Mujahideen for the local Sinai franchise of the Islamic State staged a series of coordinated simultaneous attacks on Egyptian army checkpoints in northern Sinai, killing at least fifty soldiers. An unknown number of jihadis were also killed.
In other news, thousands of Spanish demonstrators took to the streets of Madrid and other cities to protest a new law that forbids protests in front of parliament and government offices.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, K, Srdja Trifkovic, 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.
Eurogroup Says ‘No Grounds’ For Greek Talks Until Referendum
Eurozone finance ministers agreed Wednesday to wait for the result of Greeces controversial bailout referendum before holding any more discussions on Athens’s debt crisis, Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem said.
Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, said in a video statement after a conference call between the 19 members of the eurozone that there were “no grounds for further talks” until after Sunday’s vote.
The call came hours after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a television address that the referendum on creditors’ reform terms for a bailout would go ahead and urged people to vote ‘No’.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Executive Order on Overtime May Spark Next Recession
Economists using data to forecast economic growth might want to focus some attention on the White House instead. Based on the pursuit of fairness rather than data, the Obama administration decided 5 million workers deserve a raise.
New rules about who qualifies for overtime could prove to be devastating to small businesses and will most likely hurt millions of employees.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Ryanair Now Accepts Cash Only for Ticket Purchases
After credit card payments via website become impossible
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, JULY 1 — The cap controls, a repercussion of a surprise decision by the Greek government to call a referendum on creditors’ proposal, also made online shopping with multinationals by holders of Greek cards impossible as Protothema online reported. The Ireland-based carrier Ryanair, which flies out of 11 airports in Greece, said it was experiencing “high rates of decline” on their credit/debit cards transactions with customers from Greece. “Ryanair has now provided the option for Greeks looking to travel to buy their plane tickets in cash at the Ryanair ticket desk at its airports,” a statement read.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Seeks New EU Loans After IMF Debt Default
The European Union will decide Wednesday whether to grant Greece a last-minute bailout package to avoid pushing it further towards an exit from the eurozone.
Greece on Tuesday failed to make a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) payment to the International Monetary Fund, becoming the first industrialised country to do so.
On the same day, the international bailout keeping its economy afloat formally expired.
The missed payment underlined the failure of more than five months of wrangling between Greece’s radical left government and its creditors to reshape its bailout and prevent it dropping out of the eurozone.
But finance ministers from the eurozone were set to resume talks in Brussels on Wednesday after under-pressure Athens asked for a new two-year aid plan — the third in five years.
Greece has requested a further 29.1 billion euros from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to “fully cover its financing needs and the simultaneous restructuring of debt,” for the next two years, according to the office of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Moody’s Downgrades Greece to Caa3
Moody’s on Wednesday downgraded Greece’s government bond rating to Caa3 from Caa2, saying that the rating will be placed on review for further downgrading.
“The key driver for today’s rating action is Moody’s view that the probability of support continuing to be provided over the medium-term has fallen since the assignment of the Caa2 rating in April, regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s referendum,” Moody’s said in a statement.
“Moody’s believes that without ongoing support from official creditors, Greece will default on its privately-held debt,” it added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Pope Expresses Support for Greeks, Demands Human Dignity
Francis says social and economic situation ‘worrying’
(see related) (ANSA) — Vatican City, July 1 — Pope Francis is worried about the crisis in Greece and wants to express his closeness to the Greek people, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Wednesday. The pontiff also said that people’s dignity should be a prime factor in the political debate, with Athens facing a possible financial meltdown after missing a debt repayment deadline Tuesday. “The news from Greece regarding the economic and social situation of the country is worrying,” Lombardi said.
“The Holy Father wishes to convey his closeness to all the Greek people, with a special thought for the many families gravely beset by such a complex and keenly felt human and social crisis.
“The dignity of the human person must remain at the centre of any political and technical debate, as well as in the taking of responsible decisions.
“Pope Francis invites all the faithful to unite in prayer for the good of the beloved Greek people”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Renzi Tells Greece to Respect Rules, Adopt Reforms
Italy hasn’t raised taxes so Greeks can keep dodging them
(ANSA) — Berlin, July 1 — Premier Matteo Renzi said Wednesday that Greece should follow Italy’s lead by working to respect the EU rules and adopt economic reforms. “I’m convinced that Greece must take the highway of structural reforms,” Renzi said, stressing the efforts Italy has made to respect EU budget rules. “If the rules are respected everywhere they must be respect in Greece too,” he added in a speech on the future of Europe at Berlin’s Humboldt University before a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in the German capital. “We haven’t cut the pensions for early retirees in Italy so Greece can keep paying them.
“We haven’t raised taxes in Italy so that Greek ship owners can continue not paying them”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Report: IMF Orders US Tour Operators to Withhold Payments to Greek Hotels
The consequences of Greece’s default on its $1.7 billion IMF loan payment may already be damaging the country’s fragile economy with reports that the International Monetary Fund has ordered US tour operators to withhold payments to Greek hotels.
US tour operators withhold payments to Greek hotels for services used, by order of the IMF. To crush us is their aim. t.co/W8uUr4FAFl
— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) July 1, 2015
According to Greek blogger Alex Andreou, US tour operators have been told to, “Withhold payments to Greek hotels for services used, by order of the IMF.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The 75 Trillion Dollar Shadow Banking System is in Danger of Collapsing
Keep an eye on the shadow banking system — it is about to be shaken to the core.
According to the Financial Stability Board, the size of the global shadow banking system has reached an astounding 75 trillion dollars. It has approximately tripled in size since 2002. In the U.S. alone, the size of the shadow banking system is approximately 24 trillion dollars. At this point, shadow banking assets in the United States are even greater than those of conventional banks. These shadow banks are largely unregulated, but governments around the world have been extremely hesitant to crack down on them because these nonbank lenders have helped fuel economic growth. But in the end, we will all likely pay a very great price for allowing these exceedingly reckless financial institutions to run wild.
If you are not familiar with the “shadow banking system”, the following is a pretty good definition from investing answers.com…
The shadow banking system (or shadow financial system) is a network of financial institutions comprised of non-depository banks — e.g., investment banks, structured investment vehicles (SIVs), conduits, hedge funds, non-bank financial institutions and money market funds.
How it works/Example:
Shadow banking institutions generally serve as intermediaries between investors and borrowers, providing credit and capital for investors, institutional investors, and corporations, and profiting from fees and/or from the arbitrage in interest rates.
Because shadow banking institutions don’t receive traditional deposits like a depository bank, they have escaped most regulatory limits and laws imposed on the traditional banking system. Members are able to operate without being subject to regulatory oversight for unregulated activities. An example of an unregulated activity is a credit default swap (CDS).
These institutions are extremely dangerous because they are highly leveraged and they are behaving very recklessly. They played a major role during the financial crisis of 2008, and even the New York Fed admits that shadow banking has “increased the fragility of the entire financial system”…
Bond expert Bill Gross, who is intimately familiar with the shadow banking system, has just come out with a major warning about the lack of liquidity in the shadow banking system…
Mutual funds, hedge funds, and ETFs, are part of the “shadow banking system” where these modern “banks” are not required to maintain reserves or even emergency levels of cash. Since they in effect now are the market, a rush for liquidity on the part of the investing public, whether they be individuals in 401Ks or institutional pension funds and insurance companies, would find the “market” selling to itself with the Federal Reserve severely limited in its ability to provide assistance.
As far as shadow banking is concerned, everything is just fine as long as markets just keep going up and up and up.
But once they start falling, the whole system can start falling apart very rapidly. Here is more from Bill Gross on what might cause a “run on the shadow banks” in the near future…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Facts Behind the Greek Melodrama
by Srdja Trifkovic
Greece is now technically in default, having failed to pay its $1.8 bn monthly installment to the IMF which was due June 30. Contrary to the mainstream media treatment of the story, there will be no ripple effect and no major financial crisis.
The Greeks are in dire straits, but their economy (the size of Connecticut’s) and their foreign debt (280 bn euros, including $243 bn to the IMF, the European Commission and European Central Bank) are not significant enough to impact the markets in Frankfurt, London, or New York. In fact it is an even bet that in the end Greece will not leave the Eurozone. My hunch is that some compromise with the IMF-EC-ECB Troika will be found, even though the Greeks are likely to vote “no” in a referendum next Sunday with the following complex question:…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. On Same Debt Path as Greece
It’s crunch time for Greece as IMF debt looms and bailout ends.
Puerto Rico announced it’s about to suffer the same fate and a new chart shows the U.S. is on the same debt path.
[Comment: All by design. Country’s debt build-up was designed to be unpayable to enslave the country.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Your Money is the Hammer That Government Holds Over You
A government, any government, cannot operate or function without money. Government must tax the people in order to pay for those operations and functions, whether a dictatorship, a democracy, or a Constitutional Republic. If it cannot tax enough to pay for these functions, like in a time of war, it must borrow the money from the moneychangers. Today moneychangers are encapsulated in the innocuous and benign name of “Central Banks.” You don’t see the individual names of the moneychangers any more so you can’t pin the blame on an individual or a cabal for their crimes.
The Founding Fathers knew all this and tried to set up a system of banking that did not lend itself to the historical abuses caused by the moneychangers. But as usual, the moneychangers won out with the passage of the 16th Amendment that created the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service. The newly constituted Federal Reserve once again, opened the door to those historical abuses. The Internal Revenue Service became the collector of the money to pay back the loans made by the moneychangers to government and the lifetime earnings of the people became the collateral for those loans.
So it follows that: “Your Money is the Hammer That Government Holds Over You.” Money can be used as a tool or a weapon. Government has become very adept at using money as a weapon.
But without your money, the government is virtually powerless. It cannot make laws. It cannot hire people to administer or enforce those laws. It cannot make war. It cannot build roads and bridges. It cannot pay back the loans to the moneychangers. It cannot protect the masses from all enemies, foreign or domestic. But further and most important, it cannot waste and abuse your money, which it does with reckless abandon.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Antipsychotics Too Often Prescribed for Aggression in Children
Powerful antipsychotic medications are being used to treat children and teenagers with ADHD, aggression and behavior problems, a study finds, even though safer treatments are available and should be used first.
“There’s been concern that these medications have been overused, particularly in young children,” says Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who led the study. It was published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. “Guidelines and clinical wisdom suggest that you really should be using a high degree of caution and only using them when other treatments have failed, as a last resort.”
Olfson and his colleagues looked at prescription data from about 60 percent of the retail pharmacies in the United States in 2006, 2008 and 2010. That included almost 852,000 children, teenagers and young adults. Teens were most likely to be prescribed antipsychotics, with 1.19 percent getting the drugs in 2010, compared to 0.11 percent in younger children. Boys were more likely to be given the medications.
Antipsychotic medications like clozapine and olanzapine are used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some symptoms of autism. They have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat aggression and ADHD, but are prescribed off label to reduce disruptive behavior.
Use of antipsychotics in children has been questioned because the drugs can have serious side effects, including tremors, weight gain, increased diabetes risk and elevated cholesterol.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ban Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind?
Battle Flag of Northern Virginia
It is vile that the Confederate flag, which represented freedom and liberty, and resistance to tyranny and a centralized government, was used by a racist murderer. First of all, this flag is NOT the “Confederate Flag.” It is the “Battle Flag of Northern Virginia.” This design, however, is the one most synonymous with the term, and the one used in various forms on many of the other flags that were flown by the Confederate States. It is also the one most hated by those who are completely and totally ignorant of what it stands for.
So take another look at the flag and answer this very simple question : Do you see a big letter “X” anywhere on the flag? What if I were to lay that X down on its side, do you see it now? The X is formed by the big, blue bands which are outlined with white trim.
Now take another look at the flag. On this big “X” there are thirteen white stars. Do you know what these thirteen stars represent? They represent the thirteen original, united colonies from which the United States began. Each one of these colonies had its own system of self government… until the start of ‘northern aggression’ when the northern states began trying to usurp authority over the southern states. This was the main cause of the Civil War.
Point of note: The thirteen stars on this flag appear to lie on the blue X… but in reality, the X lies on the stars, allowing them to shine through.
Now, do you remember from your grade-school years how the teachers would sometimes ask you to circle the right answers or picture on a work page, or to put an X on a picture or word or other item that didn’t belong in a group? That is the same concept this flag is designed around. The stars are laid out in the pattern of an X, and the blue bands are put on the thirteen stars to show that the southern states no longer wanted to be a part of the union with the northern states. In simpler terms, the message of the flag’s design is simply this… CROSS US OUT of your Union! The southern states withdrew from the union in a movement called “secession,” which led to the Civil War. The flag had nothing at all to do with slavery, which was on its way out before it was used to further the agenda of a centralized federal government. Remember the winners wrote the history, revising it as they went.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Black Professor: ‘Whiteness is Terror’
An assistant sociology professor at the University of Memphis and self-described “Dirty South black feminist” has filled her Twitter feed with racist rants declaring white people terrorists just because of the color of their skin and, of course, the “privilege” that comes with that melanin…
UPDATE: Robinson has been terminated. The university sent out the following message:
Zandria Robinson is no longer employed by the University of Memphis.
— UofMemphis (@uofmemphis) June 30, 2015
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Congress’s ObamaCare ‘Small Business’ Fraud
Americans fed up with the unbridled arrogance of the nation’s “ruling class” are about to be further infuriated. As American Commitment president Phil Kerpen reveals, there’s yet another outrageous scandal occurring on Capitol Hill, where the House and Senate have falsely certified themselves as small businesses so they can fund themselves and their staffs with taxpayer-funded health insurance—sidestepping ObamaCare provisions in the process. “They conspired to break the law,” Kerpen told Front Page.
In an interview with Newsmax TV, Kerpen reminded viewers that Americans had “demanded” Congress enter the healthcare exchanges like everyone else. Nevertheless, when the time came for members of Congress and their staffs to be subjected to the very same law they imposed on the public, “members of Congress of both parties didn’t want to do it,” Kerpen noted. “They didn’t want to lose taxpayer funding for their premiums for themselves and their staff.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Constitution Under Full Fledged Attack
A George Soros and State Department funded organization, the New America Foundation, even claimed that white Americans are the biggest terror threat in the U.S., and given the timing of their “study,” it’s not hard to see their agenda to racially divide the country and ultimately destroy the Constitution.
[Comment: Soros…his fingeroprints are everywhere.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Epic Pluto Flyby Occurs This Month
A NASA spacecraft is less than two weeks away from a historic flyby of Pluto that will cap a nine-year trek across the solar system.
NASA’s New Horizons probe will cruise within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto’s surface on July 14, capturing the first-ever good looks of the frigid, faraway and mysterious world.
“One of my fondest hopes for the flyby, apart from the great science we’ll do, is that we’ll excite a lot of people about the power of exploration, the sheer audacity of our species and the great things we can achieve,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, wrote in a blog post on June 25.
Scientists haven’t learned much about the dwarf planet since its discovery in 1930. Because Pluto is relatively small and so far away from Earth — about 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers), on average — the object remains a blur of pixels even in the best photos by NASA’s powerful Hubble Space Telescope.
But New Horizons is lifting Pluto’s veil. Observations by the piano-size probe during its approach have already revealed previously unseen surface features on Pluto, including extensive light and dark patches and a possible ice cap at one pole.
New Horizons also has spotted an enigmatic “dark pole” on Charon, the largest of Pluto’s five known moons. (With a diameter of about 750 miles, or 1,200 km, Charon is half as wide as Pluto itself. In fact, researchers generally regard Pluto-Charon as a binary system.)
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-Scientologist Carmen Llwyelyn Blasts ‘Cult’ And Her Treatment After Divorce With Jason Lee
Carmen Llywelyn has launched a scathing attack on Scientology, branding the religion a “sinister cult” 13 years after leaving it.
The Never Been Kissed actress was introduced to the church after moving to California and meeting the My Name is Earl star Jason Lee, who was already a member, aged 19. The couple married a year later in 1995 and divorced in 2001.
Scientology counts John Travolta, Will Smith, Juliette Lewis and Tom Cruise among its many famous followers. It is founded on the work of sci-fi writer L Ron Hubbard, who wrote of an alien dictator who brought his people to earth 75 million years ago.
Llywelyn discussed her experiences within the church in a lengthy essay for Gawker, writing: “I’ve realised that the religion is built on a foundation of violence. […] I did what so many other people who join Scientology do: I lost all sense of individual identity in the name of the cult.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A new report’s chilling findings on the extent of Soviet spies in the American press
More American journalists were involved in spying for the Soviet Union than was previously believed, according to new research published in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies.
Traditionally, research has focused on the role that U.S. reporters played as messengers, recruiters, and sources of information (and disinformation), but some of those “journalist spies also collected a large amount of secret diplomatic and military information” from 1941 through 1946 as World War II gave way to the Cold War, writes Alexander G. Lovelace of Ohio University. The article, published this month, is “Spies in the News: Soviet Espionage in the American Media During World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War.”
Throughout the life of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics only a tiny fraction of all U.S. journalists joined the Soviet espionage network. Quantifying the harm done is difficult but the information they transmitted to their handlers undoubtedly inflicted damage on both the U.S. and its allies during World War II and the Cold War. Some of these American journalists had access to the highest echelons of the U.S. government and provided the Soviets information of great value to America’s enemies.
Lovelace writes that there were 22 journalists active as “[a]gents in the USA” in June 1941, according to a Soviet intelligence officer. The academic notes that “taken by profession, journalists provided the highest numbers of spies second only to engineers.” After 1941 the number of American reporters spying for the Soviets grew.
[Comment: Their treachery still continues today.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Mandatory Vaccination: California is Ordering Genetic Alteration
Governor Jerry Brown just signed SB277 into law in California. No more religious or philosophical exemption from vaccination.
Now only a medical doctor’s note stating a person should not be vaccinated will provide an exemption—and you can be sure doctors who sign a number of these notes will be tracked, scrutinized, harassed, and attacked by the State.
SB277 requires all children who attend public and private schools to receive the full schedule of vaccines.
Home-schooled children can opt out of vaccination. Pay attention, parents.
I’ve written many articles about vaccines, about their dangers, their undeserved reputation for having eliminated contagious diseases in the West, and the absurdity of so-called herd immunity.
Here, first, I want to underline the obvious: freedom is under egregious attack. It has been replaced in the public mind by “safety and protection.”…
“We will protect you on every level. Just give up freedom.”
From the caves of 100,000 years ago, all the way forward to the Modern State, that assertion has been used to exert more and more control over the people.
At higher levels of political power, beyond direct medical issues, mandatory vaccination is being used as yet another hammer, in order to elicit compliance from citizens.
“We say do X; therefore, you must do X.”
In this case, X involves the injection of toxic substances like aluminum, formaldehyde, Polysorbate 80 and numerous other harmful chemicals into the body.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New Horizons Update: Methane Detected; New Images of Pluto and Charon; Sunrise/Sunset Observations
Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows. The infrared spectrometer on NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface; Earth-based astronomers first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.
“We already knew there was methane on Pluto, but these are our first detections,” said Will Grundy, the New Horizons Surface Composition team leader with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Soon we will know if there are differences in the presence of methane ice from one part of Pluto to another.”
Methane (chemical formula CH4) is an odorless, colorless gas that is present underground and in the atmosphere on Earth. On Pluto, methane may be primordial, inherited from the solar nebula from which the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.
Images from New Horizons show the view from aboard the spacecraft closes in on the Pluto system for a July 14 flyby.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
SpaceX Rocket Failure Threatens Support for Commercial Spaceflight
The destruction of an unmanned rocket on Sunday comes at a tricky time for NASA and the International Space Station.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Test Pilot: The F-35 Can’t Dogfight Worth a Damn
The F-35 is an impressive disaster. On the one hand, its high-tech helmet is a technological marvel. The F-35B’s hovering tricks are awe-inspiring. On the other hand, the Joint Strike Fighter is just out-and-out bad at some really basic fighter jet stuff. A new report from a test pilot really lays it bare: The F-35 can’t dogfight.
The issues are laid out in a previously private but now non-classified report obtained by War Is Boring. In it, a F-35 test pilot enumerates his issues with the aircraft after a series of mock close-range engagements with the older, trusty F-16 back in January.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Texas Clinics Turning Away Unvaccinated Children
A network of clinics in Texas has issued new guidelines asserting their facilities will no longer take children as patients if they have not been vaccinated.
Austin Regional Clinic, the largest healthcare provider network in the Central Texas region serving close to half a million residents, announced today they will begin prohibiting children who are not up to date on vaccine requirements from being seen by doctors starting tomorrow…
Notably, the list also recommends children receive a dose of Merck’s controversial Gardasil vaccine by age nine, despite reports that hundreds of young women in the US have died, and tens of thousands have been harmed by it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
TV Land Pulls ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ Off the Air
A week after Warner Bros. announced it would halt the production of all merchandise featuring the Confederate flag on General Lee, the iconic car from The Dukes of Hazzard, the show has inexplicably disappeared from TV Land’s lineup.
WB announced the move as major retailers Walmart, Amazon, eBay, and Sears all introduced bans on the sale of Confederate flag merchandise in the wake of Dylann Roof’s Charleston, SC shooting rampage at a black church.
“Warner Bros. Consumer Products has one licensee producing die-cast replicas and vehicle model kits featuring the General Lee with the confederate flag on its roof — as it was seen in the TV series,” a company spokesperson said June 24. “We have elected to cease the licensing of these product categories.”
It now appears the controversy may have driven both the show and General Lee, a 1969 Dodge Charger, completely off the air.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
British Truckers Call for Army to End Strike
The head of a British truckers association says the army should be brought in to clear the blockade of Calais by French strikers that has led to travel chaos on both sides of the Channel. Strikers have threatened to up the ante.
British police were forced to close off sections of motorway to park some 3,000 trucks waiting to board ferries to France on Wednesday as striking ferry workers blocked the port of Calais for a third consecutive day.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Convicted Terrorist Loses Danish Citizenship
Sam Mansour, who has been dubbed ‘The Bookseller from Brønshøj’ and ‘al-Qaeda’s PR man in Denmark’, on Wednesday became the first ever Dane to have his citizenship revoked for illegal activity.
The Eastern High Court on Wednesday sentenced Sam Mansour to four years in prison and expulsion from the country with no chance to return.
The revocation of his Danish citizenship is historic, as never before has a Dane had ties severed to the country for violations of the law.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Europol Launches Anti-Terrorism Web Unit
The EU’s police agency Europol on Wednesday launched its web unit tasked to hunt down online extremist propaganda. Europol’s director Rob Wainwright said the unit is “aimed at reducing terrorist and extremist online propaganda.” The unit consists of over a dozen Europol officials and experts from national authorities.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Far Right’s Le Pen Seeks Presidency of Calais Region
French far right leader Marine Le Pen announced Tuesday she will stand for president of the large Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region of northern France in December’s regional elections.
Polls show she is favourite to win control of the region for her National Front (FN) party, despite maintaining a busy schedule as an MEP and making preparations to stand as the FN’s candidate in the 2017 presidential election.
And while the FN has a long history of having candidates in regional councils, it would be the first time a member of the anti-Europe and anti-immigrant party would be at the helm of such a powerful body…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Assembly Robot Crushes Worker at Volkswagen
A worker was setting up a robot at a Volkswagen factory when the machine grabbed him and pressed him against a metal slab, causing lethal injuries.
The incident occurred on Monday as a Volkswagen factory in Baunatal, Hesse, when the 21-year-old man from another company was working on assembling the robot for a new electric motor production line.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Heatwave Leaves 800,000 French Homes Powerless
There are fears that this week’s heatwave will leave more people in the dark, after an electricity transformer overheated leaving 800,000 homes in western France without power. The mercury on Wednesday was set to reach 40C in parts of the country.
A heatwave has been melting swathes of France since Tuesday, but it’s also had consequences at the country’s power stations.
On Tuesday night, electric posts overheated in western France, leaving a total of 800,000 homes without power.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
How to Keep Cool Like an Ancient Roman
As the mercury rises in Italy and the days and nights get unbearable, we look to the ancient world for tips on staying cool.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Is the Battle of the Wine Spain’s Coolest Festival?
Every June 29th, Spaniards in the wine making region of La Rioja spend the day dousing each other in wine during ‘la batalla del vino’: the battle of wine.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Islamist Cell Planning Attacks in Italy Busted
(ANSAmed) — ROME, JULY 1 — Carabinieri police on Wednesday arrested two North African people in dawn raids as part of a probe by Rome prosecutors into an alleged al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist cell, ANSA sources said. A third person who was already in jail is also under investigation. Investigators said the suspects aimed to “plan and execute terrorist acts in Italy and North Africa”. The three are accused of international terrorism.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Jihadist’s Family Arrested in Anti-Terror Op
Two North Africans planning attacks detained in separate raids
(ANSA) — Rome, July 1 — Italian police on Wednesday arrested in dawn raids 10 people from two families who were allegedly about to leave the country to fight in Syria as part of a vast anti-terrorism operation, ANSA sources said. In a separate operation, Carabinieri police arrested two North African people — a Tunisian and a Moroccan — as part of a probe by Rome prosecutors into an alleged al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist cell planning attacks in Italy.
The first set of arrests were made in provinces of Milan, Bergamo and Grosseto and in a town in Albania. Four of the suspects were Italian converts to Islam. Five Albanians and a Canadian national were also arrested. Among those arrested were the parents and sister of Maria Giulia Sergio, a 27-year-old Italian convert to Islam who in 2011 married Aldo Kobuzi, an Albanian man who trained in Iraq for jihad.
Sergio’s father, mother, and sister were converts to Islam.
Sources say Sergio — who goes by the name “Fatima Az Zahra” on Facebook — and Kobuzi, along with Kobuzi’s mother, are currently fighting with ISIS in Syria.
Police also arrested Kobuzi’s aunt, Arta Kacabuni, 41, in Arcille di Campagnatico in the province of Grosseto and his uncle, Baki Coku, 37, who also lives in the province of Grosseto but was arrested in Albania where he was currently traveling. Coku, who was visiting family in his hometown of Lushnje, is expected to be extradited to Italy.
Sergio is a native of Torre di Greco in the province of Naples and was public in her support of jihad on her Facebook page.
She posted photos of women wearing the face veil known as a niqab, and in a post from December 2010 wrote “Allah strengthen our legs to give us victory over the miscreants”.
Her last post is dated November 2013.
Sources say Sergio, who was married to a man from Morocco prior to marrying Kobuzi, took a flight from Rome to Istanbul where she then crossed the Turkish border into Syria to join ISIS.
Investigators said they intercepted messages sent by Sergio in which she took delight in the January 7 attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were murdered.
“A thing so appreciated by the faithful,” the message read. “God is great. Two of the Mujahideen have killed the cartoonists who offended the prophet of Islam in France”.
The two suspects arrested in the other operation were named as Abderrahim El Khalfi Abderrahim, 37, born in Azemmour in Morocco, and Tunisian Ahmed Masseoudi, 29, from Le Kef.
A third person, a Moroccan, who was already in jail in Morocco, is also under investigation. He was named as Mohammed Majene, 27, from Oujida. Investigators said the suspects aimed to “plan and execute terrorist acts in Italy and North Africa”. The three are accused of international terrorism. They are suspected of using the Internet site ‘i7ur’ to advocate jihad and recruit supporters, police said.
Among other things, they celebrated the 2013 ‘martyrdom’ in Syria of a 19-year-old Algerian man, Khaled Amroune, holding him up as an example of someone who moved from espousing Islamism to actually fighting for the cause.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Spent Millions Corrupting Ruby — Prosecution
Moroccan ‘falsely denied having sex’ with ex-premier
(ANSA) — Milan, June 30 — Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi spent millions of euros bribing exotic dancer and alleged underage prostitute Karima El Mahroug aka Ruby to keep mum about his alleged sex parties, Milan prosecutors said Tuesday.
In return for huge sums, they said, the former teen runaway falsely denied having sex with the media magnate at his villa outside Milan.
The prosecutors said they believed that Berlusconi corrupted Ruby, who was at the centre of the ‘bunga bunga’ sex scandal, to give favourable evidence at criminal trials, transferring funds amounting to some seven million euros to her which she used for various purposes. Berlusconi said the claims were “another attempt by the Milan prosecutor’s office to build accusations against me based on nothing”. He said he had already been cleared of the charges in the other trials.
The prosecutors have completed the so-called Ruby Ter (Ruby Three) case probe into allegations Berlusconi bribed witnesses to perjure themselves during two trials. The ex-premier, Ruby and several other women who took part in so-called ‘bunga bunga’ parties at Berlusconi’s home have been notified the investigation is closed. This step usually comes before prosecutors request indictments. Last year the supreme court definitively cleared the 78-year-old billionaire of underage prostitution charges in the main case because it said there was no proof Berlusconi knew Ruby was 17 at the time — one year under the legal limit for sex workers.
The court said, however, that “paid acts of a sexual nature” took place between Berlusconi and Ruby, whose real name is Karima El Marough.
She alleged used the money he gave her to set up a restaurant in Mexico, among other things, prosecutors allege. El Marough’s former partner Luca Risso is suspected of laundering the seven million euros, the sources said. The case against two long-serving Berlusconi lawyers, Niccolò Ghedini and Piero Longo, is set to be dropped as they were not among the people notified of the end of the investigation.
Ruby allegedly falsely denied having sex with Berlusconi and falsely denied agreeing to accept the “enormous” sums of money from him to ‘act mad’ and deny his “elegant parties” were of a sexual nature, prosecutors said.
Berlusconi, they said, paid more than 20 girls for their silence on his alleged bunga bunga sex parties from November 2011 “until yesterday”.
Investigations began in January 2014 after Milan judges published their reasons for separate first-instance convictions of Berlusconi and of former TV anchor Emilio Fede, ex-talent scout Lele Mora and dental-hygienist-turned Lombardy councillor Nicole Minetti for pimping for the three-time premier.
Berlusconi was subsequently acquitted on appeal last July on grounds there was no proof he knew Ruby was 17 at the time, while the convictions of Fede, Mora and Mienti were upheld on appeal in November.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Jubilee’s 25 Mn Pilgrims ‘Will Spend 5 Bn Euros’ — Coldiretti
Holy Year ‘should boost jobs’
(ANSA) — Rome, July 1 — The Catholic Church’s Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy will bring 25 million pilgrims to Italy and they will spend an estimated five billion euros between 8 December 2015 and 20 November 2016, farmers’ association Coldiretti said Wednesday.
“There should also be a positive effect on employment given that the last Holy Year in 2000 gave a 1% boost to job creation,” said Coldiretti President Roberto Moncalvo.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Man Faces Eight Years in Norway Jihadi Trial
Norwegian prosecutors are seeking an eight-year jail sentence for a jihadist who they say fought for the Islamic State group and an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria, media reported on Tuesday.
The 24-year-old Norwegian, named as Ishaq Ahmed by the TV2 channel, left for Syria in October 2013. Prosecutors say he fought for IS before joining the Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. He could face up to nine years in jail if found guilty of “support for a terrorist organisation”.
Photographs posted on Facebook showed him posing with weapons.
Ahmed insists he is innocent and that he was only in Syria to carry out humanitarian work. But prosecutors maintain that in the months before his departure he carried out online research into weapons and body armour.
“We have found no evidence of humanitarian work or an effort to procure medical materials,” prosecutor Geir Evanger said, quoted by the NTB news agency.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Scientists Find Cause of Coeliac Disease
Norwegian scientists have discovered the cause of coeliac disease, the auto-immune disorder which causes gluten intolerance in about one in a hundred people
Professor Ludvig Sollid and his team at the University of Oslo have discovered that coeliac sufferers have one of two defective human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) which cause the immune system to see gluten molecules as dangerous, triggering an immune response which causes severe inflammation and other symptoms.
“When a person who has coeliac disease eats gluten, the immune system reacts to gluten as if it were a virus or a bacterium,” Sollid told Norway’s NRK. “It attacks the gluten, and part of this attack causes the immune system attacks the body itself.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: ‘We Not Ill. No Children. We Beg for Beer’
Two young Polish men have started begging for money in central Oslo with a sign which mocks the many Roma beggars. ‘We not ill. We have no children. We beg for beer,’ it reads.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Rare Images of Armenian Genocide Survivors on Show in Italy
Rare, moving images of survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide will be shown in Bologna on Thursday as part of the 29th edition of the city’s “Cinema Ritrovato” (Rediscovered Cinema) festival.
A significant historical source that was discovered completely by chance, buried away and forgotten in the US Library of Congress, the silent film dates from 1923 and includes images of children packed onto boats in Turkey and lines of refugees trudging along roads.
The film is being shown as part of a selection intended to honour Armenian cinema a century after the beginning of the slaughter of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turkish forces.
Also on show during the festival are “Namus” (Honour), a 1925 work by Hamo Beknazarian that is considered the first Armenian film, “Sayat Nova” (The Color of Pomegranates) a 1969 film by Sergei Paradjanov and “Naapet”, Henrik Malyan’s 1980 film about a genocide survivor…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Smacking Must be Banned to Bring UK Into Line With International Law — Report to UN Insists
The UK will be breaking international law unless smacking is completely banned, Britain’s four official children’s commissioners have insisted.
In a report submitted to the United Nations, the four commissioners — representing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are demanding an “immediate” repeal of all laws allowing parents to deliberately hurt their children.
The Government must also teach parents who smack alternative “non-violent forms of child rearing and behaviour management”, they add.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Protests Against New Law Restricting Protest
Thousands of protesters filled the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities on Tuesday to protest a new law that goes into effect 1 July. The law prohibits public protests in front of parliament and government offices under threat of heavy financial penalties and even jail.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Superconductivity Record Bolstered by Magnetic Data
The long-standing quest to find a material that can conduct electricity without resistance at room temperature may have taken a decisive step forward. Scientists in Germany have observed the common molecule hydrogen sulfide superconducting at a record-breaking 203 kelvin (-70 ºC) when subjected to very high pressures. The result confirms preliminary findings released by the researchers late last year, and is said to be corroborated by data from several other groups.
Some physicists urge caution, however. Ivan Schuller at the University of California in San Diego, says that the results “look promising” but are not yet watertight. However, Antonio Bianconi, director of the Rome International Center for Materials Science Superstripes (RICMASS), thinks that the evidence is compelling. He describes the findings as “the main breakthrough” in the search for a room-temperature superconductor since the 1986 discovery of superconductivity in cuprates — exotic ceramic compounds that exhibit the phenomenon up to 164 K.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Temperatures Soar as Heatwave Hits Spain and Portugal
A heatwave in Spain and Portugal has triggered alerts across the region, with temperatures soaring above 40C and warnings of risks to residents’ health.
Warnings have been issued in more than 40 provinces in Spain, with a red alert for the southern city of Cordoba.
Neighbouring Portugal has also placed four regions on an orange alert, the second highest level possible.
Both countries have warned that the searing heat will substantially increase the risk of forest fires.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Two More Arrested in Italy Anti-Terror Sweep
Two North Africans have been arrested in Rome on suspicion of being part of an al-Qaeda-inspired cell that was planning attacks in Italy and North Africa.
A third person, already in jail, is also under investigation, Ansa reported on Wednesday, citing sources.
In a separate operation, Italy’s anti-terror police arrested ten people accused of planning to fight in Syria alongside Isis jihadists.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Universities Allow 100 Religious Extremists a Platform to Spread Hatred
Universities are providing a platform for more than 100 Islamist extremists every year, a disturbing report will reveal next week.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Enemies of Freedom Are in Our Universities Says Daily Mail Comment
Inevitably, the student bodies and university authorities who welcome these hate preachers protest they have a special duty to promote free speech. But isn’t this deeply disingenuous?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Serbia: Survey: 50% Pro-EU Membership, 37% Against
73% against joining NATO
(ANSA) — BELGRADE — In Serbia, 50% of the population are in favour of their country’s EU membership and 37% against, according to the latest survey conducted by CESID between June 10 and June 20. Explaining to journalists the results of the survey, CESID director Djordje Vukovic pointed out that the number of Serbs opposed to the European Union is growing.
In 2013, 66% were in favour of the EU, whereas in 2011 the percentage was 62%. Even the support for NATO is declining: 73% of respondents are opposed to Serbia’s NATO membership. Only 12% declared their support for NATO membership, compared with 25% in 2012. Even the confidence in state institutions is decreasing: 31% of Serbs trust the government, 27% the President of the Republic, 20% the parliament and only 7% trust political parties.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
After Heavy Fighting in Sinai, Egypt’s Police Hit Brotherhood in Cairo
At least 70 combatants and civilians are feared dead in a string of terror attacks in Egypt’s Sinai province, claimed by an “Islamic State” offshoot. Police responded with a Cairo raid on Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
Following a series of attacks in Egypt’s North Sinai region that killed at least 70 soldiers and civilians on Wednesday, state security forces stormed an apartment in a suburb in western Cairo. Nine members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, including a former parliamentarian, were killed in the raid.
The Reuters news agency cited security sources, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to comment, as saying that the police had encountered armed resistance in the Cairo apartment, and seized weapons from the site.
However, Brotherhood spokesman Mohamed Montase told Al Jazeera television that the men were just holding an organizational meeting, and denied they were armed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: 13 ‘Terrorists’ Killed in Cairo’s October 6 Suburb — Security Source
CAIRO, Jul 1 (Aswat Masriya) — Thirteen “terrorists” were killed by Egyptian security forces after a gunfire exchange in Cairo’s October 6 suburb on Wednesday, a security source said.
This comes in tandemn with ongoing clashes in between security forces and militants in North Sinai.
The nine were killed in a raid on headquarters that they were using to hide, the source added.
On Tuesday, three “terrorists” were killed in the same neighbourhood while trying to bomb a car in the vicinity of the October 6 Police Station, security sources said.
Meanwhile, attacks on security checkpoints and facilities have left 60 casualties among security personnel, ranging from deaths to injuries, a security source said.
The attacks were followed by clashes with militants. So far over 30 militants have been killed in the clashes, the source added.
The Sinai-based militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for the attacks. The group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq last November, changing its name to Sinai Province.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Dozens Killed in Sinai Attack on Army Checkpoints
Also 10 officials among the victims, 80 injured
CAIRO — Over 72 Egyptian soldiers were reportedly killed on Wednesday morning at northern Sinai checkpoints in clashes with armed groups supporting the Islamic State (ISIS).
Launching the attack against the Egyptian soldiers were armed men belonging to a group until recently known as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which in the past has claimed responsibility for dozens of similar attacks. Eyewitnesses say that the terrorists were riding in vehicles when they launched the attack, including by using grenades. Violent clashes with the army ensued.
The group Wilayat Sinai (“The Sinai Province”) claimed responsibility on Twitter for the coordinated attacks against over 15 Egyptian military sites in the northern Sinai. About 30 people — both soldiers and jihadists — were reportedly killed in the attacks. “The Lions of the Caliphate,” the group wrote on Twitter, “simultaneously attacked over 15 sites and Egyptian army checkpoints with heavy weaponry and grenades, and took complete control of some sites. The clashes continue.” The group Ansar Beit el Maqdis — whose name translates as “Partisans of the Holy City” (Jerusalem) — recently changed its name to Wilayat Sinai.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s Sinai Rocked by Wave of Deadly Attacks
Islamic State militants have launched a wave of attacks on the security forces in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula.
The military said 10 soldiers had been killed or wounded along with 39 “terrorists” in near-simultaneous raids on checkpoints near Sheikh Zuweid.
But security and medical sources said as many as 50 soldiers had died.
Clashes are continuing in the area, with militants reportedly roaming the streets of Sheikh Zuweid and besieging the town’s main police station.
Islamic State’s local affiliate, Sinai Province, said in a statement posted online that it had targeted 15 security sites and carried out three suicide attacks.
The assault is one of the biggest since jihadists based in Sinai stepped up their attacks after the military overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Morsi two years ago. At least 600 police and armed forces personnel have since been killed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS Affiliate Warned British Tourists Not to Go to Tunisia Before Shooting
The terror group warned Christians they were not welcome in Tunisia and said it was planning an attack that would overshadow the Tunisia museum massacre that left 21 tourists dead in March.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Militants Affiliated With ISIS Attack Security Sites in Sinai
Militants carried out a broad attack on Egyptian Army checkpoints and other security installations in the northern Sinai Peninsula early Wednesday, killing at least 18 soldiers and police officers, according to state news media.
A militant group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the offensive. In a statement circulated on social media, the group said it had attacked more than 15 checkpoints and police installations, using heavy weapons including mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The army said the checkpoints had come under attack by militants driving pickup trucks equipped with antiaircraft guns.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Latest: Muslim Brotherhood Calls for Egypt ‘Rebellion’
CAIRO (AP) — The latest news on the nine Muslim Brotherhood leaders killed in a Cairo apartment raid (all times local):
10:45 p.m.
The Muslim Brotherhood says its leaders killed in a Cairo apartment were murdered in “in cold blood,” calling for a rebellion against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who it calls a “butcher.”
“Come out in rebellion and in defense of your country, yourselves and your children,” it said in a statement issued in English Wednesday. “Destroy the citadels of his oppression and tyranny and reclaim Egypt once more.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia Attack: ‘Dangerous Terrorist’ Wanted by Investigators Could Get Migrant Boat to Europe
A “dangerous terrorist” being hunted by Tunisian authorities as a possible accomplice in the beach massacre that killed 38 people may be trying to cross the Mediterranean on a migrant boat.
Rafique Tayari, one of the two wanted men named by the interior ministry yesterday, is in Libya, where human smugglers have been taking advantage of widespread lawlessness to send hundreds of thousands of desperate people to Europe.
His family told The Telegraph that he left home in Tunis several months ago without warning and has since called several times saying he was in Libya and wanted to reach Italy to start a new life.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia Attack Gunman Was High on Cocaine and Took Pictures During Shooting
Police said an unexploded bomb was found on Seifeddine Rezgui’s body and a picture appears to show a bomb vest beside him. However, this image seems to show a bomb and detonator.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia Attack Gunman’s ‘Accomplice’ Rafikhe Tayari Has Already Reached Libya
Rafikhe Tayari, 28, who has been described by police as dangerous, is thought to have assisted Seifeddine Rezgui carry out the massacre in Sousse on Friday afternoon.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New ISIS Video Threatens to Overthrow Hamas in Gaza Because Group is Not Extreme Enough
A new video released by Isis militants entitled “A Message to our People in Jerusalem” has directly threatened to overthrow Hamas in Gaza because the group is not extreme enough.
Issued by Isis’s media wing from an Aleppo stronghold for the so-called Islamic State in Syria, it criticised Hamas for dealing with “nationalist” and “secularist” entities like Iran and the Shia Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Posing with AK47 assault rifles, three different fighters were shown speaking in the 16-minute long video statement, addressed to the “tyrants of Hamas”.
“The point of jihad is not to liberate land… but to fight for and implement the law of God,” one fighter can be seen saying.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
by Elyakim Haetzni
If a German television network would report that Israel “inserted poison into main water resources in the Gaza Strip” and a German newspaper would write that “the Jews’ god is demanding that they offer him a sacrifice on Passover in the form of matza made from our children’s blood,” we would alert the world against the blood libels and say that the Nazis have returned.
But when these words appear on the Palestinian Authority’s television and official newspaper, al-Hayat al-Jadida, we don’t say or do a thing. Arab Nazis bear a reduced political and criminal responsibility here — and the source of this racist arrogance is in the left, which carries the flag of “progress.”
Several days after the hit-and-run attack in Jerusalem, in which two people were murdered, and the attempt to murder Yehudah Glick, Supreme Sharia Judge Mahmoud al-Habash lashed out on official Palestinian television: “We kiss every leg carrying out a holy war at the al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem.”
Imagine a Jewish public figure speaking that way, for example after the burning of the Arab youth — within hours, the inciter would be arrested until the completion of legal proceedings and would be judged severely. But when the inciter is Arab, sacred rules like “the rule of law” and “equality before the law” are null and void.
| — Hat tip: K | [Return to headlines] |
74 Children Executed by ISIS for ‘Crimes’ That Include Refusal to Fast, Report Says
The blood-soaked executioners of ISIS have spared neither women nor children since the jihadist army established its caliphate a year ago, putting an estimated 74 kids and even more women to death for such offenses as practicing “magic” and refusing to fast during Ramadan.
A total of 3,027 people have been executed by ISIS since it declared itself a state under strict Islamic law in Syria and Iraq last June, according to a new report by the UK-based group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Many of the charges against those executed are recorded as blasphemy and spying, but others include sorcery, sodomy, practicing as a Shia Muslim,” the report states.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Kuwait: Torture Death of Student: Dh12m Blood Money Offered
Sharjah — The family of a student, who is on death row for torturing a fellow student to death, offered a cheque for one million Kuwaiti Dinars (Dh12.14 million) to the deceased’s family as blood money in a Sharjah court on Tuesday.
The family also submitted a cheque for 100,000 Kuwaiti Dinars (Dh1.21 million) to the lawyer of the deceased’s family, in addition to a cheque for 10,000 Kuwaiti Dinars (Dh121,462) as legal fees.
The lawyer of the deceased’s family, Salim Sahoo, however, refused the cheques and insisted on cash payment as was agreed by the two parties. The second defendant in the case is yet to pay the blood money. The Sharjah appellate court adjourned the case to next month, when a forensic report will be submitted in court. Two Kuwaiti students were sentenced to death by the Sharjah Shariah Court of First Instance in November last year for torturing and murdering their compatriot roommate. A third accused in the case was fined in absentia for failing to inform the police about the crime.
The victim, 19-year-old Mubarak Meshaal Al Mubarak, a first-year student at the University of Sharjah, was tortured and assaulted for three days by the accused. The third accused, who fled the UAE after the incident, did not directly take part in the crime but failed to inform legal authorities about it. Defendants Y.H., 18, and H.M., 19, were convicted of deprivation of the victim’s freedom, torture and premeditated murder.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Relentless Terror: The Everyday Horrors of the Islamic State
Eighty lashes of the whip for alcohol. Amputation for theft. Crucifiction for robbery. These are only a few of the draconian punishments employed by the Islamic State, according to documents and the testimony of witnesses obtained by SPIEGEL.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed to Give Away $32 Billion
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has pledged to give away $32 billion over the coming years.
There is no time scale set for the donation, which represents all of his fortune, according to Alwaleed. The billionaire is the world’s 20th richest person with $30.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The gift would benefit Muslim and non-Muslim countries, Alwaleed said in a press conference in Riyadh today. It would be used for work in areas including inter-cultural understanding, disease eradication, providing power to remote areas, building orphanages and schools, disaster relief and empowering women, he said.
Since Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced the Giving Pledge in 2010, about 200 individuals from around the world have promised to give away more than half of their fortune in life or death. Gates and Buffett are leading by example. The two richest Americans, who are worth $151 billion combined, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, have put more than $46 billion into the Gates foundation.
The Prince hoped the gift would build a “better world of tolerance, acceptance, equality and opportunity for all,” he said in a statement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Allure of the Islamic State: Money and Status Attract Fighters
A bricklayer got a $60 a month raise by trading his construction tools for a Kalashnikov and becoming a soldier for the Islamic State. Subsidies and other benefits appear to be part of the holy war’s allure for some.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Deploys Tanks Along Syrian Border
Tension rises, army in state of high alert
(ANSAmed) — ISTANBUL, JULY 1 — Turkey has strengthened its military presence along the border with Syria with tanks and missile batteries, several local media report. Army units deployed along the border have also been placed in high alert. Armored vehicles and military personnel from the 5th Armored Brigade were on Tuesday moved to the southeastern province of Kilis. Missile batteries were sent to the Karkemis hills in the Gaziantep province, a strategic point to look out over Syrian territory nearby. The strengthening of the Turkish military presence along the border was decided after an intensification of clashes between the Islamic State (ISIS) and Kurdish fighters in recent days. Several media report that the jihadist fighters have mined part of Syrian territory between Karkemis and Jarabulus, in the Aleppo province just over the Turkish border. Several trenches have been dug, which aim to — among other things — to block the movement of armored vehicles if the Turkish army does cross the border. Some trenches have been dug by Turkish soldiers in Nusaybin, in the Mardin province, located in front of the Kurdish-Syrian city Qamishli. The daily Bugun reports that all the units deployed along the border have been placed in “maximum alert” for the next 24 hours, while the interior ministry has called meetings with governors and police officials of the provinces concerned to draw up an action plan for any potential popular uprisings in the case of armed intervention.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Baltic States Ridicule Russia’s Probe on Independence
Baltic politicians have ridiculed Russia’s new investigation into the legality of their countries’ independence.
“It’s incomprehensible why the Russian Prosecutor General’s office would waste its time and resources on this nonsense. The entire issue is legally absurd”, Estonia’s foreign minister, Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, told EUobserver.
Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania’s FM, told local media it’s “a provocation, to say the least”.
Ivars Lasis, a Latvian foreign ministry spokesman, told this website that “if you follow the logic” of the Russian enquiry, it “also casts a doubt on the legal foundations upon which the sovereignty of the Russian Federation itself is built”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Russia to Launch Bulava Ballistic Missiles in Military Exercises by End of 2015
Russia plans to perform several test launches of its Bulava ballistic missiles by the end of 2015, according to a report. The launches will occur just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the expansion of Russia’s nuclear arsenal in a move that sparked international criticism and NATO countermeasures.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ukraine Stops Buying Russian Gas
Ukraine has stopped buying gas from Russia after a price deal expired on 30 June and talks in Vienna failed to produce a new agreement. It will continue to transit gas to Russia’s EU customers. But the breakdown in talks poses questions on future winter transit if bad blood persists.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
India: Vandals Attack Baptist Church, Damage Cross, In Bhiwani
Four motorcyclists threw stones at the building. After a first incident, they came back half an hour later to carry out a second attack. This is the first act of violence in Bhiwani District. For the church’s pastor, the attack was “an attempt to provoke tensions in the community.” According to the president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, it was “intentionally provocative and anti-Christian.”
Mumbai (AsiaNews) — On Sunday morning, four men stormed the Baptist church in Bhiwani District, in the northern Indian State of Haryana.
The four hooligans arrived on motorcycles around 5:30 am. Two of them threw stones at the building and then fled when they saw parishioners at the scene.
Some 30 minutes later, the attackers came back and threw stones a second time, damaging the church’s cross. Now, things appear to be back normal.
Deputy Police Inspector Ummed Singh corroborated the incident. The official said that no one was hurt, noting that police agents have been deployed around the church to avoid “any other possible incident during the week’s religious services.”
According to Rev Prakash Messey, the pastor of the church, the attack was “an attempt to provoke tensions in the community.”
The incident two days ago is the first act of violence since the priest arrived in Bhiwani District. It reflects a cident vandalised s, its, of justice and ain ent by favouring climate of tension caused by recent attacks against Catholic and Pentecostal churches.
Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), firmly condemned “those who vandalised the cross in the Baptist church in Bhiwani”.
“This act deeply hurts our religious feelings. The cross is the symbol of the Christian faith,” the activist told AsiaNews. “This is not an isolated act by vandals; it is rather intentionally provocative and anti-Christian.”
The GCIC president is very concerned about the slow pace of justice in apprehending the culprits. “Impunity,” he said, “encourages such people to feed a climate of fear and intimidation, since they can act undisturbed”.
What is more, “Such attacks generate tensions in a society that for decades saw the members of different religions co-exist harmoniously.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS Burns CIA Opium Fields in Afghanistan
The Islamic State is destroying opium fields in Afghanistan as it routs the Taliban, according to witnesses.
The reports may ultimately result in the US sending troops back into the country to protect these valuable and highly lucrative assets.
In 2009 it was reported that the CIA controlled the opium trade in Afghanistan through Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the former president, Hamid Karzai, who began his career as a fundraiser for the CIA’s mujahideen during the 1980s.
“CIA-supported Mujahideen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society,” William Blum writes in The Real Drug Lords.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Smita Sabharwal: Indian ‘Eye Candy’ Official Sues Outlook
An Indian bureaucrat is suing one of the country’s leading news magazines after it described her as “eye candy”.
Outlook magazine also carried an illustration showing Smita Sabharwal walking the ramp at a fashion show with her political bosses leering at her.
Ms Sabharwal, who works in the office of the chief minister of southern Telangana state, told BBC Hindi the remark was “sexist” and “demoralising”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Almost a Third of China’s Great Wall Has Disappeared
Around 30% of China’s Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities — including stealing bricks to build houses — erode the Unesco world heritage site, state media has reported.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China at War With Islam: Uighurs
Citing China’s ban on fasting the holy month of Ramadan in the Muslim dominant Xinjiang district, the World Uyghur Congress has accused Beijing of launching an “unnamed war against Muslims and Islam.”
“Unfortunately the world is still keeping silent,” the Vice President of the Congress Seyit Tumturk told Anadolu Agency this week.
Tumturk condemned government restrictions on Ramadan in the far-western Xinjiang district where Muslim party members, civil servants, students and teachers are banned from fasting during the holy month.
He added that the Muslim-dominant area is the “only Muslim region in the world where people are prohibited to practice Ramadan fasting”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China-Russia to Boost Military Technical Training Cooperation
China has plans to build stronger military ties through developing armed forces-technical training cooperation with Russia to boost geopolitical relations. Beijing insists that cooperation between the world’s second- and third-most powerful militaries should not be considered a threat to any third party.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Historic Vietnam-USA Summit to Address Beijing Threat in the South China Sea
In early July, for the first time in history, the Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party will make an official visit to the United States. Response to Beijing provocations in South China Sea on agenda.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) — On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Hanoi, Nguyen Phu Trong, will visit Washington to discuss the “nine major pillars” of cooperation between the two countries and the renewed threat of Beijing in the South China Sea.
The meeting, which will take place in early July (although the exact dates have not been published), is the first ever visit by the highest office of the Vietnamese Party to the United States.
Ted Osius, US ambassador to Hanoi, is confident that this will be “a historic meeting. American leaders are ready to welcome the Vietnam delegation in this important visit”. The Vietnamese Secretary-General retinue will be numerous, given the multiple topics to be discussed. Apart from the issue of China, other items on the agenda will include policies, security, economy, trade, education, health, environment and relations between the two States.
The Vietnamese media report that on June 25 Beijing relocated a Chinese oil platform HD-981 (v. Photo) in the waters of the South China Sea, about 167 km from the coast of Vietnam, in the exclusive economic zone of Hanoi, which is claimed also by China.
The Vietnamese press writes today that “the maritime authorities of Vietnam are closely monitoring the position of the China HD-981 oil rig.” In May last year, Beijing had located the rig in the same area, in a move branded as provocative by both Vietnam and the States of South-East Asia.
According to China’s Maritime Safety Agency, the platform will search for of oil and natural gas in Lang Shui, north-east of the Paracel Islands (an archipelago subject of disputes), from June 25 to August 20. The Chinese government has banned all foreign vessels from entering in ‘“work area” of the platform, which has a two-kilometer radius.
On June 25, the Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Tu Quan, confirmed — as already announced two weeks ago — that Beijing is completing the construction of military and civilian bases in the Spratly Islands, disputed by Vietnam and many countries of the south-east Asia.
Hanoi and Washington fear that the Chinese artificial islands could be used for military purposes and to impose Beijing control’s on navigation in the South China Sea, an area rich in oil and natural gas, with an annual turnover of more than 5 trillion dollars.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Super-Muscly Pigs Created by Small Genetic Tweak
Belgian Blue cattle are hulking animals that provide unusually large amounts of prized, lean cuts of beef, the result of decades of selective breeding. Now, a team of scientists from South Korea and China says that it has created the porcine equivalent using a much faster method.
These ‘double-muscled’ pigs are made by disrupting, or editing, a single gene — a change that is much less dramatic than those made in conventional genetic modification, in which genes from one species are transplanted into another. As a result, their creators hope that regulators will take a lenient stance towards the pigs — and that the breed could be among the first genetically engineered animals to be approved for human consumption.
Jin-Soo Kim, a molecular biologist at Seoul National University who is leading the work, argues that his gene edits merely speed up a process that could, at least in principle, occur through a more natural route. “We could do this through breeding,” he says, “but then it would take decades.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) Taiwan gay rights activist and “rainbow party” (Color Play) organizer Zhong Ji Lu was taken into custody by Taiwan police today for his role in the massive, deadly fireball that rained down upon 500 youth celebrating over the weekend. He was questioned and released on NT$1 million bail, with investigations pending.
Zhong Ji Lu is the key founder of Gay Rights Taiwan (www.facebook.com/gayrightstw) according to Storm Media Group in Taiwan. Mr. Lu is well known as a gay rights activist according to Liberty Times Net Taiwan. He’s also been the subject of top news on Pridewatch Taiwan (http://www.pridewatch.tw/people/yaowz) as a gay rights activist. Since this link was first publicized, the Pridewatch Taiwan website has been down, likely due to the very large amount of traffic referred by Natural News.
The Color Play Creative Company and Rui Bo Marketing Agency are responsible for this tragedy, reports China Times. Both organizations are owned by Taiwan gay rights activist Zhong Ji Lu, who has been linked to numerous business scandals, according to the Times.
The weekend catastrophe involved the spontaneous ignition of a multi-colored special effect which was launched into the air by event organizers using air cannons. The “special effect” turned out to be highly explosive particulate corn flour, the same substance frequently responsible for grain silo explosions in the grain belts of the world. The airborne corn flour ignited and burst into flames, raining down fire upon the heads of nearly 500 youth who were attending the event.
Natural News can now report that event organizers were previously aware that this substance was flammable and had the potential to explode. As Nextmag Taiwan now reports:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Police Quell Riot at Australian Prison Over Smoking Ban
Heavily-armed police quelled a riot involving up to 300 inmates at an Australian jail Wednesday over the introduction of a smoking ban, with a handful of prisoners injured.
Melbourne’s Metropolitan Remand Centre remains in lockdown after the 15-hour disturbance when doors were smashed, fires lit and some inmates armed themselves with sticks and iron bars from the jail’s agricultural sheds.
Three prison staff received minor injuries and five inmates were taken to hospital, some with dog bites, after police moved in during the early hours of the morning, reportedly using tear gas…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya: Al-Shabab Ramadan 2015 Threat: Militants Pledge to Kill ‘Non-Believers’ During Holy Month
Al-Shabab, the Somalia-based jihadi terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda, threatened to attack “non-believers” in Kenya during Ramadan, continuing what has become an annual offensive during the Islamic holy month. Amid constant clashes between Somali forces and al-Shabab, jihadist leaders have continued to push for greater violence against non-Muslims, echoing earlier rhetoric from the Islamic State group.
“We are planning to give Kenyan non-believers a true taste of Jihad [the holy war] in the next few days and weeks,” a senior al-Shabab commander said, according to Christian Post, adding that they will keep “targeting and destroying Kenya’s education sector and business sector.”
Kenya has been under attack by al-Shabab since 2011, after Kenyan troops entered Somalia to fight the terrorist group, reports the Nigerian Vanguard. In April, al-Shabab attacked Garissa University College in Kenya and killed 152 people, sparking international outrage.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Nancy Menges & Luis Fleischman: Free or Fraudulent in Venezuela’s Upcoming Elections
n mid-June, Thomas Shannon, a senior counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry, met with the leader of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello. Cabello is the second most powerful man in the Venezuelan regime and is also being prosecuted in the U.S. for leading a drug cartel that has reportedly shipped tons of cocaine into the United States
According to Venezuela ‘s official version, the meeting was part of a “normalization” process between the two countries.
Whereas, it is not clear what the two men discussed, it is reasonable to assume that the Venezuelan government’s decision to hold parliamentary elections on December 6, despite initial hesitations and objections, was the result of this meeting. From Cabello’s perspective the meeting provided good propaganda showing him as a statesman not a drug kingpin. In terms of any normalization between the two countries, the State Department’s conditions were; the setting of a date for parliamentary elections; allowing outside election monitors and freeing all political prisoners including the leader of the opposition, Leopoldo Lopez. Therefore, the question remains whether or not the Administration has accomplished its aims.
Although Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro agreed to hold parliamentary elections, there has been no commitment- as far as we know- to release opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez from prison or for that matter none of the 70 political prisoners currently held by the Venezuelan government without trial and without proven charges…
| [Return to headlines] |
Police Find Men Pushing Car Loaded With Explosives in Mexico Border City of Ciudad Juarez
Police in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez say they have detained three men who were pushing a car laden with explosives.
The explosives included two tubes of ANFO, or ammonium nitrate-fuel oil, a potent explosive often used in industry. Officials say the explosives would have caused damage in a 40-yard (meter) radius had they detonated.
The Chihuahua state prosecutors’ office said Tuesday that police also found three batteries, two bottles of fuel and electrical wire in the car. It said the men who were pushing the car also had marijuana and guns.
In July 2010, a car bomb aimed at federal police officers exploded in Ciudad Juarez, killing three people and wounding nine. But drug violence in the city across from El Paso, Texas, has calmed since 2011.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Czech Republic: Immigration More Dangerous Than Cold War
Prague in favour of refugee camps in Africa and Middle East
(ANSA) — PRAGUE — Immigration threat is more dangerous than the Cold War, according to Czech Finance Andrej Babis, who commented on this issue speaking with the daily Pravo.
Babis declared his support for the construction of refugee camps outside the borders of the Schengen area, in Africa and the Middle East. Illegal refugees arrested in the EU without residence permits, he said, should be immediately moved to these areas. “The Isis, terrorism and illegal migration are an even greater threat to Europe than a conflict or Cold War with Russia. The EU should build refugee camps in areas overlooking southern and eastern Mediterranean, where asylum applications could be examined and evaluated. The goal is a controlled migration”, Babis said. Prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka agreed with him. Babis is critical of the redistribution policy of 60,000 refugees, on a voluntary basis. According to him, if each country makes its own decision, just like Hungary has already done, the Schengen area will run the risk of dissolving”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark Tightens Border Controls Over Migrant Fears
Denmark’s new Liberal led government is stepping up border controls in a bid to stop irregular migrants from entering the country.
The moves, announced Tuesday (30 June) by its new minister of foreign affairs Kristian Jensen, is raising broader concerns about internal freedom of movement rules in the EU.
Denmark is part of the EU passport-free Schengen area but says vamping up border checks won’t obstruct free passage.
The foreign ministry in a tweet said the plans are “not permanent border controls”.
Jensen in Berlin delivered a similar message to his German counterpart Frank Walter-Steinmeier.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Expert: Poland Has No Set Programme for Migrant Integration
Although Poland will announce in July how many migrants it will take on as part of an EU-wide policy, the country does not have a plan to integrate them in society, a report says.
Miroslaw Bieniecki, the head of Institute of Migration Studies, which published the report, said that “From now, we should spend a lot more energy, a lot more time and resources so that Poland’s integration policy is implemented in a coherent and thoughtful manner.”
The European Commission recommended that over the next two years Poland take on almost 2,700 asylum seekers originally from Syria and Eritrea who had landed in Italy and Greece.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Migrant Crisis: EU to Help Hungary Tackle Big Influx
The European Commission has pledged to send financial aid and experts to Hungary to help tackle an influx of migrants arriving via Serbia.
The EU will provide more than €8m (£6m; $9m) in aid, tents and experts to fingerprint migrants, process asylum requests and help with expulsions.
Until recently most of the migrants came from Kosovo, but now many are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
More than 65,000 have entered Hungary illegally from Serbia this year.
The EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, discussed the crisis with Hungarian officials in Budapest on Tuesday.
“Hungary is under pressure. We were talking so far about Italy and Greece. Now we added Hungary.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Record 137,000 Refugees: Migrants Crossed Mediterranean This Year
A record 137,000 people made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in the first half of 2015, most of them fleeing war, conflict and persecution, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
“Europe is living through a maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions,” the UN refugee agency warned in a report, adding that the number of people making the crossing swelled 83 percent in the first six months of 2015 compared to a year earlier.
The situation is expected to worsen as more clement summer weather allows ruthless people smugglers to dispatch more people on the dangerous crossing, often in rickety boats and at the mercy of human traffickers…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Record 137,000 Migrants Crossed Med in 2015, UNHCR
A record number of 137,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa in the first six months of 2015, United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said in a report on Wednesday. Most of those people were fleeing war and persecution, the agency said. UNHCR said most of the asylum seekers went to Greece and Italy — 68,000 and 67,500 respectively. The 137,000 figure is 83% higher than the 75,000 who arrived same period in 2014.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Record 137,000 Crossed Mediterranean This Year
A record 137,000 people made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in the first half of 2015, most of them fleeing war, conflict and persecution, the United Nations said Wednesday.
“Europe is living through a maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions,” the U.N. refugee agency warned in a report, adding that the number of people making the crossing swelled 83 percent in the first six months of 2015 compared to a year earlier. The situation is expected to worsen as more clement summer weather allows ruthless people smugglers to dispatch more people on the dangerous crossing, often in rickety boats and at the mercy of human traffickers.
The immigration crisis is a burning issue for the EU, where member states have been wrangling over the best ways to tackle human trafficking and arguing over how to share the burden of helping new arrivals, many of them ill, starving and destitute.
The soaring numbers arriving in Italy and Greece, before moving on to other northern European states in the hope of finding jobs, has sparked outcry and growing anti-foreigner rhetoric in many countries.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Ship Rescues 104 Migrants Off Libya
The Swedish coast guard ship Poseidon has rescued dozens of migrants who were travelling in a rubber boat in waters off the coast of Libya’s capital Tripoli.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Justice Scalia Issues Scathing Dissent in Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Ruling: ‘Pride Goeth Before a Fall’
WASHINGTON — As one of the four justices that dissented from today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring that all 50 states must legalize same-sex “marriage,” Justice Antonin Scalia issued a sharp rebuke of his colleagues’ arrogance, warning that “pride goeth before a fall.”
“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” he wrote. “It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the court to do so.”
Scalia was speaking of his disapproval of five black-robed justices issuing an edict that he opined was “highly unrepresentative” of the nation and “hardly a cross-section of America.”
“Today’s decree says that my ruler, and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he said. “And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the people of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves,” he said.
Scalia then began to speak with sarcasm, stating that he believed the justices’ ruling reeked of arrogance.
“[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial putsch,” he said. “The five justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every state violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003.”
“They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since,” Scalia continued. “These justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry.”
“And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution,” he said.
Scalia remarked that the court’s reasoning, which he likewise criticized, was couched in personal preference and not based upon law.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Laura Kipnis on How Campus Feminism Infantilizes Women
“What now gets labeled feminism on [college] campuses,” says Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis, “has to do with dialing back a lot the progress women have made establishing ourselves as consenting adults.”
Last week, Kipnis sat down with Reason’s Matt Welch to talk about how campus feminism infantilizes women, Title IX, why Hustler’s Larry Flynt and anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin have a lot in common, and her recent book, Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
LGBT Activists: Marriage Was Never the ‘End Game’
Some admit they seek radical ‘transformation’ of society
Now, the real fight begins, say leaders in the LGBT movement.
And it won’t be for the faint of heart.
So-called “marriage equality” is not the end-game, according to the activists. It’s merely a window through which they will push for other rights, in housing, education, health care, employment and religious practice.
An op-ed in the Nation, a left-of-center magazine, provided a playbook for LGBT rights activists moving forward from last Friday’s 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court proclaiming same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
In that op-ed, LGBT activists were encouraged to take the offensive against any individual or group that does not agree with their worldview.
“Create a specific anti-fascist infrastructure of social media, legal, research and watchdog groups to expose and defeat the right wing culturally and politically,” writes the article’s authors, a trio of LGBT rights activists. “In sum, the work ahead for queers is to be transformative, not transfixed.”
A perusal of commentary from LGBT leaders shows that marriage was never the end game. The next step will be for activists to fan out throughout the 50 states, with a special focus on those less-friendly states in the Bible Belt and middle America.
The article goes on to lament that 29 states have no LGBT rights protection, so that is where they plan to strike first.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
However, according to MIT network scientist Cesar Hidalg, the popular profile picture change has little to do with Facebook supporting gay rights.
“This is probably a Facebook experiment!” Hidalg said on his Facebook page earlier this week. “The question is, how long will it take for people to change their profile pictures back to normal.”
Although corporate media reports dismiss Hidalg’s remarks as a joke, the fact remains Facebook has conducted a number of psychological operations on their users, including experiments to gauge the ability of social networks to operate as a massive-scale emotional contagion.
“Facebook conducted a massive psychological experiment on 689,003 users, manipulating their news feeds to assess the effects on their emotions,” Forbes reported last June…
As Sandeep Parwaga and others have noted, there is more to Facebook than meets the eye.
Rarely mentioned in all the hoopla praising the technological wonder of the Facebook network is the fact the company received start-up funding from the CIA.
“Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC,” writes Matt Greenop.
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.
[Comment: Face “build your own dossier” book.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Officials: Students’ Gender Identity Determines Restroom Use
The U.S. Justice Department says in a court filing that transgender students must be allowed to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.
The department says in a statement of interest filed Monday that failure to do so amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972. The document is in response to a federal lawsuit filed against the Gloucester County School Board by a 16-year-old transgender student who wants to be allowed to use the boys’ restroom.
The lawsuit says Gavin Grimm used the communal restrooms without incident until the board adopted a policy in December requiring transgender students to use a private facility.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order allowing Grimm to use the boys’ restrooms.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
On-Duty NYPD Officer Grinds, Simulates Sex With Man in Street at ‘Gay Pride’ Parade
A video of an on-duty NYPD police officer bumping and grinding and simulating sexual intercourse with a “gay pride” parade participant has gone viral and is raising concerns.
The video, which has been viewed well over 2 million times on YouTube, shows an unidentified, uniformed officer loosing himself to the Michael Jackson song, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” and bumping his rear-end into the private area of the “gay pride” marcher.
During the short video clip, the officer’s back is turned to the homosexual man dancing behind him as his holstered gun and handcuffs shake from his hips.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Court Now Holds That Same-Sex Couples May Exercise the Fundamental Right to Marry.”
“On Friday, Karen Wilkerson, sought a court order compelling the Smith County county clerk to issue her and Jodie Smith a marriage license. The complaint quotes from the SCOTUS opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges: “The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. Republican Elites Are Lying To You… They Can Nullify The SCOTUS ‘Same-Sex Marriage’ Ruling Tomorrow
This from GrasstopsUSA:
Republican Leaders Are Lying To You. Congress CAN Nullify The Lawless Supreme Court Decree That Two Men Can Marry… And They Can Do It Tomorrow!
“This news might come as something of a shock to some of you, but Congress has the CLEAR and UNDENIABLE authority and power, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States, to NULLIFY the recent lawless decree by five unelected black-robed tyrants that elevates perversion to the status of marriage.
“All it takes is a simple majority vote in the House and the Senate and, once it is done, the courts have no power to rule on it and Barack Obama has no authority to veto it. If Congress votes… IT IS DONE.
A Tyrannical Supreme Court Is The Problem: The Checks And Balances Provided By The Constitution Is The Solution.
Now, some of you are already asking; if the solution to vacating this ruling is so simple, why isn’t Congress doing it right now? We’ll get to that, but first let’s talk about Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Walmart, Comcast Celebrate Gay Pride
Nowhere is homosexual influence more pronounced than Hollywood. However, a new film on homosexual influence in Hollywood, “An Open Secret,” is having a hard time getting distributed, with those involved with the film saying that financial interests in Hollywood have been trying to suppress it. This film, however, does not celebrate “gay pride.” Rather, it expose victims of sexual abuse in the entertainment industry. The homosexual pedophiles exposed in the film include Marc Collins-Rector, a major figure in the entertainment business who is a convicted child abuser and now a registered sex offender. The film is directed by Amy Berg, who also directed the 2006 American documentary film about a pedophile Catholic priest, Oliver O’Grady, called “Deliver Us From Evil.”…
Although Walmart still portrays itself as family-friendly, LaBarbera points out that the company is now publicly pro-homosexual and has been giving major grants to homosexual/transgender events and organizations, including $25,000 — $50,000 in 2014 to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a group that helps elect “out” homosexuals to political office. (Most of them are Democrats.)
The group’s 2011 annual report reveals that openly gay Obama ally, Terry Bean, co-founder of the major homosexual lobby, the Human Rights Campaign, has been a major supporter of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund as well. Bean took a leave of absence from the Human Rights Campaign after he was arrested on sexual abuse charges involving sex with a minor.
[…]
Meanwhile, open homosexuals in the media, such as Edward Snowden mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald, have opened fire on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for exposing the Court’s gay marriage ruling as a “judicial Putsch” that stole the democratic system away from the American people.
Writing on the website of First Look Media, financed by billionaire French-born Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar, Greenwald hailed the ruling and noted that “Harry Hay created the Mattachine Society,” the first homosexual rights organization in the U.S. However, Greenwald failed to point out Hay’s membership in the Communist Party and support for the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What happened in Washington, D.C. last week at the Supreme Court happened for one reason and one reason only: because the U.S. hierarchy allowed it to happen. The U.S. bishops — past and present — must step up and own this disaster.
It was the past generation and present generation of so-called leaders who led the faithful right over the cliff by allowing the homosexual sub-culture — which is more of a dominant culture than a subculture — to flourish in the Church for decades.
The society turned gay, first culturally and then legally, but not before the Church in Her leadership had already blazed the trail. The culture turned gay because the clergy turned gay first.
Many bishops and loads of priests have known for years about the dominance of the so-called gay mafia in the Church. Even Pope Francis acknowledged it soon after his election.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
We are one of the few traditional Churches left. All our clergy are required to be married-to women. Remember them? They used to be No1 in days past. Now all we hear about is a minority that imposes itself on the rest. Gays do not reproduce. Women do. So guess what that means for our national survival.
A couple of “nice boys” tried to make me perform a “wedding”. I refused. They reported me to the Police who promptly tried to arrest me but Cameron’s law so far prevents “nice boys” from being able to force their views on clergy. Personally I am sick of hearing about it all. They’ll be the death of us all. Tolerance is one thing but it must go both ways. Two percent telling 98% how to live?
Mad. That is compulsion, not tolerance and they are so vicious.
Now Cardinal. Congratulations!
Justice Scalia is a champion and standout for civilizational stability and common sense amongst an activist rabble who would impose the view of a minority on the majority while completely subjugating the law of the land in doing so.
Justice Scalia should be commended for his stance while the other so called ‘justices’ should be hanged for theirs!
This nonsense has annoyed me for many years.
For a start I disagree with the hijacking of the word ‘GAY’, it used to mean happy, light hearted, now it is used to describe unfortunate people who were born with an imbalance of chromosomes, and while we may sympathize with them, exactly why are they ‘proud’ of that?
Are we to see parades of small people ‘Dwarf Pride?’
How about ‘We’re proud to have had measles’, etc., well where does it stop?
http://10news.dk/?p=1390
“The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said.”
Yassin Salhi decapitating his boss
– Workplace and marital problems, or jihad?
– The one does not exclude the other, the prosecutor of Paris says, according to Le Figaro.
Salhi allegedly, went to Syria with wife and children i 2009, where he also became close with a Forsane Alizza member, an islamist group that has been threatening with attacks on France.
The above group also has been working to enforce wearing the niqab in public in France. At one time there was a case of a muslima being stopped by police on niqab driving in Paris.