Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/23/2015

The Turkish military and mujahideen for the Islamic State have exchanged fire across the border between Turkey and Syria. One Turkish soldier was killed and at least two were wounded. Meanwhile, the United States is considering launching air strikes against ISIS from bases inside Turkey.

In other news, the Chinese government has propped up the country’s shaky stock market with a reported 800 billion dollars.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, K, Nick, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

Financial Crisis
» China Stock Rescue Measures Add up to $800 Billion
» Commodities Collapsed Just Before the Last Stock Market Crash — So Guess What is Happening Right Now?
» Finland: Unemployment Rate at 10%, Every Fifth Young Person Without Work
» Greece: Tsipras Faces Down Second Rebellion on EU Bailout
» Morgan Stanley: Gold Could Plunge to $800, And it’s Not Because of China’s Reserves
» What Do Greece and Louisiana Have in Common? The War on Cash
» Why Most Companies “Beat” Earnings Expectations — Explained in One Chart
 
USA
» American Students Are Now Being Given Threat Assessments
» Americans Are Fleeing These US Cities in Droves
» Armed Marine Vet Standing Guard Outside Recruiting Center Told to Leave or He’ll be Arrested
» Can You Hear Me Now? Graham Smashes Cell Phone After Trump Outs Number
» Colo. Theater Shooting Jurors Say Death Penalty Can be Considered
» Cyborg Cockroach and Drone Teams Can Locate Disaster Survivors
» Deport the Abdulazeez Family
» Earth-Like Alien World Looms Into View Through Kepler Telescope
» FCA Files IPO for Ferrari on NYSE
» Finding Another Earth
» GA School District Installs Palm Scanners for Lunch Program
» Government Agent Blows Up Federal Lab While Making Meth — No Arrests, No Charges
» NASA Spies Earth-Sized Exoplanet Orbiting Sun-Like Star
» NASA Finds Closest Earth Twin Yet in Haul of 500 Alien Planets
» Pluto’s Atmosphere is Swept Back Like a Comet’s Tail
» San Francisco Could be Hit by Massive Earthquake ‘Any Day’, Says USGS Scientist
» Senators Given Under 60 Minutes to Read 1000+ Page Bill Before Vote
» Shocking Video Shows LAPD Cops Shoot Man in Wheelchair With 3 Bean Bag Rounds and a Taser
» The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System
» These Soviet Maps of America Are Incredibly Detailed
» Vibrant Pluto Stuns Scientists
» Watchdog: Increased Risk of IRS Unfairly Auditing Political Groups
 
Canada
» Canadian Prime Minister to Meet With Crews Battling Raging Wildfires in British Columbia
» Canada’s New Anti-Terror Law May Not Meet International Rights Obligations
 
Europe and the EU
» Breivik Bomb Van Exhibited on Norway Massacre Anniversary
» Denmark-Germany Undersea Fehmarn Tunnel Gets Go-Ahead
» Finland: Support for Mosque Causes Spike in Lutheran Church-Leavers
» Germany: High Stakes for Wagner’s Progeny at Opera Fest
» Germany: Record Sales Put Daimler in Rivals’ Wing Mirrors
» Germany: Hohle Fels Cave Yields Paleolithic Figurine Fragments
» Germany: Walls in Their Minds: East—West Split Remains
» Hamburg Court Confirms Italy Motions on Marines in India
» Italy: Bologna Mayor Probed for Providing Water to Squatters
» Italy: Lavazza Bids to Buy French Coffee Maker Carte Noire
» Italy: Nearly 4,000 Rome Holiday Lodgings ‘Irregular’
» Italy: Verdini Tells Berlusconi Will Split
» Italy: Rome Mayor Plays Up ‘Virtues’ of New York Times Report
» Italy: Terror Suspects Refuse to Talk, Say Prosecutors
» Italy: Vendola Among Those Indicted in ILVA Case
» ‘Mob Rule’ Is Just Part of French Striking Culture
» Norway: ‘Most of Breivik Victims’ Parents Still Cannot Work’
» Poland: Civil Drone Almost Collides With Lufthansa Plane
» Sicily Governor Crocetta Says Won’t Quit
» Sweden: Malmö Attacks Part of ‘Spiral of Retaliation’
» Sweden: Two Gothenburg Arrests Over Syria Terror Killing
» Time to Ditch Milk? Exploring the Dairy Dilemma
» UK: ‘Smart Skin’ Could Revolutionize Military Vehicles
» UK: David Cameron’s Extremism Speech
» UK: World War II Tunnels Reopened in Dover
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Israel, Hamas Strange Bedfellows When it Comes to Reining in ISIS in Gaza
» The Earliest-Known Chicken Dinners
 
Middle East
» Fences Rise Across Middle East as Jihadi Threat Escalates
» Garden of Eden Dries as ISIS, Turkey and Iraq Fight Over Water
» Iran Executions See ‘Unprecedented Spike’ — Amnesty
» Islamic State: Turkey Soldier Killed in Cross-Border Fire
» Islamic State Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda, FBI Chief Says
» Lebanon Evicts 6,000 Refugees Into the Streets
» Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis Grows Amid Gridlock
» Policeman Killed Amid Growing Violence in Turkey
» Report: US May Now Launch ISIS Strikes From Within Turkey
» Turkey Scrambles Fighter Jets to Syrian Border as Clashes Erupt With IS Militants
» Turkey-Funded Mega-Mosque in Bucharest Sparks Resistance
» Why My Own Father Would Have Let IS Kill Me
» ‘You’ve Been Fleeced’: Congress Grills Kerry, Obama Officials on Iran Nuke Deal
 
Russia
» Berlusconi Says Vladimir Putin Wants Him to Become Russia’s Economy Minister
» Bishkek Ends Agreement With Washington, Inching Its Way Closer to Beijing and Moscow
» Dutch-Polish ‘Content Factory’ To Counter Russian Propaganda
» Gerard Depardieu Given Hand-Scything Lesson by Belarus Leader
» Russia is the Most Attractive BRICS Market for Investors
 
South Asia
» Asia Bibi — Latest Developments
» India: Kerala: Hindu Fundamentalists Forcibly Convert 39 Dalit Christians
» Officials: High Temperatures Melt Glacier, Flood Central Asian City of Almaty in Kazakhstan
» Possible Attacks on Churches Trigger High Security Alert in Indonesia
 
Far East
» China Wants to Build a Lunar Base on the Far Side of the Moon
» Vientiane and Beijing Agree to US$ 7.2 Billion Railway to Link the Whole of Southeast Asia
 
Australia — Pacific
» British 15-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to Invovlement in Planned ANZAC Day ISIS-Style Terror Plot
» ‘Ghost Population’ Hints at Long-Lost Migration to the Americas
» Strewth — Australian Genetic Link to Founding of the Americas
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Boko Haram Bombs Kill Over 50 in Nigeria, Cameroon
» Kerry Kennedy Calls for Darfur Rain Dance at Giffoni Fest
» Obama Excitement at Fever Pitch in Kenya
 
Latin America
» At Mexico’s Narco Cemetery, Palatial Tombs Await the Inevitable End for Gang Members
» Brazil Police May be to Blame for 35 Execution-Style Killings Over Weekend
» Four-Legged Fossil Snake is a World First
 
Immigration
» “Refugee Children” Invade Sweden
» 35-40 People Drown in Mediterranean Migrant Crossing, Save the Children Reports
» Denmark: Smugglers Help Refugees Compare Welfare Benefits
» Denmark Can’t Find Housing for Refugees
» Finland: Asylum Seeker Reception Centres at Capacity
» Hispanics Love Me, Trump Declares at Mexican Border
» House OKs Bill to Crack Down on ‘Sanctuary Cities, ‘ White House Threatens Veto
» Italy: No One is Shirking Migrants Responsibility — Prefects
» Shipwreck Survivors Say 40 Dead Off Libya
» Trump Threatens Independent Run, On Sidelines of Border Visit
 
Culture Wars
» 13 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger
» Italy: Civil Unions to Cost 3.5 Mln Next Year, 6 Mln in 2017
» Swedish “Far-Right” Plans Gay Pride Parade Through Muslim Areas; Leftists and Gay Rights Groups Decry the Parade as Racist
» The Truth About Violent, Intolerant ‘Liberals’ — Video
» Watch the Astonishment on Gay Pride Event Attendees’ Faces When They Learn Which ‘Bigot’ Uttered These Anti-Gay Marriage Quotes
» Woman Reveals Plans to Marry Her Dog Following the Death of Previous ‘Husband’… a Pet Cat (And Her Boyfriend is All for it)
 
General
» Brain Area Found That May Make Humans Unique
» The Rise of On-Body Cameras and How They Will Change How We Live
 

China Stock Rescue Measures Add up to $800 Billion

China has enlisted around 5 trillion yuan ($800 billion) of public and private money to prop up its wobbly stock markets, according to a Reuters analysis of public statements, media reports and market data.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Commodities Collapsed Just Before the Last Stock Market Crash — So Guess What is Happening Right Now?

If we were going to see a stock market crash in the United States in the fall of 2015 (to use a hypothetical example), we would expect to see commodity prices begin to crash a few months ahead of time. This is precisely what happened just before the great financial crisis of 2008, and we are watching the exact same thing happen again right now. On Wednesday, commodities got absolutely pummeled, and at this point the Bloomberg Commodity Index is down a whopping 26 percent over the past twelve months. When global economic activity slows down, demand for raw materials sinks and prices drop. So important global commodities such as copper, iron ore, aluminum, zinc, nickel, lead, tin and lumber are all considered to be key “leading indicators” that can tell us a lot about where things are heading next. And what they are telling us right now is that we are rapidly approaching a global economic meltdown.

If the global economy was actually healthy and expanding, the demand for commodities would be increasing and that would tend to drive prices up. But instead, prices continue to go down.

The Bloomberg Commodity Index just hit a brand new 13-year low. That means that global commodity prices are already lower than they were during the worst moments of the last financial crisis…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Finland: Unemployment Rate at 10%, Every Fifth Young Person Without Work

Statistics Finland reports that the unemployment rate in Finland reached ten percent in June 2015, up from 9.2 percent one year earlier. Youth unemployment is over 22 percent already, with no signs of improvement in sight because there are no jobs or internships to be had.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Greece: Tsipras Faces Down Second Rebellion on EU Bailout

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras faced down a second rebellion from his governing Syriza party on Thursday (23 July), moving the country another step closer to obtaining an €86 billion EU bailout.

After another parliamentary sitting which went on into the small hours of the morning, deputies passed the second tranche of laws — this time on banking and judicial reform — needed to open formal bailout talks, by 230 to 63.

Thirty six Syriza deputies either voted against the government or abstained, three fewer than the previous week, when the first series of austerity measures were adopted.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Morgan Stanley: Gold Could Plunge to $800, And it’s Not Because of China’s Reserves

On Sunday evening, gold plunged in thin trading to less than $1,100 an ounce and has been hovering near multiyear lows ever since. While plenty of gold bugs were swift to dismiss the China report as misleading, Morgan Stanley is pointing to longer-term trends that are sending the shiny stuff lower.

Analysts led by Tom Price now say the metal could fall as low as $800 an ounce, as reported by Bloomberg News.

They figure that the era of price stability that once ruled precious metals is now coming to an end. The Morgan Stanley chart below shows a rather stable line for gold, silver, palladium, and company, while other commodities, such as iron ore, have seen more volatility.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

What Do Greece and Louisiana Have in Common? The War on Cash

More and more institutions are trying to make it harder for you to move your money into cash.

Globally, over $5 trillion in debt currently have negative yields in nominal terms, meaning the bond literally has a negative yield when it trades. In the simplest of terms this means that investors are PAYING to own these bonds.

Bonds are not unique in this regard. Switzerland, Denmark and other countries are now charging deposits at their banks. In France and Italy, you are not allowed to make cash transactions above €1,000.

This sounds laughable to most people, but it is a reality in Europe… and in the US, in some regions. Louisiana has made it illegal to purchase second hand goods using cash.

This is just the beginning. The War on Cash will be spreading in the coming weeks.

The reasoning is simple. Most large financial entities are insolvent. As a result, if a significant amount of digital money is converted into actual physical cash, the firm would very quickly implode.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Why Most Companies “Beat” Earnings Expectations — Explained in One Chart

When it comes to corporate earnings announcements, some two-thirds of the time companies beat consensus expectations. This happens both during good quarters and bad (such as this one). How is this possible? The following chart form Deutsche Bank explains it once and for all.

The reason the average EPS beat in the past 4 years has been about 3.3% is because the average EPS cut just prior to reporting has been… 4.0%

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

American Students Are Now Being Given Threat Assessments

Every student is given a “THREAT ASSESSMENT” by police and school administrators!

Schools and police are using V-STAG to assess a students threat level:

“The Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines (V-STAG) is a school-based manualized process designed to help school administrators, mental health staff, and law enforcement officers assess and respond to threat incidents involving students in kindergarten through 12th grade and prevent student violence.”

The war on terror is out of control! Watch out that kindergarten kid could be a threat!

Did you know, police are giving American addresses color coded threat ratings? And our govt. has also assigned you a threat assessment while travelling inside the U.S.

V-STAG was developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Department of Education.

[Comment: Infrastructure is being organized that will be used to round up and identify dissidents, basically anyone against the corrupt bankster status quo.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Americans Are Fleeing These US Cities in Droves

What do El Paso, New York, and Chicago have in common? They are among the top 20 cities from which Americans are fleeing in droves…

The map below shows the 20 metropolitan areas that lost the greatest share of local people to other parts of the country between July 2013 and July 2014, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The New York City area ranked 2nd, losing about a net 163,000 U.S. residents, closely followed by a couple surrounding suburbs in Connecticut. Honolulu ranked fourth and Los Angeles ranked 14th. The Bloomberg calculations looked at the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Armed Marine Vet Standing Guard Outside Recruiting Center Told to Leave or He’ll be Arrested

A Marine veteran standing guard outside an Armed Forces Recruiting Center has been told he is no longer welcome and ordered off the property.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Can You Hear Me Now? Graham Smashes Cell Phone After Trump Outs Number

WASHINGTON — Most people just toss their old cell phones in the junk drawer. Not Lindsey Graham.

The South Carolina senator and GOP presidential candidate responded Wednesday to Donald Trump giving out his personal phone number with a dramatic one-minute video, titled, “How to destroy your cell phone with Lindsey Graham.” As the title implies, the video shows the senator mercilessly destroying a phone.

Set to classical music, Graham blends, beats, drops, chops and throws an old mobile to death. He lights it on fire. He shreds it in a blender. He drops it off a roof … you get the idea.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Colo. Theater Shooting Jurors Say Death Penalty Can be Considered

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — The jurors who convicted James Holmes of murder in the Colorado theater shooting unanimously decided Thursday that they can consider the death penalty in his sentencing.

They said capital punishment is justified because Holmes murdered a large number of victims; caused a grave risk of death to others; committed murder in a heinous, cruel or depraved manner; and laid in wait or ambush.

Prosecutors said Holmes wanted to murder as many as he could in the audience of more than 400 people but failed to kill more than 12 because his assault rifle jammed. The defense offered no counter-argument in this first phase of his sentencing.

The defense will now lead the next phase, trying to show that his mental illness and other “mitigating factors” make it wrong to execute him in any case.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Cyborg Cockroach and Drone Teams Can Locate Disaster Survivors

WE THINK of cockroaches as icky pests, but they could be lifesavers, too. Cybernetically enhanced insects controlled by a drone can be deployed to comb the rubble of an earthquake site, looking for survivors.

Alper Bozkurt and colleagues at North Carolina State University in Raleigh have created cyborg cockroaches with tiny electrodes implanted to serve as a kind of electronic bridle. “This stimulates the antennae which they use to understand their physical environment,” he says. Given an “obstacle on the right” signal, the insects go left, for example.

The cockroaches are good at scrabbling through tricky terrain, making them ideal search-and-rescue scouts. But they need to be coordinated, and that’s where the drone comes in. “It’s like a leader that can guide the swarm to explore a large environment,” says Edgar Lobaton, who works with Bozkurt. The drone does not guide the insects individually. Instead it beams an invisible radio “fence” for them to search within.

The insects are also fitted with sensor backpacks.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Deport the Abdulazeez Family

It’s time to put our people first.

by Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Before and after 9/11, the FBI took a hard look at Youssef Abdulazeez because he had apparently donated money to Hamas through a front group. He went on a watch list. He went off the watch list. The FBI forgot about him until his son, Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez, went on a Jihadist killing spree in Chattanooga.

Just like the Tsarnaev terrorists, the media is digging into the background of this dysfunctional Muslim family. We have learned that Youssef Abdulazeez liked to beat and rape his wife. He even wanted to get a second wife to rape and beat, as permitted “under Islamic law… in the parties’ native State of Palestine.” He also included some of his kids in his Koran-approved domestic abuse.

The family is issuing statements claiming that their son, like every Muslim terrorist ever, was suffering from “depression” and that Islam is a peaceful religion. But the father’s donations to Hamas and the rants about America, Israel and Europe on his family’s social media tell a very different story.

The only obvious conclusion from all this is that the Abdulazeez family, like the Tsarnaevs, should never have been allowed into this country. And after 9/11, they should not have been allowed to stay.

Their history of domestic abuse and terrorism is abnormal by American standards, but normal by Muslim ones. The Abdulazeez family’s native Jordan has unprecedentedly high levels of support for Al Qaeda and ISIS. Honor killings of women continue to have support from inside the political system.

Among Palestinian Muslims, like the Abdulazeez family, as many as 1 in 4 support ISIS. Palestinians who are displaced in their Jordanian homeland tend to affiliate with Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood which supports their cause, much as they do in Gaza where Hamas is the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise. All that made Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez into an even bigger threat to Americans.

Not only shouldn’t Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez have been working at a nuclear power plant, he should never have been in this country. The Chattanooga massacre did not have to happen…

           — Hat tip: K [Return to headlines]
 

Earth-Like Alien World Looms Into View Through Kepler Telescope

Meet Kepler 452b, Earth’s new alien cousin. This rocky planet is the first alien world we’ve seen that circles a sun-like star at a distance that should allow liquid water to exist on its surface.

The planet came to light after a first pass through the full data set collected during the NASA Kepler telescope’s four-year run. The analysis also yielded about a dozen other candidate worlds close to the size of Earth in the habitable zone around their stars.

Kepler’s original mission has ended, so the new discoveries come not from new data but from ever-more-thorough analyses of the existing data. Small Earth-like planets have proved the hardest to tease out.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

FCA Files IPO for Ferrari on NYSE

Fiat Chrysler says that carmaker’s tax office stays in Italy

(ANSA) — Turin, July 23 — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said Thursday it has filed its Ferrari unit’s initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, including submitting documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US. FCA, which has long said it intends to sell some shares in the luxury carmaker, said in a statement that the tax office for Ferrari SpA will remain in Italy. The plan is part of chief executive Sergio Marchionne’s plan to raise money to reduce debt and fund new investments.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Finding Another Earth

The discovery of a super-Earth-sized planet orbiting a sun-like star brings us closer than ever to finding a twin of our own watery world. But NASA’s Kepler space telescope has captured evidence of other potentially habitable planets amid the sea of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

GA School District Installs Palm Scanners for Lunch Program

“It’s a secure way to ensure a student’s identity when paying for a school meal…”

The district will be using scanning devices that take “a super high-resolution infrared photograph of the vein pattern just below the skin,” WTVM reports.

The image is “recorded, digitized and stored on an encrypted server.”

[Comment: Conditioning to acclimatize the next generation into giving up biometric tracking information without a second thought. This behaviour will continue into adulthood. Plus all that tracking information is now stored in government computers (don’t believe for a second it won’t be provided to the government when it asks the school for the information.) This is all happening by design.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Government Agent Blows Up Federal Lab While Making Meth — No Arrests, No Charges

A high-ranking NIST officer was recently forced to resign after creating an explosion inside of a government lab while attempting to manufacture methamphetamine. According to NBC News, the explosion happened at the Gaithersburg, Md. campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, around 7:30 PM on Saturday. An officer on the scene, who has not been named by police, was reportedly found with severe burns on his hands and arms, implicating him in the explosion.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

NASA Spies Earth-Sized Exoplanet Orbiting Sun-Like Star

Astronomers have spotted the closest thing yet to the first true ‘Earth twin’ — a small planet orbiting the bright star Kepler 452, at a distance where liquid water could exist.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

NASA Finds Closest Earth Twin Yet in Haul of 500 Alien Planets

It may not be Earth’s exact twin, but it’s a pretty close cousin.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has spotted the most Earth-like alien planet yet discovered — a world called Kepler-452b that’s just slightly bigger than our own and orbits a sunlike star at about the same distance Earth circles the sun.

“This is the first possibly rocky, habitable planet around a solar-type star,” Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California, said during a news briefing today (July 23).

Kepler-452b lies 1,400 light-years away, and is the only planet known in its solar system. It’s about 60 percent wider than Earth, which gives it a “better than even” chance of being rocky, researchers said. The planet is probably about five times more massive than our own, making it a so-called “super Earth.” It likely possesses a thick atmosphere, lots of water and active volcanoes.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Pluto’s Atmosphere is Swept Back Like a Comet’s Tail

Not only has NASA’s New Horizons mission confirmed that Pluto has an extended atmosphere, after its historic flyby on July 14, the spacecraft observed a “cavity” in the solar wind, revealing a long plasma tail reminiscent of a comet’s ion tail extending from the dwarf planet.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

San Francisco Could be Hit by Massive Earthquake ‘Any Day’, Says USGS Scientist

The San Francisco Bay Area could be struck by a major earthquake “any day now”, says a scientist with the US Geological Survey. The Hayward fault historically causes a huge earthquake every 140 years and it has been 147 years since the last major quake on the fault.

The 1868 earthquake killed 30 people and destroyed most property in the area. Population in the Bay Area was less than 265,000 in 1868, now it is more than 7 million.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Senators Given Under 60 Minutes to Read 1000+ Page Bill Before Vote

Sen. Mike Lee gives a look at the corrupt workings of the legislature.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) gave America a disturbing look at what happens behind-the-scenes in the legislature. While a printer worked furiously behind him, Lee explained how the Senate was just given under 1 hour to read and comprehend a massive spending bill before the scheduled vote.

Here is Senator Lee’s message from July 21st, 2015:

LEE: We received this bill at 3:07 p.m. The bill is 1,033 pages long. We’re being called on to vote on it at 4 o’clock. We’re only up to about page 500 in printing it off. I’m pretty sure that its going to be hard to read the whole bill in its entirety and understand it in the roughly 30 minutes between now and when we have to vote on the bill.

If I don’t have time to read legislation before voting on it, my default vote is no. We received the highway bill today at 3:06 p.m., and it is over 1,000 pages long. Our first vote on this legislation is scheduled for 4:00 p.m.

Posted by United States Senator Mike Lee on Tuesday, July 21, 2015

“If I don’t have time to read legislation before voting on it, my default vote is no,” Senator Lee commented on his video. That’s a principle endorsed by Police State USA in a 2013 article, A Pro-Liberty Approach to Lawmaking.

[Comment: Excellent and intelligent. No time to read and thoroughly analysis bill, then flush it down the toilet. But watch out for contrived crisis situations that pressure for passage of a bill in consideration in order to “resolve” the created crisis.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Shocking Video Shows LAPD Cops Shoot Man in Wheelchair With 3 Bean Bag Rounds and a Taser

Los Angeles, CA — Three rounds with a bean bag gun and a taser — deployed against a man in a wheelchair.

The LAPD is facing criticism after a video surfaced that shows them firing beanbag rounds at a man in a wheelchair and then hitting him with a taser.

According to LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith, the man in the wheelchair, Christopher Adam Zareck, 43, swung a pole at police when they tried to take him into custody.

Police were called to the scene around 7:00 pm last Friday after a man reported that he’d been in an altercation with Zareck. Ironically enough, the man claiming he’d been in an altercation with Zareck said he successfully defended himself against the wheelchair-bound man. However, nearly a dozen officers were deployed to stop this one man.

The video, taken by homeless skid row resident Hubert Jackson, shows 10 officers on the scene for this one man in a wheelchair.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System

Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic’s DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim’s funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Despite the fact that the prosecutor’s case was flimsy—it hinged on the similarity of Bain’s first name to the rapist’s, Bain’s ownership of a red motorcycle, and a misidentification of Bain in a lineup by a hysterical 9-year-old boy—Bain was sentenced to life in prison. He was finally freed after DNA testing proved his innocence, and was paid $1.7 million.

Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

Weiner was wrongfully arrested, convicted, and jailed for more than two years for a crime he too did not commit. In his case, a young woman claimed Weiner had abducted her, knocked her out and then sent taunting text messages to her boyfriend about his plans to rape her. Despite the fact that cell phone signals, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony indicated the young woman had fabricated the entire incident, the prosecutor and judge repeatedly rejected any evidence contradicting the woman’s far-fetched account, sentencing Weiner to eight more years in jail. Weiner was only released after his accuser wascaught selling cocaine to undercover cops.

In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son…

As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re operating in a new paradigm where the citizenry are presumed guilty and treated as suspects, our movements tracked, our communications monitored, our property seized and searched, our bodily integrity disregarded, and our inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” rendered insignificant when measured against the government’s priorities.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

These Soviet Maps of America Are Incredibly Detailed

At the height of the Cold War, the USSR had amazing hand-drawn maps of the USA, including our military installations.

Wired has a fantastic feature on some of the most intricate and unsettling maps we’ve ever seen. The Soviet military, or some other faction within the government of the USSR, made maps. Millions of them. Maps with the kind of detail just short of Google Street view, spanning the entire world, with cities broken down to the width of streets and the size of buildings.

John Davies, a software developer, is working on cataloging and digitizing some of them. He’s even compared them with British land surveys made around the same time, finding that Russia knew things that the British agencies didn’t, including sensitive military facilities.

While much of our present map technology has the benefit of satellites, its estimated that whomever was making the Russian map surveys employed tens of thousands of on-the-ground surveyors. Given how many of the maps include sensitive locations in Western countries, it also points to some heavy espionage. Compare that to the United States, which used superior air recon methods to do its secret mapping.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Vibrant Pluto Stuns Scientists

They are 5 billion kilometres from the Sun in the dim, far-flung outskirts of the Solar System, but Pluto and its large moon Charon turn out to be astonishingly vital worlds.

Images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew within 12,500 kilometres of Pluto on 14 July, reveal frosty plains, soaring mountains and much more geological activity than anyone anticipated. “What’s unexpected to me is how dynamic a world both Pluto and Charon are,” says Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “Who would have expected to see such young surfaces? They are absolutely spectacular and fascinating.”

Giant icy mountains in Pluto’s southern hemisphere tower more than 3,500 metres high in the first high-resolution images that New Horizons sent back. The peaks’ sheer height signals that they are made of water ice, the only material that could buttress such huge ridges at Pluto’s frigid temperatures of less than 223°C, just 50°C above absolute zero. Bright rims near the tops of the peaks — named after Nepalese explorer Tenzing Norgay — could represent a fresh coat of frozen nitrogen or other types of ice.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Watchdog: Increased Risk of IRS Unfairly Auditing Political Groups

Lax oversight at the IRS increases the risk that political and religious groups could be unfairly targeted for audits, government investigators say in a report that raises concerns about an IRS division that has been under scrutiny for singling out conservative organizations.

There are 1.6 million tax-exempt groups in the U.S., according to the GAO report. Fewer than 1 percent are audited each year, a process that can be costly and time-consuming for both the IRS and the group being audited.

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Canadian Prime Minister to Meet With Crews Battling Raging Wildfires in British Columbia

Canada’s prime minister is heading to British Columbia to meet with crews battling raging wildfires there.

The crews are working in an area of the province where residents of 70 properties have been evacuated.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Christy Clark are scheduled to meet Thursday with crews battling fires near West Kelowna.

There are currently 250 wildfires burning across the province, adding to a total of 1,314 this season.

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Canada’s New Anti-Terror Law May Not Meet International Rights Obligations

A United Nations human rights body is raising concerns about Canada’s new anti-terror legislation, saying it could run afoul of international human rights norms.

The Anti-Terrorism Act, passed by parliament in June, makes it easier for intelligence officers, border guards, and law enforcement officials to monitor and arrest potential terror suspects in Canada.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee said in a report released Wednesday that it is concerned that that the law grants the government sweeping powers but does not contain enough legal safeguards to protect people’s political and civil rights.

Critics say the bill will make it easier for security officials to place Canadians under surveillance.

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Breivik Bomb Van Exhibited on Norway Massacre Anniversary

Objects used by mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, including the van that concealed a bomb, have gone on show in Norway amid fears the exhibition could attract sympathisers.

The display in Oslo opened four years to the day after Breivik killed 77 people in a bloody rampage.

Officials says it aims to help Norway come to terms with the terror attacks.

But experts and some relatives of the victims have warned it could become a magnet for right-wing extremists.

Concern has focused on the inclusion of some personal items belonging to the killer, including a fake police identity card.

Last week, Tor Oestboe, whose wife was among those killed, said he feared the exhibition would provide a “hall of fame” for the mass murderer.

Oeystein Soerensen, a political historian, told Norway’s Dagbladet newspaper last week that the exhibition could become “a kind of twisted Mecca” for anti-Islam and right-wing extremist “tourists”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark-Germany Undersea Fehmarn Tunnel Gets Go-Ahead

Denmark has got EU approval for a 19km (12-mile) undersea road-rail tunnel that will cut journey times to Germany.

The €8.7bn (£6bn; $9.6bn) Fehmarn Belt project will get €589m of EU funding.

The EU Commission said it complied with EU state aid rules and would boost transport links between central Europe and Scandinavia.

The tunnel will connect the Danish island of Lolland with Germany’s Fehmarn island. Construction will start in January, and it should open in 2024.

There will be a four-lane motorway alongside a double-track railway.

The link will provide a fast corridor between Copenhagen and Hamburg. It is expected to slash that rail journey from just under five hours currently to little more than two hours.

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Finland: Support for Mosque Causes Spike in Lutheran Church-Leavers

The Church Council of Helsinki’s decision to support a group helping with plans for a grand mosque has given rise to heated emotions amongst Christian followers.

On Tuesday, the number of people to leave the Lutheran church via the Eroakirkosta (“split from the Church”) site was twice as high as usual. The web page allows Finnish citizens, most of whom are automatically signed up to the Lutheran Church at birth, to sever their official ties (and subsequent tax obligations) without fanfare.

The sudden spike in church-leavers is thought to be linked to the plan for a grand mosque for the Finnish capital being posted on the web page.

According to the site, many church-leavers do not like the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s decision to support a group involved with the grand mosque project. Parishioners magazine Seurakuntalainen-lehti on Tuesday wrote that the Church’s governance will fund the Fokus group for Culture and Religion that has been participating in preparatory stages of planning.

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Germany: High Stakes for Wagner’s Progeny at Opera Fest

Beloved by Adolf Hitler and Angela Merkel alike, the Bayreuth Festival honouring Richard Wagner kicks off on Saturday. But critics say the composer’s progeny have dragged the festival too far from its origins.

Dyed-in-the-wool Wagnerians tend to be deeply conservative in their operatic tastes, and seasoned Bayreuthers say they are feeling increasingly alienated by the provocative, in-your-face productions.

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Germany: Record Sales Put Daimler in Rivals’ Wing Mirrors

Mercedes-Benz cars are flying off the production line like never before, driving parent company Daimler closer to its goal of overtaking rivals Audi and BMW.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Germany: Hohle Fels Cave Yields Paleolithic Figurine Fragments

TÜBINGEN, GERMANY—Two fragments of a female figurine carved from mammoth ivory have been found in Hohle Fels Cave. The fragments resemble a breast and part of the stomach of the 40,000-year-old figurine known as the Venus from Hohle Fels, which was discovered in 2008. This carving may have been slightly larger, however, than the approximately two-inch-tall Venus. “The new discovery indicates that the female depictions are not as rare in the Aurignacian as previously thought, and that concerns about human sexuality, reproduction and fertility in general have a very long and rich history dating to the Ice Age,” Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen said in a press release.

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Germany: Walls in Their Minds: East—West Split Remains

A lack of women in the East, more wealth in the West, and lingering bitterness — a report published on Wednesday exposed the stark differences that still exist between East and West Germany 25 years after reunification.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Hamburg Court Confirms Italy Motions on Marines in India

Motions to stop India from taking judicial action

(ANSA) — New Delhi, July 22 — The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on Wednesday confirmed Italy has filed a motion in relation to the case of two Italian marines being held in India suspected of killing two Indian fishermen during an anti-piracy mission in 2012.

The motion was filed based on Article 290 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the court said in a communique it sent to ANSA in New Delhi.

That article said any precautionary measures undertaken by one party against another in a maritime dispute can be lifted once the case has gone to court.

Italy requested that India refrain from taking judicial action against marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, that it refrain from exercising jurisdiction with regards to their case, and that it “immediately lift all restrictions on the marines’ freedom of movement”.

Prosecutors at the Indian Supreme Court earlier this month agreed to a motion presented by Italy to take the marines’ case to international arbitration.

Italy presented its request for international arbitration under the terms of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea agreement in a bid to end a 40-month diplomatic and legal deadlock between the two countries.

Latorre is currently in Italy on medical leave while Girone is living at the Italian Embassy in New Delhi.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Bologna Mayor Probed for Providing Water to Squatters

Depriving people of water ‘violates human rights’ says Merola

(ANSA) — Bologna, July 22 — Bologna Mayor Virginio Merola is being investigated on charges of abuse of office after he ordered running water provided to two buildings squatted by indigent families, the prosecutor’s office said Wednesday.

The building — one an apartment complex that was occupied beginning in March last year, the other a former headquarters of Telecom phone company squatted as of December — are located not far from one another in an outlying district.

Depriving people of water, no matter who they are “is a violation of human rights,” said the mayor, who is from the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD).

The squatters lived in “dangerous hygienic and sanitary conditions, and it is my duty as mayor to intervene,” Merola said.

His lawyer added that Merola’s decision was driven “by the need to protect the constitutionally guaranteed rights of vulnerable subjects, such as the minors involved”.

The mayor might be found culpable under a measure introduced by former transport and infrastructure minister Maurizio Lupi, which prohibits utilities being provided to illegally occupied buildings.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Lavazza Bids to Buy French Coffee Maker Carte Noire

Deal subject to EU, French approval

(ANSA) — Turin, July 22 — Lavazza has submitted a binding offer to buy coffee rival Carte Noire, the French market leader with a 20% share of the domestic retail market. Financial terms were not disclosed and the deal remains subject to approval by European authorities as well as French regulators.

Under the terms of the deal Lavazza would acquire Carte Noire’s coffee-making plant in Laverune in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

Lavazza operates in 90 countries around the world and has a 45% share of the Italian retail market.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Nearly 4,000 Rome Holiday Lodgings ‘Irregular’

Censis says tax loss to city totals around 40 mn euros

(ANSA) — Rome, July 21 — There are nearly 4,000 “irregular” tourist lodgings currently on offer in the Eternal City, making up a total of about 36,000 beds, with unregulated or “under the table” structures totaling about 75% of those, said Censis on Tuesday.

The think tank said the city government loses around 40 million euros annually due to the phenomenon.

Censis conducted the study, called “Rome Towards the Jubilee,” in light of the special Jubilee year announced by Pope Francis, which will begin in December and is expected to attract up to 33 million tourists and religious pilgrims to Rome.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Verdini Tells Berlusconi Will Split

‘I have the numbers’ says ex-aide

(ANSA) — Rome, July 23 — Forza Italia (FI) heavyweight Denis Verdini on Thursday told FI chief Silvio Berlusconi he was splitting off to form his own group in parliament, sources at a meeting between the pair told ANSA. “I have the numbers,” the ex-close aide of the three-time premier said during the “long and cordial” meeting, they said. Relations between the media magnate and his former national coordinator have been tense ever since Berlusconi pulled out of a tacit reform deal with Premier Matteo Renzi after Sergio Mattarella was elected Italian president.

Berlusconi said the allegedly one-sided choice broke the pact, a contention Renzi denied.

Verdini has reportedly been amenable to renewing the pact, which envisages cooperation in overhauling Italy’s slow and unwieldy political machinery.

Verdini, who was indicted for bankruptcy earlier Thursday, has also been at odds with Berlusconi over his plans for FI, which has recently lost top spot on the centre right to the populist anti-immigrant and anti-euro Northern League.

The former premier has lined up new people to take over the heavy lifting Verdini used to do for him, according to political sources.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Rome Mayor Plays Up ‘Virtues’ of New York Times Report

Paper points up Marino’s ‘honesty’ in face of city’s ‘decline’

(ANSA) — Rome, July 23 — Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino on Thursday seemed unperturbed by a New York Times article on the ‘degradation’ in the city, preferring to play up the ‘virtues’ of the report instead.

“The title is very nice, I liked it a lot,” Marino said in reference to the report headlined ‘A virtuous mayor versus Rome’s vice’ appearing on the front page of the print edition of the International New York Times. He also took issue with ANSA for allegedly mistranslating the title in its first dispatch.

However, the agency subsequently clarified that the confusion was due to the fact that the same article had appeared under three different headlines on three different platforms.

It appeared in the New York edition of the paper with the title ‘The Mayor’s Honest, but Is That Enough to Halt the Eternal City’s Decline?’, and on the paper’s website as ‘Romans Put Little Faith in Mayor as Their Ancient City Degrades’.

Marino dismissed the charge implicit in this last title as “the evaluation of a handful of journalists”.

The article lists the many problems facing the Eternal City and its residents, from unkempt public parks to strikes by public transport workers and the so-called Mafia Capitale investigation into alleged infiltration by criminal organisations into contracts in the city. “I was surgically aggressive from the very beginning,” Marino, a heart surgeon by profession, is quoted as saying. “I don’t give a damn about what the political agreements were before I arrived,” he added.

“The most important thing to me is to run the city in an honest and transparent way,” Marino said.

The New York Times reports that many Rome residents and commentators credit the mayor for his honesty, but registers frustration that he is not getting more done. “Marino is a Martian in Rome, which is fascinating, but tiring,” Marco Damilano, a political commentator and city resident, told the paper.

“Rome is in ruins. If he starts acting, he and the city can come out of this stronger,” he said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Terror Suspects Refuse to Talk, Say Prosecutors

Two men arrested on suspicion of plotting attacks inside Italy

(ANSA) — Milan, July 23 — Prosecutors said Thursday that two alleged supporters of terrorist group ISIS were refusing to answer questions related to suspicions they were plotting attacks on Italian targets. Tunisian Lassaad Briki and Pakistani Muhammad Waqas were arrested in Brescia on Wednesday after they posted plans for attacking Italian landmarks as well as a military base on their Twitter accounts.

Prosecutors said the pair invoked their legal right to remain silent under questioning.

“People of Rome, the choice of whether to die is up to you,” they allegedly wrote in one post.

Authorities allege the pair announced plans to attack churches as well as major sites such as Rome’s ancient Colosseum and Milan’s Duomo.

It was also alleged the two wanted to travel to Syria to train and fight with the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group. The alleged terrorists also spoke of hitting the air base at Ghedi near Brescia — the base for anti-ISIS Tornados.

The two me had created a Twitter account called ‘Islamic_State in Roma’ and allegedly planned terrorist actions, posting messages with photos of famous Italian sites in the background.

“We are in your streets. We are everywhere. We are locating targets, waiting for time X,” read some of the messages, written in Italian, Arabic and French.

As part of the investigation, police acquired wiretaps of conversations between the men, who communicated in Italian as that was they only language they had in common.

They allegedly discussed how to make a home-made bomb as set out in a jihadi manual titled How to Survive in the West, prosecution documents showed Wednesday. Milan prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said that in addition to the Ghedi military base in Brescia as a potential target, the pair also spoke of attacking the fruit shop where the Tunisian man worked as a cleaner, and also issued “generic threats against law enforcement”.

He said that there was never, however, “a real danger with the transition from words to action”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Vendola Among Those Indicted in ILVA Case

SEL leader ‘leant on environment agency chief’

(ANSA) — Taranto, July 23 — Former Puglia Governor Nichi Vendola was among 44 people sent to trial Thursday on charges of environmental disaster at Taranto’s Ilva steel works.

Vendola is accused of aggravated abuse of office, judicial sources said. He allegedly leant on the head of the regional environmental protection agency Arpa, Giorgio Assennato, to tone down reports on the toxic effects of emissions from Ilva. Assennato has also been indicted, for alleged aiding and abetting. Vendola, leader of the small, leftwing Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) party, has frequently denounced polluting conditions at the works but has also underscored its importance as the city’s largest employer.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

‘Mob Rule’ Is Just Part of French Striking Culture

The burning of tyres, blockading of ports and tipping over of Uber cars by French strikers may have shocked and angered foreign observers, but it’s all just part of the French culture of strikes. And it works, explains a French historian.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Norway: ‘Most of Breivik Victims’ Parents Still Cannot Work’

More then half the parents of the victims of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik remain too traumatised to return to full-time work, a study showed on Wednesday as Norway marked the fourth anniversary of the attacks.

The study, which surveyed 86 parents of the 69 people killed on July 22, 2011 on the island of Utoya — where they were attending a Labour Party youth camp — found that two thirds suffered from post-traumatic stress reactions, including impaired concentration, memory or sleep.

Fifty-one percent of the parents were still either on partial or full leave from work.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Poland: Civil Drone Almost Collides With Lufthansa Plane

The number of near-miss incidents between civilian drones and commercial aircraft at airports is raising questions over passenger safety in Europe.

Earlier this week, a Lufthansa plane almost collided with a drone near Warsaw’s Chopin international airport, reported Reuters.

Officials said the remotely-controlled drone passed within 100 metres of the commercial airliner. Over 100 passengers were on board.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Sicily Governor Crocetta Says Won’t Quit

Wiretap, criticism ‘part of Mafia plot’

(ANSA) — Palermo, July 23 — Sicily Governor Rosario Crocetta told the Sicilian regional assembly (ARS) he would not quit over a controversial wiretap whose existence has been disputed. “I refuse to offer my flesh to hungry executioners…everyone knows that wiretap does not exist,” he said. Crocetta suspended himself after a reputable news weekly published the tap in which he allegedly said nothing when his doctor Matteo Turino, probed in a hospital graft case, said Sicily health councillor Lucia Borsellino should meet the same fate as her Cosa-Nostra slain father, anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino. Crocetta said he was the victim of a smear campaign after prosecutor’s offices said they had no such wiretap on their files.

However the magazine, L’Espresso, stood by its story, saying the tap had been classified. The governor, a member of Premier Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD), is suing L’Espresso for 10 million euros. Renzi is meeting the PD’s head in Sicily, Fausto Raciti, about the case on Thursday. Also on Thursday, Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said he had ordered “preliminary checks” into the wiretap. “I have launched a preliminary check-up as is the case whenever there is an improper circulation of trial information,” Orlando said. Crocetta said later in the day that the Sicilian Mafia was behind the smear campaign against him. Recent criticism of his management of the region, along with the surfacing of what he said is a doctored or non-existent wiretap, were the work of “the real magic circle, that of business which is in cahoots with masonry and the Mafia, which no longer carries out massacres but is now embedded into regional affairs”, he told the Sicilian regional assembly.

The governor went on to say he will not call early elections.

“False scoops cannot decide the fate of governments,” he said, adding that “shady powers are threatening democracy”. The PD component of the ARS said it will stand by its governor.

“I no longer have any doubts as to that wiretap, they ended when the Palermo prosecutor denied its existence,” said PD whip Antonello Cracolici.

“We will try and heal the wound, which I know will be difficult”.

Also on Thursday, Codacons consumer association offered the embattled governor psychological assistance amid concerns over his alleged suicidal thoughts. On the day the wiretap allegations surfaced, a weeping Crocetta went on record saying “I could have done myself in”.

Three days later he claimed “someone wanted to stage a coup, they wanted to bring about my resignation or my suicide”. “We believe these are very serious declarations that should not be underestimated,” Codacons said in a statement. “A regional governor needs to have the strength to tackle critical situations such as the one facing Crocetta, and he should never, under any circumstances, consider the possibility of suicide”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Sweden: Malmö Attacks Part of ‘Spiral of Retaliation’

Sweden’s third largest city was shaken by a suspected grenade attack overnight as police confirmed that the recent wave of violence in the city is linked to a row over a recent court verdict.

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Sweden: Two Gothenburg Arrests Over Syria Terror Killing

Two Swedes were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of committing murder in war-torn Syria, in Sweden’s first such detentions since the conflict erupted in 2011.

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Time to Ditch Milk? Exploring the Dairy Dilemma

Dairy’s going out of favour — and it’s being implicated in everything from upset stomachs to cancer. What’s the truth and are the alternatives any better?

Around 15 per cent of people in Europe now avoid dairy products for medical or lifestyle reasons, and the market for dairy-free alternatives is growing rapidly.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: ‘Smart Skin’ Could Revolutionize Military Vehicles

New “smart skin” for military vehicles could let them “feel” their environment, similar to a human. The skin, for example, could let combat aircraft detect any damage by “feeling” the injury.

BAE Systems’ U.K. division is developing the Smart Skin concept, which aims to give machines the ability to ‘feel’ the world around them, sense and process the data like an animal and relay the information to a “brain” within the machine.

In future combat, all machines could leverage this mega-smart skin, detecting heat, damage and stress. Combat aircraft, drones, tanks and other land vehicles, as well as naval vessels could covered with the smart skin. Drones operating in air, on land, at sea or underwater could also deploy the technology.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: David Cameron’s Extremism Speech

by Martha van der Pol

Maajid Nawaz, self avowedly an ex-extremist, now advises David Cameron on tackling extremism.

His key message to the PM is that a distinction MUST be drawn between Islam and Islamism. The former being a religion ‘much like any other’, and the latter being that evil -ism which is leading thousands of Muslims to join ISIS or take innocent infidel lives in some other way as ‘Lone Wolves’ around the world.

Yet — there is no such distinction between Islam and Islamism in reality — despite what our Muslim friends at Quilliam would like us to believe. Muslims who decide to blow people up do so for Islam — because they follow in the prophet Muhammad’s ‘teachings’ that:

Quran (3:151) — “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

UK: World War II Tunnels Reopened in Dover

DOVER, ENGLAND—After two years of excavations conducted by volunteers, the Fan Bay Deep Shelter, constructed in just 100 days by order of Winston Churchill, has been opened to visitors. Consisting of tunnels under the White Cliffs of Dover, the bombproof shelter served as a hospital, store, and housing for officers and soldiers from the Royal Artillery. The tunnels were filled with more than 100 tons of rubble and soil in the 1970s, until they were rediscovered in 2012. The volunteers removed the debris by hand to reveal wartime graffiti, wire twisted by hand into hooks, ammunition, and a needle and thread tucked into a tunnel wall.

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Israel, Hamas Strange Bedfellows When it Comes to Reining in ISIS in Gaza

Bitter enemies Israel and Hamas finally agree on something: If the growing presence of ISIS within Gaza is not contained, the terrorist group could touch off a repeat of the 50-day war that devastated the Palestinian territory last summer.

The black-clad jihadist group’s tentacles have reached inside Gaza, and it has taken credit for a series of rocket attacks on Israel, as well as a coordinated series of car bombings on Sunday whose targets — senior officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad — show ISIS in Gaza is at odds with fellow jihadists and infidels alike. Israel holds Hamas responsible for any and all attacks originating from the territory it controls, putting the onus on Hamas, itself a U.S.-recognized terrorist organization, responsible for putting the clamps on ISIS.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Earliest-Known Chicken Dinners

HAIFA, ISRAEL—Archaeological evidence suggests that chickens were used in cockfighting in Southeast Asia as early as 8,000 years ago, and that the birds and the sport reached the Levant some 5,000 years ago. Now more than 1,000 chicken bones have been unearthed at Maresha, a city that flourished in what is now southern Israel between 400 and 200 B.C., on the trade route between Jerusalem and Egypt. Here there were twice as many female bird bones as males, and the bones showed signs of butchering, indicating that the birds had been raised for meat, and probably eggs. “This is a matter of culture. You have to decide that you are eating chicken from now on,” Lee Perry-Gal of the University of Haifa told NPR. Just one hundred years later, chickens had spread across Europe.

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Fences Rise Across Middle East as Jihadi Threat Escalates

As they confront the rising threat of modern jihadist violence, many of the nations most at risk are retreating behind one of the oldest forms of defense.

Tunisia and Turkey are the latest to invest in border barriers, both announcing the plans in the immediate aftermath of attacks on civilian targets. A fence and watchtowers will guard Tunisia’s border with Libya, where the militants who killed foreign tourists on a Tunisian beach are said to have been trained. Turkey said late Wednesday it will fortify the border with Syria after a suicide bomb in a nearby town.

From Morocco to Saudi Arabia, boundaries are being fortified at a rate not seen since the months following the Sept. 11 attacks.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Garden of Eden Dries as ISIS, Turkey and Iraq Fight Over Water

The “Garden of Eden” is drying up this summer. Water levels in the fabled Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq have reached their lowest levels since Saddam Hussein substantially drained them in the 1990s to starve their inhabitants.

The reason is that the Euphrates, one of two rivers that flow through the marshes, has been reduced to a trickle.

In June, the Iraqi parliament’s agriculture and water committee blamed the crisis on Turkey, where hydroelectric dams block the river’s upper reaches. It accused Turkey of breaching a deal to deliver 500 cubic metres of water per second out of the country down the Euphrates. The head of Turkey’s directorate of state hydraulic works did not respond to questions on this, though New Scientist has been told that flow has resumed in recent days.

Iraq’s parliamentarians also blame ISIS, which in May captured the river’s Ramadi dam. The group has reportedly cut supplies to government-controlled areas further downstream — including the marshes — by using the dam to divert water into nearby Lake Habbaniyah, which is intended to take wet-season floodwaters. In addition, it may be on the verge of taking over the Haditha dam upstream, which would give ISIS total control of the Euphrates in Iraq.

But a third culprit may be the Iraqi government, which is anxious to exploit the river’s waters in a hearts-and-minds battle to hold back ISIS.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Iran Executions See ‘Unprecedented Spike’ — Amnesty

There has been an “unprecedented spike” in the number of executions in Iran, Amnesty International has warned.

The rights group said it believed 694 people were killed between 1 January and 15 July, almost three times the figure acknowledged by the authorities.

It said credible reports suggested Iran executed at least 743 people in 2014.

Amnesty said the surge was disturbing as the death sentences were invariably imposed by courts “completely lacking in independence and impartiality”.

“They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalised at all, let alone attract the death penalty,” it added.

“Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic State: Turkey Soldier Killed in Cross-Border Fire

Turkey’s military and Islamic State fighters have exchanged fire over the Syrian-Turkish border, killing one soldier, officials say.

The governor of Kilis province said another two soldiers were injured when a border post was attacked from Syria.

Turkey responded with heavy weapons, killing one IS militant, the army said.

It is the latest violence to hit Kurdish-dominated south-east Turkey, three days after 32 people were killed by a bomber linked to IS in Suruc.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Islamic State Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda, FBI Chief Says

The Islamic State terror group’s effort to inspire troubled Americans to extremism is a greater threat to the U.S. than an external attack from Al Qaeda, the FBI director said Wednesday.

FBI Director James Comey told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum that the group, commonly known as ISIS, has influenced a significant number of Americans through a year-long campaign on social media urging Muslims who can’t travel to the Middle East to “kill where you are.”

Twitter handles affiliated with the group have more than 21,000 English-language followers worldwide, Comey said, adding that thousands of those could be U.S. residents.

The FBI has arrested a significant number of people over the last handful of weeks who had been radicalized, Comey said. He also repeated his previous disclosure, without elaborating, that several people were arrested who were planning attacks related to the July Fourth holiday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Lebanon Evicts 6,000 Refugees Into the Streets

Over 6,000 Syrian refugees including many women and children that have long been staying in informal camps in northern Lebanon have in recent days been evicted by the Lebanese army and police.

Since 2011, the number of Syrians who have sought refugee in Lebanon due to the ongoing violence in their country has reached 1.2 million people, in a country whose population is less than 4 million. The UN halted its refugee registration after pressure from the Lebanese government, which since January has enacted a de facto closure of its border to the arrival of the massive numbers of Syrians and has imposed very strict regulations on their stay in the country.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis Grows Amid Gridlock

BEIRUT — The Lebanese cabinet has failed to agree on a solution for the country’s growing garbage crisis, postponing discussion until next week as trash piles up on the streets.

The main company in charge of collecting trash stopped its work last week amid a dispute over the country’s largest trash dump. Mountains of trash have collected in the capital and suburbs meanwhile.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Policeman Killed Amid Growing Violence in Turkey

A Turkish police officer has been shot dead and a second wounded in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. The attack follows a major bombing that has since been linked with the “Islamic State” militant group.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Report: US May Now Launch ISIS Strikes From Within Turkey

The United States may now launch manned and unmanned military strikes against ISIS from inside Turkey, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Prior U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State have originated from aircraft carriers in the Gulf.

Turkey agreed to allow the U.S. expanded use of its Incirlik Air Base, though Turkish military aircraft won’t be used in any operations against ISIS, according to Today’s Zaman, an English language daily based in Turkey. Incirlik is located near the Turkish-Syrian border.

The U.S. currently has six Predator drones at the base, two of which will be armed with Hellfire missiles, according to Zaman.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey Scrambles Fighter Jets to Syrian Border as Clashes Erupt With IS Militants

One Turkish soldier has been killed and another two wounded after suspected “Islamic State” (IS) militants fired on a border outpost. Fighter jets and tanks have been deployed in response to the ongoing clashes.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey-Funded Mega-Mosque in Bucharest Sparks Resistance

Resistance is growing in Bucharest to a giant mosque proposed for the city and financed by Turkey, as part of its push to build religious centres in major cities outside the country.

The Romanian government has given 11,000 sqm of terrain next to the exhibition centre ‘Romexpo’ with a market value of €3.9 million for free to the Mufti of the Romanian Muslim Community, Murat Yusuf.

On the site, Turkey will finance the building of a mosque, initially meant to be “the largest in a European capital”.

But opposition to the project comes from a broad mix of Romanian intellectuals, ex-President Traian Basescu, extreme-right groups and some Muslims.

“The construction of this mosque is a political decision between the Romanian and Turkish governments,” says Ruxandra Fatma Yilmaz, who is preparing a doctorate about Islam in Europe at Bucharest’s National School of Political Science (SNSPA).

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Why My Own Father Would Have Let IS Kill Me

The group that calls itself Islamic State (IS or Isis) has a special punishment for gay people — it kills them by throwing them off high buildings. Taim, a 24-year-old medical student, tells the story of how he only escaped this fate by fleeing from Iraq to Lebanon.

In our society, being gay means death. When Isis kills gays, most people are happy because they think we’re sick.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘You’ve Been Fleeced’: Congress Grills Kerry, Obama Officials on Iran Nuke Deal

Secretary of State John Kerry found himself on the defensive Thursday at a Senate hearing where he was hard-pressed to find support for the Iran nuclear deal from either side of the aisle — and sharply sparred with Republicans who accused him of being “fleeced” and “bamboozled.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Berlusconi Says Vladimir Putin Wants Him to Become Russia’s Economy Minister

He’s stood by his old friend through a massive tax fraud conviction and a sordid sex scandal. But it seems Vladimir Putin’s kindness to Silvio Berlusconi knows no bounds after he reportedly offered the former Italian leader the job of economy minister.

The Russian president is also keen to give Berlusconi citizenship, the disgraced media tycoon was quoted as saying by Italian media on Thursday.

“In Italy, I have been relegated to the sidelines, but Putin has told me he is willing to give me citizenship, and entrust me with running the economy ministry,” La Stampa quoted him telling a fellow guest at a dinner party.

“My future? Becoming minister for my friend Putin,” the 78-year-old former Italian premier reportedly said.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Bishkek Ends Agreement With Washington, Inching Its Way Closer to Beijing and Moscow

The US State Department gave activist Azimjan Askarov an award last week. Analysts say relations with the US have soured since the Central Asian country joined the Eurasian Economic Union in May. Russia and China boost their cooperation in the region.

Bishkek (AsiaNews/Agencies) — The Kyrgyz government has unilaterally terminated a cooperation agreement it signed with the United States in 1993 in retaliation for an award given by the US State Department to Kyrgyz activist Azimjan Askarov.

Yesterday, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Temir Sariev signed the government decree terminating the agreement on Cooperation to Facilitate the Provision of Assistance with effect on 20 August 2015.

For some analysts, the decision is part of a wider strategy designed to draw the Central Asian country closer to Russia and China, away from the United States.

Askarov, a journalist and rights activist, was sentenced to life in prison in September 2010 for “inciting ethnic hatred” and complicity in the murder of a law-enforcement officer during clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s southern regions of Osh and Jalal-Abad in June of the same year.

At the time, months of clashes left 400 people dead, with more than 2,000 people injured and 400,000 Uzbeks displaced.

Despite international appeals, including a recent one by Ban Ki-moon, the Kyrgyz government has failed to name the perpetrators of the violence.

For his part, Askarov has always denied any wrongdoing. His son, Sherzod, accepted the award on 16 July on behalf of his father.

In motivating its decision, the State Department described the activist as “a uniting figure in the human rights community, bringing together people of all ethnicities and backgrounds to urge the government of Kyrgyzstan to take effective action towards creating a sustainable peace between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.”

However, Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry protested Washington’s decision to confer the 2014 Human Rights Defender Award on Askarov. As a result of this, Kyrgyz authorities terminated the agreement at once.

Since the early 1990s, US government has provided Kyrgyzstan with around US$ 1 billion in assistance. According to the most recent full-year figure provided on the USAID website, US government assistance in 2013 alone totalled $49 million. The largest recipient sectors were economic growth, agriculture and energy.

By cancelling the 1993 treaty on July 21, Kyrgyzstan stands to lose the millions of dollars worth of assistance that Washington provides to Kyrgyzstan every year.

These include “programs to address violent extremism, increase economic growth and job creation, improve the educational system, and support the continued democratic development of Kyrgyzstan,” a State Department spokesperson said.

Still, “We will continue to engage with and support the people of Kyrgyzstan,” he added.

According to some analysts, cordial relations with Washington have been phased as Kyrgyzstan decided to make its full entrance into the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union in May of this year, after several postponements.

For quite some time, Beijing has had plans to expand in Central Asia, as evidenced by the Silk Road Economic Belt it launched in 2012.

At the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Ufa (Russia), Putin and Xi Jinping also decided to boost cooperation in Russia’s Far East.

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

Dutch-Polish ‘Content Factory’ To Counter Russian Propaganda

The Netherlands and Poland are to launch a Russian-language news agency in order to counter Russian propaganda.

Bert Koenders, the Dutch foreign minister, told press in Brussels on Monday (20 July) the project will “give the tools and the capacities for Russian language (media) and Russian social media to work on the basis of objective information … with the exchange of different viewpoints”.

Grzegorz Schetyna, his Polish counterpart, said it will be “something which doesn’t use the language of propaganda, of aggression, but which has real, reliable information”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Gerard Depardieu Given Hand-Scything Lesson by Belarus Leader

French actor Gerard Depardieu has been given a lesson in hand-scything by Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko during a surprise visit.

Mr Lukashenko, once described by US officials as “Europe’s last dictator”, hosted Mr Depardieu in his residence near the capital Minsk.

The visit comes ahead of Belarus’s presidential elections, which Mr Lukashenko is widely expected to win.

In 2013 Mr Depardieu received a Russian passport from President Vladimir Putin.

The actor had decided to leave France to avoid paying higher taxes.

He has described Russia as “a great democracy”.

‘Security threat’

During Wednesday’s visit to Belarus, the 66-year-old actor and the president, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, also discussed the cultivation of organic food products.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Russia is the Most Attractive BRICS Market for Investors

For Bloomberg, Russia has overtaken China, where volatility prevails in equity markets. Investors are betting on lower political risks in Russia and an economic recovery in 2016.

Moscow (AsiaNews) — Russia has become the most attractive market among BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) for investors in 2015, replacing China as the top earner, this according to the Bloomberg news agency.

Concerns over falling oil prices and the collapse of the ruble at the end of 2014 have largely dissipated, with investors betting on fewer political risks for Moscow.

According to Bloomberg, “the tables have turned in these seven months.” Crude has rebound, and investors have calmed down over the country’s troubles.

Oil has stabilised above US$ 55 a barrel and a cease-fire is holding in eastern Ukraine, whose crisis the West has blamed on Russia.

The latter’s volatility index has dropped by more than half to 28 per cent, the steepest decline since 2006.

Analysts surveyed indicate that Russian stocks are valued at less than half of their BRICS peers, and could bring higher profits if political risks ease further.

“Our models are telling us to buy Russia,” Tim Love, a London-based investment manager at GAM, told Bloomberg.

“Most Russian stocks are fundamentally undervalued,” said Mattias Westman, the London-based founder of Prosperity Capital Management, a major asset investment firm heavily involved in former Soviet republics. “There is potential for further recovery,” he explained.

Russia’s economy, set to contract this year for the first time since 2009, may rebound 0.5 per cent in 2016, a Bloomberg survey shows.

At the same time, European economic sanctions over the Ukraine are likely to be relaxed, as it will not be “easy to convince everyone to prolong them” next year, Westman said.

In nominal terms, Russia’s benchmark Micex Index has advanced 18 per cent this year, 4 percentage points lower than the Shanghai Composite Index.

However, a record drop in Russian volatility, combined with an increase in Chinese price swings, left returns adjusted for such fluctuations superior for Moscow by a factor of 1 to China’s 0.6, according to the data. For Bloomberg, this represents the best gain among BRICS members.

In July, the instability caused by the bursting of China’s bubble cut the value of Chinese shares, sending Shanghai to the bottom of the riskless-returns table.

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

Asia Bibi — Latest Developments

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily suspended the death sentence of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, her lawyer said, in a case that hit global headlines after the murder of two politicians who tried to intervene on her behalf.

Asia Bibi, a farm worker and mother of four, became the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law in 2010.

The Supreme Court will soon begin hearing an appeal against her conviction, said lawyer Saif-ul-Malook.

“The execution of Asia Bibi has been suspended and will remain suspended until the decision of this appeal,” Malook said. No date had been set for her execution, he added.

The prosecution lawyer was not available for comment.

           — Hat tip: Nick [Return to headlines]
 

India: Kerala: Hindu Fundamentalists Forcibly Convert 39 Dalit Christians

As the weakest group in society, Dalits are attracted to the benefits given to Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists. For more than a year, the Hindu fundamentalist VHP has been working on conversions. Granting benefits to some and not all violates the constitution, said Sajan George.

Alappuzha (AsiaNews) — These “are forced conversions, which are undertaken out of a desire for the benefits granted to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits,” said Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), who spoke to AsiaNews about the conversion of 39 Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) from 11 Christian families, organised by the Hindu fundamentalist Visvha Hindu Parishad (VHP) last Sunday in Alappuzha, Kerala.

Many VHP leaders attended the ceremony of re-conversion to Hinduism (Ghar Wapsi) held between 6 and 10 am at the Nallaveetil Bhadrakali temple, near Cheriyanadu.

Traditional Ganapathi homam and Shudhi homam prayers were recited as ritual cleansing and converts were asked to recite the Gayathri Manthra (one of the most famous mantra) at the end of the ritual.

“We are moving ahead with our initiative so that many other families from other religions will soon be converted to Hinduism,” said Alappuzha VHP chief Prathap G. Padickal. “Many people contact us because they want to return to their original faith.”

Alappuzha district is the nerve centre of these activities. Kerala’s first Ghar Wapsi was held near Haripad on 21 December of last year, when 30 Christian Dalits embraced Hinduism.

Most Christian Dalits belong to Pentecostal groups and are denied the benefits enjoyed by Hindu Dalits, and are therefore an easy target for the VHP. “VHP people have targeted Dalits because they belong to the lower class,” Sajan George said.

For the GCIC president, “granting benefits to Hindu, Sikh, Jain or Buddhist Dalits is discriminatory under Articles 14, 15 and 16 of the Constitution which grants equal treatment to all religions.”

What is more, “Ghar Wapsi cause disharmony in the community and sow the seeds of suspicion among people”.

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

Officials: High Temperatures Melt Glacier, Flood Central Asian City of Almaty in Kazakhstan

Officials in Kazakhstan say a flood that forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from the outskirts of the country’s largest city was due to the rapid melting of a glacier in the nearby mountains.

The Thursday flood in the Central Asian city of Almaty sent water mixed with boulders and trees rushing through streets. No deaths were reported, but the Interior Ministry said 76 people sought medical help and 950 people were evacuated.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Possible Attacks on Churches Trigger High Security Alert in Indonesia

This follows the burning of two Protestant churches in Central Java, ostensibly sparked by an arson attack against a mosque in Papua during celebrations marking the end of Ramadan. Mainstream and social media have failed to report that a 15-year-old Christian boy was killed by police in the latter incident. The government urges people not to give in to provocations.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — Indonesian authorities are on high alert across the country against possible new attacks against churches, this after two Christian places of worship were recently set on fire in Central Java in response to an arson attack that destroyed a small mosque in Papua during the celebrations for the end of Ramadan.

Senior Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno personally issued orders deploying police and the military at such sites, in particular in Jakarta and central Java.

“President Joko Widodo sent a message to police, military and intelligence agencies to watch out and protect churches and other sites of vital importance,” Purdijatno said.

The Indonesian minister invited ordinary people not to give in to acts or provocations by members of other religions. He also set up a team of investigators from the National Human Rights Commission to shed light on the affair.

The recent spate of violence was sparked by a fire at a small mosque in Tolikara, a district in the eastern province of Papua, during the Eid al Fitr celebrations that mark the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and prayer for Muslims.

In reaction to this incident, two Protestant churches were set on fire in Central Java. Anti-Christian violence also broke out in Surakarta and other locations in the province.

Many fear that violence and persecution against Christians could escalate, fuelled by rumors about what happened in Tolikara.

What is more, mainstream and social media have focused on fire at the mosque but ignored the fact that police fired at Christians, killing a 15-year-old boy and wounding others.

In view of the situation, the authorities have sent senior government officials to Tolikara district to restore calm and security.

Yesterday, top police and army officials met dozens of ulema and Muslim religious leaders, asking for their cooperation to restore peace and coexistence between Muslims and Christians in the area.

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world. Increasingly however, it has become the scene of attacks or episodes of intolerance against minorities, whether they are Christians, Ahmadi Muslims or belong to other faiths.

In addition, building regulations are often used to stop non-Muslims from having their own places of worship, as was the case for the Yasmin Church in West Java.

Although the constitution guarantees Christians the right of freedom of religion, they have suffered from acts of violence and religious persecution.

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

China Wants to Build a Lunar Base on the Far Side of the Moon

In the early 1970s, future Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt strongly petitioned NASA to land the Apollo 17 mission on the far side of the moon, ultimately to no avail. His argument was that it would have provided unique science on a fascinating region of the lunar surface, but NASA deemed it too risky for a manned mission at the time.

Now, more than 40 years later, China is planning to achieve this goal in 2018 or 2019, albeit with an unmanned lander and rover, by becoming the first nation to land on the far side of the moon — and they want it to be a stepping stone to eventually having a manned lunar base on the surface.

The stationary lander and rover will jointly be called Chang’e 4, a successor to the Chang’e 3 mission, which touched down on 14 December 2013. This was the first soft-landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976. The European Space Agency (ESA) may play a role in the mission, but it’s unsure what yet.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Vientiane and Beijing Agree to US$ 7.2 Billion Railway to Link the Whole of Southeast Asia

The high-speed train will start in China and link Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Construction will take five years. Initially planned to start in 2011, the project was delayed by economic and political setbacks. Some Laotian citizens wonder whether it would be better to invest the money in the roads.

Vientiane (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Laos and China will jointly build a bridge linking the Southeast Asian nation with northeastern Thailand as part of a U.S. $7.2 billion high-speed railway project that has been delayed by numerous setbacks for more than four years.

Officials from both sides agreed to build the bridge over the Mekong River to link Laos with Thailand’s Nong Khai province. During their meeting, they also resolved to build the much-delayed rail line from Kunming in south China’s Yunnan province to the Lao capital Vientiane, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport told RFA.

Landlocked Laos expects the railway’s 420-kilometre route through the country to lower the cost of exports and consumer goods while boosting socioeconomic development in the impoverished nation of nearly 7 million people. It is part of a longer railway that will extend southward through the Malaysia to Singapore.

Both sides agreed to complete in five years the construction of a 500-kilometer (310-mile) leg of the railway in China and in Laos, although they did not schedule a start date.

Political and financial setbacks have delayed the Lao-China stretch of the railway. The original construction plan called for work to begin in 2011 and be completed this year, this according to the state-owned Vientiane Times.

The two countries had agreed to a 40-60 split of the initial financing costs. Laos will pay 40 per cent, or US$ 840 million, of the initial construction costs, while China will pay 60 per cent, or US$ 1.26 billion.

Chinese venture capital firms would contribute the remaining US$ 5.1 billion, and receive substantial stakes in the railway once it has been completed, it said.

Lao Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavath said Lao officials could not yet estimate how many passengers from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore would use the railway once it was linked to Thailand.

Following his comments, some citizens expressed concern about whether the high-cost railway project would be worthwhile for the country.

“It is not necessary to invest a large sum of money in the railway project,” a resident of Luang Namth province where the railway begins in the northernmost region of Laos, told RFA. “Each province has many problems with roads. Why not use that money to build standard roads throughout the country, which is what people really need?”

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

British 15-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to Invovlement in Planned ANZAC Day ISIS-Style Terror Plot

A 15-year-old British boy has pleased guilty to inciting an Isis-style terror attack at an Anzac Day parade in Australia.

The boy, who is from Blackburn in Lancashire, sent thousands of instant messages to 18-year-old Sevdet Besim over a 10-day period suggesting the young man carry out the attack, the Old Baily heard.

In one message on March 18 this year, the British boy, who was 14 at the time, said: “Suggest you break into someone’s house and get your first taste of beheading.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

‘Ghost Population’ Hints at Long-Lost Migration to the Americas

Present-day Amazonians share an unexpected genetic link with Asian islanders, hinting at an ancient trek.

Skoglund’s discovery — which is published online on 21 July in Nature2 — was that members of two Amazonian groups, the Surui and the Karitiana, are more closely related to Papua New Guineans and Aboriginal Australians than other Native Americans are to these Australasian groups. The team confirmed the finding with several statistical methods used to untangle genetic ancestry, as well as additional genomes from Amazonians and Papuans. “We spent a lot of time being sceptical and incredulous about the finding and trying to make it go away, but it just got stronger,” says Reich.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Strewth — Australian Genetic Link to Founding of the Americas

Genetic studies suggest that all Native American groups owe most — and in some cases all — of their ancestry to a single population that arrived in North America from Siberia at least 15,000 years ago.

Even so, some of the earliest human skeletons found in the Americas have features less like those of Siberians and more like those of indigenous people living in Australia and on some islands of South-East Asia. That could just be a coincidence, or it could reflect some unrealised genetic ties between the Americas and Australia.

A new analysis suggests it is the latter. Geneticists led by David Reich and Pontus Skoglund at Harvard Medical School have analysed DNA from 63 people belonging to 21 Native American populations — and compared the information with DNA data from 197 populations elsewhere in the world — and found that there really is an Australian flavour to some Native American genomes.

Specifically, people belonging to the Surui and Karitiana populations of the Amazon share between 1 and 2 per cent of their ancestry with indigenous populations living on the Andaman Islands, New Guinea and in Australia.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Boko Haram Bombs Kill Over 50 in Nigeria, Cameroon

Toll likely to rise

(ANSA) — Rome, July 23 — Bomb blasts blamed on Boko Haram killed 29 people in Nigeria and 24 in Cameroon, officials said Thursday after Nigeria’s new president warned that the U.S. refusal to sell his country strategic weapons is “aiding and abetting” the Islamic extremist group.

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency called Thursday for urgent blood donations to treat 105 wounded people, according to spokesman Sani Datti.

He said at least 29 bodies have been recovered at two bustling bus stations in northeastern Gombe town — the latest targets in a campaign that has spilled across Nigeria’s borders.

In neighboring Cameroon, two suicide bombers Wednesday killed at least 22 people at a marketplace near the border, officials said. The toll is likely to rise among the 50 injured, they said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Kerry Kennedy Calls for Darfur Rain Dance at Giffoni Fest

Human rights activist also speaks on road safety, gay marriage

(ANSA) — Giffoni Valle Piana, July 23 — American human rights activist Kerry Kennedy on Thursday asked jurors at the Giffoni Film Festival to join her in a dance to invoke rain in Darfur, highlighting people’s struggles with lack of water in Sudan.

The daughter of Robert F. Kennedy has come to Italy to take part in the Giffoni Doha Youth Media Summit, which manages and promotes cultural events for children and youth.

“The sun shines for ten months in the year in Darfur, Sudan,” said Kennedy. “Therefore the inhabitants invoke the rain with a dance. I ask all of you to join me in this dance in the hope the rain arrives in those sun-burnt lands,” she said.

She encouraged the festival’s more than 700 jurors to take part in the dance, which included hand clapping and finger snapping. In a joint initiative with Italian police, she also raised the issue of road safety, urging young people to look out for their friends when driving.

“We can protect our friends from bullying, from violence and from many horrible things. But above all we can protect them when they are driving a vehicle. It is extremely important for their life,” she said.

When asked on the sidelines of the conference about her view on America’s legalisation of gay marriage, she said she hoped the country could be an example for others.

“Finally the moment has come to celebrate marriages between people of the same sex as normal marriages,” she said. “I hope that America can become an example for other countries,” she said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Obama Excitement at Fever Pitch in Kenya

Kenyans would welcome a visit by President Obama to the village where his father was born. This is not on the itinerary but residents of Kogelo are still hoping he’ll squeeze it in to his packed schedule.

Police have intensified security measures ahead of the visit, not only in Nairobi. The city of Kisumu, with 500,000 residents is also in a state of emergency. It is located not far from the village of Kogelo, where Obama’s father, Barack Obama Senior, was born in 1936. Here, too, security is at maximum level.

The US president’s 94-year-old grandmother, Sarah Obama, is particularly looking forward to Obama’s visit. She told DW she would slaughter a farm animal for him. “Whatever he likes to eat, whether it is duck, lamb, even cow’s meat. We have everything for him,” she said in an interview with DW’s Kiswahili service.

Barack Obama himself has never lived in Kenya. He was born in Hawaii where his father studied in the 1960s and met his future wife, Stanley Ann Dunham. Their marriage lasted only three years. In 1964 Obama Senior returned to Kenya where he died in a car accident 18 years later.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

At Mexico’s Narco Cemetery, Palatial Tombs Await the Inevitable End for Gang Members

CULIACAN, Mexico — Palatial tombs mark the final resting spots of drug traffickers in the Jardines de Humaya cemetery in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan.

The cemetery is known for the extravagant tombs commissioned by traffickers and their families.

Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman hails from this region and there were fears he would seek revenge against those who turned against him while he was prison. But his escape doesn’t seem to have sparked additional violence, apparently with few new burials here in the nearly two weeks since he slipped out of Mexico’s highest-security prison.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Brazil Police May be to Blame for 35 Execution-Style Killings Over Weekend

Detectives in Manaus are investigating whether police death squads or criminal gangs were involved in a rash of execution-style killings that left 35 people dead in just three days.

As the authorities flooded the streets with officers to reassure a nervous public, city officials were forced to admit that the police themselves may have been responsible for the worst weekend of homicide in recent memory.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Four-Legged Fossil Snake is a World First

‘Hugging’ creature from Brazil shakes up picture of snake evolution.

The first four-legged fossil snake ever found is forcing scientists to rethink how snakes evolved from lizards. Although it has four legs, Tetrapodophis amplectus has other features that clearly mark it as a snake, says Nick Longrich, a palaeontologist at the University of Bath, UK, and one of the authors of a paper describing the animal in Science.

The discovery comes in a major year for snake evolution research, Cohn says. In January, the snake fossil record was pushed back by some 70 million years to the Middle Jurassic, around 160 million years ago, with the report of the oldest snake ever found. Although Tetrapodophis is not the oldest snake, Cohn says, “from a developmental perspective, this could be one of the most important fossils ever found. The combination of a snake-like body with complete forelimbs and hindlimbs is like a snake version of Archaeopteryx.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

“Refugee Children” Invade Sweden

by Ingrid Carlqvist

The number of children seeking asylum in Sweden has exploded over the last ten years, presumably because children are granted asylum much quicker than adults, and Swedish authorities don’t verify the age of these “children.” Refugees are allowed to bring their entire family to Sweden once they get residency status.

Swedish journalists do everything in their power to maintain this image of “refugee children.”

“I’m risking my job by telling you this. … Many of us are under state orders to keep quiet. It’s professional misconduct to contact, for example, immigration services with information about someone lying on their asylum application.” — “Isak,” an employee at a facility for unaccompanied children.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

35-40 People Drown in Mediterranean Migrant Crossing, Save the Children Reports

Save the Children reports that another 35-40 African refugees have drowned while trying to reach Italy from Libya.

The aid group said some of the 80 survivors who were brought ashore Thursday in Augusta, Sicily, reported the deaths that occurred the previous day.

Details were scarce, but survivors told Save the Children’s advisers that the migrants died as the dinghy began taking in water.

The dead were believed to be mostly sub-Saharan Africans from Senegal, Mali and Benin and included at least seven children, the group reported in a statement.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark: Smugglers Help Refugees Compare Welfare Benefits

A document that human smugglers use to help asylum seekers compare the different levels of benefits in Europe makes all of the criticism of Denmark’s refugee benefit cuts “ring hollow”, centre-right parties said on Thursday.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Denmark Can’t Find Housing for Refugees

Some 12,000 refugees need help a place to live in Denmark but nearly half of the nation’s municipalities say that they can’t find housing for the newcomers.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Finland: Asylum Seeker Reception Centres at Capacity

The Finnish Immigration Service is on the urgent lookout for vacant facilities to house asylum seekers throughout Finland, as even the reception centres in the north of the country have reached capacity.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Hispanics Love Me, Trump Declares at Mexican Border

LAREDO, Texas (AP) — Ever sure of himself, Donald Trump paid a visit to the Mexico border Thursday and predicted Hispanics would love him — “they already do” — because as president he’d grab jobs back from overseas and give more opportunity to those who live in the U.S. legally.

“There’s great danger with the illegals,” the Republican presidential contender told reporters. But he claimed a “great relationship” with Hispanics, even as Latino leaders have come at him with blistering criticism for his painting Mexican immigrants as criminals.

“I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan,” Trump said. “The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

House OKs Bill to Crack Down on ‘Sanctuary Cities, ‘ White House Threatens Veto

The House approved legislation Thursday to punish so-called “sanctuary cities” for failing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, in the first congressional response to a brazen murder earlier this month in San Francisco allegedly committed by an illegal immigrant.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would penalize jurisdictions that bar the collection of immigration information or don’t cooperate with federal “detainer” requests, by blocking them from receiving certain federal law enforcement grants and funding.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: No One is Shirking Migrants Responsibility — Prefects

‘Don’t agree with Alfano’ says Palomba

(ANSA) — Rome, July 22 — The association of Italian prefects said Wednesday that none of them were shirking responsibilities to cope with migrant reception. “Over the last few months none of us pulled back despite the difficulties,” said Sinpref chair Claudio Palomba, responding to Interior Minister Angelino Alfano who said prefects who weren’t up to the task should quit. “I don’t agree with what the minister said,” Palomba told ANSA. “It’s the government that should realise that there are defective areas, and none of us is shirking”.

Alfano said earlier that prefects who can’t cope with the migrant-reception emergency can leave their posts. “We have confidence in the prefects” to deal with migrants “but if there are those who get scared, can’t stand the impact and can’t cope, let them take a step back and we’ll replace them,” he said. Alfano was responding to a Sinpref statement saying the officials were becoming “scapegoats” for an alleged failure to manage migrant reception, which has seen several local citizens’ protests.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Shipwreck Survivors Say 40 Dead Off Libya

Survivors of a migrant shipwreck that occurred Wednesday off the coast of Libya said Thursday that some 40 of their fellow passengers perished in the disaster. The survivors arrived at Augusta port in Siracusa province on board the German Navy ship Holstein, which rescued a total of 283 people.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Trump Threatens Independent Run, On Sidelines of Border Visit

Donald Trump made a splashy visit Thursday to the U.S.-Mexico border in a bid to draw attention to illegal immigration. But on the sidelines, he was making news for other reasons — his threat to mount an independent run for the White House if the Republican Party won’t welcome him.

The warning, made in an interview with The Hill, comes as Trump faces some of the toughest criticism yet from fellow Republican candidates. Trump said the Republican National Committee “has not been supportive,” and suggested if he does not clinch the nomination and is not “treated” well by Republicans, he’d consider an independent bid.

Asked about the remarks Thursday during his border visit, Trump did not rule out an independent run but said: “I want to run as a Republican. … I think I’ll get the nomination.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

13 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger

Sanger called the various methods of population control, including abortion, “defending the unborn against their own disabilities”

Planned Parenthood, engulfed in a scandal following the release of two undercover videos, is the largest abortion provider in the United States.

On its website, the organization compliments Margaret Sanger as one of the pro-choice movement’s “great heroes.” Sanger started the American Birth Control League in 1921; it became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.

Planned Parenthood praises Sanger for “providing contraception and other health services” and “advancing access to family planning in the United States and around the world.”

In addition to Planned Parenthood, Sanger also founded the Birth Control Review, a journal about contraception and population control. Here are 13 things Sanger said during her lifetime.

1) She proposed allowing Congress to solve “population problems” by appointing a “Parliament of Population.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Civil Unions to Cost 3.5 Mln Next Year, 6 Mln in 2017

And 22.7 million in 2025 due to increased benefits, deductions

(ANSA) — Rome, July 23 — The cost to the public purse of a new law permitting civil unions for same-sex couples would be about 3.7 million euros in 2016, rising to six million euros in 2017, the finance ministry said in post on its Twitter feed Thursday. As well, the ministry said in its technical report that making gay couples official would cost 22.7 million euros in 2025 due to “a reduced IRPEF personal income tax take due to larger deductions, more family benefits, and more pension benefits to same-sex partners”.

Such a law is now before parliament after the European Court of Human Rights complained earlier this week that Italy should provide such legislation to protect the rights of gay couples. The Senate justice committee said it was waiting for more information from the finance ministry as part of its review of proposed legislation on civil unions. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said in a radio interview that while the government wants to strengthen human rights, he would draw the line at legislation allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. “We say ‘yes’ to the strengthening of individual rights but we fear that this bill could be used to achieve the adoption of children, to which we are opposed,” said Alfano, head of the New Centre Right (NCD) political party that is in a coalition government with the center-left Democratic Party (PD). He said he also doubts whether same-sex civil unions should be seen as “the equivalent of marriage” in terms of all the rights the traditional union involves.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Swedish “Far-Right” Plans Gay Pride Parade Through Muslim Areas; Leftists and Gay Rights Groups Decry the Parade as Racist

No, this is not satire. On July 29, a gay pride parade is scheduled in Sweden. But, you see, this is no ordinary gay pride parade. This gay pride parade was created by Jan Sjunnesson, former editor-in-chief for the Samtiden newspaper in Sweden, which is owned by the nationalist Sweden Democrats party (for our Canadian readers, think of the Sweden Democrats as being kind of like the Conservatives or the Canadian Action Party, which means that they’re considered “extreme far-right” in Sweden). The parade is scheduled to go through Tensta and Husby — two areas where Muslim immigrants are more than 75% of the population.

On the event’s Facebook page, the organizers state that there will be public “kissing” and “singing”.

To place an LGBT parade to the suburbs dominated by immigrants from the Middle East, however, is an expression of pure racism, according to critics.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

The Truth About Violent, Intolerant ‘Liberals’ — Video

Why is the left allowed to engage in violent rhetoric?

Transgender reporter Zoey Tur threatened to hospitalize conservative pundit Ben Shapiro during a Dr Drew debate in which Shapiro dared to utter the hate crime of arguing that wearing a dress didn’t make Tur a biological female. Tur grabbed Shapiro around the neck before telling him, “If you don’t cut that out, you’ll be going home in an ambulance.”

After the taping, Tur continued the threatening tirade, telling Shapiro, “I’ll see you in the parking lot.”

Tur then doubled down further, indirectly threatening to “curb stomp” Shapiro. He also retweeted someone who advocated punching Shapiro in the face.

In a subsequent radio interview, Tur admitted he was threatening Shapiro during the debate, before going on an anti-Semitic rant in which he claimed that Judaism was “misogynistic cult” which doesn’t allow women to touch men.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Watch the Astonishment on Gay Pride Event Attendees’ Faces When They Learn Which ‘Bigot’ Uttered These Anti-Gay Marriage Quotes

Slater took the opportunity to survey the attendees, asking them questions such as, “What percentage of the male population do you think is gay?” He received a wide variety of answers, the lowest being 28% and the highest, 70%

Using statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Slater surprised virtually every person he encountered telling them the CDC says 1.8% of males are gay.

The radio talker also played a little game with the attendees called, “Which Bigot Said It?”

On a white board, Slater had photos of Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

The radio talker also played a little game with the attendees called, “Which Bigot Said It?”

On a white board, Slater had photos of Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

He also posted the following four quotes about gay marriage.

“Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time.” “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.” “I think marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.” “For me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.” Slater read the quotes and asked the gay pride parade supporters, “Which bigot said it?”

After they made their guesses, it was revealed the quotes came from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Watch the astonishment:…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Woman Reveals Plans to Marry Her Dog Following the Death of Previous ‘Husband’… a Pet Cat (And Her Boyfriend is All for it)

A woman has revealed that she is planning to marry her dog following the death of her former husband, who was a cat.

Dominique Lesbirel, 41, from Holland, married her pet cat Doerack eight years ago but sadly, the animal had to be put down after suffering kidney failure aged 19.

Determined to move on Dominique has revealed she now plans to marry her dog Travis.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Brain Area Found That May Make Humans Unique

Experiment compares the way monkey and human brains respond to abstract information.

Neuroscientists have identified an area of the brain that might give the human mind its unique abilities, including language. The area lit up in human, but not monkey, brains when they were presented with different types of abstract information.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

The Rise of On-Body Cameras and How They Will Change How We Live

More people are wearing on-body cameras that film everything someone does. How will this alter your behaviour?

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]