Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is being investigated by the German authorities on possible charges of hate speech and incitement. Mr. Zuckerberg may have broken German law by allowing hateful posts to appear on Facebook.
In other news, the magazine Rolling Stone and the writer Sabrina Erdely have been found guilty of defamation for their bogus article about an imaginary gang rape at the University of Virginia. The magazine and the writer will have to pay $7.5 million in damages.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Caroline Glick, Cy Halothrin, Dean, Fjordman, Nick, Reader from Chicago, Srdja Trifkovic, 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.
2 Injured: Suspect in Custody After Stabbing at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey
Two people were stabbed Friday at Rutgers Business School in Piscataway, New Jersey and a suspect is in custody.
The website NJ.com reported the attacker was a former student, who was being treated for self-inflicted wounds. It identified the two victims as a Rutgers faculty member and student…
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
Translated excerpts of Srdja Trifkovic’s interview on the U.S. election for Serbia’s Public Media Service, Belgrade Radio II.
There are endless skeletons in Hillary’s closet, many more than the renewed FBI investigation indicates. Her past record and her modus operandi are inherently scandalous, and many details are yet to be revealed. At home, America is more divided than ever. Whoever wins next Tuesday, we’ll have roughly one half of the electorate who will not see the outcome as legitimate or even legally valid. Abroad, the entire concept of global hegemony is in crisis—and on this issue the two candidates differ fundamentally.
Trump has assailed the holy trinity of the American “Deep State,” or permanent state: rampant immigration, globalizing “free trade,” and global empire. Hillary Clinton is determined to maintain the current strategic approach on all three issues, which is likely to have catastrophic results. Compared to her, Obama has been markedly cautious. In the summer of 2013 he refrained from direct intervention in Syria, in spite of the neoconservative-neoliberal duopoly’s intense pressure. It is to be feared that if she wins—and if the Republicans maintain their majority in both houses, and start insisting on further investigations—she will engineer some foreign crisis in order to consolidate her domestic position. This would open the possibility of uncontrolled escalation, in Syria and elsewhere.
Q: This campaign has been marked by many trivialities . . .
ST: Primarily because the media focus has been on demonizing and deconstructing Donald Trump, and the media have acted as an integral part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. His vulgarity notwithstanding, their obsession with Trump’s demolition has lowered the tone. It has masked the fact that there is no real split between the two parties’ establishment on the issue of global empire, immigration, and “free trade.” This is why a major segment of the Republican establishment has been anti-Trump: he has dared question these holy cows of the Duopoly. From the standpoint of the American deep state—the political establishment in Washington, the financial power node in Wall Street, and the military-industrial complex—Trump’s election would present a real and present danger. With Hillary at the helm they would enjoy the perfect comfort of continuity.
The first dangerous crisis would be her stated intention to create no-fly zones and “protected areas” in Syria. That could herald to the worst global calamity we have seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962 . . .
And yet, the maintenance of this global empire is completely opposed to any rational notion of America’s national and security interests. It is rooted in an ideological obsession to which Hillary Clinton is deeply devoted, a triumphalist misunderstanding of “American exceptionalism.” This is an absurd notion, which has had its continuity ever since the Puritan settlement of New England in the XVII century, which claims that America is exempt from all legal and moral restraints that apply to the rest of the world. Intoxicated by this doctrine, to which she evidently subscribes, it is to be feared that she would follow the dictum of “my way or no way”—as amply evidenced in her State Department tenure. Some members of Obama’s cabinet have said that during that time she was always the most hawkish voice in the room. She tipped the balance over the Libyan intervention. At the same time, her chronic inability to admit mistakes and accept responsibility for them is indicative of sociopathic personality. This disorder was clearly visible after Ambassador Stevens and his crew were murdered in Benghazi in September 2012.
Q: Do you see the possibility of tampering with election results?…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick on Trump’s True Opponent
As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.
One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Communist Wants to Own Hollywood Studio
Vladimir Lenin, the first dictator of the Soviet Union, said “the motion picture” was the most important art form for spreading communism to other countries. And his successor, the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin, is reported to have predicted he could convert the whole world to communism if he was given control of the American movie industry.
In 1935, the cultural commissioner of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), V.J. Jerome, planted a branch of the party in Hollywood, and went to work to use the industry to advance the cause. The Soviet-backed communists recruited actors, directors, and writers to the cause, and eventually did battle with the studio owners in labor strikes.
But now, Chinese communists have surpassed their Russian comrades, and they aren’t bothering with recruiting “lowly” actors, directors, and writers to advance Chinese communism; they are looking to buy theater chains and movie studios.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Fox News Poll: Clinton Ahead of Trump by Two Points
Hillary Clinton has a 2-point edge over Donald Trump with less than a week before the election.
That’s according to a new national Fox News Poll of likely voters conducted Tuesday-Thursday.
In the four way race, Clinton tops Trump by a 45-43 percent margin. She was up by three points a week ago (44-41 percent) and by six in mid-October (45-39 percent). Gary Johnson gets 5 percent and Jill Stein two percent. Only four percent are undecided.
Without third-party candidates in the mix, Clinton is ahead by just one point: 46-45 percent.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Gregg Jarrett: An “Avalanche of Evidence” May Now Bury Hillary
Americans who lived through the nightmares of both the Watergate and Lewinsky scandals recall vividly how every day seemed to produce new evidence of wrongdoing. The drip, drip of deceptions and lies finally overflowed into a cascading pool of criminality and disgust.
The first scandal culminated in Articles of Impeachment. The other an impeachment trial. Is America now hurtling toward the same political abyss? It looks like it. So, fasten your seat belts and brace for impact.
Sources tell Fox News’s Bret Baier that the FBI has uncovered an “avalanche of evidence” in the Clinton Foundation investigation.
Agents are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case,” calling it a “very high priority.”
Armed with newly discovered email evidence and additional documents revealed by WikiLeaks, these sources say that agents will likely try to get Huma Abedin and others to cooperate in an effort to bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mahin Khan Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison in Tucson Terrorism Case
PHOENIX (KPHO/KTVK) — A man arrested on terrorism charges in Tucson was sentenced to 8 years in prison Friday morning.
Judge Dean Fink also ordered Mahin Khan, 18 to lifetime probation.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Rigged Polls: Tests Show College Grads Conceal Support for Donald Trump
A large percentage of college graduates are hiding their support for Donald Trump, according to test surveys of 309 college graduates conducted by Morning Consult.
That hidden support for Trump could be providing Hillary Clinton a false, 2-point advantage in election polls, according to the polling firm’s results.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Rolling Stone, Reporter Ruled Liable in Defamation Suit
After hearing more than two weeks’ worth of evidence, jurors ruled Friday that Rolling Stone magazine and a writer defamed a University of Virginia administrator in a 2014 story about an alleged sexual assault, media outlets reported.
Word of the jury decision came Friday afternoon in multiple news outlets.
School administrator Nicole Eramo claimed the 2014 article portrayed her as a villain who discouraged the woman identified only as Jackie from reporting the incident to police. A police investigation found no evidence to back up Jackie’s claims.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Rudy Giuliani is Claiming to Have Insider FBI Knowledge. Does He Really?
Rudy Giuliani told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on Oct. 26 that Donald Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.”
“I’m talking about some pretty big surprise,” he said.
Two days later, FBI Director James Comey revealed to Congress that his agents had resumed their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, after agents in an unrelated case discovered emails that could potentially be relevant to the server case.
Giuliani is a former U.S. attorney and New York mayor whose former law firm represents the FBI Agents Association, as the Daily Beast points out. But does he have inside sources at the bureau who might have given him a heads-up about what was to come?
Giuliani addressed the question in an interview with “ Fox & Friends “ on Friday morning, though his answers were so vague that it is difficult to assess even what exactly he claims to have known about.
Giuliani claimed he was “real careful not to talk to any on-duty, active FBI agents,” but he had “a lot of friends who are retired FBI agents, close, personal friends.” He then opined about how his retired agent friends disagreed with Comey’s decision not to charge Clinton in the email case, and they felt the Justice Department was “obstructing” agents’ separate efforts to look into the Clinton Foundation…
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
Soros Spends Millions to Defeat Trump Ally in Arizona
Progressive billionaire George Soros invested an additional $2 million in groups opposing Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an ardent supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to a Friday report from Politico.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Texas Officials Warned of Potential Pre-Election Terrorist Attack
Texas is one of three states that has been warned about a potential terrorist attack on the day before the November 8 presidential election.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Divided: UK’s Most Segregated Towns Where White Population Has Halved in 10 Years
WHITE and minority groups are now more isolated from each other than ever before — while white populations in towns and cities have sunk to record lows, it has been revealed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
by Douglas Murray
Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors, initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics.
By prosecuting Wilders, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer “more,” or he will be committing a crime.
At no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of, say, British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.
The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalising a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.
The Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France to Collect Personal Data of 60 Million With Controversial Database
France’s government last week announced the creation of a highly controversial new database that will collect and store personal information on nearly everyone living in the country who holds a French identity card or passport.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
‘I’m Not Happy’ Nigel Farage Says Theresa May Needs to Call for General Election
NIGEL FARAGE insisted that Theresa May should call for an emergency general election during a debate with Welsh MP Stephen Kinnock on today’s Good Morning Britain.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Mark Zuckerberg is Being Investigated by German Prosecutors for Hate Speech on Facebook
On Nov. 4, Der Spiegel announced that prosecutors in Munich are opening an investigation into Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and some fellow executives for possible criminal incitement and hate speech, as Facebook’s policies may be in violation of Germany’s hate speech laws. That’s according to the criminal complaint filed by attorney Chan-jo Jun in Munich, Germany in September. At the time, a Facebook spokesperson said the complaint had no merit.
Jun wants the the Facebook executives to be forced to remove from the site the postings he believes fall afoul of German law. He included in his filing 438 posts that allegedly contained racism, incitements to violence, and references to Nazis and the Holocaust. Facebook is certainly not the only social media platform to be criticized for its laissez-faire approach to hate speech — Twitter has been in the cross-hairs this election cycle — but there are only 4 million Twitter users in Germany. In February, Zuckerberg announced that he and Facebook would work with Germany to combat hate speech on his platform.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Recusal Filed Against Judge on Wilders Hate Speech Trial
At the request of Geert Wilders, lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops announced a recusal request against one of the judges in the hate speech trial against the PVV leader. In court on Thursday Knoops announced that they want judge Elianne van Rens removed from the case because Wilders believes her biased, the Volkskrant reports.
The recusal request will be considered at 10:00 a.m. on Friday. It is unclear when a ruling will be made on the request — it could be right away, but could also be two weeks later. It is therefore also unclear whether Wilders’ trial will be delayed over thist. According to a Public Prosecutor spokesperson, the request has “absolutely no chance”.
Wilders also requested that Van Rens be removed from the case in April, but the request was denied. According to Wilders, Van Rens made negaive statements about the political views of his party in the past and that makes her biased.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Robert Spencer in Frontpage: European Media Jihad Against Geert Wilders
The mainstream media in Western Europe and North America isn’t even pretending to be an objective news source anymore; instead, “journalists” are working openly to quell what looks increasingly, on both sides of the Atlantic, like a popular revolution against the hegemony of the self-appointed political and media aristocracy that seems hell-bent on driving Western civilization over the cliff. And so it’s time for another round of their Two-Minutes Hate against Dutch politician and freedom fighter Geert Wilders.
Wilders has yet again gone on trial in the Netherlands for “hate speech,” and this time the case against him is especially flimsy: as Europe is roiled by the criminal activity of Muslim migrants, he is being accused of “hate speech” for saying that the massive influx of immigrants from Morocco (from which most of the Muslim migrants in the Netherlands come) has to be stopped.
This trial could very easily backfire on the Dutch inquisitors, and make Wilders more popular than ever with the people of the Netherlands and Europe in general, as they are increasingly fed up with the political and media elites’ forcing them to accept a massive influx of Muslim migrants that ensures a future only of civil strife, bloodshed, and Sharia oppression.
Consequently, those elites are trying desperately to shore up their position.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedes Join in Huge Online Protest Against Farage Event
The luxury hotel venue for an ‘alternative Nobel Prize’ ceremony set to feature a speech by Ukip interim leader Nigel Farage has been targeted with a wave of negative online reviews by protestors, who disagree with allowing the nationalist-organized event to be held there.
Stockholm’s iconic five-star Grand Hotel has been hit with a string of one-star reviews on its official Facebook page, after it was announced that the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) would hold their “European Freedom Awards” there on November 4th.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Institutions Have ‘De Facto Blasphemy Law’ Protecting Islam, Claims Secular Critic
The National Secular Society (NSS) has said Muslims are creating a “special category” to protect Islam from criticism in the UK, and the press and British institutions have “internalised [a] de facto blasphemy law” after a gymnast was banned from competition after “mocking” the religion.
“We need to challenge this cultural taboo against mocking religion — but let’s be clear, I say religion, but really Islam is trying to put itself into a special category — that’s what the problem is,” the communications officer for the NSS, Benjamin Jones, told talkRADIO.
“Other religions broadly in the country, particular Christianity, accept the hard fought wins of the enlightenment, that religion is not in a special category that can not be criticised or mocked,” he added…
| — Hat tip: Nick | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Boris Johnson Warns of a Period of ‘Storm and Stress’ In Parliament Over Brexit
Parliament is going through a period of “storm and stress” over Brexit, Boris Johnson has warned — as a third Tory MP steps down in two months.
Speaking at a press conference in Berlin after meetings with his German counterpart the Foreign Secretary was asked about the resignation of Tory MP Stephen Phillips on Friday morning.
Mr Johnson urged the German press to ignore what he called the sturm und drang amongst MPs and the High Court’s recent finding against the Government, arguing that it was of little consequence in the long-run.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham Girls’ Sexual Exploitation: Eight Asian Sentenced for Up to 19 Years
A month-long trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the men “sexualised” their victims and, in some instances, subjected them to acts of a “degrading and violent nature”.
One girl and her family told police, their MP and the then home secretary David Blunkett about the abuse and eventually moved to Spain to get away from the men.
The court heard that this victim had gone to the police in 2003, saying that she had been repeatedly raped by Sageer Hussain when she was 13…
| — Hat tip: Nick | [Return to headlines] |
Who’s Invited to Swedish Nationalists’ Far-Right Gala?
On Friday night the Sweden Democrats (SD) are holding their gala event dubbed the ‘European Freedom Awards’ in Stockholm, with a prize due to be handed out and allies from across Europe set to attend.
The person who has been awarded SD’s first “European Freedom” prize. Former Czech President Klaus spent 23 years at the top of Czech politics, and is the co-founder of the Eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party.
Klaus famously held up the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by demanding an opt-out for his country, before eventually signing it in 2009. An outspoken climate change denier, he is one of the few heads of state to openly challenge the assertion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming is man-made. He was also once accused of stealing a pen on a state visit to Chile.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Wilders Hate Trial Stalls After Alleged Judge ‘Bias’
The racial hatred case against far-right politician Geert Wilders has stalled as his lawyer demands one of the judges is replaced for ‘a degree of bias’ in court. Wilders is charged with discrimination and inciting racial hatred during local election events in 2014. The case has stopped and a separate panel is dealing with his lawyer’s complaints against Elianne van Rens, one of the three judges, on Friday, reports NOS. Wilders, who is exercising his right not to be present at his own trial, tweeted yesterday: ‘What terrible bias from this judge who can barely disguise her hatred of the PVV.’
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan Crackdown Has Turkey on Edge as Kurd Leaders Jailed
A Turkish court ordered the nation’s most prominent Kurdish lawmakers jailed, sharply escalating a crackdown personally led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and sending markets tumbling over fears of renewed violence and a possible rupture with the West.
Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP by its Turkish initials, were two of 11 members of parliament to be detained in overnight raids on Friday. Erdogan accuses the party of close links to separatist PKK rebels and in May, at the president’s request, parliament passed a law stripping HDP lawmakers of their immunity from prosecution, enabling them to be charged with terrorism-related offenses.
The sweep comes amid an extraordinary assault on all forms of opposition in Turkey after a July 15 attempted coup. The government has sacked tens of thousands of civil servants for links to an Islamic movement led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government says masterminded the failed putsch. But the crackdown soon extended beyond the Gulen network, as more than 100,000 people were fired from their jobs, suspended or detained in the months following the botched putsch, including prominent journalists, activists and academics with no known connection to Gulen’s group.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU-Turkey Relations Plunge to New Low
Turkey has jailed opposition MPs, accused Germany of sheltering terrorists, and threatened, once again, to scrap the EU migrant deal.
Police on Thursday (3 November) arrested 11 MPs from the liberal and pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party, including two of its co-chiefs, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, who were dragged from their homes in the town of Diyarbakir in a midnight raid.
Authorities have put 37,000 people behind bars, dismissed 100,000 from government posts, and shut down 170 media outlets.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Vladimir Putin Unveils Statue of Medieval Namesake Who ‘United Russian Lands’
Vladimir Putin has unveiled a giant statue of a tenth century namesake seen as the spiritual founder of both Russia and Ukraine, in a move that is likely to further inflame tensions between the two neighbours.
Prince Vladimir the Great ruled Kievan Rus, the forerunner state from which modern Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia emerged, between 980 and 1015. He is revered in all three countries as a founder of eastern Slavic Orthodox civilization.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
India: Mysterious Fires Keep Kashmir Children Out of School
Education has been one of the major casualties in Indian-administered Kashmir since the latest round of unrest began in July following the death of a popular militant leader. Institutions have been shut, and now unknown attackers are targeting government schools. Gowhar Geelani reports from Srinagar.
On Sunday, two more government-run schools went up in flames in Indian-administered Kashmir under mysterious circumstances, taking the number of schools burned down in the region to 27 in the past few weeks.
The state government, a coalition of the regional Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says it is not known who is responsible.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Indonesian Muslims March Against Jakarta’s Chinese Governor
Tense atmosphere in city as Islamic hardliners demand Basuki Tjahja Purnama be jailed for insulting the Quran
Tens of thousands of hardline Muslim protesters in Indonesia marched on Friday to the presidential palace to demand the resignation of the Christian ethnic Chinese governor of the capital, Jakarta, who they said had insulted the Quran.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, where many people follow a moderate form of Islam. While hardliners have launched occasional agitation in the past, protests on such a large scale have been rare.
The atmosphere in Jakarta was tense and some companies asked employees to work from home, access to business districts was restricted and embassies urged caution.
Truck loads of soldiers and police, some equipped with rifles, were on patrol and others secured shopping malls. A total of about 18,000 security personnel are expected to be deployed in the sprawling city of 10 million, police said.
The protesters, led by a group called the Islamic Defenders Front, are calling for Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahja Purnama, a Christian and the first ethnic Chinese in the job, to be jailed for blasphemy.
They say he insulted the Quran by dismissing a political attack by an opponent who urged opposition to Purnama by citing a verse from the Quran…
| — Hat tip: Cy Halothrin | [Return to headlines] |
Afghan Migrant Who Admired Hitler in Court for Abusing Girlfriend With Iron Bar
AN AFGHANI migrant who was a huge fan of Hitler because he killed so many Jews has appeared in court on charges of having tortured and raped his girlfriend with an iron bar and an umbrella.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Erdogan Threat: Give Turkey Visas by Christmas or it Will Open EU Borders to Migrants
If President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration carries out the threat it would trample on a £5billion deal with Brussels that has stemmed the flow of migrants into Europe.
Mr Erdogan’s government in Ankara warned yesterday it would unleash chaos on Europe unless Turkey’s 80 million citizens were granted freedom of movement across the continent.
Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: “Our patience is approaching an end. We won’t wait until the end of the year.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Police in Paris Clear 3,800 Migrants From Street Camps
Police in Paris cleared some 3,800 migrants from unofficial camps in the city on Friday morning and relocated them to accommodation around the region.
However given that camps in the area have been cleared over 20 times over the past months many locals and charity workers had little optimism that Friday’s evacuation would be a long term solution.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Riot Police Clear Migrant Camp on Streets of Paris in Dawn Raid After Nights of Violence
RIOT police started evacuating thousands of migrants from an illegal camp in Paris at daybreak.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
‘Germany Made a Grave Mistake’ French PM Says Merkel’s Open-Door Immigration Was ‘Wrong’
Manuel Valls said France’s “strict” immigration policy was far more efficient than the German Chancellor’s approach to immigration.
The 54-year-old said government officials were right to tighten immigration laws and step up border controls to stem the tide of migrants streaming into France last year.
He said: “Angela Merkel was wrong to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. It’s not even an option for France, we simply wouldn’t cope.
“We will take in as many migrants as we possibly can, but not that many. And we will look after the people we welcome well.”
France’s socialist Prime Minister also vowed the ‘Jungle’ migrants will become full-fledged members of society and would learn to speak fluent French.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German police have arrested a Syrian man in Berlin suspected of plotting a terror attack on a city airport, it has emerged.
The man, who has lived in Germany since 2015 and claims to be 27, was seized late last night at an apartment in the Schoeneberg district of the capital.
He is suspected of belonging to a foreign terror organisation — believed to be ISIS, according to reports in Germany.
It comes just weeks after a 22-year-old bogus refugee called Jaber Al-Bakr was captured after police raided his apartment in the city of Chemnitz to discover a bomb under construction.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Migrants have staged a mass protest in Paris over their treatment by French authorities following the destruction of their makeshift camps.
Hundreds of refugees sleeping rough in the French capital joined local activists to demonstrate close to their encampment near the Stalingrad Metro station.
One man held up a sign saying ‘human, no beast’ as a man used a loud speaker to lead the march, which happened late last night.
It came 24 hours after violence broke out at the site with gangs of men attacking each other using sticks as makeshift clubs.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hundreds of Migrants Drown in Mediterranean — Bringing Total to 4,000 This Year
HUNDREDS of migrants have drowned off the Libya coast in the Mediterranean as they attempted to get to Europe.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Obsessing Over Europe’s Refugee Crisis While Ignoring Africa’s is White Privilege at Work
Mehdi Hasan is the host of “UpFront” on Al Jazeera English and the former political director of the Huffington Post UK.
This is not just navel-gazing hyperbole but white privilege, plain and simple. How else to describe a collective tendency to obsess over a refugee crisis in (rich, white) Europe, rather than in (poor, black) Africa? In what warped world are thousands of penniless and homeless refugees considered to constitute a crisis only when they wash up on the shores of western Europe?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Paris is the New Calais, With Scores of Migrants Arriving Daily
The migrant crisis in France has shifted from the “Jungle” of Calais to the streets of Paris, with hundreds camped out in tents in the city’s northern neighborhoods and dozens more arriving each day.
The wildcat encampments have thrust the European migrant issue in the face of Parisians and once again underscored the French government’s inability to resolve a problem it hoped Italy and Germany would forestall.
The numbers have been far greater in those countries, but migrants — largely Africans and Afghans — nonetheless keep trickling into Paris. As many as 100 migrants are arriving a day, according to aid groups. Most have vague hopes of reaching Britain or getting asylum in France.
Stretching far up the Avenue de Flandre in the city’s working-class 19th Arrondissement and bunched under nearby subway overpasses at the Jaure’s and Stalingrad Métro stations, the enclaves of pup tents are islands of misery in the midst of first-world prosperity.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syrian Migrant Jailed After Throwing His Children Out of Window to Punish Wife
A SYRIAN father who threw his three children from a first-floor window because his wife was “enjoying” the same freedoms as German women has been sentenced to 15 years in jail.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
“Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is being investigated by the German authorities on possible charges of hate speech and incitement.”
Isn’t it so delicious how revolutionaries turn on their own?.
An avaricious twit set upon by a gang of traitorous, self-hating lunatics; yeah, you’re right, eminently satisfying!
Actually this is not what it seems. This is the excuse Zuckerberg is looking for to implement more PC nonsense and content control over Facebook, as in “I was forced to do it”. Just wait for it.
I think you are right. Then he can say… the German government asked us to do it… so it is “lawful”.
It”s funny how Western governments, supposedly valuing free speech, are pioneering censorship and prior restraint of speech.
I’m not sure how Facebook got so big, but it’s high time to start patronizing an alternative social network. Perhaps the Facebook pariahs could keep their Facebook accounts pristine and empty, except for a link to their real network.
Now that I’m thinking along those lines, it occurs to me that somebody could develop an app that would pick up such a link on Facebook, and integrate the content, so the user could sign into Facebook, but would seamlessly see both Facebook and the content of freer social networks.
Actually, since Obama gave away internet domain authority to a global organization easily captured by the OIC, the largest identity group in the world, there may be no sites available for free discussion. I guess we’ll go back to private, subscription-only networks not internet based.
More like we are going back to shortwave radio, because that is the only thing they cannot completely control. Pirate broadcasting, or speaking in code.
Do transmitters/receivers still exist?
Actually, at the risk of appearing to be a dinosaur (which is entirely probable), I’m too busy living my life to give my loved ones daily updates, and no-one else really cares, so apart from narcissists, who needs social media anyway?
So sucking up to Merkel hasn’t worked out so well for Zuckerberg?!
“Mr Erdogan’s government in Ankara warned yesterday it would unleash chaos on Europe unless Turkey’s 80 million citizens were granted freedom of movement across the continent.”. If the EU had any [manly attributes] they would reinforce the Greek border and threaten Turkey with military force if they decided to go ahead with their threat. Those people only understand force/violence.
The Turk is behaving as an imperial power. Al Abadi of Iraq is sensitive to this reality. The EU is sleepwalking into its colonization and genocide. History changes, but the Turk does not.
Is Zuckerberg an American or Chinese communist? Who will tell him he can’t be both?
Scum like him are the reason jews get such a bad rap. Either he is too shortsighted to see the path he is leading us down, or he is actively selling out the West that made him rich and powerful. I tend to believe the latter; moneygrubbing [illegitimate offspring] would do anything to make a fast buck.
Somewhere out there is a length of rope with his name upon it.
What Germany is demanding of Facebook is prior restraint, a legal doctrine has been attempted here on many occasions. Nixon tried to implement it and so did Obama. Obama decided to give the Internet away instead. What all this proves is that the Elite’s agenda can’t stand the light of day. Thus their agenda, along with themselves, should be consigned to the realm inhabited by rats and cockroaches.
** claims that America is exempt from all legal and moral restraints that apply to the rest of the world **
That is not what I take from the little reading I’ve done relating to Puritans and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I think the Puritans thought they had a chance to practice their faith free of the control of the Anglican Church and that thereby they might be a beacon to the world. Notwithstanding, their beliefs were firmly rooted in the Bible. They did indeed seek to free themselves from Anglican restraints but not all other restraints.
Be that as it may, there’s no reason to paint Clinton as allegedly being an inheritor of this erroneous notion. She couldn’t care less about any notions of decency or propriety because of who she is. Would that she were influenced by any kind of a moral code teaching honesty and respect for others.
Hillary sometimes refers to her Methodist beginnings. I believe she taught Sunday School as a teenager. She has been criticized by ministers for her “gaining salvation through works” theology. But then again, so has The Donald. They are American through and through. As far as karma goes, though, I’d rather be standing in Trump’s shoes.
The Puritans are a good example of the faith through works idea. They believed in the freedom to practice their faith but not in freedom for anyone else within their domain to differ. Which led to witch-burning and such…
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was one strain of English life. The Dominion of Virginia was quite another. It was a commercial venture, expected to show a profit for its English investors. Membership in The Church of Virginia was mandatory in the early years, and its bishops had to return to Canterbury for their episcopal investiture. Upon returning home, they had the ecclesiological mojo to ordain priests. Eventually dissenters like the Huguenots settled in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Catholics stayed in Maryland. Pennsylvania was founded by Wm Penn as a safe haven for refugees from Massachusetts, and more famously as the first settlement of Quakers, Mennonites, etc. Even Jews sought haven there.
The history of religion in America is fascinating. And it is most peculiarly American.
It is true that Winthrop wished for people without a “testimony” to find somewhere else to settle.
It’s hard to see the Puritan essence, which was fidelity to the Word, as leading to witch burning. James I wrote a book on witchcraft so witches were hardly of Puritan provenance. Winthrop seems to me to have been a sensible and restrained leader, not one to have laid the groundwork for stupidities such as witch burning. In fact, one of the hallmarks of Puritan life in England before emigration was the quality of their preachers. They were quite unlike some/many of the remaining parish clergy who seemed to fulfill a role as preserving rituals and ceremonies. Some/many of the Puritan preachers were products of Cambridge. People would come from miles around to listen to their sermons. So popular were they that the established Church took to denying them the use of existing churches, leading to a surreptitious campaign of soliciting contributions to buy up properties to be used by their preachers. I think Methodists’ penchant for outdoor meetings had its origin in this same denial of Church premises but, hard as it may be to believe, I could be wrong on that.
I have read but little about the Salem witch trials but it seems more sensible to see them as a manifestation of the eternal stupidity and superstition that not infrequently afflict human societies. One sensible fellow then apparently made a plea for evidence-based proceedings or otherwise argued for something other than a ready-fire-aim approach. He seems much more in line with the probity and erudition of the Puritan core, though I can’t point you to any account of his remonstrances. (He was not the first sensible person to swim against the tide of popular madness. There might even be people like him among us today.)
Winthrop, too, had to deal with some woman who made a nuisance of herself. I think she was given to espousing unwelcome doctrinal views. Winthrop several times had her removed or ordered her to absent herself. Only when she came back after, oh, three such removals did he punish her. I don’t recall the punishment.
Yes, American religious history is fascinating. The LDS Church was certainly unique, shall we say, in the circumstances of its founding. The Quakers are of interest to me as my forebears had switched from Puritanism within no more than 70 years after arriving in Watertown in 1631. What is up with that?
Col. B–
The Puritan Colony was harsher than that. I don’t have the books to hand any more, having lost them in a move, but I do remember being struck by the treatment of women (no, NOT a feminist perspective. It’s just hard to miss). I will admit I am prejudiced after the experience of having lived there for many years. Even though by now it is mostly Catholic (French, Irish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese), there is that whispering spirit of unforgiving rectitude underneath a thick veneer of socialist taxation.
Perhaps a region’s character is at least partly informed by its weather? As one moves further north into Maine, speech becomes more laconic, the people more retiring. While Massachusetts’ winters are awfully long, Maine’s seem eternal.
The founding spirit of a place seems to “stick” – see New York City’s Dutch mercantile attitude and Virginia’s ineffable English and Scots-Irish enclaves.
America’s early religious history included its bouts of “spiritual awakenings”. There were three distinct ones, with perhaps a fourth. Here’s a brief, flawed overview, but considering the source, not bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening
As often happens in these wikis, the bibliography is excellent.
What is not often mentioned is the Pentecostal movement in America which began in the late 19th- early 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiness_movement
It spread to South America, and from there to Spain. Here is one version of how the “charismatic movement” began to spread in North America, back to the mainline churches, including by then, Catholicism.
http://www.jeevanjal.org/jeevanjal/origin-ccr.html
The version of the history of this movement (at least as it applies to mainline churches) that I learned seems more likely to me. That link above mentions Lansing Michigan – a point of geography with which my understanding agrees. In the version I learned from my Anthro of Religion professor, the reason it started in Lansing rings truer for me…she said it was Catholic U.S. Air Force officers stationed in Spain who brought back this strange new practice to their graduate work at Michigan State University.
Back then when the military draft was a fact of life and American military bases were far-flung, ubiquitous even, and American Catholicism was in the ascendancy. A pentacostal rivulet grew into quite a stream by the mid-1960s. It remains so today, though it’s more likely to evidence itself in church-sponsored renewal weekends called “Cursillo” by most of them. It used to be segregated – men first, then women – because it started in Spain as a way to draw men back into an increasingly feminized church. In our p.c. world, that has all passed; men and women do the weekends together, to the detriment of both.
The only positive remnant I see is Kairos, the prison ministry that has gradually gone world-wide and continues to spread in our prison-bedeviled country.
http://www.kairosprisonministry.org/
Kairos has a karmic feel to it, given that the first inkling of this renewal began on death row in Spain and its beginning in U.S. prisons was on death row in Raiford, the maximum security prison in Florida. Generally speaking, prison wardens who’ve experienced a population where Kairos is lively say the environment is markedly more peaceful than it is in other prisons. Somehow I doubt that happens in prisons where Islam is dominant.
There is also a group for the families of those inside, and another for incarcerated adolescents. Again, both have good track records.
I am a proud desendant of Governor William Stone, who wrote and proclaimed The Tolleration Act . This was the first freedom of religion law in English history. Something I have found through studing my family is the influence of Normans in the south at this time. Some historians propose and I agree that the English civil wars and our civil war was a continuation of the Norman conquest. At a meeting of Charles II,supporters in St. Mary City in 1653 all 5 commanders were norman, William Stone, Job Chandler, Richard Chandler,John Washington, and Augustine Cornwallis. Interestingly Washington’s and Cornwallis’s great grandsons would meet at the Siege of Yorktown. I am proud to say that 4 of the 5 at that meeting were my gg grandfathers.
Thanks for your work there. I know a little about the unforgiving rectitude of which you speak. Odd for people who should know that there are none who are righteous, not one, though that’s hardly an exclusively Christian failing.
That didn’t spring out of nowhere, I suppose. I’m told there is a temperamental split in Germany between the jollier Catholic south and the sterner Protestant north, but have no personal knowledge of that. Perhaps it descends from times when there was no luxury to indulge in silliness. The Pilgrims, for example, abandoned heady socialist notions eo instante. Now millions lap them up with a spoon. It makes me a little cranky myself, truth to tell.
One anecdote about the early colony in Massachusetts sticks in my mind. A woman complained publicly in church that her husband was not paying attention to her physically. This was not stated to be odd in any way as it was apparently the Puritan view that this is an essential part of marriage. Too, didn’t the Puritans permit bundling? Maybe it was a Yankees practice. Anyway, little of the little I’ve read of those earlier times conveyed the idea that Puritans were censorious prudes. The issue of sports on Sunday was contentious in Elizabethan times but only because this seemed inconsistent with the Puritan ideas of the Sabbath. Point Anglicans, in my view. Who could be, um, unreasonable in their own way.
And there was the Puritan desecration of church organs and stained glass windows, etc. The work of particular zealots in the Civil War? Certainly, the Puritans never had a lock on fanaticism.
I read one book about Puritans in England, whose title I can’t bring to mind just now (along with my home address or where I parked my car). It described a practical,quite normal people as I recall with lightning fast courtships. Marriage was suggested to two youngsters and the marriage took place within a month. Bam. Get on with it!
There’s a funny story here about bundling and a certain candidate for sheriff.
The twists and turns of new and old faiths are faskinating, as Daffy Duck would say. The Mormons continue to fascinate me. Under the Banner of Heaven and Wife No. 19 are page turners.
The wonder of our age is that the inner life of millions of Westerners is such thin gruel. Young women especially seem to draw sustenance from notions that “absurd” doesn’t even begin to describe. Watch some of those “feminist cringe” videos on YouTube. Boy howdy but that there is some industrial-strength demonic possession. Counterpart sickness abounds in countless others who are in the grip of social, biological, political, and economic ideas that would embarrass even a professor of gender or African-American studies.
The abandonment or loss of the idea of a benevolent Creator has left a gaping hole in modern lives, to be filled, apparently, by a return to tribalism and the worst kind of quasi religious slavery. So far as I can tell there is no cure for the ideological furies.
Other than another Great Awakening.
Fifteen years ago, I visited the c13th church of St Mary, Isle Abbots in Somerset. Most of the statues in the niches of the tower survive (including the BVM), except those nearest the ground. I imagined the Puritan iconoclasts being too tired or bored to get long ladders or scaffolding to destroy the rest; we English are rarely fanatical for long!