenever Marxists make it into high office, they seize the moral high ground from which they lecture the masses from bully pulpits provided by the media of the day.
The story of the Obama Marxist regime is told in hundreds of Western movies: the Yahoos come shouting their way into town; kick up the dust into the faces of the hardworking townspeople they invade, and bully and burrow their way into a society that is always so much better off without them.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your Money — “Legally, “ of Course
Did you know that the government of Iran steals your cash if they find more than loose change in your car? They don’t arrest you for any crime, for the simple reason you didn’t commit any crime; but it isn’t about crime and punishment—it’s about”legalizing” theft by the state.
So the government toadies don’t charge you with a crime or arrest you—they just steal your money.
Pity the poor Iranian people—clearly, there is no rule of law to protect them from their predatory, rapacious, fake-democracy, quasi-totalitarian government. Did you also know that if you deposit too much money in modest sums, the government of Iran steals all your deposits? They will claim—oh, the twisted logic of Orwellian, repressive governments—that you are obviously a drug dealer who is avoiding laws that require banks to report large deposits to the government.
Once again, you won’t be charged with a crime—in true Orwellian fashion the suspicion that you may have committed a crime is sufficient reason to steal your cash. Pity the poor Iranian people, living in such a banana-republic kleptocracy.
Did you also know that if you are caught with any drug paraphernalia in your vehicle, the government of Iran steals your vehicle? The crime isn’t a drug crime—it’s a property crime: what are you doing with the government of Iran’s vehicle?
Pity the poor Iranian people, living in a Kafkaesque nightmare where suspicion alone justifies the government stealing from its citizens, and an unrelated crime (possessing drug paraphernalia) is used to justify state theft.
As in a Kafkaesque nightmare, the state is above the law when it needs an excuse to steal your car or cash. There is no crime, no arrest, no due process—just the state thugs threatening that you should shut up and be happy they don’t take everything you own.
Your car and cash are guilty—and your house, too.
Alas, dear reader, I have misled you. It is not the Iranian government that uses these tricks to steal from its people—it is the U.S. government that uses these above-the-law excuses to blatantly steal from its citizens. I presented these Orwellian, Kafkaesque travesties of the rule of law as being Iranian so you would see them for what they are—the actions of an above-the-law, predatory state which falsely claims to be a democracy with a functioning judiciary.
All these forms of civil forfeiture in America are well documented:
Taken: Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?
Stop and Seize (six parts)
I strongly recommend reading every word of these articles before you start spouting nonsense about what a great and glorious government and legal system we have here in America.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Radioshack Puts Customer’s Personal Data Up for Sale in Bankruptcy Auction
Asset sale could include millions of e-mails, physical addresses, and customer names, if legal challenges don’t stop it.
For years, RadioShack made a habit of collecting customers’ contact information at checkout. Now, the bankrupt retailer is putting that data on the auction block.
A list of RadioShack assets for sale includes more than 65 million customer names and physical addresses, and 13 million email addresses. Bloomberg reports that the asset sale may include phone numbers and information on shopping habits as well.
The auction is already over, with Standard General—a hedge fund and RadioShack’s largest shareholder—reportedly emerging as the victor. But a bankruptcy court still has to approve the deal, and RadioShack faces a couple legal challenges in turning over customer data.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
So You Think the Military Won’t Kill U.S. Citizens?
When the President issues an order, the soldier isn’t going to reflect on whether the order is constitutional or not.
The soldier’s job, in his mind, is simply to obey the Commander-in-Chief and carry out his orders.
[Comment: More so when military becomes packed with immigrants that use the military to get fastrack to citizenship without learning about the Constitution.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Special Forces Invade Appalachian Trail
Alex Jones hears about how a branch of the Army has been doing special training along parts of the Appalachian Trail.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Texas Lawmaker Pushes Mandatory Mental Health Screening for Children
A Texas lawmaker has introduced draconian legislation that would force parents to have their children undergo mental health screenings at the behest of teachers, under threat of suspension from school.
The bill, introduced by Texas State Representative Jason Villalba (R-Dallas), gives school officials the power to diagnose students with psychological problems, and mandate screenings by health professionals.
Parents would then have 30 days to comply with the ruling, or the child will be sent to “an alternative school”…
Critics, including former Congressman Ron Paul have long warned of the danger of government mandated mental screenings for children. In 2011, Paul introduced the Parental Consent Act, HR 2769, in an effort to prohibit federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health or psychiatric screening program.
As Paul noted at the time “There has been a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of prescriptions to even more children. A universal screening program is the stated goal of these lobbyists.”
[Comment: Coupled with the Pschiatrists DSM manual and such things as classifying “opposion to authority” as a mental disorder children will be branded for life. This can then be used to prohibit them as adults from ever owning a gun. Bonus for banksters is the increase in psychotropic mental drug sales while chemically killing the brains of potential future “dissidents”.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Hollowing of the U.S. Military
The withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, brought a new round of downsizing. Not only did the Obama administration decide to reduce the number of Army troops from 570,000 to around 490,000 (with similar downsizing among the other branches), but also brought huge cultural challenges to the force. First, the administration dropped the long-standing policy barring open homosexuality in the military. Within months came the administration’s mandate to gender integrate the combat arms and even special operations forces.
Unfortunately, the downsizing and “cultural” decisions were made with faulty assumptions about the national security environment; specifically, the assumption we would be done with the wars, and the military would “pivot” the focus to the Pacific. As we now know, the “enemy” had a vote with Crimea, Ukraine, North Korea, and now with the Islamic State seizing much of Syria and Iraq. As General Odierno would state in Jan. 2015, we now have the “most uncertain time I’ve seen in our national security.” To top it all off, the sequester went into effect in 2013, and the Army has been slashed to below 490,000 moving to around 470,000 and could go as low as 420,000.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Only Truly Compliant, Submissive Citizen in a Police State is a Dead One
Americans as young as 4 years old are being leg shackled, handcuffed, tasered and held at gun point for not being quiet, not being orderly and just being childlike—i.e., not being compliant enough.
Americans as old as 95 are being beaten, shot and killed for questioning an order, hesitating in the face of a directive, and mistaking a policeman crashing through their door for a criminal breaking into their home—i.e., not being submissive enough. And Americans of every age and skin color are being taught the painful lesson that the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. In turn, Americans are being brainwashed into believing that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will people sit in the kettle of hot water boiling to death?
[Comment” “Fun” Camps = “Re-education” gulags.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Another day, another mega-M&A deal taking advantage of abnormally low bond rates, this time however not involving biotechs or a specialty pharma seeking to purchase a debt-free balance sheet, but one involving the Oracle of Omaha himself, and his Heinz investment, which will merge with Kraft Foods whose market cap was over $40 billion this morning on the news of the merger, and create the third largest food and beverage company in the US, and 5th largest in the world.
And while the resulting company will certainly be an unprecedented food giant, one which leaves the US food industry even more concentrated, here is the rationale behind the deal and the punchline for American workers: “significant synergy opportunities.” Translation: thousands of layoffs imminent.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
To People Who Still Think Obama is the Answer
Create new solid US jobs?
End the unemployment crisis?
That was never, ever Obama’s agenda.
And people who think it is are being betrayed.
There are several ways to show this, but perhaps the most important way is to sketch in the effects of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Obama is fully supporting and fronting for and defending.
He wants Congressional approval for the TPP this year.
As Public Citizen reveals: “The TPP is a massive, controversial ‘free trade’ agreement currently being pushed by big corporations and negotiated behind closed doors by officials from the United States and 11 other countries — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam [and probably later, China will sign on].
“And U.S. TPP negotiators literally used the 2011 Korea FTA [Free Trade Agreement] — under which [US] exports have fallen and [US] trade deficits have surged [and 85,000 US jobs have been lost] — as the template for the TPP.
“We only know about the TPP’s threats thanks to leaks — the public is not allowed to see the draft TPP text. Even members of Congress, after being denied the text for years, are now only provided limited access. Meanwhile, more than 500 official corporate ‘trade advisors’ have special access. The TPP has been under negotiation for six years, and the Obama administration wants to sign the deal this year…”
Yes, secret deal. The public is not permitted to see what is in it. We only know some of what’s in it because of several partial leaks.
Obama wants Congress to fast-track the TPP with a strict up or down vote: no amendments permitted; no filibustering; the final vote must take place within 90 days of the TPP’s introduction on the floor of Congress; no Committee vetting first.
This is your transparent President.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
TSA Allows Convicted Bomber Through Expedited Screening
The TSA allowed convicted terrorist bomber Sara Jane Olson to pass through expedited screening at a Minn. airport, despite knowing her criminal background.
The incident occurred at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport back in 2014, according to a TSA Inspector General Report and a KMSP-TV investigation which confirmed Olson as the “notorious convicted felon” described in the report.
A TSA agent recognized Olson, who served seven years in prison for planting bombs under police cars, but when he notified his supervisor he was told to “take no further action and allow the traveler through the TSA Pre-Check lane.”
The TSA should have declared Olson ineligible for expedited screening, the report stated.
However, the report, which is heavily redacted, does not reveal why Olson was allowed into the Pre-Check program.
We reported on a similar incident in 2014 when the TSA, on orders from the State Dept., spared the Muslim Brotherhood from pat downs and other security measures despite the group’s close ties to al-Qaeda.
One member of the Brotherhood delegation was even under investigation for child pornography but still received VIP treatment while traveling through America’s airports.
None of this is really that shocking considering the TSA is more interested in conditioning the public to obey authority than providing real security.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wisconsin Cops Will Now Forcibly Take DNA for All Misdemeanors
State to get access to thousands of Americans’ genetic information.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Prof: Electric Cars Cause More Pollution
A University of Toronto professor says owning an electric car in some Canadian provinces could actually be worse for the environment than conventional gas-powered automobiles.
In Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, electric cars generate more carbon pollution over their lifetimes than gas-powered cars, according to Chris Kennedy, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, in an interview with CBC’s The Current.
Those provinces generate much of their electricity by burning coal, so consuming more electricity — such as by charging an electric car battery — significantly boosts carbon emissions.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Al Qaeda in Spain Founder Obtained Citizenship Through Sham Marriage
On July 10, 1985 a young man about 1.70 meters tall, with fair skin, green eyes, red hair and sporting a well-kempt beard turned up at Madrid’s Civil Registry with a 29-year Spanish woman called Pilar Toledo. After a brief ceremony, the two signed their wedding papers and kissed each other. They wouldn’t meet again for another three years when they signed their divorce papers on November 11, 1988.
The young man was a Syrian national called Mustafa Setmariam, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, the founder of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain, and number four in the organization until the death of Osama Bin Laden. Setmariam sowed the seeds of radical Islam in Spain, spreading the Salafist word that would encourage other young men to set up jihadist groups to raise money and recruit fighters for the conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark Lost Billions on Goldman Sachs Deal
The partial sale of Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs did not include a massive deal that both parties knew was imminent, shortchanging the company’s value by as much as 20 billion kroner.
Denmark lost out on billions of kroner when it sold partial ownership of Dong Energy to American investment firm Goldman Sachs in January 2013, Politiken reported Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
European Space Agency’s Mars Express
Mars Express is the European Space Agency’s first spacecraft built to explore another planet. The orbiter is still circling the Red Planet after more than a decade in space, but lander Beagle 2 lost contact with Earth in December 2003 before it reached the surface.
Among other achievements, Mars Express found methane in the Martian atmosphere, mapped the composition of polar ice and flew close to the Martian moon Phobos.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
More and more parents are choosing to not christen their children, according to figures from the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs.
The new figures revealed that the number of baptised children fell by more than 18 percent over the past five years.
Karen Leth-Nissen, a theologian and PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, contends that fewer parents are inclined to make the decision for their children.
“The prevailing reason for children not being christened is that their parents believe that children should choose themselves,” Leth-Nissen told DR Nyheder. “It’s an expression of the individualism that is mega-trending in society.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Far-Right Leader Le Pen Pledges Vote on EU Exit
The head of France’s far-right National Front party has said she will ask the French people to vote on pulling out of the EU if she is elected president in 2017.
“My idea is to tell the French people that if they elect me,” in 2017, “six months later there will be a referendum,” Marine Le Pen told Greek TV channel Mega.
Several opinion polls predicted victory for Le Pen’s surging anti-EU and anti-immigration FN in Sunday’s local elections, through her party finished second but with its highest ever vote. She is hoping to carry the momentum forward to a successful run at the presidency in 2017.
“The European Union is death, the death of our economy, our social welfare system and our identity,” she said in the interview broadcast Monday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germanwings Pilot Was Locked Out of Cockpit Before Crash in France
PARIS — As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed in relatively clear skies, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.
A senior military official involved in the investigation described “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.
“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”
He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”
While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading up to the Germanwings crash, it also left many questions unanswered.
| [Return to headlines] |
Germany: ‘Space Stone’ Brought Back to Cologne
German astronaut Alexander Gerst visited the Cologne city hall on Wednesday to present a special gift — a stone from the city’s famous cathedral that he’d taken into space with him.
The 38-year-old astronaut said during the presentation that “the stone was a very important guest on the space station.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germanwings Plane Crash: A320 Pilot Says Co-Pilot Can be Locked Out of Cockpit
[…]
An Australian A320 pilot, who declined to be named, said the locked flight deck of the aircraft could be entered using an emergency code on a keypad. In the case of the pilot flying the aircraft being incapacitated, the door will automatically open after a set period of time if the correct code is entered.
However, in the event a pilot flying the aircraft does not want the other pilot to enter the flight deck, the one in the cockpit has the ability to block entry if he reacts before the door would be opened automatically.
“If the person on the other side of the door says ‘no’, you can’t get in,” the Australian pilot said.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Faces EU Fine Over Hazardous Waste
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MARCH 25 — The European Commission has asked the European Court of Justice to fine Greece for its failure to manage hazardous waste as Kathimerini online reports.
Previously convicted by the court in 1999 for failing to comply with the EU’s landfill directive, Greece could pay 17.7 million euros in fines, plus a daily penalty of 8,096 euros until it solves the problem.
The Commission has identified problems in four key areas: failure to record the amount of trash being produced, failure to treat about one third of hazardous waste which ends up in so-called temporary storage, lagging infrastructure such as waste treatment facilities, and insufficient monitoring. Greek industries produce 280,120 tons of hazardous waste a year.
Another 7,000 tons comes from households and construction.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Hiding Still ‘Indefinite’ For Swedish Artist Vilks
Swedish artist Lars Vilks who is believed to be the intended target of one of the Copenhagen shootings, says police have told him he can never return to his home in southern Sweden, as he prepares to hold a debate in a secret location on Wednesday night.
Lars Vilks, who has been in hiding since the attacks in Denmark, says he has been moved between three different locations and was told by police this week that he could not go back to his house in Höganäs in Skåne, southern Sweden.
After being briefly allowed to collect some belongings several weeks ago, police supervised as a removal company packed up the rest of his possessions on Tuesday afternoon.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Investigators Rule Out Mid-Air Explosion as Cause of Alps Crash
French investigators searching for clues that will shed light on the Germanwings plane crash have ruled out an explosion in mid-flight as the cause of the tragedy.
The size of the fuselage fragments found on the ground were not in keeping with such an occurrence, they said.
The experts also said they had found usable audio material inside the cockpit voice recorder. “We have the sound and the voices of the entire flight, right up until the impact,” said Rémi Jouty, director of the Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA). “But we still don’t have precise information.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, the son of Holocaust survivors, is an accomplished, even gifted, pessimist. To his disciples, he is a Jewish Zola, accusing France’s bien-pensant intellectual class of complicity in its own suicide. To his foes, he is a reactionary whose nostalgia for a fairy-tale French past is induced by an irrational fear of Muslims. Finkielkraut’s cast of mind is generally dark, but when we met in Paris in early January, two days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, he was positively grim.
“My French identity is reinforced by the very large number of people who openly declare, often now with violence, their hostility to French values and culture,” he said. “I live in a strange place. There is so much guilt and so much worry.” We were seated at a table in his apartment, near the Luxembourg Gardens. I had come to discuss with him the precarious future of French Jewry, but, as the hunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers seemed to be reaching its conclusion, we had become fixated on the television.
Finkielkraut sees himself as an alienated man of the left. He says he loathes both radical Islamism and its most ferocious French critic, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s extreme right-wing—and once openly anti-Semitic—National Front party. But he has lately come to find radical Islamism to be a more immediate, even existential, threat to France than the National Front. “I don’t trust Le Pen. I think there is real violence in her,” he told me. “But she is so successful because there actually is a problem of Islam in France, and until now she has been the only one to dare say it.”
Suddenly, there was news: a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, in eastern Paris, had come under attack. “Of course,” Finkielkraut said. “The Jews.” Even before anti-Semitic riots broke out in France last summer, Finkielkraut had become preoccupied with the well-being of France’s Jews.
We knew nothing about this new attack—except that we already knew everything. “People don’t defend the Jews as we expected to be defended,” he said. “It would be easier for the left to defend the Jews if the attackers were white and rightists.”
I asked him a very old Jewish question: Do you have a bag packed?
“We should not leave,” he said, “but maybe for our children or grandchildren there will be no choice.”
[…]
The Shoah served for a while as a sort of inoculation against the return of overt Jew-hatred—but the effects of the inoculation, it is becoming clear, are wearing off. What was once impermissible is again imaginable.
[…]
But what makes this new era of anti-Semitic violence in Europe different from previous ones is that traditional Western patterns of anti-Semitic thought have now merged with a potent strain of Muslim Judeophobia. Violence against Jews in Western Europe today, according to those who track it, appears to come mainly from Muslims, who in France, the epicenter of Europe’s Jewish crisis, outnumber Jews 10 to 1.
[…]
On May 24, four people were murdered at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in Brussels, allegedly by a French Muslim of jihadist bent named Mehdi Nemmouche. Two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer, and a Belgian employee of Muslim and Jewish descent were killed. Nemmouche had recently returned to Europe after a term with ISIS in Syria, where, according to a former French hostage of ISIS, his specialty was torturing prisoners.
[…]
There are no Jews left in Leova. What used to be the synagogue is now a gymnasium; the caretaker tried to sell it to me. The Holocaust history of Leova is incompletely known, but the last Jews appear to have been rounded up in late 1941 by Germany’s Romanian allies. According to records in the Moldovan State Archives, this group included six people who I believe were part of my grandfather’s family, among them five children, ages 15, 12, 9, 7, and 3. Their last known destination was a concentration camp in Cahul, in what is today southern Moldova.
I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly. But I am also predisposed to think this because I am an American Jew—which is to say, a person who exists because his ancestors made a run for it when they could.
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Arrests Suspected ISIS Recruiters
Italian authorities have arrested two people suspected of being involved in the recruitment of fighters for the Isis extremist group, and a third who was the alleged author of the Italian version of an Isis propaganda document.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Three Arrested as ISIS Recruitment Cell Busted
Italian-Albania operation result of long investigation
(ANSA) — Rome, March 25 — Three people were arrested in Italy and Albania on Wednesday in an operation to bust a cell of alleged Islamist extremists dedicated to recruiting jihadists and helping them reach ISIS militias, ANSA sources said. The operation is the result of a long investigation by Italian anti-terrorism police, the sources said. The suspects in Italy were arrested in the province of Turin. Police also conducted searches of properties linked to people suspected of being ISIS sympathizers in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Tuscany.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ‘If My Son a Terrorist I’ll Kill Him Myself’ Says Dad
Mother of arrested says ‘nothing but gratitude for Italy’
(see related)(ANSA) — Turin, March 25 — The father of a 20-year-old Italian who was arrested on suspicion of penning ISIS propaganda said if his son is indeed involved with the Islamic terrorist group, he will mete out fierce justice himself.
“My son is a good boy,” said Idajet Elezi, whose son Elvis was arrested earlier in the day.
“But if he is a terrorist, I’ll kill him myself”.
“We’re Muslims, and I ask Caritas (Catholic charity) for help because my husband has been unemployed for five months,” said Liliana Elezi, Elvis’ mother.
“We feel nothing but gratitude towards Italy”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Marine Le Pen Promises Referendum on French EU Exit
Far-right MEP Marine Le Pen told Greek TV channel Mega Tuesday that if she is elected French president in 2017, she will hold a referendum later that year on whether France should exit the EU. She already promised a referendum on reintroducing the death penalty.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Crematorium Tried to Use Bodies to Heat Houses
A crematorium in Oslo tried to connect its ovens to the local district heating system so that could use heat from burned bodies to warm houses across the city. But the local utility felt there were “ethical issues”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Radicalization of Europe’s Muslims Hits a Crisis Point
With every new atrocity, Western leaders and political commentators collectively assure themselves and the public that the Islamic State’s power will suffer, that its PR machine is failing, and that the flow of Western Muslims to the Caliphate will stop.
It doesn’t.
Sadly, one can no longer pass these views off as those of a “small minority” of Europe’s Muslims. Across Western Europe, Koopmans’ study determined, “Two thirds of the Muslims interviewed say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live. Three quarters of the respondents hold the opinion that there is only one legitimate interpretation of the Koran.”
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Two Arrested After Man Shot Dead in Malmö
Two people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was shot dead in Malmö in southern Sweden. The incident comes less than a week after two men died in a mass shooting in Gothenburg.
Both Gothenburg in western Sweden and Malmö in the south — Sweden’s two biggest cities after the capital Stockholm — have been struggling with violent crime in the past few years, with the police taking measures such as increasing their presence on the streets and clamping down on illegal firearms.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Three Americans, Including Virginia Mother, Daughter on Doomed German Plane That Crashed in Alps
A government contractor from Virginia, her daughter and a third American were killed in the plane crash in the Alps that left French aviation investigators saying Wednesday they had not the “slightest explanation” for what happened.
The Germanwings A320 lost radio contact with air traffic controllers over the French Alps on a seemingly routine flight Tuesday from Spain to Germany, killing all on board.
The director of France’s aviation investigative agency told reporters there currently is not the “slightest explanation” for what caused the plane to lose altitude and crash.
Remi Jouty said the investigation could take weeks or even months. He said the plane was flying “until the end” — slamming into the mountain, not breaking up in the air.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
Cambridge United supporter Simon Dobbin, 42, was found on the ground with serious head injuries following the fight involving about 15 people after his side’s match at Southend United.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Jeremy Clarkson Dropped From Top Gear, BBC Confirms
Jeremy Clarkson’s contract will not be renewed after an “unprovoked physical attack” on a Top Gear producer, the BBC’s director general has confirmed.
Tony Hall said he had “not taken this decision lightly” and recognised it would “divide opinion”.
However, he added “a line has been crossed” and he “cannot condone what has happened on this occasion”.
Clarkson was suspended on 10 March, following what was called a “fracas” with Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Moment Thugs Stamp on Shopkeeper’s Head in Nottingham Newsagent Raid
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
The shocking CCTV footage shows shop owner Naresh Nagarajah, 36, being mercilessly attacked during the ‘traumatic’ robbery in Arnold, Nottingham.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Reportedly Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks in Effort to Lobby Congress Against Deal
Israel has spied on the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran as part of a campaign to convince members of Congress to oppose an agreement, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal says that Israel’s lobbying effort has angered Obama administration officials, one of whom told the paper that “something serious has shifted here.”
“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” the paper quoted a senior U.S. official as saying.
Other officials said Israel is one of the most aggressive countries in terms of spying on the U.S., along with Russia, China and France. That claim was strongly denied by an Israeli official, which said the allegations were “clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”
[Anyone remember Jonathan Pollard, the American traitor whose massive intelligence take Israel bartered to the Soviet Union, then our principal adversary? — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Israel Institutes Sweeping Travel Warning
TEL AVIV — The Counter-Terrorism Bureau (CTB) of the Israeli National Security Council published its semi-annual travel advisory Monday urging citizens to stay away from 41 countries, nearly a quarter of UN member states.
In advance of the upcoming Passover and summer holiday season, CTB notes that warnings are based on “solid and reliable information, which reflects a real threat, based on the intelligence picture for a specific period.”
Rankings range from Code Burgundy — countries where citizens are either forbidden or strongly urged not to visit due to “very high concrete threat” — to Code Yellow, where “ongoing potential threats” warrant essential travel only.
“Recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists in Belgium, Canada, Australia, France and Denmark raise concerns over additional attacks against Western targets, including Israeli and Jewish targets, by veterans of the fighting in Syria and Iraq who are affiliated with Global Jihad (including Islamic State) and by local elements inspired
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
US Declassifies Document Revealing Israel’s Nuclear Program
In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.
But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.
The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu’s March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.
Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel’s sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
12 Jihadis From the Hague Killed in Syria and Iraq
So far at least 12 people from The Hague have died taking part in jihad in Syria and Iraq, new city council figures show. Mayor Jozias van Aaartsen will not say how they died but did confirm they are ‘mainly’ young men, the Telegraaf reports. So far 40 young men and six women have left The Hague for Syria and Iraq and three children have been stopped from going, the paper says. In the meantime, 11 people have returned. Van Aartsen declined to say why they had come back — because they are injured, out of nostalgia or other motives. Around 20 The Hague jihadis are still in the region.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Author of Italian ISIS Propaganda Arrested
20-year-old Italian with Moroccan roots
(see related) (ANSA) — Rome, March 25 — A 20-year-old Italian with Moroccan roots who is suspected of being the author of a 64-page Italian-language document of ISIS propaganda that recently appeared on the Internet is among the people arrested on Wednesday in an operation to bust a jihadist recruitment cell, ANSA sources said. The document, which was detected by the authorities on February 28, presented propaganda detailing ISIS’s version of what it is doing in Syria and Iraq and how it supposedly protects supporters and is ruthless with enemies. The young man allegedly prepared the propaganda in November.
Its significance is not so much the content, but the fact that it targeted an Italian audience, according to investigators. It was published by a number of users on Facebook and other websites, the sources said.
The two other people arrested are both Albanian nationals, the sources said — an uncle and nephew, one of whom lives in Albania, while the other is a resident of the province of Turin.
The three people arrested were allegedly in contact via telephone and Facebook with Anas El Abboubi, one of dozens of ISIS foreign fighters linked to Italy.
El Abboubi is currently thought to be in Syria. He was arrested in June 2013, but subsequently released by a court.
Before going to Syria he visited Albania.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Countdown to Obama’s Dangerous Deal With Iran
The Obama administration’s determination to reach an accord with Iran at any cost continues unabated. As the March 31st deadline approaches, the administration has taken to recklessly downplaying Iran’s increasing belligerence, as well as continuing a coordinated attack on Iran’s chief critic, newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This weekend, the White House dismissed a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that included more chants of “Death to America” by both the crowd and Khamenei himself, insisting that it was only “intended for a domestic political audience.”…
There may be nothing more intellectually bankrupt than the progressive notion that Israel remains the chief obstacle to either a two-state solution, or that such a solution is the ultimate cure for Middle East violence. Charles Krauthammer deftly exposes that bankruptcy. “I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either,” he wrote following the outpouring of leftist handwringing that accompanied Netanyahu’s re-election. “Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state—with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted—only to be rudely rejected.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen Loot Secret Files About U.S. Spy Operations
Secret intelligence files held by Yemeni security forces and containing details of American intelligence operations in the country have been looted by Iran-backed militia leaders, exposing names of informants and plans for U.S.-backed counter-terrorism operations, U.S. officials say.
U.S. intelligence officials believe additional files were handed directly to Iranian advisors by Yemeni officials who have sided with the Houthi militias that seized control of the capital of Sana last September and later toppled the U.S.-backed president.
For American intelligence networks in Yemen, the damage has been severe. Until recently, U.S. forces deployed in Yemen had worked closely with President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government to track and kill Al Qaeda operatives, and President Obama hailed Yemen six months ago as a model for counter-terrorism operations.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS Recruit 400 Children for ‘Cubs of Caliphate’
By Conor Gaffey
Offices for “Ashbal al-Khilafah” (“Cubs of the Caliphate”) were opened in several IS-held Syrian cities, according to London-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Minors are indoctrinated through sharia courses and prepared for combat in military training camps. The SOHR also said that children were encouraged to attend public executions and were offered weapons and cash to join the organisation.
Children form an important part of ISIS propaganda which attempts to portray a fully-functioning state replete with education system, says Charlie Winter, researcher at anti-radicalisation thinktank Quilliam.
“They’re central to the ISIS media strategy of trying to garner outrage and shock the world,” says Winter. “It’s all part of ISIS’s attempt to show themselves as a functioning state with a proper education system.”
A video released earlier this month showed a French child aged around 12 years old executing Arab-Israeli citizen Muhammad Musallam, whom ISIS accused of being a Mossad spy. The group also invited young boys to watch a screening of the execution of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh, who was locked in a cage before being burnt alive.
Online tactics used by the group to recruit young girls have been compared to those used by paedophiles grooming young children. Winter says that children cannot be blamed for being forced into the group and the recruitment tactics used by ISIS equate to child grooming.
[Shades of the Htilerjugend. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
“I was standing there helpless. The government have left us as captives in the hands of ISIS…”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Residents ‘Looting’ Presidential Palace in Aden
Washington has announced that Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, “is no longer at his residence in Aden.” A Yemeni official has warned of the outbreak of a civil war if Houthi rebels seize the city.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Warplanes Bomb Houthi Positions in Yemen
Warplanes of the Royal Saudi Air Force bombed the positions of Yemen’s Houthi militia and destroyed most of their air defenses, Al Arabiya News Channel reported early on Thursday.
Arab Gulf states had announced that they have decided to “repel Houthi aggression” in neighboring Yemen, following a request from the country’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
In their joint statement Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait said they “decided to repel Houthi militias, al-Qaeda and ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] in the country.”
The Gulf states warned that the Houthi coup in Yemen represented a “major threat” to the region’s stability.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Genetic Tests Lead to 165,000 Break-Ups
Thousands of couples have called off their engagements in Saudi Arabia as a result of mandatory pre-marital health checks, it’s reported.
In the past year, about 165,000 couples have decided not to get married after receiving test results showing “genetic incompatibilities”, the Saudi Gazette website reports. The tests are mandatory for couples who are planning to tie the knot, and screen for a number of diseases, including sickle-cell anaemia and HIV. Dr Mohammad al-Saidi, from the health ministry, says the aim is to reduce the risk of parents passing on illnesses or genetic disorders to their children. According to Dr Saidi, 60% of couples end their engagements after receiving their results, which he says is a sign of success.
Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of genetic diseases in the world. Pre-marital health tests aim to prevent marriages between close relatives — a longstanding practice in Saudi Arabia — which can lead to serious medical problems in offspring.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia Masses Troops Along Yemeni Border
Yemeni foreign minister calls for Arab League intervention
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT — Arab media reported on Wednesday that Saudi troops and vehicles had been massed along the country’s border with Yemen. The Houthi Shia rebels, who took over the country’s capital in September last year, are from the border with Saudi Arabia in the north. Meanwhile, in contrast with the news reported in the morning, Yemeni president Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi is said to b still in Aden in a “safe location”, after being forced to leave his residence. Houthi rebels — backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh — continue to advance towards the city in the southern part of the country. Confirmation was given by Foreign Minister Riad Yassin, who reiterated a request for “Arab nations” to halt the advance of the Iran-backed Houthis. “We have asked the Arab League for a military and political intervention,” the minister said, announcing that a meeting on Yemen would be held on Thursday on the sidelines of an Arab League ministerial meeting scheduled in Sharm El-Sheikh to prepare for the weekend’s summit. “We have seen that the secretary general understands the Yemeni request and that the crisis in Yemen is serious,” Yassin said, noting that the country “needs urgent and rapid intervention by all Arab nations.” (ANSAmed).
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Officials Fear Iran Might Attack American Troops in Iraq: Report
U.S. officials have growing concerns Iran might launch attacks against American troops in Iraq should nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers collapse, journal Politico reported on Wednesday.
The U.S. officials, according to the report, voiced concern that a collapse in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France, plus Germany) could embolden Iranian hard-liners and potentially lead to attacks on Americans in Iraq.
According to the report, U.S. officials also voiced concern over the safety of U.S. troops in Iraq in relation to U.S. attempts to see the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of Iran’s principal allies in the region.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
US “Loses” $500 Million in Weapons Given to Yemen, Now in Al-Qaeda Hands
Nobody could have possibly foreseen that yet another US foreign diplomacy “success story” would turn out to be an epic disaster. Well, nobody, except for those who accurately predict thatevery US intervention abroad is now a staggering fiasco (for everyone involved except the US military-industrial complex of course). As for Yemen, the outcome was clear long ago: •Yemen’s US-Backed Government & President Resign •Obama’s “Partners” In Yemen Overthrown As Presidential Palace Falls To Local Militiamen •Deserted US Embassy In Yemen Immediately Seized By Armed Rebels •The Coup Is Complete: US Embassy In Yemen Shutting Down, Ambassador To Leave By Wednesday
And, naturally, after noting that “the employees said that more than 20 vehicles were taken by the fighters after the Americans departed from Sanaa’s airport” we asked how long until we have a “tabulation of losses to US taxpayers, just like the great Islamic State ‘robbery’ of hundreds of millions in US military equipment in Iraq?” That, of course, was another epic US intervention success story.
Anyway, thanks to WaPo we have an answer: according to Jeff Bezos’ recent media acquisition, “the Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen.”
Obviously, “can’t account for” means “has lost.” But while the US does not know where nearly half a billion in weapons can be found, it is more than informed who is the current owner: there are”fears that the weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.” And just like that, America’s now laughable, pathetic foreign policy has not only resulted in another US-supported administration to be exiled or worse, but is has directly armed the adversary.
[Comment: “Loses” — yeah sure. This arming of adversaries seems to be happening a lot. It is probably a planned “loss”.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Conducting Airstrikes to Help Iraq Retake Tikrit
WASHINGTON (AP) — At Iraq’s request, the U.S. began airstrikes in Tikrit on Wednesday in support of a stalled Iraqi ground offensive to retake the city from Islamic State fighters. The bombing marked a significant expansion of the U.S. military role in Iraq.
“These strikes are intended to destroy ISIL strongholds with precision, thereby saving innocent Iraqi lives while minimizing” unintended damage to civilian structures, Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, the commander of the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State group, said in a written statement.
“This will further enable Iraqi forces under Iraqi command to maneuver and defeat ISIL in the vicinity of Tikrit,” Terry said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
Tikrit is deemed an important test of the ability of Iraq, with coalition support, to retake ground it ceded to the Islamic State last year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Conducting Airstrikes to Help Iraqi Forces Retake Tikrit
The Pentagon gave orders for U.S. and coalition forces to begin airstrikes to help Iraqi forces retake Tikrit, a senior U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday.
Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Iraqi government requested coalition support and that operations were ongoing Wednesday. A statement from the Combined Joint Task Force, the U.S. military command overseeing operations in Iraq, said the caolition was also providing intelligence and were assisting Iraqi Security Forces headquarters in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or ISIL.
An Associated Press reporter in Tikrit reported hearing warplanes overhead late Wednesday, followed by multiple explosions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Yemen’s President Flees Country by Sea Amid Rebel Advance
Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled the country by sea Wednesday on a boat from Aden, his destination a secret, as Shiite rebels and their allies advanced on the southern port city where he had taken refuge, captured his defense minister and seized the city’s airport.
A Yemeni official would not say where the deposed leader fled to, but did tell Fox News: “He is safe. That’s all I can say at this point.”
Over the past year, the Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are believed to be supported by Iran, have battled their way out of their northern strongholds, overwhelmed the capital, Sanaa, seized province after province in the north and worked their way south.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Superhighway: Russian Official Proposes Road That Could Connect London to NYC
One of Russia’s most powerful tycoons and a close pal of President Vladimir Putin has proposed a long and winding road that theoretically could connect Great Britain to Alaska, via Mother Russia. And while a nearly 13,000-mile highway sounds like a stretch — a really long stretch — the major roadblock is likely money, not feasibility.
“This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project,” Russian Railways boss Vladimir Yakunin told the Russian Academy of Science, where he presented his plan for the Trans-Eurasian belt Development, which he acknowledged would cost “trillions” of dollars.
The road would link thousands of miles of existing byways and bridges across Russia, a span of more than 6,000 miles. From the west, it could then connect to roads in Europe, including the Chunnel Tunnel, which connects Great Britain and France.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US House Votes 348-48 to Arm Ukraine, Russia Warns Lethal Aid Will “Explode the Whole Situation”
The House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Obama to send lethal aid to Ukraine.
[Comment: More gasoline to “help” put out the fire.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School
In February, “ArbCom” voted to expel “Wifione” from Wikipedia.
No idea what “ArbCom” is? You’re not the only one. It’s the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, the highest court in Wikipedia land. And Wifione was a Wikipedia “administrator” account, run by persons unknown, that was accused of manipulating the Wikipedia site of an unaccredited business school in India by deleting links to numerous media reports alleging it scammed students into paying hefty sums for worthless degrees.
For four years, that Wikipedia page was a primary marketing tool of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), which at one time boasted a network of 18 branches and tens of thousands of students. It lured students with the promise of an MBA and partnerships with international universities in the United States and Europe…
India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper.
[Comment: Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students’ lives,” an Indian journalist quoted in the story says]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Official: At Least 3 Members of ‘Taliban 5’ Trying to Reconnect With Terror Networks
At least three of the five Taliban leaders traded last year for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have tried to plug back into their old terror networks, a government official familiar with the intelligence told Fox News, describing it as an attempt to “re-engage.”
The new allegations come as Bergdahl now faces desertion charges, and as the one-year deal governing the former Guantanamo detainees’ supervised release in the Gulf nation of Qatar is set to expire — at the end of May.
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency recently told Congress that, after that expiration, all his officers can do is warn the U.S. government if the men return to the battlefield.
[These vermin for a deserter-defector, the search for whom cost several good soldiers their lives. How’s that hopey-changy thing workin’ out for us? — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
Tens of Thousands in Singapore Queue Up to Eight Hours to View Lee Kuan Yew’s Coffin
Singaporeans wept on the streets and gathered in their thousands today to pay their respects to founding leader Lee Kuan Yew as his flag-draped coffin was transported on a gun carriage to parliament for public viewing.
By the afternoon, Singaporeans were waiting for up to eight hours in queues that snaked around the central business district, many with umbrellas unfurled in the 33-degree Celsius heat, to pay their respects for the late leader.
The 91-year-old patriarch died on Monday after half a century in government, during which Singapore was transformed from a poor British colonial outpost into one of the world’s richest societies.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Afghan Translator Who Became a 9/11 Millionaire
Afghanistan claims to be “open for business”, and some super-rich Afghans have begun investing in their own country. But how soon can their money start replacing the billions of dollars in overseas aid the country has had so far?
The “9/11 millionaire” is how Afghan entrepreneur and businessman Fahim Hashimy is often described. He made his fortune, which he modestly calls “small-sized”, from contracts supplying Americans in the wartime years.
At 35, he now heads an empire, the Hashimy Group, with an average turnover of more than $200m (£134m) a year, which includes Afghanistan’s second-biggest TV station, 1TV, as well as logistics and construction companies. He also launched East Horizon, a low-cost domestic airline, in 2013.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Cheap Eurozone Takeaway Fuels Chinese Appetites
The inexorable decline of the single currency offers ambitious Chinese firms a bargain buffet of eurozone business, analysts say, with this weekend’s multibillion deal for Italian tyremaker Pirelli only the latest course in an acquisition binge.
Less than a year ago the euro was worth nearly $1.40 on international markets. Earlier this month it stood at less than $1.05, down by a quarter as the European Central Bank embarks on a massive stimulus programme while the US Federal Reserve is widely expected to start raising interest rates.
By the standards of first-world forex markets it ranks as a collapse.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China’s Moderate Wealthy ‘Will Have Double the Cash of US Counterparts by 2020’
The total wealth held by China’s moderately wealthy — households with financial assets of between US$100,000 to US$2 million — will be double that of their American counterparts in 2020, a study shows.
The United States topped the list last year with households from this wealth segment holding US$23 trillion in financial assets, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit global report sponsored by Citi.
The report, which measured the trend in 32 countries, says this group — which it calls “the new wealth builders” (NWBs) — is the world’s fastest growing wealth segment. China occupied second place in last year’s report when the nation’s NWB assets amounted to US$19.5 trillion.
But the Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts that the US will soon cede the top spot to China. This wealth segment will grow faster in the world’s second-largest economy because of its population advantage and a rate of economic growth fuelled by the loosening of monetary and fiscal policy, the report said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China’s Hydrogen-Powered Future Starts in Trams, Not Cars
The sleek, orange locomotive that made its debut this month in Qingdao, China, resembles a high-speed bullet train, at least until it moves. But this new vehicle—a tram, not a train—tops out at about 43 miles per hour, a fraction of the 200mph speeds of Japan’s Shinkansen trains.
In smog-choked China, however, speed’s not as important as what the new tram leaves behind it: Its only emission is water. The tram, the first of its kind in the world, runs on hydrogen power via onboard fuel cells. Refueling takes just three minutes, after which a three-car tram capable of carrying as many as 380 passengers can run for about 62 miles.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Tourists Shun Package Trips in Favour of Independent Travel
Mainland Chinese holidaymakers may give the impression that they favour package tours, but most of the country’s young travellers prefer to organise their own itineraries, a recent industry report shows.
The report, by Qyer.com, which offers budget travel plans and information on cheap flights and hotels, said more than 70 per cent of outbound tourists last year were independent travellers, meaning they planned and booked their trips themselves instead of joining tour groups.
Of last year’s 109 million out-bound trips, 77 million were made by independent travellers — about 20 per cent more than 2013’s 64 million.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘No Africans’ Chinese Restaurant Owner Arrested in Nairobi
The owner of a Chinese restaurant in Nairobi that operated a “no Africans” policy has been arrested after media reports about the establishment triggered an outcry on social media.
Zhao Yang was charged with operating a restaurant without a valid licence only hours after the Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest newspaper, published a front-page story about the restaurant.
Co-owner Esther Zhao told the newspaper that Africans posed a security risk and needed to be kept out after 5pm. “We don’t admit Africans that we don’t know because you never know who is al-Shabaab and who isn’t,” she said, referring to the Somali-based terror group blamed for a number of attacks in Kenya in recent years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Zimbabweans Threaten to Dig Up the Grave of Cecil Rhodes
The grave of Cecil Rhodes in Zimbabwe could be dug up after anti-colonial protests.
Rhodes is buried at a site he chose, known as World’s View, in the Matopos Hills, half-an-hour’s drive south of Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo. His grave is a major tourist attraction in one of the poorest parts of Zimbabwe.
But some of President Robert Mugabe’s supporters said they would dig up the grave in solidarity with protests in South Africa calling for the removal of Rhodes’s statue from Cape Town University.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Plan to Upgrade Falklands Military Installations Upsets Argentina
Argentina has reacted angrily to Britain’s plans to beef up and modernize its military installations in the Falklands Islands over the possibility of an invasion by the government in Buenos Aires.
Argentinean Defense Minister Agustín Rossi on Tuesday called the British decision “madness,” and said there had been no official communication from London explaining the plan. Rossi stressed that there was there no Argentinean policy contemplating an invasion.
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told parliament on Tuesday that there was “a very live threat” that Argentina might invade the South Atlantic archipelago as the then-military government did 33 years ago in 1982.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Documents Show DHS Released 165,900 Convicted Criminal Aliens Within Last Year
The ICE documents confirm a May 2014 Center Immigration Studies (CIS) report showing that in 2013 ICE freed 36,007 convicted criminal aliens, who had nearly 88,000 convictions, including 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, and 303 kidnapping convictions.
As has been previously reported, and is evidenced in these documents, the 36,007 criminal aliens freed by ICE in 2013 were just the tip of the iceberg. In a DHS “Overview of ICE” document marked “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” the following figures are reported through April 26, 2014 [NOTE: “Final Order” indicates the illegal aliens were ordered to leave the country, but have not done so and remain free]:
[Comment: All planned to disrupt and destabilize the country. To the point where people clamour for the government to “do something”. Solution — a police state. Classic “Problem, Reaction, Solution. Create the problem in order to get the desired reaction. Implement the “Solution” that would never have been approved by public if the problem had not been created in the first place.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Voters in every ethnic group want the number of migrants coming to Britain to be cut, reveals a report out today.
Overall, the survey found that 79 per cent of respondents thought immigration levels should be reduced with 59 per cent wanting a big drop.
This support for stricter border controls was shared by people from all ethnic groups, according to analysis by campaign group Migration Watch.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Robert Carl Jordan, 56, has until April 6 to appeal a Government decision to send him back to the U.S, because they say he does not have the right paperwork to prove he can stay in the UK.
[Comment: Why no “right to family life” for this man? Other commenter to article note:” Absolutely incredible, what happened to this decent, law abiding, hard working taxpayer “Right to a family life”. the one we freely give to foriegn rapists and the like along with legal aid for a barrister. “ ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Lampedusa Massacre; PM Requests 20 Yrs
Tunisian on trial for 366 migrants killed October 3, 2013
(ANSAmed) — AGRIGENTO, MARCH 25 — Italian Prosecutor Andrea Maggioni asked for 20 years in prison for Tunisian Khaled Bensalem, 36, accused of multiple manslaughter and catastrophe.
Bensalem was allegedly the illegal immigrant smuggler who’s boat capsized on October 3, 2013 off the coast of Lampedusa, causing 366 deaths.
The Tunisian is on trial under the summary procedure before judge Stefano Zammuto.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Many Costs of Obama’s Amnesty
by Phyllis Schlafly
Rector estimates that the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits the immigrants who came here illegally now receive, plus other goodies such as EITC and ACTC cash, will encourage increased illegal immigration in the future. The average American, whose children and grandchildren will end up burdened with this enormous debt, must ask whether someone is trying to destroy America.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Affirmative Action Thrives at Most Selective Colleges
Colleges across the country are trying to diversify their freshman classes, but are doing so on an ever-changing legal terrain about whether, and to what extent, they may consider race in admissions policy.
“The practice of race-conscious admissions is not the sole domain of the most selective institutions,” said Lorelle Espinosa, assistant vice president of the Center for Policy Research and Strategy at the American Council on Education, a higher-education advocacy group.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
New Trend: ‘Radically Inclusive’ Churches That Embrace All Religions and All Lifestyles
If you want as many people to attend your church as possible, why limit yourself to just Christians?
All over America, “radically inclusive” churches that embrace all religions and all lifestyles are starting to pop up.
Church services that incorporate elements of Hinduism, Islam, native American religions and even Wicca are becoming increasingly common. And even if you don’t believe anything at all, that is okay with these churches too. In fact, as you will see below, one Presbyterian minister in Oregon is even inviting people to “bring their own god” to church. But if these churches don’t really stand for anything at all, what is their purpose? And what does the popularity of these churches say about the future of religion in America?
One such church that has gotten quite a bit of attention lately is led by D.E. Paulk. The son of Earl Paulk, he was once considered to be the “heir apparent” at one of the largest megachurches in America. But these days he leads worship at a church that recognizes “all gods and prophets, including Mohammed”…
[Comment: Soon it will look like the ‘church’ portrayed in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Southern US Strawberry Festival Sparks a Race Row
A poster for a Louisiana strawberry festival showing two faceless black children has prompted sharply split online opinion over whether it is offensive and racist.
The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the small city near Lake Pontchartrain every April, and according to organisers is second in popularity in the state only to Mardi Gras itself.
When the festival unveiled its official poster on Wednesday — featuring faceless African American children wearing their white Sunday best and holding a basket of strawberries — it took less than 24 hours to generate bitter disagreement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Philosophy Has to be About More Than White Men
by Minna Salami
Across the country, students have been “dismantling the master’s house”. They weren’t smashing their principals’ offices, but rather demanding a revision of their predominantly white, predominantly male curricula. From UCL to LSE to York, Warwick, Nottingham and Kent, the student-led campaign “Why Is My Curriculum White?” has attracted thousands of people concerned that the course content at universities across the country reflects white dominance and under-represents black people.
It is about time too. The demographics of Britain are changing. Ethnicity, religion, heritage, language are increasingly part of the national discussion. Universities play a key role in shaping thought and policy that can relieve current tensions, and foster a culture of justice and equality. However, they can only do that if they themselves are just and equal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Challenging Islam’s Warrant to Kill
By Mark Durie
[…]
There is much talk these days of radicalization and deradicalization. At the heart of both processes are religious ideas: theological dogmas. What are some of the key theological principles which might cause a Muslim to take this call seriously? What is the Islamic reasoning given by the IS Hacking Division in support of its call to kill non-Muslims?
The Hacking Division quotes two verses of the Qur’an:
Sura 9:123 ‘fight believers who are near to you’ and Sura 9:14 ‘Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them, and satisfy [actually yashfi ‘heal’] the breasts of a believing people’.
The meaning of these two verses hangs upon the word qatilu, translated here as ‘fight’. The verbal root q-t-l from which qatilu is formed means ‘kill’, so the the Arabic actually means ‘fight to kill’ (see discussion here). These Qur’anic verses truly are commands to kill non-Muslims.
The second quoted verse, from Sura 9:14, puts forward a view concerning what Muslims should do about emotional pain and anguish they may experience because of unbelievers. ‘Allah’, the verse says, ‘will heal the breasts’ of Muslims, — and then the sentence continues into the next verse — ‘and remove the rage of their hearts’.
The key concept here is that if Muslims have strong feelings, including anger, against non-Muslims, their emotional distress will subside and be ‘healed’ as they kill, humiliate and triumph over non-believers.
[Their emotional distress will also subside if their attacks on non-believers elicit a fast, accurate, and condign response. Walk heavy and watch your six. — PW]
| — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey | [Return to headlines] |
“The deaths of those innocent passengers were the result of a deranged crew member, and had nothing to do with Islam.” – Barack Obama, March 25, 2015
It is interesting that the French authorities have not released the name of the pilot who remained in the cockpit.
What are the odds it is a Muslim name?
No connection *yet* to Islam; perhaps, though, to depression? See this Daily Mail articl (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3012053/Andreas-Lubitz-Germanwings-flight-9525-French-alps-crash-French-alps-Germanwings-plane-crash-Airbus-A320-Barcelonnette.html ) for the background of Andreas Guenter Lubitz, co-pilot of the Germanwings 9525 plane.
1) I thought the Fields Medal was the Nobel of mathematics.
2) Philosophy can stop being about white men when any other ethnic group actually contributes to it.
(tee hee) Maybe the course could add V.S. Naipaul? Known for his warnings re. Islam….
And Isaiah Berlin, often quoted here. Yes, he was white, but Jewish, and they’re an ethnic minority- but not a PC one. My brain hurts!
Naipaul’s “Among the Believers” is excellent. We read it in the 80s, from the library in town. They’d never put that on the front shelf now.
I found it very cheap a few years before the Baron’s eye problems and we re-read it. Still definitive…
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
The publisher re-issued it in 2011, I see. And subtitled it with the Islamic part. So I must have bought it before 2011 – wow, time flies – since I paid the usual nickel plus shipping for the original version.
Here’s the 1981 version at Abe, for a dollar:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=10697551793&searchurl=isbn%3D9780394509693
There are others for +$3.00 and free shipping.
It’s a book well worth owning. I don’t think the new version is any different except for the subtitle and perhaps an introduction.
According to comments on pilots’ forum pprune.org (a great source of intelligent comments, about all things aviation), the NYT have previously been caught making such rumour-based announcements too early, which they then had to backtrack on. And so far, they’re the only ones reporting the “locked cockpit” story (excluding all the reports citing theirs).
But, assuming they’re correct this time, yes, it seems like there’d have to be a lot of coincidences for it NOT to be foul play. The version above, or the other pilot forgetting the emergency code, and his captain at the very same time having a seizure/heart attack, plus the aircraft’s autopilot being disengaged and the plane being put into a steep dive.
At pprune.org, many are also asking why the names of the pilots have not yet been released… the longer this goes on, the more it indicates that there IS something strange about the pilots, surely? And why else would their names be withheld, other than because they’re cultural enrichers, with the authorities putting a premium on not silencing the “JIM” angle, at all costs?
I meant, of course “silencing the “JIM” angle at all costs”
Small pieces of news. Perhaps irrelevant, perhaps not.
Andrew Lubitz, the Airbus Killer, studied in the school of Bremen.
A couple of months ago, Bremen become famous because one of its mosques became the first one to be closed in Germany because of his support to IS.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fdc_1417809722