Monthly Archives: November 2015

Michael Stürzenberger: Silenced in Graz

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Long-time readers are familiar with Michael Stürzenberger, the German anti-jihad activist and member of Die Freiheit. Mr. Stürzenberger has been up on charges before for his political views in Germany, but now he has been tried, convicted, and sentenced in Austria. One of his “crimes” was to quote Voltaire on the topic of Islam.

Below is the report on the case from Michael Mannheimer’s blog. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

Austria: Stürzenberger Sentenced to Prison and Fine

Today, in Graz, Austria, German Islam critic Michael Stürzenberger was tried for “hate speech and denigration of religious doctrines.” The decision: Four months probation and a fine of €960. Since he asked for three days to consider, the decision is not yet legally binding.

If Voltaire were alive today, it would have been no different for him than for Stürzenberger. He would have been sentenced to prison because of his criticism of Islam. In a speech in Austria, Stürzenberger quoted the former terrorist imam, Nassim Ben Iman (who had turned his back on Islam) by saying: Islam is a religion that legitimizes killing. And paraphrased him: Every Muslim is a potential terrorist.

Well, anyone who knows the Koran knows that this is required by the Koran. And that brought him yesterday’s conviction. Even though the facts are clear: Anyone who refuses the battle against “infidels” is not seen by the Koran as a complete Muslim. In Graz, the gutmenschen (plaintiffs were the Greens) won a victory. But it is a pyrrhic one. For they have now created a martyr from the Islam-critical milieu. Not just anyone, but one of the best-known and most informed Islam-critics in Germany and Europe. Islam-criticism will show a strong growth. And the Red-Greens will find their Waterloo.

— Michael Mannheimer November 18, 2015

Voltaire said:

The Koran teaches fear, hatred, contempt for others. Murder as a legitimate means of spreading and maintaining this devil’s doctrine. It denigrates women, divides people into classes and demands blood and more blood.

That a camel driver creates an uproar in his one-horse town; that he wants to make his fellow citizens believe that he had a talk with the Archangel Gabriel; that he brags he was carried away to Heaven and received there a part of this indigestible book, whose every page makes healthy human reason quiver; that to create respect for this book, he subjects his land to fire and sword; that he strangles fathers, abducts daughters; that he offers those defeated the choice of death or accepting his faith.

That, of a certainty, is something no one can excuse, unless he was born a Turk or superstition has extinguished any natural light of his understanding.

The trial is reported in the Tiroler Tageszeitung:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/21/2015

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Vice President Joe Biden appealed to American citizens not to turn their backs on Syrian refugees. Mr. Biden said it would play right into the terrorists’ hands to act in such a divisive fashion.

In other news, an angry mob torched an electronics factory in Pakistan after rumors surfaced that a factory employee had desecrated a Koran. The management of the factory was relieved when they learned that the incident had nothing to do with Islam.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Dora, Green Infidel, Insubria, JD, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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“Vlaams Belang Vindicated”: Brussels Lockdown

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When I first read about the shutdown of Brussels, I knew immediately whose website I wanted to see. Michael is a long-time blogger and a native of Belgium for whom Brussels is home. I first got to know him when Vlaams Belang was under attack by Charles Johnson. In other words, a nightmare ago. It was he who helped explain to me the reality of VB, the desire of Flanders to go its own way, and why Charles Johnson was so very wrong in his character assassinations.

So I checked, and sure enough, Mike notes the shutdown of Brussels:

Since 2 am Saturday morning, Brussels is in a heightened state of alert. State Security “has indications that an attack was planned with guns and explosives”. PM Charles Michel has stated that “the threat is grave and very close”. The Threat Level is at 4, the highest one. The Brussels metro does not function. Army and police patrol in the city.

For decades the Vlaams Belang has warned of the grave dangers imposed by unchecked immigration and especially from muslim countries.


The ongoing persecution of Vlaams Belang was brutal. Those people paid a heavy financial and emotional cost for daring to go up against the Brussels/EU machine. So did Paul Belien, formerly the editor of Brussels Journal, whose wife was also a member of Parliament.

Here is Diana West’s essay from 2008 about her meeting with Mr. Dewinter in Brussels [the emphasis below is in the original posting]:

…Having interviewed Dewinter on several separate occasions — a couple of times in Antwerp last summer, once in Washington last year — I only wish the US had candidates of his strength, purpose and calibre. I know of no American politician who understands the historic sweep of the jihad as Dewinter does, and who is so forthright, outspoken and active in his stand against it. As far as the completely spurious and thoroughly deranged charges against him of anti-Semitism and crypto-Nazism go, they are, well, spurious and thoroughly deranged. Last summer I asked him to explain his stand against Islamization. He replied:

“It’s a global struggle for our values, for our European way of life, for our civilization. That’s why I think it is also a European struggle; that is, It’s not only about a mosque two blocks away — no! It’s about our survival as a European nation and as a civilization. And I recognize those values, that civilization, also over there in Israel. It’s the only country in occupied territory, the vanguard of Europe in occupied territory, that is sharing those same values. And that’s why it’s so important to support Israel.”

Mike from Downeast continues with the long record of persecution Vlaams Belang has suffered under the leftist regime in Brussels:

Its only reward was a “cordon sanitaire”, a barrage of insults, anti-racism laws, lawsuits, intimidation campaigns, vandalization of property of its members and party infrastructure, the blocking of ads, exclusion of VB publications on the yearly Boekenbeurs (the national Book Fair), and severe restrictions on the appearance of VB politicians on state-controlled TV stations.

Today, the chickens have come home to roost.

Indeed they have. In those dark days after the first Brussels Counterjihad Conference we were painted as xenophobic haters and racists. But for the most part Americans ignored Europe’s growing problems with immigrants. It was over there and that wasn’t happening here to anyone they knew. A lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since then, much of it innocent.

Be sure to check out Mike’s other photos of Brussels from earlier today. For me, they are eerie. We lived with this prediction for so long that to see it embodied is in some ways more disturbing than to have it surprise us, as the Paris massacre did.

One can only ask when the next European city will shut down… and for how long?

What place will be the next Paris?

The loud threats from ISIS to American cities — will they also become a reality?

The Land of Ice and Snow

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No, it’s not really that cold. Not around here, not yet. But it felt like it for a while early this morning.

Dymphna and I became chilled late last night, and even more so when we got up this morning. We both thought we were coming down with some unpleasant disease. However — to make a long story short — it turned out that we had experienced a failure of the motor for the fan in the air handler for the heat pump. It got good and cold here last night (and it’s going to be even colder tonight), so it was down in the mid-50s (ca. 12ºC) in the house this morning.

An emergency visit from our trusty HVAC man did not result in the expected repair — he has to order a replacement part that he HOPES will take care of the problem, but he can’t do that until Monday. So we are going to be cold for at least a few more days.

We used to have a portable electric heater, but we gave it away years ago to a family member — the reasoning being that we would never be without heat unless we had lost our electricity, so why bother keeping an electric heater on hand? Hah!

So we turned on the oven and left the door open to warm the house up. That’s a propane stove, and you have to be very careful when you do something like that. The heat downstairs rises upstairs to the Eyrie, along with whatever gaseous effluvia are emitted by the oven as result of propane combustion. I was up here working for about forty-five minutes before I realized I was getting a peculiar sort of headache, up the back of my neck and into the back of my head. I knew what that meant, so I went downstairs and turned off the oven.

There was no help for it — we went out and did what we knew all along we would have to do: buy a couple of compact electric heaters, one for the bedroom and one for the kitchen. We took a trip to the (relatively) big city and went to Wal-Mart, where Dymphna picked out the heaters she wanted (she had researched them online beforehand).

So now we’re all set: it will be at least tepid in here until the air handler is repaired. Which will undoubtedly be very expensive — things like that always are. Sigh.

Anyway, that’s why posting has been light. And it may continue to be light from time to time, depending on the flow of HVAC-related events.

There’s no midnight sun in these latitudes. Nor hot springs — which is too bad; we could use some of that steam right now.

President Zeman to PM Sobotka: “Inform Yourself!”

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Last night we reported on a speech given by Czech President Miloš Zeman at an event sponsored by an Islam-critical group in the Czech Republic.

It seems that Mr. Zeman has ruffled a few feathers with his speech, and not just those of exotic foreign birds at the UN and in Brussels. He was criticized yesterday by his own prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, for being involved with a “xenophobic sect”.

Not only did the president refuse to back down, but in his admirable response to Mr. Sobotka he said, in effect, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Below are excerpts from the Reuters report:

Czech PM Rebukes President for Supporting Anti-Islamic Groups: Paper

PRAGUE (Reuters) — Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka criticized the country’s president for supporting anti-Islamic groups and spreading hatred in an unusually sharp rebuke of the head of state in a newspaper interview published on Friday.

President Milos Zeman, 71, frequently expresses anti-Islamic views and has opposed allowing immigrants from the war-torn Middle East into Europe, drawing criticism last month from a top U.N. human rights official.

At a rally on Tuesday held by group called “We don’t want Islam in the Czech Republic” Zeman praised the up to 2,000 people who attended for independent thinking and he lashed out against what he said was a pro-immigration media massage.

“The highest representative of the country, the president of the Czech Republic, which has deep humanistic and democratic tradition, should not in my opinion speak at a gathering of a xenophobic sect which was filled with spreading intensive hatred,” Sobotka told daily Hospodarske Noviny.

“I believe he caught many people in our country off guard in a very unpleasant way,” he said, adding the meeting angered even Zeman’s supporters within Sobotka’s Social Democratic party.

In a reply via his spokesman on Twitter, Zeman said: “The prime minister apparently does not have adequate information, although he should have it before making such statement… I think that a good prime minister should not act like this.”

The Czech Republic has seen several thousands of migrants enter its territory this year, with the vast majority of the refugees and migrants traveling through neighboring Austria to Germany.

Zeman, 71, was criticized last month for making “Islamophobic” statements by United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/20/2015

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The big story of the day was the jihad attack on a Radisson hotel in Bamako, Mali, which left at least 27 people dead. The mujahideen took 170 hostages, forcing people to recite Koran verses to prove they were Muslims. Those who failed the test were killed. American special forces helped local commandos storm the building, freeing the remaining hostages, killing some of the terrorists, and trapping the rest on the upper floors and roof of the building.

It’s not in tonight’s news feed items, but there is a breaking news report that Belgium has placed Brussels on the highest possible terror alert, citing a “serious and imminent threat”.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Dora, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, MC, Nick, Steen, 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.

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“We Will Not Succumb to Brainwashing”

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On November 17 Czech President Miloš Zeman spoke at a rally in the Czech Republic organized by the group “Block Against Islam”. Among the other honored guests present for President Zeman’s speech was Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League.

Many thanks to Margita for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Below are excerpts from the Breibart report on Mr. Zeman’s speech:

Eastern Europe Rising: Czech President Speaks at Anti-Islam Rally With PEGIDA Leaders, Tommy Robinson

Speaking to a crowd this afternoon that included observers from Germany’s PEGIDA movement and Britain’s Tommy Robinson, president Miloš Zeman was a guest of the Czech political action group ‘Block Against Islam’.

Speaking on stage, the president said nobody else would be able to dictate to the Czech people, and took aim at the mainstream media, which he accused of “massaging” the migrant crisis for their own ends. He took a strong position defending free speech, remarking that everyone had the right to an opinion, but Czechs should never try to silence people with opposite views.

Mr. Zeman remarked using slurs against your political opponents didn’t constitute a real argument, and accordingly those opposing migration should no longer be called “extremists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, racists or fascists”, reports Radio Prague. The audience greeted the president’s words with cheers and chanted “long live Zeman!”

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Geert Wilders: “The Name of That Evil is Islam”

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Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, spoke in the Dutch parliament yesterday for the first time since the jihad massacre in Paris a week ago today. Mr. Wilders reiterated what he has been saying for years: that the Netherlands must stop importing Muslims, close its borders, and prevent mujahideen who are fighting in Syria from ever returning “home”.

The arguments and questions aimed at him by his parliamentary critics (including a Turkish-Dutch member) were lame at best. It is becoming increasingly difficult for proponents of Multiculturalism to put forward convincing reasons why Mr. Wilders is wrong in his stance.

I haven’t seen any poll results since the Paris atrocities, but the PVV was the most popular party in the Netherlands before the attacks. It will be interesting to see its numbers in the next poll.

Many thanks to H. Numan for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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Abdelhamid Abaaoud: What I Did at Summer Camp

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As part of his semester of study abroad, the recently deceased mastermind of the jihad massacre in Paris took a little working tour of the battlefront in Syria.

Vlad, Rita, and I didn’t know his name when we made this video back in March of 2014, but we’ve now learned that he was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a “Belgian” from the Molenbeek district in Brussels — also known as the “Gaza Strip of the Benelux”. In the video you can see the late lamented Mr. Abaaoud engaging in fun jihad camp activities, such as driving a vehicle around dragging corpses through the dirt.

And this was before the Caliphate was even proclaimed, back when the Islamic State was still ISIS, when it was confined to “Iraq and al-Shams”. Recent events have made it clear that Islamic State is now everywhere.

WARNING: Although this video blurs out the worst of the grotesque and bloody shots, it is still disturbing to watch. Readers who are sensitive to images of brutality and degradation may want to skip this one:

Transcript:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/19/2015

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A gang of “youths” beat up a team of Russian journalists who visited a suburb of Brussels in an attempt to interview family members of the late alleged mastermind of the Paris massacres, the “Belgian” Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

In migration news, the mayor of Melbourne called on Australia to do its part and take in a larger share of “Syrian” “refugees”.

In other news, two soldiers in Bosnia were shot to death by an Islamic terrorist, who later blew himself up to evade capture.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Dean, Dora, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JLH, LP, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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I am a Traitor

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As the crisis in Europe intensifies, more and more writers begin to sound exactly like Fjordman, the Dark Prophet of Norway.

Many thanks to JLH for this translation of a guest article in Andreas Unterberger’s blog:

Je suis un traître — Ich bin ein Verräter
(I am a Traitor)

November 16, 2015

by Werner Reichel

After the massacres in Paris, the politically correct propaganda machinery is running at top speed again. It is hardly possible to inform oneself via mainstream media about the war of conquest in Europe. From all MSM outlets dribbles the slimy concern of those politicians who — by their actions or non-actions — bear a substantial share of the blame for the death of around 130 civilians in Paris. Once more, the leftist criminals behind the desks in editorial offices evoke in pathetic cries freedom, democracy and courage — that is, values and virtues which they despise and for whose preservation they would risk nothing, because they do not have the courage for it.

From all sources, the politically correct commentators and experts are searching for a spin to once again sell the gullible public on the idea that the latest bloodbath was a regrettable lone incident, perpetrated by several mentally disturbed and misguided people. Again and again the public is informed why the diverse massacres have nothing to do with Islam and why the real victims are not the people killed and their friends and relatives, but the millions of Muslims in Europe.

In the end, xenophobic rabble rousers, rightist sub-humans and right-populists would attempt to make use of this latest, unfortunate isolated incident for their repulsive and inhuman purposes, like for instance re-introducing border controls. So after the bloodbath perpetrated by radical Muslims, the battle against the “Right” — i.e., these citizens who are no longer swallowing the PC propaganda idiocy — must be intensified. That is just the same old shell game. Astonishingly, it still works.

The journalists and other opinion-makers — like third-class carnival magicians — are trying to direct the public’s attention to secondary venues, so after every attack, they ask why the authorities, the police, the intelligence services, that is those state institutions the MSM journalist despises and criticizes, have “failed.” These recriminations come almost exclusively from people who are loudest in their complaints against the “superfluity” of rights and powers of these institutions. Whenever radical Muslims perpetrate a bloodbath, the following rules of thumb and standards of conduct apply:

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Mark Zuckerberg: Are You Charlie or Sharia?

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Majid Oukacha is a French apostate from Islam who published a book earlier this year about his former religion. It had already sold thousands of copies before the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday, but after that the number of readers of his Facebook page increased by a factor of ten.

Unfortunately, upon seeing his increasing popularity, the moderators of Facebook in the French language — who seem to be Muslims living in Morocco — shut Mr. Oukacha’s page down without any explanation.

Below is a video released yesterday by Majid Oukacha in English, but subtitled in French. In it he poses a question to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook: Mark, are you Charlie or Sharia?

A Sea Change in the “Refugee” Crisis

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Most American political discussions remain focused on President Obama, and — now that the 2016 campaign is in full swing — the dozen or so major contenders vying to succeed him. All significant events, from petroleum prices through sex scandals to hurricanes, are viewed through the lens of presidential politics. This is the preoccupation not only of the Legacy Media, but also much of the New Media. There has been a drumbeat for the past seven years or so of OBAMA… OBAMA… OBAMA — as if no other public figure were significant. And now there will be a gradual switchover to HILLARY… SANDERS… JEB… TRUMP… CARSON as the next election draws closer, and then after January 20, 2017 the journalistic preoccupation will return to POTUS… POTUS… POTUS, whoever that turns out to be.

This obsessive monomania is a mistake and a waste of energy. Mr. Obama is hardly the cause of our national political disease, but rather a symptom of it — I could go on at length about the “root causes” of Obamaism, but that would be another post entirely.

The same sort of journalistic tunnel vision holds sway in Europe, although it is diffused among a number of political leaders. The European press tends to focus on the pronouncements of Angela Merkel, François Hollande, David Cameron, and other prime ministers and heads of state who appear to occupy the pinnacle of power — as if they were the main architects of crucial public policy and the motive force behind the crucial events of our time.

This is hardly the case. As all the momentous news washes over me, I notice certain eddies and ripple patterns to the tidal ebb and flow of events. Something else is at work besides the capering clowns who strut and fret their hour upon the political stage. It’s hard get a clear view of those occluded causes — they probably include the name “Soros”, but his hand is far from the only one at work.

After digesting a lot of information about the “refugee” crisis over the past four months, these are a few of the facts/deductions that seem important, but not often discussed:

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One Slim Finger in a Very Leaky Dike

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The Washington Times appears to be the best MSM news source for the latest legislation on those 10,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees President Obama had planned on bringing in to the U.S. Should you decide to push through the sludge of those who are constrained by The Narrative muzzle, you’ll find only the usual declarations about our “heritage as a nation of refugees”, our mandate to “help those in need”, etc.

Paris was a horror but the ripples it created seem to have washed over the feet of our slumbering Congress, waking them to step around the puddles. They haven’t increased our national security as much we purportedly race-mongering haters would like, but this suspension of Obama’s Refugee Festival is a good place to start the pushback.

The tenor of this signed news piece by the Time’s Stephen Dinan is clear:

Distrusting President Obama’s assurances and brushing aside his insults, the House voted Thursday to hit the “pause” button on his plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. this year, insisting he step up security checks to make sure terrorists can’t exploit America’s humanitarian heart.

The 289-137 vote saw 47 Democrats join Republicans, defying a veto threat from Mr. Obama, who has grown increasingly strident in accusing his critics of everything from hysteria to Islamophobia.

But his victorious critics said he himself is to blame for having repeatedly betrayed the country’s trust on security issues, including a lax policy on immigration enforcement and mistakenly blaming an anti-Islam film rather than terrorists for the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed America’s ambassador to Libya.

There is more detail at The Washington Times’ website, but here’s the level of our president’s response. You can tell he’s not used to being thwarted:

”The idea that somehow they [Syrian immigrants] pose a more significant threat than all the tourists who pour into the United States every single day just doesn’t jive [sic] with reality,” Mr. Obama said. “So my expectation is after the initial spasm of rhetoric, the people will settle down, take a look at the facts, and we’ll be able to proceed.”

The word Our First Linguist meant to use was “jibe” but he can’t help it; the man is limited by his Harvard Law gig.

You’ll notice he doesn’t mention “the reality of all the [illegal aliens] who pour into the United States every single day” across our degraded southwestern border. Like all politicians he cherry-picks his “facts”.

It took a while to sort through the verbiage and drill down to the language of H.R.4033. As the Times says, this is a “modest” piece of legislation. What is making the bureaucrat politicians squirm is Congress’ assigned responsibility for certifying each and every “refugee”. Basically it says, “You want ’em? Then you sign for ’em”:

The bill the House passed is modest. It would require the heads of the FBI, Homeland Security and the intelligence community to sign off on every refugee.

I don’t know who “the intelligence community” would be. The CIA director? You can almost hear them screaming from here.

There are several places I check for the passage of bills but this is too new for the government to have moved on releasing the details. This is all I have at the moment:

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