The European Union has insisted that Hungary and Slovakia take their mandated share of the bloc’s refugees, but both countries have refused. The EU then initiated legal action against them, so now they are arguing their case before the European Court of Justice. It is not yet clear how the two countries will respond if the court rules against them.
In other news, in Venezuela the inflation rate so far this year stands at almost 93%.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to AF, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Reader from Chicago, Srdja Trifkovic, SS, 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.
Inflation in Venezuela Stands at 93% So Far in 2017
Inflation in Venezuela was 92.8 percent in the first four month of this year, the country’s national assembly said in a report.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Retail Bloodbath: Macy’s Crashes After Woeful Results, Drags All Department Stores Lower
Retailer woes continued this morning when Macy’s reported another round of pitiful quarterly earnings, which saw comp store sales at owned plus licensed stores tumble -4.6%, below the already depressed estimate of -3.5%. On an “owned” basis, the miss was even worse, with Q1 comps sliding -5.2%,, almost twice as bad as the consensus estimate of -3.0%.
Earnings were just as bad with the company reported Q1 adjusted EPS 24c on sales of $5.34 billion, missing estimates of $5.45 billion, barely making the lowest estimate; the profit margin also disappointed with gross profit printing at 38.1%, below the 38.84% estimate. Meanwhile, with Q1 inventory of $5.63 billion rising from $5.4 billion at year end, more margin eroding liquidation sales are likely on deck.
The only good news was that Macy’s maintained its fiscal 2017 sales and earnings guidance, which however was not nearly enough for the market, which has dragged Macy’s stock lower by 12%, to the lowest since October 2011.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Racist Note Sparked Protests at a Minnesota College. The School Now Says the Message Was Fake.
The hate-filled note was allegedly found on a student’s windshield on April 29, and it contained an ominous warning:
“I am so glad that you are leaving soon,” the message said. “One less n — — — that this school has to deal with. You have spoken up too much. You will change nothing. Shut up or I will shut you up.”
Days of demonstrations against hate speech and canceled classes followed at St. Olaf College, a liberal arts school in Northfield, Minn.
There was only one problem: The note, as it turns out, was fake. And yet, it arrived on the heels of nine other reported acts of hate speech on campus in recent months.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Boiling Blood and Radiation: 5 Ways Mars Can Kill
Radiation exposure is among the top health risks for Mars astronauts, but the Red Planet poses many other dangers as well.
The most immediate threat to human health on Mars is the low pressure of the planet’s atmosphere, which is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s.
“If you are unprotected on Mars … your blood would boil, even at ambient temperature,” said planetary scientist Pascal Lee, who’s based at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, both in California.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Delingpole: And So it Begins, Trump’s Great Climate Purge…
[…] But whatever works is fine by me. The important thing is for the U.S. to pull out of Paris not in order to facilitate exit from Obama’s Clean Power Plan or to avert legal action from politicized litigators like the Sierra Club but purely as an upward extension of the presidential middle finger to the bloated, corrupt and overmighty Climate Industrial Complex.
If and when Trump pulls the U.S. out of Paris it won’t be the end for the Green Blob, nor even the beginning of the end. But it might, perhaps, be the end of the beginning. It will be arguably the first big signal by any major leader of the Western world that the tide on the Great Global Warming Scam is about to turn and that the Alarmists are about to be crushed by fortune’s wheel.
| — Hat tip: AF | [Return to headlines] |
Duke Divinity Professor Calls Diversity Training ‘A Waste, ‘ Faces Discipline
A divinity professor at Duke University has apparently resigned following disciplinary actions against him, after he questioned the value of diversity training at the school.
Paul Griffiths, a professor of Catholic theology at the school, could not be reached for comment Tuesday about the flap. A colleague at the school says Griffiths, 61, has resigned, effective next year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hate Crime Hoax Spree Continues, This Time Hitting a College
A small college in Minnesota was shutdown by protests earlier this month due to concerns about a racist note found on a student’s car. St. Olaf College announced Wednesday that the note was a hoax perpetrated by a student seeking to “draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”
This is the second high-profile hate crime this month that has been discovered to be a false flag. Last week, a church organist in Indiana was arrested for spray painting his own church in an attempt to “mobilize a movement.”
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
How KGB Tactics Are Being Used Today to Destroy America
Subverting education is instrumental
The Soviet Union made exporting revolution a high priority.
Although the USSR is gone, the effects of their subversion campaign linger to this day.
The script for Communist takeover
KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov gave an in-depth look.
[O]nly about fifteen percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other eighty-five percent is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures, or psychological warfare.
He described how they recruited journalists and prominent figures to spread the Party line. Further, they compiled hit lists, including Communist sympathizers likely to outlive their usefulness after the Revolution.
Bezmenov described the revolutionary script as demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization. After coming to the USA, he was horrified to see this process well in development. Let’s see how his predictions from 1984 turned out.
[Comment: Read. It. All. And watch the Yuri Bezmenov interview with G. Edward Griffith.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How the New York Times Proved Trump’s Case for Firing James Comey
In an extensive article published last month that included interviews with more than 30 current and former law enforcement officials, congressional officials and other government employees, the New York Times published a stinging indictment of James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.
The Times made the case that Comey violated FBI tradition, bypassed the Justice Department and went rogue on several occasions in a manner that clearly impacted the 2016 presidential election.
In a letter on Tuesday from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein recommending that Comey be fired, Rosenstein specifically cited Comey’s alleged mishandling of the Clinton email probe as justification for Comey’s removal from office.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Imam Praised as Moderate by New York Times Arrested for Islamic State Ties
By Robert Spencer
This underscores yet again what I have said for years: there are sincere Muslim reformers, but there are also a great many deceivers (“War is deceit,” said Muhammad), and it is essentially impossible to tell one from the other. What is even worse about this story is that policy analysts read the New York Times and take it seriously, and base their recommendations upon it.
If this imam had been in the United States, he could have attained great influence and access, as did another “moderate,” Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who is now in prison for financing al-Qaeda, or at very least tremendous influence in the Islamic community, as did Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also praised as a moderate in the New York Times and seen briefly in a PBS documentary on Muhammad, leading Islamic prayers on Capitol Hill with Hamas-linked CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Randall Ismail Royer, who later served time in prison for jihad activity, in the congregation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
KC Man to be Detained While FBI Conducts Terrorism Investigation
A Kansas City man who is the subject of an FBI investigation into possible terrorism links was ordered held without bond Thursday.
Isse Aweis Mohamud, 21, is currently charged in U.S. District Court in Kansas City with passport fraud.
A federal magistrate judge ordered his detention Thursday after federal prosecutors argued he posed a risk to public safety and was a flight risk.
Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Hays based her detention order on the flight risk argument.
[Comment: In this era of nutty decisions from left wing judges, this judge is refreshing.]
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Senate Democrats Pressed on Poor Diversity in Hiring
First-term Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is taking on a leading role in the initiative.
Senate Democrats are making headway toward fixing their staff diversity problem — and one of their own is looking to lead by example by publicly reporting the demographics of her payroll.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chamber’s first Latina, opened her books to Politico as the caucus works to rectify the meager number of minorities in senior staff positions. The Nevada lawmaker is also hosting meetings with aides who are women of color about strategies to ensure Democrats’ offices look more like the diverse base of their party, starting with Latinas, and is planning talks with African-American and Asian-American staffers.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article149462029.html#storylink=cpy
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Senator Wants ‘Mandated Diversity’ For Congressional Staff
One of the U.S. Senate’s newest members is proposing to shake up the chamber by mandating “diversity” quotas for everything from staffs to committees.
A proposal by Nevada’s freshman Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, could mimic efforts in corporate America. Large companies across the country, particularly those in Silicon Valley, have been under intense pressure to hire more minorities.
Cortez Masto thinks it should be a Congressional priority, too.
“We should be mandating diversity in our committees, mandating diversity in our hiring practices, mandating diversity throughout the United States Senate,” Cortez Masto told the podcast Women Rule. “You just have to walk in the room and look at the Senators that are there — the 100 Senators, right? You could see the lack of diversity.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Pocahontas “Insult”: Why Trump Should Keep Using it
In late April, President Trump again fired the barb of “Pocahontas” at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Soviet Union). Despite the claims of many in the media that it is “obvious racism,” Trump should keep using it.
For starters, Warren has earned it. She is arguably somewhat nicer that Hillary Clinton but just as deceitful and opportunistic. For example, she has fudged data in an academic study. In addition, despite being a “crusader” against the Big Banks during the housing meltdown, it turns out that she does business with some of the banks she denounces and has made a tidy sum from flipping houses, two of which were in foreclosure.
Trump could certainly criticize Warren for those “peccadillos,” but the Pocahontas barb will surely yield more electoral dividends. Now, if Trump were using Pocahontas as an attack on the Harvard Hero of the Working Class’s Native American ancestry, then it would be racist. Yet it is all but certain that Warren has no such ancestry. Rather, Trump employs the insult which refers to Warren’s obfuscation of her heritage, which in turn is likely an attempt to cover up that she probably lied about her ancestry to obtain positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands of Innocent Men Were Wrongly Imprisoned Because of One Lying Woman
Up to 23,000 current prisoners are expected to be released from the Massachusetts State Prison system because the female lab chemist handling evidence in their cases lied, forged colleague’s signatures, and purposefully contaminated evidence. Here is the story of Annie Dookhan, nicknamed “Superwoman” for her record productivity at the state crime lab.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Trump: Comey a ‘Grandstander, ‘ ‘Showboat’
President Trump on Thursday called fired FBI Director James Comey a “showboat” and “grandstander” who Trump intended to fire regardless of any recommendation from the Justice Department.
Trump, speaking to NBC News, gave his first in-depth remarks since the stunning ousting of Comey on Tuesday evening.
“Look he’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander,” Trump said. “The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil — less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.”
Trump said he had planned to fire Comey for some time, but “there’s no good time to do it by the way.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Trump Signs Executive Order Launching Voter Fraud Commission
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to launch a commission to review alleged voter fraud, a White House official confirmed to Fox News, after months of claiming voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.
The order, titled “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity,” would establish a bipartisan commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, to review alleged voter fraud and suppression. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has investigated voter fraud in Kansas, will serve as vice chair.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tommy Curry is an associate professor at Texas A&M. He is black, and specializes in Critical Race Theory. Prof. Curry does not limit his teaching to the classroom. He has a strong presence on YouTube.
In this brief interview, he discusses when it is appropriate to kill white people:
“In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘A Giant Step’ European Union Bosses Approve Visa-Free Travel for Ukrainians
THE European Union has approved visa-free travel for Ukrainians to visit all member states except the UK and Ireland for 90 days.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
by Srdja Trifkovic
Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the French presidential election provides conclusive proof that no major European nation can save itself from demographic and cultural suicide through the electoral process. That outcome is not merely a victory for status quo politics, which millions of lower-middle-class French people prefer, but a triumph of the globalist establishment.
Macron is a paradigmatic pastiche, almost a caricature, of Europe’s postmodern transnational elite. He is a former international banker and fanatical Euro-integralist who wants an ever-tighter union ruled from Brussels. He is an Islamophillic open-borders globalist, lovingly known among France’s urban progressives as the “French Obama.” Last January he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that critics of Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy were guilty of “disgraceful oversimplification.” In his opinion, by allowing over a million unassimilable and unvetted aliens into the country, “Merkel and German society as a whole exemplified our common European values. They saved our collective dignity by accepting, accommodating and educating distressed refugees.” Last February he lampooned Donald Trump’s promise to protect America’s southern border by promising never to build a wall of any kind.
More seriously, Macron’s “solution” to jihadist terrorism is more Euro-federalism: “We must quickly create a sovereign Europe that is capable of protecting us against external dangers in order to better ensure internal security,” he declared last March. “We also need to overcome national unwillingness and create a common European intelligence system that will allow the effective hunting of criminals and terrorists.” This is nonsense. Many terrorist attacks in France, Germany, Belgium, etc., were carried out by Muslims who had been arrested or registered and presumably supervised by their host-countries’ security services. The problem is not the absence of information sharing; the problem is that the number of Muslims exceeds the capacity of the security mechanism to manage the threat…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
Assange Stay Extended: WikiLeaks Founder’s Asylum Continued — Under These Conditions
WIKILIEAKS founder Julian Assange’s five-year stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London looks set to continue, after the country’s incoming president announced he would extend the controversial whistleblower’s asylum.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Austrian Government Set to Collapse as Elites Fear Far-Right Surge
AUSTRIA’S government is on the verge of collapse due to a shock resignation, opening the door to the far-right Freedom Party.
And the crisis could a huge headache for Brussels as the anti-EU Freedom Party is currently leading in the polls.
Yesterday the future of the coalition government was thrown into doubt after Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner resigned, prompting calls for an election.
Many within his People’s Party believe an election should be called rather than simply replacing him as party leader and continuing the shaky coalition with the Social Democrats.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Britain’s First All Female Terrorist Plot Fails Miserably
Three women were charged Thursday in what is believed to be Britain’s first all-female Islamist terror plot.
The women are accused of planning to murder “a person or persons unknown” between April 11 and April 28. Two of them wore burqas to court, but the judge forced them to remove their veils, according to The Times.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Denying the Threat of Islamic Imperialism
The behavior of many Western political leaders, jumping from one definition to another about the “true nature of Islam,” has so far been disastrous. The tenets of Islam are there or all to see; people in the West seem not to want to look.
What are we Westerners doing trying to tell Muslims what their religion is, in the first place? Do they try to tell us what “real Christianity” is?
Sadly, too much of what we have seen of Islam in the West has been violent. Countless attacks, with shouts of “Allahu Akbar” have been claimed in the name of Islam. In terms of what their religion stands for, you at least have to give them credit for being forthright. We in the West are the ones who have lied.
Ultimately, if we do not confront this problem, this problem will confront us.
Spain: “Pacifist” Imam Arrested on Terror Charges
| — Hat tip: AF | [Return to headlines] |
Dutch Politician Turns Tables on EU Demanding €100bn From ECB Boss if They Leave Eurozone
Forum For Democracy leader Thierry Baudet asked whether The Netherlands would receive their €100bn surplus back from the ECB should they opt to leave the Euro.
Mario Draghi, the President of the ECB insisted that they would not receive the money back before the pair rowed during a meeting in the Dutch parliament.
Mr Baudet began by raising a document which referred to comments made by the ECB boss claiming that if Italy were to leave the Eurozone they would have to pay back the difference in what they owe.
He said: “As we, the Netherlands, now have a surplus of about €100bn, does this by your own words mean that if the Netherlands decides to leave the Eurozone, which is one of the key points of my party’s programme, we would get back €100m from the southern countries in the Eurozone according to your views?”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Eight Arab Princesses Go on Trial in Belgium
The women — all from the United Arab Emirates — have been accused of bringing their servants to Europe without a work visa and then holding them in inhumane conditions. The case could have far-reaching consequences.
Princess Shekha Alnehayan and her seven daughters traveled to Brussels regularly. In 2008 they rented their usual luxury suite in the Conrad Hotel for several months. And they brought along at least 20 servants, who had to attend to every wish 24 hours a day, without enough food, without a bed — and without a visa, let alone a work permit for Brussels.
Now the eight princesses stand accused of violating labor regulations and of human trafficking.
Things only came to light when one of the servants fled and reported the case to the police.
But it took nine years for the actual trial to get underway.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Negotiator Addresses Ireland’s Unique Post-Brexit Future
The European Union’s lead Brexit negotiator paid a visit to Ireland, which faces particular uncertainty once the UK leaves the EU. Michel Barnier said he would work with the Irish to avoid a “hard border.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Exclusive — French Historian: ‘Human Rights’ is the Religion of the French State
French historian of law and sociologist Professor Jean-Louis Harouel believes France and its “religion of human rights” are to blame for the rise of Islam which he said is a political ideology first and a religion second.
Professor Harouel sat down with Breitbart London at his home in Paris to talk about what he calls the “religion of human rights”. To Harouel, human rights, or political correctness, have been transformed into the state religion of France and said laws against free speech were the equivalent of “blasphemy” for the French elites.
“At the end of the 20th century, human rights took the place of Communism,” Harouel said adding that human rights have become, “our last utopia”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: What Draws Right-Wing Extremists to the Military?
First it was Franco A. Then came a second Bundeswehr officer. The arrests of right-wing terror suspects working in the military raise questions about how attractive the Bundeswehr is for extremists.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Takes First Step Towards Legalizing Rape Committed by Muslim Men
Recently, a German judge has acquitted a Turkish drug dealer, fully understanding that he forcibly and undeniably violated a woman for four hours to the point of incapacitation. The reason for lack of conviction was that the perpetrator was presumed to not culturally understand what rape was. As described, due to the “mentality of the Turkish cultural circle” (note Turkey is more than 95% Muslim), the Turk was simply participating, in his opinion, “wild sex”. In the justice’s words, “A conviction is not possible, because no intention is demonstrable.”
The defendant maintained that he would never do such a thing because he himself had female relatives. The victim herself, who personally described her direct refusal and the subsequent brutality, when asked “Could it be that the defendant thought you were in agreement?”, agreed. Acknowledged as a “heavy blow” for the injured party, the violent sex was not considered rape and the charge dropped.
This is not a unique event. Rape waves have been reported everywhere Muslim refugees have been allowed, and mainstream media always remains silent, if not attempting to defend or falsify the offenses when forced to. However, the particular incident is notable as an official declaration of the German, and likely all Western European, government.
Let them come, and let them rape without consequence.
The leftist narrative has indoctrinated German natives so strongly that their inclusive multicultural respect and bureaucratic conformism is even able to warp what is beyond doubt rape into an offensive cultural question, a question both a legal authority and the sexually assaulted woman answered yes to.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
German Election Polls — Angela Merkel to ‘Crush Schulz’
The figures, published for the German broadcaster ARD, found 49 per cent of respondents said they will vote for the current Chancellor.
Her previous work as Chancellor is said to be a driving force behind Mrs Merkel’s surge in support, according to German media.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: 30-Yr Sentence Upheld for Man Who Stabbed Ex to Death
Senegalese, 31, inflicted over 40 wounds
(ANSA) — Catania, May 10 — A Catania appeals court on Wednesday upheld a 30-year sentence for a man who stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death in 2014.
Gora Mbengue, a 31-year-old from Senegal was again found guilty of murdering 30-year-old Veronica Valenti with more than 40 stab wounds on 26 October of that year.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Living Standard Scrapped as Alimony Parameter
Only future self-sufficiency now principle
(ANSA) — Rome, May 10 — Italy’s supreme Cassation Court on Wednesday scrapped previous living standards as the key parameter for setting alimony payments and instead said that future “self-sufficiency” should be the guiding principle.
Living standards had framed the level of alimony for 30 years.
The ruling said that marriage is no longer “definitively settling down” but “an act of freedom and self-responsibility”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: De Bortoli Says Sure of Sources in Boschi Case
‘I collect libel suits’ says former Corriere editor
(ANSA) — Rome, May 10 — Journalist Ferruccio de Bortoli said Wednesday he was “absolutely tranquil and sure of the reliability of my sources” in writing in a new book that Cabinet Secretary Maria Elena Boschi asked former Unicredit CEO Federico Ghizzoni to weigh buying the troubled Etruria bank where her father was vice president. “I did not speak of pressure, it was reported to me by a source close to Unicredit,” he said, adding that he welcomed libel suits, saying “I collect them”. De Bortoli added, of the Corriere della Sera newspaper which he formerly edited, “Corriere has broad shoulders…I have never been soft on (ex-premier Matteo) Renzi, I don’t think I ever cut him slack”. De Bortoli’s book, Strong Powers, Or Almost, was presented by publishers RCS Media Group at a Milan theatre Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Macron Wants a New Deal for Europe
Emmanuel Macron has big plans for Europe. In order overcome the current crisis, he wants more community, more solidarity and more investment. And Germany is worried that it will have to foot the bill.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Merkel is Insane’: Meet the Woman Leading the AfD Into the Elections
The Local sat down with Dr Alice Weidel, the new leader of the Alternative for Germany. She may have the CV of an establishment liberal, but a half hour in her company exposed a firebrand who doesn’t hide her disdain for Chancellor Angela Merkel.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
No Progress to Report After Two Months of Dutch Coalition Talks
Edith Schippers, the Dutch negotiator for a coalition government of four parties has written to the Dutch parliament on Thursday to say that she cannot confirm if a deal is within reach, nor when a new government can be formed. Schippers wrote her letter, which contained few substantive details, at the request of several opposition parties not involved in the talks. Parliament elections were almost two months ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Northern EU Countries Blocking Quake Aid — M5S
Germany ‘led opposition at ambassadors’ meeting’
(ANSA) — Brussels, May 11 — Northern EU countries are blocking a European Commission proposal to use Euroepan regional funds for reconstrcution after central Italy’s earthquakes last year, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement said Thursday. At a meeting of ambassadors, Germany led the opposition to the idea, the M5S said, followed by the Netherlands, the UK, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, demanding a quota of national co-funding.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Row Ignites After Germany Slams ‘Tax Haven’ Malta
The Maltese government has reacted angrily after a German state’s finance minister called the EU island state “Europe’s Panama.” Now officials are hunting down Germans allegedly using Malta to dodge the tax man.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Schengen Border Controls to be Extended
EU member states agreed on Thursday to allow the extension of temporary border controls for “up to 6 months” in “exceptional circumstances”. Internal controls in the visa-free Schengen area have been put in place by Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. If opting to prolong them, a member state must “ensure that internal border controls are carried out only where it is considered necessary and proportionate”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Schulz Effect is Dying — Ex EU Chief’s Party Likely to Lose Third German Election
Germans head to the polls in North-Rhile Westphalia on Sunday for a regional election which could be a bellweather for September’s vote for Chancellor.
Mr Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, announced in November he was to turn his back on the EU to focus on a dream to oust Angela Merkel and become Chancellor.
His candidacy initially propelled the SPD party in the polls, with the party getting neck and neck and even leading against the CDU.
However, with less than six months having passed since declaring his candidacy, the air seems to have deflated from his popularity balloon.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sir James Dyson Wins Vacuum Cleaners Appeal at European Court
Sir James Dyson has won his appeal over a case that argues European suction tests favour his competitors’ vacuum cleaners.
In 2015, he lost a major legal battle in his bid to prove the tests gave misleading higher efficiency ratings to rivals’ appliances.
This successful appeal against that ruling will see the claim sent back to the original EU court for judgement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Solidarity is Essence of EU’ Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Calls for ‘Deeper’ Integration
LUXEMBOURG’S Foreign Minister has called on the European Union to “demonstrate solidarity” and “go deeper into the integration process” while hailing the victory of Emmanuel Macron.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Uppsala ‘Facebook Rape’ Verdict to be Appealed
The outcome of the trial of three men who were sentenced to prison in connection with the rape of a woman which was broadcast live on Facebook from Uppsala is to be appealed by both the prosecutor and a defence lawyer.
In April, an 18-year-old man from Afghanistan was sentenced to one year in jail for rape, and a 21-year-old from the same country for two years and four months. A third man, a 24-year-old Swedish citizen who was behind the camera, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for gross defamation and failing to report rape.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A mother who took her friend’s BMW and raced it ‘like a lunatic’ during a 91mph police chase shouted ‘you’re joking’ as she was jailed for four months.
Yasmin Katir, 27, put her head in her hands and exclaimed ‘I’m going to jail? Oh my God’ as she was led away from the dock.
The mother-of-one, who once had a fling with TV SAS star Ant Middleton, had pleaded with a judge to spare her jail after she admitted a string of driving offences.
According to the Sun, Katir and Middleton spent the night together at the Holiday Inn, Salford, seven weeks after his wife had their third child. He told her he wanted to see her again.
But Judge Sean Morris told Katir that being a mother did not give her a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ and that he needed to send a message to the public about dangerous driving.
Jailing her for four months, he told Katir: ‘Anyone who drives like a lunatic when there are blue lights behind must understand that they put life at risk.
‘I’m not bothered about your life. I’m bothered about innocent lives and a policeman’s life. You are so lucky that you are not here on a manslaughter charge. You could so easily have been.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: John Cleese’s Sense of Humour is No More.
He is an ex-funnyman: DAMIAN THOMPSON reviews first episode of Fawlty Towers star’s radio comedy
Thirteen minutes and 39 seconds. That’s all it took yesterday morning for John Cleese to demolish the myth that he’s still one of Britain’s funniest men.
John Cleese Presents, the first episode of which went out at 9.30am on Radio 4, is supposed to be a parody of a radio programme.
The former Python and creator of Fawlty Towers plays himself as a rambling, conceited old bore. And, boy, did he succeed. But there was one small problem. Within seconds, it became clear that this embarrassing ego-tripper was the real Cleese, not a parody…
John Cleese isn’t funny anymore. His sense of humour is — like the Monty Python parrot — no more. It has ceased to be. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil and gone to join the bleedin’ choir invisible.
Cleese is an ex-funnyman. Many of us have known this for years, listening to him drone on about his inner child and the wicked Tories in an attempt to divert our attention from a string of very public divorces — surely the messiest since Henry VIII’s.
[Comment: Cleese jumped the shark long ago.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A pair of moped thieves snatched a City businessman’s mobile phone in the Square Mile — demonstrating the speed at which crimes can happen.
The smartly dressed man is walking through the centre of London in broad daylight when the thieves pulls up alongside him and snatch his phone.
Officers visited shops and cafes yesterday to speaking to citizens yesterday, in a bid to tackle what is turning into an epidemic.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Veiled Woman Shot by Police in London Terror Raid Charged With Murder Plot
LONDON (AP) — A woman who was shot by officers during a raid by counterterrorism police in London was charged along with her mother Wednesday with preparing acts of terrorism and plotting murder.
The Metropolitan Police said Rizlaine Boular, 21, and two other women — one of them Boular’s mother, Mina Dich, 43 — are accused of preparing terrorist acts and conspiracy to murder “a person or persons unknown.”
Boular, Dich and 20-year-old Khawla Barghouthi were detained April 27 during police raids in London and nearby Kent county. Boular was formally arrested upon her release from a hospital three days after she was shot and injured.
All three are due in court Thursday.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What the Victory of Freemason Puppet Emmanuel Macron Means for Western Patriots
Everything went according to plan. The effete bank clerk, the corporate love child between François Mitterand and Léon Blum put together by the complacent media and the powerful elite in a bit more than a year is now President. A frail cuckold with an post-Wall granny as First Lady, lapdog of the European Union and the cosmopolitan decision makers. Already a subject of jokes, modern France is now the laughing stock of the red pill world, trying to take Sweden’s lead as the most self-destructive nation on the planet.
The alternative was there but France could not be saved. The rot is too deep. The clock is ticking now before the complete mutation of our country into an unrecognizable multicultural hell. For outside observers, France is now a test subject of what a Hillary Clinton presidency would have looked like.
The ones pulling the strings were not shy about it
Macron’s celebration at the Louvre museum (with its glass pyramid composed of 666 pieces and built under Socialist president François Mitterand) for his victory depicted numerous Masonic symbols.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The government of Kosovo fell on Wednesday in a no-confidence motion, paving the way for elections possibly to be held on 25 June. Seventy eight out of 120 MPs said prime minister Isa Mustafa was wrong to endorse an EU-backed border deal with Montenegro that would have cost Kosovo a small chunk of its territory. President Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party also ganged up on Mustafa, in power since 2014.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Amb. In Belgrade, We Are Against a Border Change
Scott, no to ‘Greater Albania’ or ‘Greater Serbia’
(ANSA) — BELGRADE — The US government’s aversion to a border change in the Balkans was underlined by US Ambassador to Serbia Kyle Scott.
With respect to the controversy raised in Serbia by the statements made by former head of the Osce delegation in Kosovo in the 1990s, US diplomat William Walker, who admitted that he is supporting the so-called ‘Greater Albania’ project, Scott said Walker talked personally, therefore his statements do not reflect at all the official policy of the US government.
“The US position is against a change of borders in the Balkans, against the creation of a ‘Greater Albania’, or a ‘Greater Serbia”‘, ambassador said. “Mr. Walker is a private citizen and can say what he wants. What I know is that the US government supports and promotes stability in the region”, the US diplomat added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
How Diplomacy Failed in Yemen and Why it Will Again
The war is often depicted as a struggle between the Hadi government and the Houthi-Saleh alliance, implying the majority of Yemenis back one side or the other. However, Yemen’s current conflict, and its roots, are far more complex and include the demands of a broad swath of marginalized areas outside of the north. The Hadi government and the Houthi-Saleh alliance only represent the politics and divisions within the northern Yemeni elite, fighting one another for power, resources and control of the country.
Yemen’s ruling elite comes mainly from landlocked and resource-poor areas in the north, while politically marginalized Yemenis tend to live in areas with oil, gas, fertile land and access to the coastline. The people of these resource-rich regions have historically resented northern rule and felt that their wealth and resources lined the pockets of northern elite, while their own areas remain politically marginalized and deprived of basic services.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS Surrenders Control of Key Syrian City of Tabqah, US Central Command Says
U.S. Central Command announced Thursday that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab force, recaptured the key Syrian city of Tabqah, the Tabqah Dam and a nearby airfield from the Islamic State, continuing to weaken ISIS’s control of territory and people.
The successful recapture of Tabqah, located roughly 30 miles west of ISIS stronghold Raqqa, denies the terrorists “a key coordination hub” that had been used by the group since 2013 to plan attacks on the West. Tabqah served as a base for planning such attacks after ISIS lost other territories in northern Syria.
According to the statement from U.S. Central Command, 70 ISIS terrorists surrendered to the U.S.-led international coalition Wednesday, and left heavy weapons behind them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudis Paid for U.S. Veteran Trips Against 9/11 Lawsuit Law
After Congress passed a new law allowing Sept. 11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, opponents mounted an expensive political campaign, including paying American military veterans to visit Capitol Hill and warn lawmakers about what they said could be unintended consequences.
What few people knew, including some of the recruited veterans themselves, was that Saudi Arabia’s government was largely paying for the effort, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite a World War II-era U.S. law requiring lobbyists to immediately reveal payments from foreign governments or political parties, some of the campaign’s organizers failed to notify the Justice Department about the Saudi kingdom’s role until months afterward, with no legal consequences.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Stupidity Not Islam is the Problem
[…] ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra etc were born out of Western stupidity, funded out of western stupidity and have grown because of western stupidity. Those groups continue to kill far more Muslims than Christians.
The growth in attacks on the west has been directly the result of governments failing to act on intelligence, pushing the ever expanding ideal of multiculturalism (Cultural Marxism) and political correctness
| — Hat tip: AF | [Return to headlines] |
The New York Times Once Praised His Moderation
Spanish authorities have arrested a Muslim cleric — whom the New York Times once praised for his efforts to fight radicalization within Germany’s Islamic community — for alleged ties to the Islamic State.
Hesham Shashaa (aka Abu Adam), a 46-year-old Egyptian-Palestinian, was detained near Alicante in southeastern Spain on April 26 on charges of aiding the Islamic State, extolling terrorism and promoting Salafi-jihadism.
The Spanish Interior Ministry said that Shashaa had facilitated the travel to Spain of Islamic State jihadists from Syria and Iraq by providing them with money, refuge and fake documents.
Most recently, Shashaa had made arrangements for two jihadists — who are the subjects of international arrest warrants for their membership of the Islamic State — to travel from Turkey to Spain by providing them with false passports.
In addition, Shashaa fraudulently tried to obtain for two jihadists letters of invitation with the aim of facilitating their travel from Egypt to Spain.
| — Hat tip: AF | [Return to headlines] |
China Plans Ambitious Space Mission to Hunt and ‘Capture’ Asteroids by 2020
A senior government space scientist said China was considering mounting a mission to “capture” an asteroid and try to fire it into the moon’s orbit within a decade, state media reported.
The ultimate aim would be to mine the asteroid for metal and minerals, or use it as the base for a space station.
Ye Peijian, chief commander and designer of China’s lunar exploration programme, said at a meeting of space authorities in Beijing this week that the nation’s first batch of asteroid exploration spacecraft would probably be launched in about 2020, according to state media reports.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Presses South Korea on Thaad Missile System
China’s president has set out his opposition to the deployment of a US missile system, in his first discussion with the new South Korean leader.
The Thaad missile system, aimed at intercepting attacks from North Korea, was made operational in South Korea last week.
But Beijing says the system will spy on its territory and has strongly criticised its deployment.
Relations between Beijing and Seoul have deteriorated over the issue.
Liberal Moon Jae-in was elected South Korean president on Tuesday. He is facing a delicate task balancing ties with the US, Seoul’s traditional ally, and China — both of whose help he needs to tackle North Korea and its nuclear ambitions.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
We should all hope that the current level of antagonism between the US and North Korea eventually passes, as it has many times before. But if it does, North Korea will fade from the news cycle. And with that, most people are going to forget about some of the crazy things that country has done, including the fact that they routinely kidnap foreigners and imprison them years.
Currently there are four Americans who are known to be held by the North Korean regime. But as crazy as it might sound, there are probably many more Americans and other Westerners who are secretly being held captive there. You’d think that we would know about every single person who has been taken by that government, but there’s one reputable source who claims otherwise.
While visiting North Korea, a Canadian security consultant and businessman by the name of James Leigh was imprisoned and interrogated there for several days last month. He claims that while he was in prison, he spoke to Professor Tony Kim, a US citizen who was also recently jailed by the authorities in North Korea. Kim was apparently being housed in a cell next to Leigh’s room, and the two frequently spoke to each other. Kim revealed to him that there are far more Americans being held captive in North Korea than any of us realize. Here’s what Leigh revealed in a recent interview with Newsmax, not long after he was released:
He said during his two-and-a-half day imprisonment, Prof. Kim told him, “There’s a lot more Americans locked up here than anyone knows.
“I said, ‘Are you serious?’“
“He said, ‘Yeah, Canadians, Americans, Europeans. There’s a whole place to hold them.’“
And that place apparently, goes by a very chilling name…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
North Korea Looking for Culprits Behind Alleged Plot to Kill Kim Jong Un
North Korea is pursuing the extradition of anyone who participated in what the country has claimed to be a CIA-supported plot to kill leader Kim Jong Un.
The plan, which the secretive regime claimed it thwarted, was to kill the dictator with a biochemical poison, a North Korean foreign ministry official said.
Pyongyang provided no concrete evidence of the alleged plot, described as “vicious” according to a BBC translation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The explosion of housing costs is one of the greatest economic crises in the developed world. From San Francisco and New York to London and Vancouver, the average worker’s paycheck is being devoured by the cost of rent. This daunting financial barrier is putting people on the streets, and preventing the next generation from raising families and entering the middle class.
For people who live in these cities, there’s really only one thing they can do. Their only option is to look for a smaller apartment, even if it’s tragically tiny. That’s what’s happening in Hong Kong, a city that now has the most unaffordable housing market in the world. Over 200,000 of the city’s poorest residents are forced to live in subdivided apartments, many of which are so small they’ve been dubbed “coffin homes” according to the Daily Mail. Take a look at what it’s like to live in one of these hovels…
Homes like that are so common in Hong Kong, that the UN has called the situation “an insult to human dignity.” And that’s exactly what it is, because this didn’t have to happen. Only 7% of Hong Kong’s land is designated for housing. However, Hong Kong isn’t the only city where we’re beginning to see these ridiculously tiny apartments.
In every city where there is a housing crisis, you’ll often find that there are zoning laws, city councils, environmentalists, and homeowners who are all preventing real estate developers from building more homes. And when that happens, people in lower income brackets have no choice but to pay a fortune to live in miniature apartments. Sadly, this is happening in America too.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Who Will Pay for China’s New Silk Road?
According to an estimate by the Asian Development Bank, there is a funding gap of US$26 trillion in the infrastructure projects that will be required in Asia by 2030. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” is designed to help meet this shortfall in Asia, as well as to help speed development in Europe and Africa. But the ambitious plans for the belt and road scheme raise the question of how it will meet its funding demands.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A Muslim-convert academic married to The Project’s Waleed Aly says sharia law can be used to promote women’s rights. Susan Carland was promoting her book in Sydney’s inner west.
| — Hat tip: SS | [Return to headlines] |
3 Dead, Liverless Sharks Wash Ashore in Weird Whodunit
In a strange case of extremely picky eating, orcas off the coast of South Africa are killing great white sharks, but the killer whales are chowing down only on the sharks’ livers and, in some cases, their hearts, researchers say.
In a four-day period starting May 3, researchers found the bodies of three great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) that had washed ashore along South Africa’s Western Cape province. Saddened and mystified by the deaths, the researchers performed necropsies (animal autopsies) on all three.
No one saw the sharks’ last moments, but their injuries indicate that orcas, also known as killer whales (Orcinus orca), were the culprits, the researchers said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Somalia?
This Thursday, the great and the good will descend on London to discuss Somalia, a country that has topped the Fragile States Index for eight of the past 10 years.
The London Somalia Conference, co-chaired by the UK, Somalia and the United Nations, will be held in Lancaster House, a grand mansion in the exclusive district of St James’s. Many of the delegates will stay in swish hotels nearby.
This is the third such London gathering since 2012, and there is an element of “cut and paste” to its agenda, which focuses on security, governance and the economy.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hungry Somalis Weigh a Daughter’s Freedom Against Her Siblings’ Lives
As the village wells dried up and her livestock died in the scorched scrubland of southern Somalia, Abdir Hussein had one last chance to save her family from starvation: the beauty of her 14-year-old daughter, Zeinab.
The disaster is part of an arc of hunger and violence threatening 20 million people as it stretches across Africa into the Middle East.
It extends from the red soil of Nigeria in the west, where Boko Haram’s six-year jihadist insurgency has forced 2 million people to flee their homes, to Yemen’s white deserts in the east, where warring factions block aid while children starve.
Between them lie Somalia’s parched sands and the swamps of oil-rich South Sudan, where starving families fleeing three years of civil war survive on water-lily roots.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fossil of Oldest Known Baleen-Whale Relative Unearthed in Peru
Skeleton from South America enables palaeontologists to piece together the puzzle of baleen-whale evolution.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Inside Venezuela’s Anti-Government Protests
Venezuelans angry with the government of President Nicolas Maduro have been taking to the streets almost daily since the beginning of April. Despite dozens of people being killed in protest-related violence, the demonstrations show little sign of abating.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mexico Begs Donald Trump to Keep NAFTA Trade Deal to Avoid Hurting US
MEXICO made a pitch to President Donald Trump yesterday to uphold the Nafta trade deal, arguing that unwinding economic integration would hurt both nations, damaging US exports, risking American jobs and hitting consumers north of the border.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Mexican Activist Who Searched for Disappeared is Slain
A mother who spent years searching for her missing daughter in northern Mexico and organized others to look for their disappeared relatives has been slain.
The group Citizen Community in Search of the Disappeared in Tamaulipas, to which Miriam Rodriguez belonged, says she was shot to death at her home Wednesday night in the town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state.
San Fernando is about 90 miles south of Brownsville, Texas, and is a critical point on drug- and migrant-smuggling routes to the border.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany ‘Grossly’ Failing Female Refugees on Sexual Violence: Report
A investigation by news service Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) carried out in Berlin’s refugee camps has found that women in the camps face “grossly inadequate protection from sexual and gender-based violence.”
Dozens of the women that IRIN spoke to reported facing sexual harassment while living at Berlin shelters, and many said that they were offered very little support, and lived in constant fear of attack.
One of the main problems highlighted in the report released on Wednesday, was that the standards introduced by the government in June last year on protecting women, which include strict codes of conduct for guards, have still not been adequately introduced.
While there were some shelters that had trained the staff to protect against sexual assault, the standards were not legally binding, meaning that most workers were left without proper training. This has left many women at risk of violence.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Half a Million Asylum Seekers on German Welfare Handouts
According to new statistics, over half a million asylum seekers now receive some kind of welfare benefit from the German state. In neighbouring Austria, the migrant unemployment rate is now over 20 per cent.
The numbers come from the German Federal Agency for Employment (BA) are were announced earlier this week. The statistics come as many still worry about the ability of the over one million migrants who came to Germany during the migrant crisis to integrate into the German job market, T-Online reports.
Minister of Labour Andrea Nahles, of the German Social Democrats (SPD), said, “this is not a sprint but a run,” indicating it would require far more time for migrants to secure stable employment. She added she was “confident” but “not relaxed” about the programme.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hungary and Slovakia Battle Migrant Quotas in European Court
The governments of Hungary and Slovakia are making their case to the European Court of Justice after refusing to take in redistributed migrants from Greece and Italy.
In September 2015, the European Union decided that all member states signed up to the bloc’s common asylum policy must take in migrants from Greece and Italy after border closures trapped the southern European countries with hundreds of thousands of migrants. Several countries, including Hungary and Slovakia, refused and now the pair is making their case to the European Court of Justice, German broadcaster MDR reports.
[Comment: Hungary and Slovakia should join the ‘Brexit Club’ to use Nigel Farage’s phrase.]
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
ICE Arrests 1,378 Suspected Gang Members in Largest Sweep to Date
The Trump administration has concluded a six-week nationwide sweep of suspected gang members with 1,378 arrests — the largest such gang sweep conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to date.
The operation, which ran from March 26 through May 6, targeted gang members and associates involved in transnational criminal activity, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder and racketeering.
“Gangs threaten the safety of our communities, not just in major metropolitan areas, but in our suburbs and rural areas, too,” ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan said Thursday. “Gang-related violence and criminal activity present an ongoing challenge for law enforcement everywhere.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Public Prosecutor: Immigration Funding ‘Attracting Mafia Interests’
The immense amount of money being allocated to the reception of migrants in Italy is “attracting Mafia interests” who would like a slice of the pie, according to the public prosecutor of Catania, Sicily.
“Based on investigations,” Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro testified Wednesday before Italy’s anti-Mafia Commission, “there is a mass of money intended for the reception of migrants that is attracting the interests of Mafia organizations.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: NGOs ‘Know Where Migrant Boats Are’ — Prosecutor
Libyan Coast Guard rescues migrants for first time
(ANSA) — Rome, May 10 — Non-governmental organisations have rescued migrants off Libya without informing the Italian Coast Guard and appear to know where migrant boats will be, Trapani acting chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told the Senate defence committee Wednesday, adding that mafia-linked people were involved in the migrant reception business. “The NGOs have carried out some sea rescues without informing the Coast Guard,” said Cartosio. There have also been “cases in which individuals on board NGO ships were aware of the time and place in which migrant boats would be, and that poses a problem as to whether the intervention was regular”. Furthermore, Cartosio said, “individuals related to or in touch with mafia organisations were part of the reception business”. Cartosio said investigations are ongoing “into aiding and abetting clandestine immigration not concerning the NGOs as such but people belonging to the NGOs.” Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had “never” been contacted by Trapani prosecutors. It said its procedures for intervention were “transparent” and it was ready to “clear things up”. Rescues were carried out in conformity with its humanitarian principles and in accordance with national and international law, it said.
Meanwhile in the first effect of a deal recently signed with Italy the Libyan Coast Guard, recently equipped with Italian vessels, rescued a boat carrying some 300 migrants and took it back to Tripoli. The migrants had sent an SOS to the Italian Coast Guard.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libyan Coastguard Intercepts Italy-Bound Migrant Ship After ‘Sea Duel’
Libya’s coastguard on Wednesday intercepted a wooden boat packed with almost 500 migrants after duelling with a German rescue ship and coming under fire from traffickers, the navy said.
The migrants, who were bound for Italy, were picked up off the western city of Sabratha, said navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem.
The German non-governmental organisation “Sea-Watch tried to disrupt the coastguard operation… inside Libyan waters and wanted to take the migrants, on the pretext that Libya wasn’t safe,” Qassem told AFP.
According to international organisations, between 800,000 and one million people, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are currently in Libya hoping to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
The North African country has long been a stepping stone for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Smugglers have stepped up their lucrative business in the chaos which has engulfed Libya since its 2011 revolution.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Libyan Coastguard Turns Back Nearly 500 Migrants After Altercation With NGO Ship
Libya’s coastguard said it had intercepted nearly 500 migrants packed onto a wooden boat and returned them to Tripoli on Wednesday after warning off a ship that was preparing to pick them up for passage to Europe.
Footage filmed by Sea-Watch, a non-governmental organisation, showed a Libyan coastguard vessel coming within metres of its own ship as it sped to stop the migrants.
Tripoli coastguard spokesman Ayoub Qassem said the incident occurred about 19 miles (30 km) north of Libya’s coast.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Migrant Quotas — EU Bitterly Divided as States Clash in Court Over Refugees
EUROPE was bitterly divided today as the east and west of the continent locked horns in an acrimonious court battle about the enforcement of migrant quotas.
Member states tore chunks out of each other over the controversial scheme as the raging political row over refugees turned into a legal catfight threatening to split the bloc in two.
Eurocrats want to enforce an EU-wide system of migrant quotas, decided centrally in Brussels, under which all member states are forced to take in a share of the 1.6 million asylum seekers on the continent.
The policy is being pushed by net contributors to the club, like Germany and Sweden, who have also had to bear the brunt for housing the majority of the new arrivals.
But Eastern European states have reacted with open fury to the proposal, which they feel intrudes on their sovereignty, and have launched a legal battle to sink it.
[Comment: Interesting development. Whatever the court rules, the European Union will further unravel.]
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Report Paints Harrowing Picture of Central America Migration
Migrants from Central America’s violence-plagued Northern Triangle region endure harrowing abuses while trying to make their way through Mexico toward the United States, a report from an international medical group said Thursday.
Doctors Without Borders, or MSF for its initials in French, called the situation a “humanitarian crisis” that demands the U.S. and Mexican governments do more to process applications for asylum and humanitarian visas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swiss Border Guard Prosecuted Over Syrian Woman’s Stillbirth
A senior Swiss border guard faces prosecution over the failure to get medical help for a pregnant Syrian woman who later had a stillbirth.
The Syrian migrant family’s ordeal happened after they were turned back at the French border in 2014.
The woman was allegedly left bleeding at a station in Brig, without medical help, despite her husband’s pleas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The globalists who run the governments and the media outlets in Europe will never admit the truth about the refugee crisis. They’ll never admit that there is a direct link between opening their nation’s borders to people from chaotic war-torn nations, and horrific terrorist attacks. They’re constantly reassuring their citizens that they have nothing to worry about from refugees who come from terror prone regions, and to suggest otherwise is racist and Islamophobic.
In fact, rather than admitting that the refugee community is riddled with terrorist sympathizers, and that this is a problem that needs to be addressed, the globalist try to normalize terrorism.
In Sweden, the government tries to rehabilitate and reintegrate ISIS fighters who have returned to their country. They give them free “housing, employment, education and financial support” rather than throwing them in jail. And in the UK, London mayor Sadiq Kahn has tried to convince everyone that terror attacks are “part and parcel of living in a big city.”
In reality, terrorism isn’t a normal part of living in a big city, or anywhere else for that matter, and it certainly shouldn’t be normalized. Instead, the source of these attacks should be addressed. And the main source of terrorism in the Western world is clearly the millions of unvetted migrants who have arrived here. The proof of this fact is in the form of map that you will never see in any mainstream news channel or publication.
Below is an image that shows every attempted or completed terrorist attack that has occurred in Europe since 2012. Notice anything?
The nations that have become the hottest destinations for refugees, are also the nations with the most terrorist attacks. France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK are brimming with terror incidents. Meanwhile, countries that didn’t take in so many refugees, like Poland, Slovakia, and the Baltic states, have very few terrorist attacks or none at all.
[Comment: Globalists and nation destroyer elites know this…they don’t care. The disintegration of the nation state is more important to them, so sacrificing the saftey of their own citizens is fine…it’s all part of the “dialectic process” of nation state destabilization…]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey Denounces German Move to Accept Asylum Requests From Its Soldiers
Turkey on Thursday condemned Germany for granting political asylum to numerous military personnel and their families with alleged links to last year’s failed coup, saying the move risked harming relations.
Germany gave positive responses to the asylum petitions of the Turkish nationals holding diplomatic passports, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily and public broadcasters WDR and NDR reported. The reports were not officially confirmed by authorities.
Since the unsuccessful coup attempt in July last year, dozens of diplomats, judges, and high-ranking Turkish officials have sought asylum in Germany as Ankara presses ahead with a vast crackdown on alleged supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based preacher who Ankara blames for the coup.
German media reported that 414 military personnel, diplomats, judges and other high-ranking Turkish officials have sought political asylum in Germany.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France’s Macron Announces Gender Equal List of Political Outsiders
The party of French President-elect Emmanuel Macron has selected a diverse list of 428 candidates for parliamentary elections next month.
Only 24 of those chosen are outgoing MPs from the current parliament.
Some 52% come from civil society and exactly half are women, the secretary-general of La République En Marche (Republic on the Move) said.
Richard Ferrand said the choices marked “the definitive return of citizens to the heart of our political life”.
Mr Macron still needs to select more than 100 candidates for the 577-seat parliament and the party says its door is open to politicians from other parties to join.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Cells That Trim Brain Connections Are Linked to Autism
A difference in brain biology between the sexes might render males most vulnerable to autism.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Lava Waves Sweep Across Jupiter Moon Io’s Massive Molten Lake
Observations of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io show waves of lava in the massive molten lake called Loki Patera.
lo is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Infrared images from the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory captured differences in surface temperature on the Jovian moon that suggest that lava waves oscillate through Loki Patera, a large, active volcanic crater stretching 127 miles (200 kilometers) across the moon’s surface.
Swells of lava spreading across the surface of the lake could help explain the periodic changes in brightness seen at Loki Patera, according to a new study describing the observations.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
[…] So now, here’s a pointed question for Americans: Who’s lethargic, and incompetent, today? If not its people as a whole, then at least its ruling elite? Who’s fiddling while the country burns—or falls apart?
As we have seen, the verdict of history is that sluggishness and ineptitude is catastrophic; the world is always in motion, and so the only hope for a people is to stay atop of the change, lest they be swept under.
Way back in the 15th century, the Chinese made mistakes and paid a heavy national price. Since then, they have learned their lesson. Now, in the 21st century, they are firmly resolved to do even better—much better—and the results speak for themselves.
We Americans are on notice.
| — Hat tip: AF | [Return to headlines] |
I wonder how many of those 23,000 locked up on fake DNA evidence would have been ‘convicted’ if DNA evidence had not become so reliant on by prosecuting authorities as an incriminating proof of the offence.
In many criminal cases, the gathering of DNA evidence has been the only deciding factor for conviction when all other avenues of evidence gathering have proved to be non-existent in being able to prove the guilt of the defendant.
DNA evidence is not an infallible means of proving or disproving guilt in criminal cases and should not be so relied upon alone as a fail safe means of proving guilt, as it has become, especially now that so many have been falsely convicted of crimes that they never committed.
Is it really any wonder this scandal was kept quiet by the controlled media!
When Macy’s went so viciously anti-Trump, many of us went anti-Macy’s.
That red star changed for the worse. alas
“It is not yet clear how the two countries will respond if the court rules against them.”
“If the court rules against them?”
Good one.
When the court,
Only two are resisting? what a pity! No wonder truth is a lonely warrior?
Retail Bloodbath: Macy’s Crashes After Woeful Results, Drags All Department Stores Lower
I cannot recall if this information appeared in Nicholas Taleb’s, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” or Paco Underhill’s, “Why We Buy”. However, Stefan Molyneux definitely covered similar territory in one of his recent videos (which, for some reason, I cannot find a link to).
Essentially, America’s commercial retail sector is at total saturation. There are no more people to sell all of this consumer merchandise to. At this point, opening a store means playing the Zero-Sum game, as in you will have to poach customers from other retailers.
Some of this erosion of “brick and mortar” market is definitely driven by predation from online retailers like Amazon.com. Nonetheless, it is also a matter of corporate-driven consumerism having being driven (typically by mass media) to the absolute limits of the public’s capacity to spend. Something that typically exceeds its own needs or wants.
To understand this manipulation, please watch the series, “Century of the Self“. It details how Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, almost single-handedly invented modern corporate PR and all of its attendant manipulations of consumer perceptions. Although produced by the commie-infested BBC, this four-hour program has no equal when it comes to elucidating how corporate puppet-masters play upon our deepest insecurities and desires in their relentless efforts to make people buy whatever it is that they want to sell. Again, whether we need it or not.
If you know somebody who always has to (be the first to) own the latest and greatest car, gadget, or other material object, look no further than this video.
Links to information about the retail crash:
4 Mall REIT Stocks to Avoid as Retail Crash Intensifies
What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017?
For now there is not much specific information available from the Hungarian government about the court case. They talk about a 10 point legal list which is the basis of their defense. As soon as more information will be available, I will be translating it of course.
Thank you very much for your sterling work. We are much indebted.