Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/19/2015

The Islamic State has released another video that purports to show the massacre of thirty people on the seashore in Libya. The victims, who were beheaded or shot, appear to be Ethiopian Christians.

In other news, Norway’s Labour Party has voted to recognize “Palestine”.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Papa Whiskey, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Financial Crisis
» China Cuts Banks’ Reserve Ratio Requirement as Growth Slows
 
USA
» Checking Charlie Hebdo’s Privilege
» Concord Hymn
» Ex-Drug Squad Officer Says He Stole Drug Money, Planted Evidence Too Many Times to Count
» Reagan Shooter John Hinckley Struggles for a Life on the Outside
» Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Daughter Heading to Jail After an Alleged Theft Violates Her Bail
» Revolt: Black Brunch Protesters Forcibly Ejected by Fed Up MN Diners and Staff
 
Europe and the EU
» By 2017, Norway Wants to be the First Country to Ditch FM Radio Entirely
» E. ON Italy Managers, Execs Nabbed on Pollution Charges
» Finns Vote, Expected to Oust Government
» France: Arsonists Destroy Historic Church
» French Court Overturns Ban on ‘Racist’ Cakes
» Italian Wine Production Last Year Hit 44.7mln Hectolitres
» Italy: Alleged Cop Says He Would ‘Raid Diaz 1,000 Times Over’
» Italy: Cragnotti Facing New Legal Woes in Bankruptcy Case
» Poland Summons U.S. Ambassador Over FBI Head’s Holocaust Remarks
» Thousands March in Europe Against US-EU Free Trade Pact
» Warning: ‘Denmark Will be Hit by a Terror Attack’
 
North Africa
» IS Shows Purported Executions in Libya of Ethiopia Christians
» ISIL Video Purports to Show Killing of Ethiopian Christians
» ISIS Video Purports to Show Killing of Ethiopians in Libya
» Islamic State Shot and Beheaded 30 People in Libya: Video
» Mass Killings of Christians Purported in IS Group Video
» Massacre of Ethiopian Christians in Libya Claimed by ISIL
» ‘You Will Not Have Safety Until You Accept Islam’: ISIS Kills 30 Ethiopian ‘Followers of the Cross’
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Norway’s Labour Party to Recognise Palestine
» Palestinian Cabinet Ministers Make Rare Visit to Gaza on Unity Mission
 
Middle East
» Armenian Genocide: Turkish Politicians Criticise the EU; Mufti Reacts to Pope’s Words Threatening to Turn Saint Sophia Into a Mosque
» Christians Driven From the Ruins of Nineveh
» In Tightly Ruled Saudi, Yemen War is ‘Something Good’
 
Russia
» Russia Will Never be Vassal of U. S., Says Putin
 
South Asia
» Bangladesh: Bishop of Sylhet: Protection for Tribal Catholics, Victims of Expropriation and Threats
» Husband Sets Wife on Fire in Pakistan ‘Honor Killing’
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Boko Haram Adopts ISIS’ Bloody Religious Cleansing Strategy
» Cameroon Attack: Boko Haram Kills 19, ‘Many Beheaded’
» Immigrants Describe Threats in South Africa
 
Latin America
» Gun Battle Kills Three in Mexican Border City of Reynosa
 
Immigration
» Liberals: Help Roma in Romania Instead of in Sweden
» Tsipras Says EU Needs Urgent Plan to Tackle Migrant Crisis
 
General
» The Printed Organs Coming to a Body Near You
 

China Cuts Banks’ Reserve Ratio Requirement as Growth Slows

China’s central bank announced Sunday it would cut the level of funds that commercial banks must hold in reserve by one percentage point, the second such move this year to boost lending.

The move, effective Monday, comes days after the world’s second largest economy reported its worst quarterly growth figure for six years.

In a statement on its website, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said the cut would “further enhance the ability of financial institutions to support restructuring”.

The reduction in the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) — the amount of cash banks must keep on hand — follows a similar move in early February, which was the first across-the-board cut since May 2012…

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

Checking Charlie Hebdo’s Privilege

By Ross Douthat

A LIVING cartoonist lecturing his murdered peers makes for a curious spectacle, but that’s what transpired at journalism’s George Polk Awards a week ago. The lecturer was Garry Trudeau, of “Doonesbury” fame; his subject was the cartoonists for Charlie Hebdo, the Parisian satire rag, who were gunned down by fanatics because of their mockery of Muhammad and Islam.

Trudeau did not exactly say they had it coming, but he passed judgment on their sins — not the sin of blasphemy, but the sin of picking a politically unsuitable target for their jabs. By mocking things sacred to Europe’s Muslim immigrants, Trudeau lamented, the Hebdo cartoonists were “punching downward … attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority.” This was both a moral and an aesthetic failing, because “ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny — it’s just mean.”

Trudeau is hardly the first writer to accuse the Hebdo cartoonists of “punching down.” That phrase, and the critique it implies of “Je Suis Charlie” solidarity, has circulated on the Western left ever since the massacre. And understandably, because it reflects a moral theory popular among our intelligentsia, one that The Atlantic’s David Frum, in a response to Trudeau, distilled as follows: In any given conflict, first “identify the bearer of privilege,” then “hold the privilege-bearer responsible.”

[“Punching downward” was what the hyper-privileged hard-leftist Trudeau did — on the French cartoonists’ graves. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

Concord Hymn

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
      Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
      And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
      Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
      Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
      We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
      When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
      To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
      The shaft we raise to them and thee.

[This isn’t exactly “news,” but as the public prints are full of drivel about the twentieth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, it seems meet to spare a thought for the 240th anniversary of “the shot heard round the world.” — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

Ex-Drug Squad Officer Says He Stole Drug Money, Planted Evidence Too Many Times to Count

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A disgraced ex-police officer testifying against his drug squad colleagues acknowledged Tuesday that he stole drug money, planted evidence and lied on police paperwork too many times to count.

Jeffrey Walker told jurors that the Philadelphia Police Department drug squad targeted white “college-boy … khaki-pants types” who were “easy to intimidate.”

That matches the description of some of the drug dealers who have testified at the six-week police corruption trial that the squad stole as much as $110,000 at a time during violent, no-warrant raids.

Lead defendant Thomas Liciardello always got a cut of the stolen money, while the others split “jobs” that they worked, Walker said. The city’s police brass often celebrated the squad’s work with splashy news conferences to announce large seizures.

“They liked that, as far as the bosses and supervisors were concerned. It made them look good. It was nothing but a dog and pony show,” Walker testified.

More than 160 drug convictions have been overturned since Walker pleaded guilty and the others were named in a 26-count indictment. Scores of civil-rights lawsuits are pending over the arrests.

[Of course, when you have a badge and needn’t worry about consequences, anybody’s easy to intimidate. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

Reagan Shooter John Hinckley Struggles for a Life on the Outside

The last man to shoot an American president now spends most of the year in a house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course in a gated community.

He likes taking walks, plays guitar and paints, eats at Wendy’s and drives around in a Toyota. Often, as if to avoid detection, he puts on a hat or visor before going out.

John Hinckley Jr. lives much of the year like any average Joe: shopping, eating out, watching movies.

Hinckley was just 25 when he shot President Ronald Reagan and three others in 1981. When jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity, they said he needed treatment, not a lifetime in confinement. The verdict left open the possibility that he would one day live outside a mental hospital.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Daughter Heading to Jail After an Alleged Theft Violates Her Bail

Jeri L. Wright, the daughter of President Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, was headed to jail Monday after a judge revoked a deal that allowed her to remain free as she awaits sentencing on a money-laundering conviction.

U.S. District Judge Sue E. Myerscough ruled there was probable cause to believe Wright committed a separate theft while on bail, thereby violating terms of her supervised release, according to Sharon Paul, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Central District of Illinois.

The judge ordered Wright, who appeared in court in Springfield, to be taken into custody by U.S. marshals.

Wright, 49, of Hazel Crest, is the daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago minister known nationwide for the controversy his sermons created for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Last March, Jeri Wright was found guilty of money-laundering, lying to federal investigators and lying to a grand jury over her role in a state grant-fraud scheme orchestrated by one of her childhood friends, former Country Club Hills Police Chief Regina Evans.

Prosecutors now say Wright was taking part in another scheme — this one involving ghost payrolling — even as she was standing trial.

[Looks like hustling runs in the family. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

Revolt: Black Brunch Protesters Forcibly Ejected by Fed Up MN Diners and Staff

[ . . . ]

Black Brunch protesters in Excelsior, Minnesota were run out of Maynard’s restaurant Sunday morning by angry customers and staff. The reaction was so swift one protester said they did not have time to take photos.

[…]

Protesters complained the owners put their hands on them, took their signs and encouraged patrons to yell at them.

[This post contains lots of tweets by the black racist punks. About time someone put a boot in these people’s behinds. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

By 2017, Norway Wants to be the First Country to Ditch FM Radio Entirely

This week, Norway’s Ministry of Culture announced its plans to transition completely towards digital radio and turn off FM radio nationwide, according to an English report from Radio.no (the original announcement in Norwegian can be found here). The switch-off is scheduled to begin in January 2017, and it would make Norway the first country in the world to “decide upon an analogue switch-off for all major radio channels,” according to the announcement.

“This is an important day for everyone who loves radio,” said Thor Gjermund Eriksen, head of Norway’s national broadcaster NRK, in a release. “The minister’s decision allows us to concentrate our resources even more upon what is most important, namely to create high quality and diverse radio-content to our listeners.”

Several countries in Europe and Southeast Asia are in the process of similar transitions, but Norway is the first to set an end date (the country started this endeavor back in 1995).

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

E. ON Italy Managers, Execs Nabbed on Pollution Charges

German utility’s power plant ‘caused severe pollution’

(ANSA)- Rome, April 15 — Finance Police on Wednesday arrested two managers and suspended three executives at the Italian branch of German power utility E.On on charges of severe pollution at a thermal power plant near Sassari, the second largest city in Sardinia. Prosecutors say plant director Mario Bertolino, his deputy Livio Russo, CEO Salvatore Signoriello, human resources exec Paolo Venerucci, and administrator Alessandro Muscas failed to comply with environmental regulations. The latter three were suspended from their duties for two months.

E.ON is a European holding company based in Düsseldorf, Germany. It runs one of the world’s largest investor-owned electric utility service providers, reportedly operating in over 30 countries and serving over 33 million customers.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Finns Vote, Expected to Oust Government

Finns voted on Sunday in legislative elections expected to oust the coalition left-right government after a campaign that focused on how to lift Finland from a three-year economic slump.

Public opinion polls have predicted a resounding victory for the liberal-agrarian Centre Party leader Juha Sipila, a 53-year-old IT millionaire and newcomer to politics.

Polling stations across the country opened at 9:00 am, and were to close at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) when the results of advance voting — by which more than one-third of the electorate cast their ballots — were to be released.

Campaigning heavily on his business know-how, Sipila has vowed to get the economy back on track after three years of recession and stagnation, austerity and failed reforms…

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

France: Arsonists Destroy Historic Church

The night of April 16-17 was catastrophic in the town of Saint-Martin-le-Beau, near Tours. La Nouvelle République posted this article on April 18:

“We don’t understand, in a village like this”… Shock and sadness were reflected on the faces of passers-by and in the remarks heard yesterday morning in the town square. They had before their eyes a scene of desolation, punctuated only by the spinning lights, the movements of the firemen, the fire hoses coiling on the street and a barrier that held them at a distance. The roof of the church had been consumed and pieces of half-charred wood were falling with a crash in the nave.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

French Court Overturns Ban on ‘Racist’ Cakes

France’s top administrative court overturned a ruling on Thursday banning a baker in the south of France from displaying “racist” cakes in his shop window.

The court’s decision comes as a victory for Yannick Tavolaro, who has sold the so-called “God” and “Goddess” cakes — which depict men and women confected out of dark chocolate with oversize genitalia — at his bakery in the town of Grasse for the past 15 years.

Controversy over the confections began in March after the prominent anti-racism organization Platform for Reflection and Action against Anti-Black Racism (CRAN) called for the cakes to be banned following a complaint from a local resident.

CRAN took the case to court after Grasse’s mayor refused to have them removed…

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

Italian Wine Production Last Year Hit 44.7mln Hectolitres

(AGI) Rome, April 17 — Italy produced 44.7 million hectolitres of wine last year, reported the ministry of Agricultural Policies. It was less than the 50 million hectolitres in 2013, but in line with estimates. The DOP wines [those with Protected Designation of Origin] form 35 percent of national production, wines without a geographical denomination made up 34 percent and PGI [Protected Geographic Indicator] wines 29 percent.

Italy was second among the major wine producing countries in Europe. France was first (46.5 million hectolitres) and Spain third after a boom in 2013, with 43.4 million hectolitres.

Giorgio Mercuri, president of the Alliance of Agrifood Cooperatives, said: “In the next few years we should continue to keep an eye on our French cousins. We should keep the French at bay because of their efficiency in exploiting their products and territory, but Spain too, which is making significant investments in vineyards and wine production.”

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

Italy: Alleged Cop Says He Would ‘Raid Diaz 1,000 Times Over’

ECtHR condemned Italy for torture of protesters during raid

(ANSA) — Rome, April 14 — A Facebook user claiming to be a State Police officer wrote on his profile Tuesday that he was in the unit that conducted a 2001 raid on anti-G8 protesters in Genoa, and that he would do it again.

“I was at the Diaz (school, where the protesters were camping out) that night,” Fabio Tortosa wrote on his profile.

“I would go back in there a thousand times”.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) last Tuesday condemned Italy, finding that torture had occurred during the raid. In response, the government sped up a reading of its anti-torture bill, with the Lower House on Thursday approving an amendment increasing the maximum prison sentence for public officials found guilty of torture from 12 to 15 years.

State Police are investigating the authorship of the post and will initiate disciplinary proceedings should Tortosa turn out to be a member of the force, the department said in a statement.

The Diaz raid is perhaps Italy’s most notorious case of police brutality.

In the night assault on the Diaz school, hundreds of police attacked about 100 activists and a few journalists, wounding 82 and seriously injuring 61 — three critically and one, British journalist Mark Covell, left in a coma with rib and spinal injuries.

Officers planted evidence including two Molotov cocktails and hammers and knives from a nearby construction site to justify the raid.

Amnesty International called the event “the most serious suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Cragnotti Facing New Legal Woes in Bankruptcy Case

Magistrates probing Cirio CisimFood

(ANSA) — Rome, April 14 — Sergio Cragnotti, former owner of the Cirio food giant, was facing new legal woes Tuesday as a magistrate ordered a September trial into allegations of fraudulent bankruptcy.

It is allegedly that about 31 million euros went missing during the bankruptcy of Cirio subsidiary CisimFood, which ran catering operations at Rome’s two airports.

However, the preliminary hearing judge decided against proceeding against Cragnotti’s son Andrea, who was a director of the catering company.

Last Friday, an appeal court upheld sentences against the main defendants in the bankruptcy of another Cirio subsidiary, including a four-year prison term for former Banca di Roma official Cesare Geronzi.

At that time, Cragnotti’s sentence was trimmed by only four months leaving the former Lazio soccer club owner with a prison sentence of eight years plus eight months.

The Rome appeal court judges cut the sentence against Andrea Cragnotti to a term of two years and four months while his siblings Elisabetta and Massimo were absolved because of the statute of limitations.

In Italy, prison terms do not usually take effect until the appeals process is exhausted, with two appeals granted in each case.

Unicredit, one of Italy’s largest banks, later took over Banca di Roma and was fined 200 million euros for Banca di Roma’s role in the Cirio bankruptcy.

Founded in the mid-19th century, Cirio was Italy’s oldest food canner.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Poland Summons U.S. Ambassador Over FBI Head’s Holocaust Remarks

Poland has summoned the United States’ ambassador in Warsaw over an article written by a top U.S. intelligence official on Poland’s alleged responsibility for the Holocaust during World War Two, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

The article by FBI director James Comey, published in the Washington Post earlier this week, prompted an outcry in Poland and drew condemnation in the media and from politicians.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Thousands March in Europe Against US-EU Free Trade Pact

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Europe on Saturday to oppose the world’s biggest free trade pact between the US and European Union.

Resistance to the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is fierce in Germany, with tens of thousands joining demonstrations across the country, a spokesman for lobby group Attac Germany said.

In southern Germany’s Munich alone, 23,000 people joined the protest, while 2,000 turned up in Leipzig, 1,000 in Stuttgart and 700 in Frankfurt.

Demonstrations in other European cities also drew protesters, including 2,000 in Brussels, 1,000 in Madrid and Helsinki, and around 300 in Warsaw and Prague…

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

Warning: ‘Denmark Will be Hit by a Terror Attack’

Police have confirmed that a series of notes threatening a new and more extensive terror attack have been found in the same Copenhagen district where a gunman opened fire on a free speech debate.

Eleven notes have been found in the Copenhagen district of Østerbro warning of a new terror attack, TV2 Lorry reported Friday.

“Denmark will soon be hit by a terror attack that will make what happened on February 14 look like a prank — look forward to it,” the notes read.

Some of the notes were placed at Krudttønden, the cultural cafe in Østerbro where Omar El-Hussein opened fire on a free speech and blasphemy event, killing 55-year-old filmmaker Finn Nørgaard.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

IS Shows Purported Executions in Libya of Ethiopia Christians

TRIPOLI (AFP) — The Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday released a video purportedly showing the executions of some 30 Ethiopian Christians captured in Libya.

The footage released online shows one group of about 12 men being beheaded by militants on a beach and another group of at least 16 being shot in the head in a desert area…

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

ISIL Video Purports to Show Killing of Ethiopian Christians

Jane Onyanga-Omara

A video purporting to show the killing of Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State-affiliated militants in Libya has been released online.

The 29-minute video appears to show militants holding two groups of captives, one by an affiliate in eastern Libya known as Barka Province and the other by the Fazzan Province, an affiliate in the south.

A masked fighter wielding a pistol says Christians must convert to Islam or pay a special tax prescribed by the Quran, before the captives in the south are shown being shot dead and the captives in the east are beheaded on a beach.

[The Qur’anic verse this butcher-boy is citing is the notorious 9:29, and the tax is the ,em>jizya,/em> — essentially “protection” money paid by conquered peoples to their Muslim overlords. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

ISIS Video Purports to Show Killing of Ethiopians in Libya

A video released by the Islamic State group on Sunday appears to show the killing of two different groups of captured Ethiopian Christians by the extremist group’s Libyan affiliates.

The 29-minute online video purports to show militants holding two groups of captives. It says one group is held by an IS affiliate in eastern Libya known as Barka Province and the other by an affiliate in the south calling itself the Fazzan Province.

A masked fighter brandishing a pistol delivers a long statement, saying Christians must convert to Islam or pay a special tax prescribed by the Quran.

The video then switches between footage of the captives in the south being shot dead and the captives in the east being beheaded on a beach.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic State Shot and Beheaded 30 People in Libya: Video

Islamic State released a video on Sunday purporting to show its militants shooting and beheading what appeared to be about 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.

Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of the video but the killings were similar to past violence carried out by Islamic State, which has expanded its reach from strongholds in Iraq and Syria to chaotic Libya.

The video portrayed Christians as crusaders out to kill Muslims and then showed about 15 men beheaded on a beach and another group of the same size shot in their heads in scrubland.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered air strikes on Islamic State targets in February in Libya after the group posted a video of militants beheading 21 Egyptian Christians.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Mass Killings of Christians Purported in IS Group Video

The Islamic State (IS) group on Sunday released a video purportedly showing the executions of some 30 Ethiopian Christians captured in Libya.

The 29-minute video purports to show militants holding two groups of captives, described in a text on the screen as “followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church”.

A masked fighter in black brandishing a pistol makes a statement threatening Christians if they do not convert to Islam.

The video then switches between footage of one group of about 12 men being beheaded by masked militants on a beach and another group of at least 16 being shot in the head in a desert area…

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

Massacre of Ethiopian Christians in Libya Claimed by ISIL

International media report that a new video from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) shows the group killing captured Ethiopian Christians in Libya. The 29-minute video released online on Sunday shows two groups of dark-skinned captives and says one group is held by an ISIL affiliate in eastern Libya and the other by an affiliate in the south.

The video bore the official logo of the ISIL media arm Al-Furqan and resembled previous videos released by the group and a text on the screen identifies the men as “followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘You Will Not Have Safety Until You Accept Islam’: ISIS Kills 30 Ethiopian ‘Followers of the Cross’

By Heather Clark

A gruesome new video released by the barbaric Islamic group ISIS, which identifies itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, shows approximately 30 Ethiopians, who they identified as “followers of the cross,” being massacred in Libya.

The 29-minute video, entitled “Until It Came To Them — Clear Evidence,” begins with what is called a history of relations between Muslims and Christians, followed by footage of Islamists destroying churches, smashing gravesites and destroying religious icons.

A masked ISIS fighter brandishing a gun then appears and declares that Christians must either convert to Islam or pay a special tax, known as jizya, as outlined in Koran. For those who refuse, “we owe nothing except the edge of the sword,” he threatens.

“Muslim blood shed under the hands of your religions is not cheap,” the fighter states. “To the nation of the cross, we are now back again.”

Footage soon switches back and forth between two groups of Ethiopians, identified as “followers of the cross,” who are being lined up and marched to their death. The first group shows approximately 15 Ethiopian men being led by masked Islamists along a beach, and a second group of another 15 Ethiopian men being led in the desert.

The men, all dressed in jumpsuits—one group in orange and the other black—are forced to their knees while they await their death. The first group is beheaded with a long knife, and their heads are placed on top of their bodies. The second group is shot execution style in the head.

“You will not have safety even in your dreams, until you accept Islam,” the fighter, who resembles the identified “Jihadi John,” threatens. “Our battle is a battle between faith and blasphemy, between truth and falsehood.”

The footage is similar to another horrifying video released in February where 21 Egyptians were marched to their death and beheaded.

“All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together,” the ISIS fighter declared. “The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.”

[In a way, we can be grateful to these goons for showing us the true face of Islam. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

Norway’s Labour Party to Recognise Palestine

Norway is likely to join its neighbour Sweden and recognise Palestine as an independent state if the Labour Party wins the next parliamentary elections, the party’s leader said at its annual conference.

“If we receive the mandate to govern, we are open to recognising a Palestinian state,” Labour leader Jonas Gahr Støre said in a speech at the party’s annual conference. “Palestinians have a right to their own state. We should be careful not to sit here in Norway prescribing other solutions.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Palestinian Cabinet Ministers Make Rare Visit to Gaza on Unity Mission

Ten months after taking office, Cabinet ministers in a Palestinian unity government are making a rare visit to the Gaza Strip.

The Cabinet ministers, all from the West Bank, are spending the week in Gaza in hopes of wresting more control from the Islamic Hamas movement.

Hamas took control of Gaza from the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007. Abbas has governed in parts of the West Bank since then.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Armenian Genocide: Turkish Politicians Criticise the EU; Mufti Reacts to Pope’s Words Threatening to Turn Saint Sophia Into a Mosque

Erdogan’s moderate Islamist party as well as the Kemalist and right wing nationalist parties issue a statement slamming the European parliament as “partial” and “intolerant”. For the mufti of Ankara, Pope Francis’ statement was “extremely spectacular.” For the first time in 85 years, a passage from the Qur’an was recited at Saint Sophia. A symposium during Holy Birth Week was held in Istanbul on “The Prophet and Cohabitation Ethics and Law”.

Ankara (AsiaNews) — Turkish political parties (with one exception) released a joint statement against the European Parliament’s ‘genocide’ vote on the mass killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I.

At the same time, Mefail Hizli, the mufti of Ankara, spoke out against Pope Francis for his use of the word ‘genocide’ in connection with the mass slaughter of Armenians, saying that the pontiff’s remarks will accelerate the rededication of Istanbul’s Saint Sophia Basilica as a mosque.

On Wednesday, the European parliament passed the motion on the Armenian genocide. Calling on Ankara to acknowledge the event, it urged Turkey and Armenia to use the occasion of the centenary of the genocide to establish diplomatic relations.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as well as the main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), yesterday released a joint statement “harshly condemning the partial approach” of the European Parliament, which backed a motion calling the mass killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I a “genocide.”

The statement condemned the parliament’s “partial” approach as against “the idea of peace, toleration and building of a common future.”

“Despite our objections, the European Parliament prefers to deepen the problem and gap between our two societies . . . and prevent impartial and scientific research of the issue,” said the joint statement.

Only the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) abstained from signing the declaration, calling the reaction against the pope by Erdogan and the other parties as childish. Instead, “The government should found a truth and reconciliation commission in order to face the past,” HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtas.

For his part, the Mufti of Ankara Hizli Mefail said, “The statement that the Catholic world’s spiritual leader pope delivered three days ago, saying Armenians had been subjected to a genocide, is extremely spectacular”.

In his view, the pope’s statement reflects “a modern colour of the crusader wars launched in these lands for centuries.”

“Frankly, I believe that the pope’s remarks will only accelerate the process for Hagia Sophia to be re-opened for [Muslim] worship”.

The latter echoes other voices who, in recent years, have called for Saint Sophia Basilica to be turned into a mosque.

Following the city’s conquest by the Ottomans in 1453, the church was used as a mosque. This lasted until the authorities of Turkey’s new Republic reopened it in 1935 as a museum.

Last Friday, for the first time in 85 years, a Muslim cleric recited the Qur’an in Hagia Sophia.

A passage from the Qur’an was recited late on April 10 at a ceremony at the basilica to mark the opening of a new exhibition titled ‘Love of the Prophet’ as part of this year’s Holy Birth Week. This includes a symposium that opened today on “The Prophet and Cohabitation Ethics and Law”.

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

Christians Driven From the Ruins of Nineveh

By Christopher Howse

The ruins of Nineveh, once the biggest city in the world, lie beside the river Tigris. On the other side of the river stands Mosul, a city of a million, the largest place still under the rule of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil). A decade ago, 35,000 Christians lived in the city; last year there were 3,000; the day Isil took over all were either killed or fled.

I will not give a catalogue of the horrors in Iraq and Syria, but it is worth realising what is being lost with the death and exile of Christians there and the destruction of their churches and libraries.

[…]

The Christians of Iraq and Syria are no interlopers. They have been there from the beginning. They use Syriac in their worship, a language resembling the Aramaic that Jesus spoke.

They taught us. Before and after the Muslim conquest of their lands, Syriac-speaking Christians translated Greek works into their own language. When the West rediscovered Aristotle, it was largely thanks to Syriac scholars that copies of his works had been preserved. In the late eighth century, for example, when the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy wanted to study Aristotle, he borrowed manuscripts of the Organon and Topics from the Orthodox (Antiochian) monastery of Mar Mattai near Mosul, which was already over 400 years old. Mar Mattai monastery was taken by Isil last year and its monks expelled; some manuscripts are said to have been saved.

It’s the people that one feels sorry for. A generation ago, there were more than a million Christians living in Iraq, a country of 35 million. A year ago there were 400,000. About two thirds are Chaldean Catholic. Tens of thousands took refuge in the city of Erbil, which is under Kurdish protection.

[Be it noted yet again that these Islamic pogroms are being enabled by the premature withdrawal of American troops from the region by Barry Hussein. — PW]

           — Hat tip: Papa Whiskey [Return to headlines]
 

In Tightly Ruled Saudi, Yemen War is ‘Something Good’

A newspaper hails Saudi Arabia’s “brave armed men”. Students build a remote-controlled fighter plane as a tribute to warplanes bombing Yemeni rebels. A phone company offers patriotic songs as ringtones.

This is wartime in Saudi Arabia, a tightly controlled Islamic kingdom where almost every audible voice is behind the three-week-old air campaign against Shiite rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

“Our king has done something good,” said Saud Mubarak, an unemployed man in his mid-20s.

He echoed the government view of the absolute monarchy that the Saudi-led military coalition acted to stop the Huthi rebels’ advance and to help the legitimate government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi…

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

Russia Will Never be Vassal of U. S., Says Putin

(AGI) Rome, April 16 — The Russian economy remains strong, said President Vladimir Putin in a live TV broadcast, despite sanctions imposed by the West following its actions in Ukraine.

He also used a question-and-answer session with the public to attack Kiev for what he called isolating its eastern regions.

“Moscow does not consider anybody to be its enemy. If anything, it is the U.S. who don’t need allies but vassals,” he said. The annual marathon-interview with the president was overshadowed by the news of the killing of Oles Buzina, a pro-Russian journalist, who was shot at the door of his home in Kiev by two hooded men on Thursday. This was “not the first political murder in Ukraine,” said the president. Moscow’s real enemies are terrorism and international crime, he told the TV audience, but he also criticised Kiev for cutting off the Russian-speaking eastern Donbass regions. “The Minsk agreements need to be implemented — we are doing everything to implement them, the Kiev authorities are in no hurry, but the sanctions against us remain,” he said. They are aimed at impeding Russia’s development, Mr Putin said, but the economy and the Ruble remained stable and inflation is under control. He claimed there are no “Red troops” in Ukraine’s eastern regions and assured a caller that “a war between Russia and Ukraine is impossible”. He also defended the decision to give green light to the sale of S-300 missiles to Tehran, as they could be a deterrent for wars in the region. “Today Iran’s partners are showing great flexibility and an evident wish to reach compromise on Iran’s nuclear programme.” This was why Russia saw no reason to maintain the ban, he said. At home the worst of Russia’s problems are over. Its economy will start growing in less than two years, he said. The murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was a “tragic and shameful event”, but he praised the work of investigators. He said five people, all of Chechen origin, were arrested 36 hours after the killing, and one was believed to have committed the murder. He remained vague, however, on bringing to justice those who ordered the killing. “I don’t know, it will become clearer as the investigation proceeds,” he said.

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

Bangladesh: Bishop of Sylhet: Protection for Tribal Catholics, Victims of Expropriation and Threats

At Easter a village inhabited by Khasia suffered a heavy attack from a group of Muslims. The real aim of the aggression was to force the community to abandon the local tea plantation, of which it has legal usufruct. The pastor: “We live in fear.”

Sylhet (AsiaNews) — “We want justice and security for our priests and our faithful. We hope that the government will find a peaceful solution and that our people can live free from tensions. “ This is the appeal that Msgr. Bejoy N. D’Cruze OMI, Bishop of Syleht, launches through AsiaNews after the recent attacks against the tribal Khasia living in his diocese. “They are a very peaceful community — the prelate said — but often fall victims of the Bengali majority “.

April 6 last, Syed Ara Begum, a Muslim owner of a tea plantation, along with at least 35 people attacked the Khasia village that falls under the jurisdiction of the parish of Sreemongal (Moulovobazar district). The population — all Catholic — was celebrating Mass for Easter Monday. Hearing the cries, the pastor Fr. James Kiron Rozario CSC ran to the site to save them. The crowd of Muslims, however, attacked him with a knife, seriously wounding him and threatening to kill him.

After assaulting the faithful, the group stole items worth 33,900 taka (4,134 EUR); destroyed Bibles, crosses, holy pictures, musical instruments and homes; killed goats and chickens.

The pastor filed a complaint against the Muslims who attacked them: “They attacked us to push us to leave the plantation. They want to occupy the land, but what they did is illegal. “ Fr. Rozario explains that the population years ago obtained government permission to use that land. “Now — he says — my Catholics and I live in fear, they might attack us at any moment.”

Nirmal Rozario, leader of the Bangladesh Christian Association, said: “We express our strong condemnation of the attack on the priest and the community. We demand that the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. “

The tribal Khasia migrated to the Sylhet region from India many years ago. They currently live in 108 villages, belonging to four Catholic parishes of the diocese.

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

Husband Sets Wife on Fire in Pakistan ‘Honor Killing’

A Pakistani man and his father have been arrested in the country’s latest so-called “honor killing” after they set the son’s wife alight for leaving the house without asking his permission, police said Sunday.

Muhammad Siddique became enraged on learning that his wife, Shabana Bibi, 25, had visited her sister without first asking him if she could go out, her brother Muhammad Azam said.

Siddique and his father then beat Bibi before dousing her with petrol and setting her on fire in Central Pakistan’s Muzaffargarh district on Friday, Azam said.

Bibi had been married to Siddique for three years, during which time she had suffered repeated domestic abuse for the couple’s inability to have children, Azam said.

Suffering burns to 80 percent of her body, Bibi died of her injuries in hospital on Saturday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Boko Haram Adopts ISIS’ Bloody Religious Cleansing Strategy

The Islamic militant group Boko Haram is adopting ISIS’ bloody strategy of stamping out Christianity with a frightening fervor, putting Nigeria’s 70 million followers of Jesus in danger for their lives, fearful human rights advocates say.

Boko Haram leaders vowed their formal allegiance to IS in an audio message in Arabic posted to Twitter last month, according to intelligence analysts. The militant group has launched murderous rampages across northeastern Nigeria, and into neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger. In an attack April 7, Islamist extremists disguised themselves as preachers and killed at least 24 people in Nigeria’s Borno state.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned the attack and is calling for a multinational strategy to fight the group.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Cameroon Attack: Boko Haram Kills 19, ‘Many Beheaded’

Nineteen people were killed in Thursday night’s attack on a Cameroonian village by Nigeria-based Boko Haram militants, a security source said in an updated toll, adding that most of the victims were beheaded.

“The final toll from this attack is 19 dead, with a majority of the victims decapitated,” a security source said Saturday on condition of anonymity.

Security sources had previously said 10 civilians were killed in the cross-border raid on the village of Bia in Cameroon’s Far North region…

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

Immigrants Describe Threats in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Fearful immigrants in South Africa who fled their homes because of threats and deadly attacks by South Africans said Sunday they were targeted in some cases by longtime neighbors and people who warned they would assault anyone carrying a foreign passport.

The immigrants spoke in interviews with The Associated Press at a tent camp after they hurriedly left Alexandra township in Johannesburg, where mobs attacked shops owned by people from other African countries, including Congo and Somalia. The violence there followed anti-immigrant riots in and around the coastal city of Durban that killed at least six people, recalling a bout of similar unrest in South Africa in 2008 in which about 60 people died.

The message from the mobs in Alexandra was, ‘“We don’t want to see people with passports. We only want to see people with South African IDs,”‘ said Veronica Lechaea, who comes from the southern African country of Lesotho and has lived in South Africa since 2008.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Gun Battle Kills Three in Mexican Border City of Reynosa

Gun battles have left at least three people dead on the streets of Reynosa, a Mexican city on the border with the US that has been plagued by drug cartel violence.

Fighting broke out after the arrest of a leader of one of the main gangs in the area.

“The same criminal group reacted by attacking federal forces,” officials said in a statement.

The statement described the dead men as “armed civilians”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Liberals: Help Roma in Romania Instead of in Sweden

The Liberal Party says government efforts to help Roma beggars in Sweden can be counter-productive and attract more such poor EU-migrants.

The Liberal party’s parliamentary group leader Erik Ullenhag and its spokesperson on European affairs wrote in Sunday’s Svenska Dagbladet that the root causes of Roma poverty should be addressed instead.

Rather than spend SEK 90 million of EU money to help Roma in Sweden, the liberals want to send help and Swedish advisors directly to the villages in Romania, as well as create a European strategy to deal with anti-Roma racism.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Tsipras Says EU Needs Urgent Plan to Tackle Migrant Crisis

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged the European Union on Sunday to urgently come up with a plan to tackle a mounting migrant humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean.

“The Mediterranean must stop being a graveyard sea and southern European countries a storage of human souls,” Tsipras said in a televised address.

He spoke after a fishing boat packed with migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, killing as many as 700 people in what officials said may be the worst disaster in the Mediterranean to date involving migrants.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Printed Organs Coming to a Body Near You

From kidneys to hands, 3D printers are churning out made-to-order bones and rudimentary organs.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

2 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/19/2015

  1. Invasion

    Due to the sudden upsurge in illegal migration I thought it worthwhile to give some background to the uses and means of what we are seeing. This week 900 people lost their lives, trying to cross the Inner Sea.

    How many of you have heard about Moslem “Hijra”? It refers to Mohammed’s mythical flight to Medina after he was warned that others planned to kill him. He and his followers fled to the above city. It is the followers we are interested herein. When Moslems today migrate they name it “hijra” after Mohammed’s flight to Medina.

    Now we are treated daily to scenes of rubber dinghies replete with males and a sprinkling of females, with more often than not, none at all. A colleague of mine believes the numbers of women migrating is around 8% of the total. Why? Most of the men are military age and surprisingly well dressed; some in Designer labels.

    They are mainly Moslem as the deliberate drowning of 30 Christians testifies.

    The average price paid to the Trafficker is around £5,000 to £10,000 per person. Now that is one great big lot of cash in regions where the average wage is often £1 per day. It is the same where my wife comes from. Are they taking loans? And where did they get these from? The traffickers themselves whom they are contracted to pay later? Their immediate and extended family?

    Currently the UK and Europe is still economically in the Doldrums with countries like Greece with numbers of unemployed at around 40% overall, with up to 80% of young people, unable to obtain a job or welfare. Even in UK, figures of up to 50% of our own under 25’s, are also unable to find work. Even my age group in the late 40 to 65 years, with all the experience that brings are having a hard time despite what the stupid lying politicians are saying.

    We live in a land of diminishing returns and welfare and “Zero-rated” flexible contracts that often leave those so employed idle for days at the whim of the “employer”. Mass migration has three or four effects.

    1) It soaks up, even bankrupts national welfare and services.

    2) It depresses wages and removes jobs from Europeans or anywhere migrants end up.

    3) Creates cultural, legal and even religious problems- tensions.

    4) Inflates house prices and rents and creates impressions of ‘wealth’ and a so called ‘Boom’, when in fact there is none where it matters, in work that is stable and vital to the wealth and stability of the state.

    I need not elaborate the importation of diseases like TB and other nasty killers. TB in London has returned after being eradicated in the 1950s. A friend of mine contracted it on the London Tube in 2012. Then there is the explosion in serious and petty crime.

    All this is known by those who still take a serious attitude to the world around them, while denied by the so-called “Progressives”. I call these latter the “Patients- In- Charge”. We do indeed live in an asylum. The latter do not believe in the nation state.

    Even when the facts should inform them of the awful reality, they ignore it. Now read this…..

    https://lindseykennedy.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/yeah-fck-you-toby-micklethwaite/

    “Firstly, as a rational and reasonably intelligent human being, I intend to reserve my vote for a party with the collective mental capacity to (1) comprehend basic environmental concepts, particularly rergarding climate change, and (2) think up a few half-useful policies that are rooted in something other than regressive, xenophobic paranoia.

    Secondly, the fact of my having been born in Britain really is little more than geographical fact and a lucky accident – hardly something to base an entire sociopolitical ideology on. One of nicer things about living in this country is that a person’s right to think, act and develop along their own lines is (largely) legally enshrined rather than sidelined in favour of a contrived, idealised monoculture hacked out of nostalgia and senseless nationalism.”

    Now some more history- ancient history. North Africa in the days of Rome and before was a green, deeply agrarian land and served the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans in rich and abundant produce. Around 650AD Arab tribes erupted from the deserts of Arabia.

    Their armies were small and the reduced armies of the East Roman defenders, wracked by disease and endless war with Persia were completely unable to withstand them. What is little known, is the fact that these invaders brought with them huge numbers of dependents, clients known as mawali and camp followers complete with massive herds of sheep, goats and camels. They were transhumant and migratory.

    North Africa soon became a desert, its once vast plains, dotted with rich forests, grasslands, vineyards, farms abundant in produce became a windblown dust bowl. Examine the once rich colony of Timgad today, a city built by Roman legion III Augusta, in a once rich agricultural surroundings.

    However, what interests us here is the fact that mass migration was a useful means to prepare a targeted area for Moslem takeover, used by the Mohammedans as a weapon of war, prior to actual takeover by military means. Roman cities in the near East fell without a “shot being fired”. This is because the Moslem hordes were already in place in their thousands, leaving the subdued cities unable to defend themselves. Many of the came, as they come today as asylum seekers and traders but eventually in sufficient numbers to be able to overwhelm the peoples they had displaced.

    Understand this harsh reality well reader. This is where we are today. These asylum seekers are an act of war by unscrupulous groups, often hidden as networks of faith centres and foundations like charities and much else. They also fund ISIL.

    This is what is happening now and was indeed promised by ISIL in a Libya ravaged by NATO and removal of Gadaffi, who had held the hordes back in the pay of the EU. Now that bottle has been unsealed and we see the dire results.

    Did Cameron and Sarkozy commit these awful acts to create the situation we now face, with traffickers using ever larger boats to bring the invaders to Europe to create their imagined Eurabian Socialist “Utopia”? Are the wars in the Middle East designed also to create herds of asylum seekers to further their idiotic desires for a New World Order, where nations and peoples no longer exist?

    I am afraid the answer appears to be in the affirmative, which means we are governed by individuals and groups guilty of huge immoral crimes against humanity, in which the deaths of the 900 above this week are on their wicked hands, as are the 40,000,000 refugees they have displaced through their proxy army the “Islamic State”. They have also guaranteed their own extermination as well as ours.

    The Late Bishop Guy

  2. “In other news, Norway’s Labour Party has voted to recognize “Palestine””

    They have already sold their own people down the river. Now they sell other people!
    ZTF

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