Today’s explosion at a nuclear plant in France occurred outside the reactor area and poses no risk of released radiation, according to French authorities. Despite the high-level terror alert in the country, the incident at the reactor — which is in Brittany near the English Channel — had nothing to do with terrorism.
In other French news, an eight-foot wall made of bulletproof glass is being built around the Eiffel Tower to thwart potential terrorists.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Dean, Dora, Fjordman, JD, LP, Reader from Chicago, 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.
Recession 2017? Things Are Happening That Usually Never Happen Unless a New Recession is Beginning
Is the U.S. economy about to get slammed by a major recession? According to Gallup, U.S. economic confidence has soared to the highest level ever recorded, but meanwhile a whole host of key economic indicators are absolutely screaming that a new recession is beginning. And if the U.S. economy does officially enter recession territory in 2017, it certainly won’ t be a shock, because the truth is that we are well overdue for one. Donald Trump has inherited quite an economic mess from Barack Obama, and it was probably inevitable that we were headed for a significant economic downturn no matter who won the election.
One of the key indicators to watch is average weekly hours. When the economy shifts into recession mode, employers tend to start cutting back hours, and that is happening right now. In fact, as Graham Summers has pointed out, we just witnessed the largest percentage decline in average weekly hours since the recession of 2008…
[comment: Obama was appointed to take down the USA economically, by driving it into even more massive debt to the private banksters.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tulsi Gabbard is Fighting to Bring Back Glass-Steagall
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is leading the charge to reinstate Glass-Steagall, a piece of New Deal legislation enacted during the Great Depression that prevented big banks from gambling with depositor’s funds. Glass-Steagall was repealed by President Clinton in 1999, but thankfully, Tulsi Gabbard is fighting to reverse this irrational decision.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Campus Conservative Group Rejected Because it Makes Liberal Students Feel ‘Unsafe’ [Video]
The student senate at Santa Clara University rejected a petition to form a campus chapter of Turning Points USA, a conservative activism group, because opponents of the group complained that its presence would make them feel “unsafe” — and because of the “mood” on campus since Donald Trump was elected president.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
By Patrick Poole
The CIA has published an analysis claiming that designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization could “fuel extremism,” POLITICO is reporting today.
Quite conveniently, this internal CIA analysis found it’s way into the hands of the POLITICO reporters.
But oddly the article fails to mention that the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community was directly involved in funding the experts who pushed the bogus “moderate Muslim Brotherhood” narrative beginning in the latter end of the Bush administration.
This hand-wringing is in response to reports that the Trump administration is actively discussing such a designation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Democrats Think Muslims Worse Off Here Than Christians Are in Muslim World
Most voters agree that Christians living in Muslim-majority countries are mistreated for their religion. But Democrats are more likely to think Muslims are mistreated in America than to think Christians are persecuted in the Islamic world.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 62% of Likely U.S. Voters believe most Christians living in the Islamic world are treated unfairly because of their religion. Just 17% disagree, while 21% more are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
These findings have changed little in surveys since early 2015.
By comparison, 39% feel most Muslims living in the United States are treated unfairly because of their religion.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Driver Dies After Tractor-Trailer Goes Over Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel
The driver of a tractor-trailer that went over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Thursday afternoon has died, officials said.
Heavy winds swept it off bridge-tunnel near the Eastern Shore, tunnel officials said.
Thomas Anderson, deputy director of finance and operations for the bridge and tunnel district in Virginia, told The Associated Press Thursday in a phone interview that the driver was alive right after it fell into the bay and was standing on the truck.
he driver later died, officials said. Additional details about the death were not available.
Anderson said the truck floated a mile east of the bridge. The wreck occurred around 12:30 p.m.
Anderson said helicopters and rescue boats made their way to the floating vehicle. The southbound lanes of the 23-mile bridge-tunnel were closed for more than an hour, officials said.
At the time of the crash, Anderson said the bridge-tunnel experienced wind conditions of up to 45 mph.
Lanes were closed in both directions on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, but reopened about 1:25 p.m.
| — Hat tip: LP | [Return to headlines] |
Emerson College Poll: Americans Find Trump Administration More Trustworthy Than Media
A key finding of the poll shows that voters find the Trump administration to be more truthful than the news media. The Trump administration is considered truthful by 49% of voters, to 48% of voters who consider it untruthful. Meanwhile, the news media is considered untruthful by a 53%-majority of registered voters, to only 39% who find them truthful (a 14-point gap). Numerous members of the Trump administration — including Trump himself — have been criticized frequently for making false statements. The partisan split on this topic is clear — 89% of Republicans find the Trump administration truthful, versus 77% of Democrats who find the administration untruthful. Conversely, 69% of Democrats find the news media truthful, while a whopping 91% of Republicans consider them untruthful. Independents consider both untruthful — the Trump administration by a margin of 42%/52% and the news media by a margin of 45%/47%. ============
http://canadafreepress.com/article/trump-could-simply-ignore-courts-order-halting-travel-ban
Trump Could Simply Ignore Court’s Order Halting Travel Ban
Betrayed the letter and spirit of our nation’s founding: Allowed the courts to run amok. We can continue drinking the judicial-supremacy Kool-Aid, committing national suicide, or we can drain the swamp infested with with black-robed tyrants
Does our current status quo make our Constitution a suicide pact? Thomas Jefferson certainly said as much, warning that accepting judicial supremacy would make our founding document just that, a felo de se, as he put it in Latin.
Acceptance of judicial supremacy, by the way, is precisely why President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations is on hold. Imagine that, Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, No. 78 that the judiciary is the “least dangerous” branch of government because it “has no influence over either the sword or the purse,” yet it’s trumping the man with the sword, the president. But does it have to be this way?
No, Trump could simply ignore the court ruling suspending his ban.
Outrageous!? Unconstitutional!? Actually, it’s wholly constitutional.
In his dissent from the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges marriage ruling, late Justice Antonin Scalia warned that with “each decision… unabashedly based not on law,” the Court moves “one step closer to being reminded of [its] impotence.” What did Scalia know about courts’ power?
That it’s basically an illusion.
Let’s do a civics quiz. Why does the legislative branch have the power to make law? Why does the executive branch (presidency) have the power to enforce law? The answer in both cases is because the Constitution grants it.
Okay, now how is it that the judiciary has the “power” to rule on law and have its decisions constrain not just its own branch, but the other two as well? How have the courts become king? Because the Constitution grants…no, stop. It’s not in the Constitution-anywhere.
Rather, this “power” was declared by the courts themselves, most notably in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision.
That’s right, the Supreme Court gave the Supreme Court the supreme power to have the final say on laws’ meaning.
It’s a great con if you can pull it off.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
First Atomic Blast Reveals Clues About Moon Formation
The explosion that opened the atomic age more than 70 years ago is helping scientists better understand another dramatic event: the formation of the moon.
On July 16, 1945, the U.S. Army detonated the first-ever nuclear bomb, conducting the event at the Trinity test site in southern New Mexico. The extreme heat of the blast melted the surrounding sandy soil’s top layer into a green, radioactive glass known as trinitite for about 1,150 feet (350 meters) in all directions from ground zero.
Now, a new study shows that water and other “volatile” compounds are scarce in this trinitite, just as they are in moon rocks.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Universities must not grant figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos a platform to espouse their hateful and unsubstantiated claims.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
High School Kids Will be Lectured on Their ‘Inherent White Bias’
Chicago-area parents take issue with a radical, anti-family, anti-American program
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Judge Jeanine: ‘The Supreme Court Will Give Trump the Win’
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday unanimously upheld a temporary suspension of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.
Last Friday, Judge James Robart, of the Federal District Court in Seattle, issued a temporary restraining order after Washington state and Minnesota both sued.
On “The O’Reilly Factor” tonight, Judge Jeanine Pirro predicted that the case will go to the Supreme Court, which will throw it out because states don’t have the legal standing to file such a lawsuit.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
On February 9 the Michigan-based company cut its sales projections for the year after experiencing another quarterly decline.
The company imagined it would have flat sales but instead found a two percent decline.
“For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Kellogg reported a loss of $53 million, or 15 cents per share,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday. “Not including one-time items, it said it earned 92 cents per share. Analysts expected a profit of 85 cents per share. Total sales were $3.1 billion, slightly better than expected revenue of $3.07 billion.”
But that wasn’t the only cuts Kellogg Co. reported this week. The company also told investors and employees that big cuts in facilities and workers are coming.
On Wednesday the company announced it was closing a large number of distribution centers across the U.S. and that layoffs would result, WKBN reported.
Some insiders have said Kellogg’s is looking to cut sales representatives, merchandisers, and shuttering as many as 39 distribution centers.
Kellogg spokesman Kris Charles released a statement saying the move is a “difficult decision.”
[…]
The continued moves to scale back the company comes after Kellogg’s decided to cut its advertising with Breitbart News at the end of 2016, thereby snubbing Breitbart’s 45,000,000 readers.
In November, Kellogg’s noted that Breitbart News’s conservative readers are not “aligned with our values as a company.”
While the decision by Kellogg’s to cease advertising made virtually no revenue impact on Breitbart.com., it did represent an escalation in the war by companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House.
| — Hat tip: Dora | [Return to headlines] |
NSA Contractor Indicted Over Mammoth Theft of Classified Data
A former National Security Agency contractor was indicted on Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges he willfully retained national defense information, in what U.S. officials have said may have been the largest heist of classified government information in history.
The indictment alleges that Harold Thomas Martin, 52, spent up to 20 years stealing highly sensitive government material from the U.S. intelligence community related to national defense, collecting a trove of secrets he hoarded at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland.
The government has not said what, if anything, Martin did with the stolen data.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Parents: Tell Trump You Oppose U.N. Takeovers
The world’s premiere homeschooling advocate, the Home School Legal Defense Association, is asking its constituents to urge President Trump to toss out three United Nations treaties that “can end up harming the same people they’ re trying to help.”
William Estrada, the organization’s director of federal relations, said in a report that there’s reason for optimism, since “draft executive orders” leaked to the New York Times suggest Trump “is considering removing the United States from multilateral treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC).”
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also is involved.
“President Donald Trump has been acting quickly on issues that were important to his campaign, including one that HSLDA mentioned to now-Vice President Mike Pence before the November election — United Nations treaties that undermine parental rights,” the report said.
While such proposals are adopted on the belief they help, that may not necessarily be so, the report said.
[Comment: UN goal was always to subvert the role of the parents. This is how globalists make good little world “citizens”. ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Public School to Teach Kids About ‘Black Lives Matter’
Rochester City School District has declared next Friday to be a “Black Lives Matter” day for all students.
February 17th will be “Black Lives Matter at School: A Day of Understanding & Affirmation,” set aside to be “a day of education, dialog and action that will actively engage a significant number of educational communities throughout Monroe County in activities which support understanding and affirmation of Black Lives.”
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Ted Cruz, Audience Members, Tore Bernie Sanders to Shreds in Last Night’s Debate
He’s lucky no one watches CNN
Often, people will ask me: “Hey Rob, if Bernie had been the nominee, he would have won, right?”
My answer is always the same. “He probably would have done a little better.”
Would he have won? I doubt it. The fact is, had Bernie secured the nomination, he would have been forced to lay out his vision for America. Then, he’d have been forced to defend it. That’s where the trouble would have come in. Bernie may have the love of the radical left, but he’s still a crazy old coot who would have faced the nigh-impossible task of trying to sell middle-America on his ridiculous socialist agenda.
How do we know this? For one thing, he was already struggling to make his case against the worst Democrat candidate in history. …But a much more recent example came in the form of last night’s CNN Obamacare debate with Ted Cruz.
Bernie was absolutely demolished — not just by Cruz, though that certainly happened, but by the audience as well. Because you missed it, here are a few highlights.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trump Aide Kellyanne Conway ‘Wrong’ Over Ivanka Plug
The standards chief of the US Congress says a senior Trump aide was “wrong, wrong, wrong” to promote Ivanka Trump products on live television.
Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Thursday: “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”
Retailer Nordstrom earlier this month dropped the US first daughter’s clothing line, citing a lack of sales.
The White House said President Donald Trump “absolutely” continued to support Ms Conway, despite intense criticism of her remarks by politicians.
Jason Chaffetz, a Republican who heads the oversight committee in Congress, said the promotion was “clearly over the line, unacceptable”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trump and Abe to Talk: Why They Are Meeting and What They’ll Discuss
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, the first world leader to meet Donald J. Trump after the election in November, plans to meet with the president in Washington on Friday in the Oval Office. Mr. Abe is then planning to fly to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., to play golf with the president.
Now that Mr. Trump has formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral trade deal — on which Mr. Abe expended considerable domestic political capital — Mr. Abe will be looking to sound out Mr. Trump on the possibility of negotiating a future bilateral trade deal between the two countries.
Mr. Abe could point out that Japanese companies invest heavily in the United States. According to the Japan Business Federation, Japanese companies have directly invested more than $400 billion in building factories and other facilities in the United States, creating about 1.7 million jobs for American workers.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Violence Helped Ensure Safety of Students
By Juan Prieto
A national debate on freedom of speech has sparked since the night of Feb. 1, when a Breitbart hatemonger’s speech was cancelled because of radical acts against replaceable property at my school, UC Berkeley.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“Be vigilant”, that’s the message from Belgium’s highest police chief. Catherine De Bolle, the commissioner-general of the federal police tells VRT News that Belgium’s terrorist alert level still stands at level 3 and that people should report suspect situations and be vigilant with the terrorist threat currently facing the country in mind.
Ms De Bolle told TV viewers that the police require co-operation from the public at large. OCAD, the government body that analyses the terrorist threat facing our country, believes a terrorist attack is still possible, even probable. The commissioner-general speaks of a “grave threat”. She believes that it’s above the large number of foreign terrorist fighters that pose a threat to Belgium. The Belgian security services also think that a number of Belgians who travelled to Syria to become jihadi fighters wish to return to Europe.
“We are apprehensive with regard to a mass return of people who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight and are now poised to return to Europe” interior minister Jan Jambon added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
43,000-Light-Year-Long Stellar Bridge Connects Magellanic Clouds
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — the largest and most well-known dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s orbit — are connected by a 43,000 light-year-long bridge of stars, according to a study recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austria: Teen Troublemaker Arrested After Death Threats Against Foreign Minister
A Chechen teenager has been arrested by special forces police in Vienna after making death threats on social media sites against the Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz.
The 17-year-old made headlines last year after he and a group of teenagers filmed themselves repeatedly hitting a 15-year-old girl in the face and posted the shocking video on Facebook. The girl had to be treated in hospital for serious facial injuries including a fractured jaw. The Chechen youth later apologised to the girl, posting a letter to her on Facebook.
The youth was active on Facebook last week, posting abusive comments about Kurz after the government announced its plan to ban Muslim women from wearing the full-face veil in public. The 17-year-old described Kurz as the “son of a whore” and threatened to kill him.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Eiffel Tower to Get Anti-Terrorist Glass Barrier Round Base
The Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most famous landmarks, will get a glass wall built round its base under a plan to provide extra protection against terrorist attacks, a source in the Paris mayor’s office said on Thursday.
The 324-metre-high structure, which gets about seven million visitors a year, already has protective metal fencing around its base, erected temporarily for the Euro football championship of 2016.
France has been hit by Islamist militant attacks including bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed.
Glass panels two-and-a-half meters high would be erected around the base of the tower as an anti-terrorist measure if the plans are approved, the source said. The project would go before a sites commission and then the environment ministry.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
European Terror Attacks Halted as German Police Arrest Two Muslims
Police have foiled a plot to launch a terror attack on European soil after they arrested six suspected Islamists and seized two dozen suicide belts in raids in both Turkey and Germany.
Officers in central Germany detained two known Islamic extremists as part of an investigation into a possible terror attack plot.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, police today seized 24 suicide belts and detained four suspected Islamic State members, the Turkish state news agency said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Explosion at French Nuclear Plant, ‘No Radiation Risk’
Caen (France) (AFP) — An explosion at a nuclear power plant on France’s northwest coast on Thursday caused minor injuries, but the authorities said there was no risk of radiation.
The blast took place in the engine room at the Flamanville plant, which lies 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of the port of Cherbourg and just across from the Channel Islands.
“It is a technical incident. It is not a nuclear accident,” senior local official Jacques Witkowski told AFP.
He said a ventilator had exploded outside the nuclear zone at the plant, which has been in operation since the 1980s and is operated by state-controlled energy giant EDF.
“It’s all over. The emergency teams are leaving,” Witkowski said…
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
France’s First Centre for Deradicalization Stands Empty Five Months After Opening
Despite thousands of French nationals having been radicalized, the country’s controversial first centre for deradicalization stands empty, just five months after opening. But the French government refuses to close it.
The centre at Beaumont-sur-Vernon in the Indre-et-Loire department of central France opened in September, despite much opposition from local residents and politicians.
Its aim was to free those who have been convinced by the ideology of jihadism and help them reintegrate into society.
But while it was meant to house 25 voluntary participants by the end of December, the centre now stands empty after its last resident was sent to prison this week after being convicted of violence, Le Figaro reports.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Police Conclude ‘Anal Rape’ Of Suspect With Cop’s Truncheon Was an Accident
An initial French police investigation has found insufficient evidence to support allegations that a 22-year-old man was anally raped with a police truncheon, a police source said Thursday, suggesting they believe the officer’s baton slipped up the man’s anus by accident.
The outcome of the internal police inquiry emerged after violence flared in the northern suburbs of Paris and elsewhere in France following the incident involving the man identified only as Theo.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Auditors Criticize €5-Billion Science Super-Campus Near Paris
Would-be rival to MIT lacks strategy and governance, report says.
France’s government auditor has taken a sharp swipe at efforts to develop a science super-campus near Paris that, by 2020, was supposed to rival the world’s top campus universities, such as the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
More than €5.3 billion (US$5.7 billion) in public spending has been earmarked for the Paris-Saclay science cluster, the Court of Auditors estimates in an annual report published on 8 February — but the original vision of creating a large integrated research university there is “at a standstill”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Geert Wilders Vows to Call EU Referendum if He Wins Dutch Election
GEERT Wilders has promised the Netherlands their own European Union (EU) referendum if he wins the upcoming election to become Prime Minister next month.
The frontrunner said his first announcement as prime minister would be to call a vote on whether to leave the Brussels bloc and follow in Britain’s footsteps.
He said: “The European Union is a political bureaucratic organisation that took away our identity and our national sovereignty.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Two Arrested in Göttingen Suspected of ‘Imminent Terror Plot’
Police in the Lower Saxon university town of Göttingen arrested two men suspected of plotting a terror attack, officials reported on Thursday.
The Lower Saxon interior ministry said on Thursday that one of the men was a 27-year-old from Algeria, while the other was 23 and from Nigeria.
Around 450 police officers were deployed in raids to search 11 buildings around Göttingen and one house in northern Hesse late on Wednesday night. The two were then arrested during the raids.
Göttingen’s police chief Uwe Lührig said that they had gained knowledge of a possible concrete and imminent attack in the past few days, and therefore a quick police operation was necessary.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
German Exports Break Record as Trump Targets Trade Balance
Germany posted a record trade surplus in 2016, which may further fuel accusations by the Trump administration that Europe’s largest economy is exploiting a “grossly undervalued” euro.
Exports climbed 1.2 percent last year to 1.2 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion), the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden reported on Thursday, while imports rose 0.6 percent to 954.6 billion euros. That left Germany’s trade surplus at 253 billion euros in 2016.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Set to Quit Eurozone in Final Nail of EU Coffin, Says Varoufakis
ITALY could be set to pull out of the Eurozone in what would be the final nail in the European Union’s (EU) coffin, Greece’s former finance minister has warned.
Yanis Varoufakis said there was an “epidemic” among countries using the single currency, with Italy the next to fall foul of Brussels’ economic malaise.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Magma Power: Scientists Drill Into Volcano to Harness Its Energy
It’s not every day that scientists can study a volcano up close, but researchers investigating the feasibility of volcano-powered electricity successfully drilled into the core of one in Iceland.
Scientists studied the volcanic system at Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, which has been dormant for more than 700 years, according to a hazard assessment by Verkis Consulting Engineers for Invest in Inceland.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Teacher Wins €9,000 in Berlin Discrimination Case
The Muslim woman won an appeal before a Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday, and is set to receive nearly €9,000 after she was rejected from a teaching job due to her headscarf.
The Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday ruled on the side of the woman, who was denied a teaching job at a Berlin elementary school.
Head judge Renate Schaude said that the woman had been discriminated against and because her wearing a headscarf posed no danger to school peace, the discrimination against her was illegal. She was therefore awarded €8,680 in compensation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands Exit From EU Would be Catastrophic: Rabobank
If the European Union falls apart, the Netherlands would face severe consequences, according to Rabobank. The Dutch economy will shrink by 10 to 15 percent, unemployment will double and welfare will remain structurally lower than when the Netherlands was part of the internal market. Should the EU stay together, but the Netherlands decides to step out, the consequences would be even more disastrous, the bank predicts, RTL Nieuws reports.
Rabobank sees four future scenarios for the EU: “muddling through”, “disintegration”, “deepening” and “two speed”. In the “two speed” scenario, the Netherlands is expected to still be part of both the Schengen agreement as the eurozone — the “fast speed”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: New Location Proposed for Contentious Utøya Memorial
The youth wing of Norway’s Labour Party (AUF) and a support group for the families of Utøya victims have proposed moving the controversial ‘Memory Wound’ memorial in order to avoid a legal battle.
The memorial to commemorate the massacre of 69 people, mostly teenagers, by domestic terrorist Anders Behring Breivik on the island of Utøya in 2011 has been fraught with controversy for years.
Designed by Swedish conceptual artist Jonas Dahlberg, the memorial is a “permanent scar” that would see the tip of Sørbråten, the peninsular which juts out into the Tyrifjorden towards Utøya, severed from the lakeside, and the names of the dead then carved on the exposed surface of the new island.
But some residents of Sørbråten have fiercely opposed the memorial, condemning Dahlberg’s design as a “rape of nature”, a “tourist attraction “, and a “hideous monument”. The residents hired one of Norway’s top lawyers to prevent the memorial’s construction. The neighbours’ lawyer, Harald Stabell, has argued that the memorial would damage the mental health of those locals who suffered traumatic stress after participating in the rescue operations after the shooting spree on the island.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Primitive Plants Survive Almost Two Years in Outer Space
Primitive plants are the latest forms of Earth life to show they can survive in the harshness of space, and for many months. Cold-loving algae from the Arctic Circle have joined the space-travelling club, alongside bacteria, lichens and even simple animals called tardigrades.
Preliminary studies of the algae after their return to Earth from the International Space Station lend some weight to the “panspermia” theory, that comets and meteorites could potentially deliver life to otherwise sterile planets. The results also provide insights into the potential for human colonies on distant planets to grow crops brought from Earth.
“I’m sure that plants of many kinds have been on the ISS before, but on the inside, not the outside,” says Thomas Leya of the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in Potsdam, Germany, who organised the algae experiment. “As far as I know, this is the first report of plants exposed on the surface of the space station.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Report: Wahhabism Spreading Across Belgium Via TV, Online Media
Most radical form of Islam overtaking Europe unchecked
Salafism is advancing in Belgium, a leaked report from the country’s coordination body for threat assessment says, adding that Wahhabi TV stations and online media operate freely while radical literature can be found in most Islamic bookshops.
The report by the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM), a special body which works in cooperation with security and intelligence agencies to assess the level of terrorist threat in Belgium, was leaked by De Standaard newspaper on Wednesday.
“An increasing number of mosques and Islamic centers in Belgium are controlled by the Wahhabism,” the document states.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The loss of electricity across the Belgian capital has sparked terror attack fears, although the cause of the outage has not been confirmed
Brussels has been plunged into darkness after a massive power cut.
The loss of electricity across the Belgian capital has reportedly sparked terror attack fears, although the cause of the outage has not been confirmed.
Belgium and other European countries are on high alert following several devastating terrorist incidents over the past 12 months.
Brussels is home to a number of key EU bodies, including the European Commission and European Council, both of which are situated in the centre of the city.
The sounds of police sirens can be heard coming from the centre of the city in footage posted online by people tonight.
Belgian security personnel ares reinforcing main sites across Brussels as the blackout causes transport chaos.
It has not been revealed when the power will be turned back on, but incredible images from across the city show just a handful of buildings with any lights still on — and they are presumably served by generators…
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Terror: Paris to Build Eight-Foot Bulletproof Wall Around Eiffel Tower
Paris City Hall announced Thursday an eight-foot tall bulletproof glass wall will shield the iconic Belle-Epoque Eiffel Tower from terrorist threats.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
The French Election is Now Marine Le Pen vs a Collapsing French Establishment
A Le Pen victory would be the worst crisis for half a century. Even if she doesn’t, the system is in deep trouble
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trouble-Hit French Nuclear Plant Rocked by Explosion
The nuclear plant at Flamanville, northern France, was hit by an explosion on Thursday morning that left several injured. Authorities say there was no risk of contamination.
The explosion occurred on Thursday at 10am in the engine room of the Flamanville nuclear power plant on the Normandy coast.
Authorities said the explosion took place outside the plant’s nuclear zone and posed no risk of contamination.
The cause of the explosion at the power station, which has been in operation since the 1980s, was not immediately known.
“It is a significant technical event but it is not a nuclear accident,” senior local official Olivier Marmion told AFP.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Two Trains Evacuated in Swedish Cities After Bomb Threats
Two trains in Gothenburg and Södertälje, near Stockholm, were evacuated after receiving bomb threats on Thursday.
Police asked national rail company SJ to temporarily halt all train traffic in and out of both Gothenburg and Stockholm, a spokesman for SJ told The Local at 3pm.
“Police have asked us to stop all traffic in Gothenburg and Stockholm. This affects us heavily. There are going to be a lot of delays, some trains will be cancelled. We urge all travellers to visit our website or app to check for information,” he said.
The incidents sparked traffic chaos in Gothenburg in particular on Thursday afternoon.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: SNP MPs Are Told Off for Singing the EU National Anthem as Historic Brexit Laws Clear
SNP MPs have been told off for singing the EU ‘national anthem’ in the Commons as historic Brexit laws were passed.
The Scottish nationalists first whistled and then hummed Beethoven’s Ode to Joy which was installed as the EU’s signature tune in 1972.
[Comment: SNP are basically Communists. That’s why they love the EU apparatus — which, as Soviet dissident Bukovsky pointed out, is parallel to the Soviet Politburo structure. www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865 ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
12th Dead Sea Scrolls Cave Found in Israel
A cave that held Dead Sea Scrolls before they were stolen in the mid-20th century has been discovered near Qumran.
Inside the cave, archaeologists found a blank scroll along with the remains of jars, cloth and a leather strap. The researchers said they believe these items were used to bind, wrap and hold the scrolls.
Between 1947 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a series of 11 caves located near the site of Qumran in what is now the West Bank. The scrolls contain copies of books of the Hebrew Bible along with community rules, calendars and astronomical texts, among other writings.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Priest: ‘Media Coverage of Syria Biggest Lie of Our Time’
Claims “popular uprising against Assad” complete media fabrication
Flemish Father Daniel Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus.
Father Daniel has been a witness to the “civil war” and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: “the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country.”
Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?
Father Daniel: “The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I’ve been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.
Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Russian Bombing in Syria Mistakenly Kills Three Turkish Soldiers
Russian air strikes on Thursday accidentally killed three Turkish soldiers during an operation against Islamic State in Syria, the Turkish military said, highlighting the risk of unintended clashes between the numerous outside powers in a complex war.
“During an operation by a Russia Federation warplane against Islamic State targets in the region of the Euphrates Shield operation in Syria, a bomb accidentally hit a building used by Turkish Army units,” the Turkish military said in a statement. Eleven others were wounded.
The Kremlin also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and expressed his condolences, blaming the incident on poor coordination between Moscow and Ankara.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Oliver Stone Urges Trump to Declassify Documents on Origins of Ukraine Crisis
The director noted that the US establishment has stuck to the same false narrative about Russia ‘seizing’ Crimea, about Russian involvement in the Ukrainian civil war, its posing a ‘threat’ to Ukraine, etc. There are important facts left unsaid about the origins of the Ukrainian crisis, Stone said, including the ‘color revolutionary’ techniques employed in the lead-up to the Maidan coup, who provided the funding, and who the mysterious snipers were that fired on police and protesters alike at the height of the crisis.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The 42-year-old Indian woman was in deep slumber last Tuesday night until she awoke around midnight to a “tingling, crawling sensation” in her right nostril.
Finally, in her fourth doctor visit — at Stanley Medical College Hospital — doctors used an endoscope to find the culprit: a blob with a pair of antennae.
“It was a full grown cockroach,” M.N. Shankar, the head of the ear, nose and throat department, told the Times of India. “It was alive. And it didn’t seem to want to come out.”
The insect was sitting in the skull base, between the eyes and close to the brain, Shankar said.
Doctors first tried to use a suction device to remove the cockroach, but the insect clung to the tissues. After a 45-minute process, using suction and forceps, doctors were able to extract the bug, still alive.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
New Fukushima Robot Probe of No. 2 Reactor Halted by Camera Glitch
Preparations to further examine the inside of the No. 2 reactor at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant were halted Thursday by a technical glitch, the plant’s manager said.
Following the survey last month, some media ran reports suggesting the radiation levels at the crisis-hit Fukushima plant had risen recently, with some quoting unnamed experts as calling the levels unimaginable.
Three of the cores in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s six reactors, including the No. 2 unit, melted down in the days after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the area in March 2011, in the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
President Trump Seeks ‘Constructive Relationship’ With China
US President Donald Trump said he wanted to “develop a constructive relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The statement comes just before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet with Trump.
Trump previously provoked China after winning the presidential election in November by exchanging a phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, the first official contact the US made with Taiwan since cutting diplomatic relations in 1979 in favor of the “One China” policy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Think Your Commute is Bad? Think Again.
Villagers in Sichuan, China, have a new ladder to assist their 800-metre climb to the outside world.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
How Psychiatry Was Revolutionised by a Treatment Discovered in a Shed
In 1949, an Australian doctor discovered that lithium was an effective treatment against bipolar disease. But it almost went forgotten.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Will Cory Bernardi be Australia’s Geert Wilders?
An outspoken MP from a centre-right party in the ruling coalition leaves after years on the back benches and frequent clashes with his colleagues about policy, especially concerning Islam. While many observers presume he will fade into insignificance, the sharp-suited crusader creates his own radical right populist party that goes on to become one of the biggest in the country.
So has been the career of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands since 2004. And so, he may hope, will be the career of Wilders’ great admirer in Australia, Cory Bernardi. But can Bernardi emulate his firebrand Dutch counterpart?
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Ecuador Presidential Hopeful Pledges to Evict Juilan Assange From London Embassy
After more than four years sheltering sheltering inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could have limited time left.
Ecuadorian presidential candidate, of the right wing Creo-Suma alliance has said in an interview with The Guardian that if he won the election, he would “cordially ask Señor Assange to leave within 30 days of assuming a mandate.”
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Bill Kristol: Lazy White Working Class Americans Should be Replaced by Immigrants
“Spoiled” natives should be supplanted, argues top neoconservative
Neoconservative Bill Kristol says that white working class Americans should be replaced by immigrants because they have become “lazy,” “decadent” and “spoiled”.
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?” asked Kristol.
“You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever,” he added.
“Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. In that respect, I don’t know how this moment is that different from the early 20th century.”
Kristol’s assertion that immigrants are all hard working, tax contributing, upstanding citizens isn’t backed up by the facts, which show that “lazy” white people are less reliant on welfare.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households.”
Immigrants also have a significantly higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives).
Kristol was apparently nervous about his comments being recorded despite making them at a public event.
“I hope this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse,” said the founder of the Weekly Standard.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Canadians Are Smart About Immigration
A new comprehensive immigration study has left many liberal pundits and journalists in the mainstream media disillusioned about one of their favourite Canadian myths.
It turns out, Canadians support sensible immigration policies.
Or, as its spun in a University of Toronto and McGill Institute study, Canadians are not as “tolerant” and “open” as we like to think.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Defiant Trump Tweets “See You in Court” After Ruling Again Blocks Immigration Order
A defiant President Donald Trump tweeted “SEE YOU IN COURT” after a San Francisco federal appeals court Thursday upheld the suspension of his controversial immigration order.
He also warned the security of the nation was at stake and said he expected to easily win the case.
Top presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway told Martha MacCallum on “The First 100 Days” that she could not specify if Trump meant he would take it to the Supreme Court, but there were “different options” open to the White House.
She added that the ruling “does not affect the merits at all.”
The panel of three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused to reinstate the order after a federal judge had issued a halt to it last week.
But the Justice Department said it is “reviewing the decision and considering its options.” Trump later tweeted: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Harvard Economist: 42 Percent of Immigrant Households on Public Assistance
In 2016, 8.9 million households headed by non-citizen… almost 42% received some type of assistance
A Harvard economist has found that nearly 42 percent of immigrant households in the United States are on public assistance of some kind.
“In 2016, there were 8.9 million households headed by a non-citizen … almost 42 percent of those households received some type of assistance,” George Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote on his website on Feb. 1.
To come to his conclusions Borjas used census data from 1994 to 2016 to calculate how many of the migrant-headed households receive either money, food stamps, or Medicaid.
According to Borjas, millions of households could be impacted if existing immigration laws are adhered to.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hungary Migrant Crisis — Viktor Orban to Build Second Fence Over Refugee Security Threat
HUNGARY’S tough-talking prime minister Viktor Orban has announced plans to build another fence along the country’s border in a bid to keep immigrants out.
Mr Orban’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said that the anti-migrant government will set up container camps on the southern border, where it wants to detain refugees while their asylum requests are being assessed.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Four members of a child sex grooming gang are facing deportation to Pakistan after immigration judges rejected their appeals against their British citizenship being revoked.
Ringleader Shabir Ahmed, Adil Khan, Abdul Rauf and Abdul Aziz, all from Rochdale, had their cases thrown out.
The men had appealed against moves by the Government to strip them of their British citizenship…
Despite the ruling, the legal battle to deport the men could drag on for some time.
There are further steps the Home Office must complete and the men will be able to appeal at later stages in the process.
The four can apply for permission to appeal against Thursday’s decision.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Refugees Crossing Into Canada From US on Foot Despite Freezing Temperatures
A growing number of asylum seekers are braving freezing cold temperatures to walk into Canada from the US, driven by fears of what Donald Trump’s presidency will mean for refugees, advocates say.
Last week, amid the chaos and uncertainty triggered by Trump’s travel ban, one agency dedicated to resettling refugees and immigrants opened an unprecedented 10 refugee claims in one day. Eight of the claimants had walked into Canada in order to avoid detection by border officials.
On Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said another 22 people had walked across the border and into Canada over the weekend; 19 of them on Saturday and three on Sunday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sessions’ Confirmation: Era of ‘Mass Amnesty Policies’ Is Over, Says Pro-American Immigration Reform
“Sessions is unparalleled in his knowledge of the proper role of the Department of Justice, the legislative process, and the rule of law.”
A pro-American immigration reform applauded Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation as U.S. Attorney General, saying the “days of turning a blind eye to illegal immigration… are over.”
“Sessions is unparalleled in his knowledge of the proper role of the Department of Justice, the legislative process, and the rule of law, all of which will be critical in restoring much-needed accountability and responsibility to the nation’s immigration policies,” said a statement from Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“An able Senator and sincere advocate for fairness, Senator Sessions fully understands the dangers posed by the 300 jurisdictions around the nation that have adopted policies that impede federal immigration enforcement and protect criminal aliens,” Stein said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Six More Turkish Fugitives Enter Greece, Plan to Seek Asylum
Greek police say two more Turkish families have illegally entered the country across a border river and plan to request asylum, claiming they face persecution in Turkey.
Authorities say more than 100 Turks have requested asylum in Greece since the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, including eight servicemen who fled in a military helicopter.
All claim they are in danger in their country, where authorities link them with the attempted coup.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Journalist Avoids Jail Over Human Smuggling
A journalist and his colleagues have avoided jail for helping a Syrian boy flee to Sweden.
Swedish journalist Fredrik Önnevall, his camera man and interpreter were handed suspended sentences with community service by Malmö District Court on Thursday.
The court found that the trio acted in a way that constituted human smuggling when they helped a 15-year-old Syrian refugee travel from Greece to Sweden, but denied the prosecutor’s request for a jail sentence.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Cop Who Spoke Out About Migrant Crime Now Being Investigated for “Hate Speech”
Earlier this week we wrote about the veteran Swedish police officer who, despite acknowledging that his actions might result in a pay cut, demotion and/or termination, posted an epic rant to Facebook about migrant crime in his country. Among other things, the officer, Peter Springare, listed the crimes that he had spent the week investigating and subsequently attributed pretty much all of them to the beneficiaries of Merkel’s “open border” policies. From his Facebook post:
“Here we go; this is what I’ve handled from Monday-Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape, extortion, blackmail, assault, violence against police, threats to police, drug crime, drugs, crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again, extortion again and ill-treatment.”
“Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, again, again, again. Christopher… what, is it true? Yes, a Swedish name snuck in on the edges of a drug crime. Mohammed, Mahmod Ali, again and again.”
“Countries representing all the crimes this week: Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown, unknown country, Sweden. Half of the suspects, we can’t be sure because they don’t have any valid papers. Which in itself usually means that they’re lying about their nationality and identity.”
Now, despite an outpouring of support on social media and from fellow officers, Springare is being investigated for a “hate crime”, to our complete shock, of course. According to Breitbart London, Maria Sterup, chief prosecutor of the Special Prosecution Office in Malmà ¶, will be reviewing Springare’s Facebook post which, if found to be criminal, could result in his dismissal.
[Comment: When people of Sweden have remove globalist traitors from any political or prosecutorial office, this mam will end up being the chief of police.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Syrian Refugee Shouts Allah as He Slashes Man Across the Face With Knife on Bus in Germany
A SYRIAN refugee who slashed a man across the face while shouting “Allah” has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for GBH.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trump Releases List of Two Dozen Terror Suspects Allowed in to US From ‘Banned’ Countries
Most were convicted; list contradicts judge’s claims of ‘no arrests since 9/11’
In an effort to defend its temporary travel ban on seven countries where extremism is rife, the Trump administration released a list Wednesday of 24 individuals suspected of terrorism who were admitted into the US in the past 8 years.
The list, obtained by Fox News, contains the names of 10 Somali nationals, six Iraqis, two Iranians, two from Sudan, two from Libya, one from Yemen and one from Syria. All of the suspects were arrested on terror charges, and the majority were convicted.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trump Loses Appeal Court Bid to Reinstate Travel Ban
A US appeals court has rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to reinstate his ban on visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said it would not block a lower-court ruling that halted the order.
Mr Trump responded with an angry tweet saying national security was at risk and there would be a legal challenge.
But the 3-0 unanimous ruling said the government had not proved the terror threat justified reviving the ban.
The ruling means that people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with visas can continue to enter the US.
The case is now likely to end up at the highest court, the US Supreme Court.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
After Conquering the Boy Scouts, What’s Next?
The epitaph of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is being written by cowardly corporations, spineless politicians, politically correct adults afraid to say anything, and of course the liberal media. The Washington Post and The New York Times have been on the front lines of the “progressive” movement that now seeks to abolish the differences between the sexes by using our children as guinea pigs in the latest version of their sick social experiment.
The BSA is near death, thanks to the most recent decision by the BSA leadership to admit girls who want to be boys. This lunacy is endorsed by the Post, which praises the BSA for adapting “in an era of rapid culture change.” In an editorial, “Welcoming Transgender Boy Scouts,” the Times declares that “The Boy Scouts are recognizing transgender boys for what they genuinely are: boys.” This is nonsense, of course. They are not boys. They are girls.
Homosexuals and others were always free to start their own organizations. Instead, however, they sought to dominate and destroy organizations training young people in the context of traditional values. Too many morally corrupted and compromised conservatives did not resist.
Conservatives who have done their homework will recognize the BSA takeover as the Gramsci strategy of marching through the institutions, named after the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. If they can conquer the Boy Scouts, there’s not much left. The churches and the religious believers who attend them constitute one possible last line of defense.
William A. Donohue recognized what was happening as far back as 1993, in his booklet, “On the Front Line of the Culture War: Recent Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America,” which was updated in 1996. The rest, as they say, is history.
In terms of organizations, the key group leading the legal assault on the Boy Scouts was the ACLU. Corporations like Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo also played roles by yanking funding.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Brussels to Host Women’s Conference After Trump’s Anti-Abortion Move
An international conference to raise money for charities providing access to safe abortion will be held in Brussels in March in response to President Donald Trump’s gag on US funding, conference co-host Sweden said on Thursday.
Development aid ministers from Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, as well as representatives from over 50 countries are expected to attend the “She Decides” conference on March 2.
In one of his first acts as president, Trump reintroduced the global gag rule, enacted by Ronald Reagan in 1984, which prohibits foreign charities from using US federal funding to provide abortion services, information, counselling or referrals.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Judge Who Will Rule on Trump Travel Order Won ACLU ‘LGBT Award’
“She received the President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 2013 from the State Bar of California and the LGBT Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of South California in 2009.”
Judge Michelle T. Friedland, who is on the three-judge panel that will rule on President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at stopping terrorists from traveling to the United States, won the ACLU of Southern California’s LGBT Award in 2009, according to the Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
“She received the President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 2013 from the State Bar of California and the LGBT Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of South California in 2009,” Leahy said in the U.S. Senate on April 10, 2014, stating his approval of Friedland’s confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
[Comment: Seems as if the ninth circus courts function is to ensure unconsitutional edicts of globalist stooges never get the chance to be overturned in the supreme court.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Molestation of the Mind: Feminizing Males and Mainstreaming Perversion
Today, talk of sexual options are as common and varied as more and more abominable sexual behaviors are thrust in front of innocent, unsuspecting children in kindergarten. It has given new meaning to asking children if they have learned their ABC’s.
What is going on in our public schools is nothing less than moral molestation. I hate to go old fashioned on you but there was a time in America when we took seriously the crime of corruption of a minor.
The Law Dictionary defines it as “actions of an adult that convince or influence a minor to do something wrongful, criminal or immoral such as performing a sexual action.
In accordance with that there was also a crime of “improper influence” which was defined as “to attempt to convince someone to perform an act that is not proper or immoral or an offense which they would not otherwise commit had they not been influenced or convinced to do so”
Today, we just call those two crimes “public education.” They simply changed the definition of “immoral,” classified it as normal, and shoved it down the throats (sorry again) of America’s elementary school students.
When will God-fearing “normal” Americans rise up and declare that enough is enough? Engaging in personal deviant behavior is one thing. Teaching it to unsuspecting innocent children is another. The molestation of the innocent mind is spiritual rape.
Pornography is defined as printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” Look at this picture. Is this not intended to “stimulate erotic” feelings in the viewer? Is it not designed to “influence” confused children? Is this not emotional pornography?
What is the common thread in a vast majority of the sexual deviancy we see in America? Could it be the indoctrination of young innocent minds into the acceptance of abnormal sexual behaviors in our social experiment laboratories known as American Public Schools?
The sexual anarchists are running America. The promotion of sexual deviancy has led to an epidemic of brokenheartedness in parents who lost their precious children to the mental molestation masquerading as education in our deviant driven gender bender, amoral curriculum.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Magnetic Meteorites Narrow Down Solar System’s Birthdate
A new limit on how long the early solar system was full of dust and gas gives us clues about how and when the sun and planets grew and evolved.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Pebbles May Have Linked Paleolithic Mourners to the Deceased
The International Business Times reports that a team of scientists from the Université de Montréal, Arizona State University, and the University of Genoa found marine pebbles in Italy’s Arene Candide Cave that hunter-gatherers may have used to apply ochre paste to the dead between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago. The remains of about 20 people have been found in the cave, which is located in a cliff overlooking the Ligurian Sea. The pebbles, found in pieces in the cave, are thought to have been collected on the shoreline, and then broken in half when the ritual painting was completed.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Primeval Reservoirs Under Earth’s Mantle May be Older Than the Moon
Lava from Earth’s hottest spots may be flecked with primordial rock that existed 4.5 billion years ago, before the moon had formed, new research suggests.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Wikipedia Bans ‘Unreliable’ Daily Mail as Source
Wikipedia has prohibited the use of the Daily Mail for citations on the open-source encyclopedia, describing the publication as “generally unreliable.”
The website carried out a survey among its editors, all of whom are volunteers, seeking their opinions on the prohibition of the Daily Mail as a source on the site, which many editors apparently welcomed.
“The paper is trash, pure and simple,” wrote editor Hillbillyholiday, who initiated the Daily Mail ban in January. Another editor, JRPG, branded it a “mouthpiece for Paul Dacre,” a reference to the newspaper’s editor.
[Commenter to article points out: The fact is, Wikipedia is an unreliable news source. Here is what Harvard University says about Wikipedia: “Nevertheless, when you’re doing academic research, you should be extremely cautious about using Wikipedia. As its own disclaimer states, information on Wikipedia is contributed by anyone who wants to post material, and the expertise of the posters is not taken into consideration. Users may be reading information that is outdated or that has been posted by someone who is not an expert in the field or by someone who wishes to provide misinformation.” The full article is here: http%3A%2F%2Fisites.harvard.edu% 2Ficb%2Ficb.do%3Fkeyword%3Dk70847%26amp%3Bpageid%3Dicb.page346376% 3AscTE9qUmpuutn7KNv0esF7bj-yw&cuid=2382718
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wikipedia Bans the Daily Mail as a Source for Being ‘Unreliable’
Wikipedia editors have said they will no longer accept links to Daily Mail stories to support citations because it is too unreliable.
A fiery debate on its suitability as a source ended with a consensus view that the Mail, and Mail Online, were “generally unreliable” and their use “is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist”.
[Comment: Lefties control Wikipedia, and they don’t like it when the Daily Mail print articles which refutes their agenda.]
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
I go through the Fjordman’s news feed about the science of the Universe, and keep on thinking some unbelievable things such as: The World has been so deceived about how the World was formed?
There is Fire represented by the Sun, and there is Water – represented by the Moon. Moon is made of Ice, just like NASA says Europa is, yet they keep the secret about our own moon for some unknown reason. Leading mankind away from the truth, maybe?
Believe what you will, but beware of media fronts paid by CIA to cover secrets in Space!
There is some evidence that NASA (Never A Straight Answer) conducted several experiments on the Moon that suggests the Moon is actually hollow while the outer crust is not very deep at all.
Most folk are not aware that our closest neighbor, the Moon, is apparently much older than the Earth itself which would then suggest, if true, that the Moon has come from elsewhere and is not an original part of this solar system.
There are also recordings from ancient times that tell of no Moon being in the Heavens at all.
“Despite the high-level terror alert in the country, the incident at the reactor — which is in Brittany near the English Channel — had nothing to do with terrorism.”
One is bursting with pride at how quickly they can analyse such things nowadays.
In my day a thorough forensic analysis might take months to complete. You know the kind of thing, search of all CCTV footage radiating out from the index site for many many miles, metallurgic analysis of debris, interviews of hundreds to thousands of people, search and cross-reference of all entry/exit logs for the plant, local airports etc etc etc…
Such efficiency.
Marvellous stuff.
Father Daniel: “The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I’ve been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.
Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.”
Now that’s rather a different view of Syria than you would hear on CNN or other mainstream media who were pushing the whole “Arab spring” fiction.
If not for strongman Assad, Syria would not have become the ‘harmonious’ country it once was and hopefully may return to. Anyone who ‘rocked’ the religious or political boat in Syria in the past could expect swift intervention from Assad’s police.
I would wager that many who watch the middle east would have recognized the hands of Iran, the U.S. State Department, and some sources even suggest Mossad, in that ‘popular’ uprising designed solely to remove Assad and open up Syria as another Iraq.
Hello Baron,
Just a quick note: Flamanville nuclear power station is located in the Cotentin, which is Normandy, not Brittany.
Whoops! Sorry about that. 🙁
I don’t think the SNP is communist. Evidence? They are a cautiously nation-promoting party that is behind Scotland’s drive to independence, while at the same time heavily pro-EU, and not seeing any contradictions there. It is also full of status quo apparatchiks and IMO unreliable regarding its promises. Socialist? Yeah, Scotland tends that way.
vera, what do you believe Socialism leads to?
The SNP is anything but nationalist. It is a globalist gang, and, were it honest – should be the SGP.
Pebbles of the Mind article sent me to the man’s website. It was rather good, I thought. He is against perversion and so am I, having suffered from it as a child (no, not my family). Fortunately, I learned enough to realize and see it for what it is/was.
I really feel sorry for young children being subjected to sexual topics before they are even old enough to understand the word ‘sex’ and it is too bad that America has lost its moral compass. However, I am hopeful that this will turn around, just as so many other stupid movements have been turned around in the past.
I am not a big fan of wikepedia either.
I see Wikepedia is in financial trouble and is asking on some pages for donations. Seems to me people are finally voting with their feet on a website that is open to anyone’s interpretation of fact.