The Office of Emergency Management in Hawaii sent out a message today that warned of an imminent ballistic missile attack, causing widespread panic among the populace. The alert went out to social media, cell phones, television, and radio. Half an hour later the government sent out a another message saying the first one had been a mistake caused by an “employee [who] pushed the wrong button.”
In other news, a Maryland businessman name Mark Lambert has been indicted in federal court for allegedly bribing Russian officials as part of a deal that is now commonly known as “Uranium One”. This is the first of what is thought to be a series of indictments, and is expected to lead all the way up to Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.
Also, Czech President Milos Zeman won the first round of the country’s presidential election.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Charles Low, Dean, JD, Reader from Chicago, 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.
In the first online news article: In a scenario that has caused widespread outrage, citizens across Hawaii received a startling message on their phones from the Emergency Alert System (EAS) that told them that a ballistic missile was incoming and to seek immediate shelter.
| — Hat tip: Charles Low | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaeda’s Younger Brother Raising Funds to Expand Islamist Children’s School
Radical Muslims indoctrinating kids in South Florida.
There are two names prominently found on the Tamarac, Florida-based Alazhar School website. One is that of the school’s principal, Dina Ibrahim, and the other is that of the school’s administrator, imam and finance officer, Trinidad-born Nabil el-Shukri. Recently el-Shukri took to the fundraising site GoFundMe to ask for money for a school expansion project. Given the terror-related background of el-Shukri and the extremism coming from a number of Alazhar teachers, any expansion of the school presents an increased threat to the community.
Nabil el-Shukri first arrived in the United States in late 1995, when he, along with his mother and siblings (three sisters and a brother), was summoned to come to Brooklyn, New York by his father, Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukri-Jumah (Shukrijumah). Gulshair, then-missionary for the Saudi Arabian government, found himself in the middle of a federal terrorism trial dealing with the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Gulshair had been involved with the main mosque associated in the bombing, Masjid Al-Farooq, and had ties to the spiritual leader of the attack, ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel-Rahman, and the explosives supplier for the attackers, Clement Rodney Hampton-El. Both Abdel-Rahman and Hampton-El received convictions for their roles in the bombing, and immediately following their January 1996 sentencing, Gulshair ushered his family out of New York and into South Florida.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Democratic Governor Threatens to Attack the President, Media Thinks it’s Hysterical
In yet another example that proves that the mainstream media is perfectly fine with violence against President Trump, MSNBC aired an interview with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe during which the Democrat openly spoke about punching the President of the United States in the face.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, responding to rumors that McAuliffe might run for president in 2020, asked the governor what he would do if Trump tried to intimidate him as he supposedly did to so many other politicians during his historic campaign.
“He intimidates his opponents. He takes people like Jeb Bush and makes them look weak. He says “Low energy Jeb” and it works. He refers to somebody as ‘Little Marco’ because he’s not as tall as he is. He finds anybody’s weakness and turns it into something that destroys them.” Matthews noted.
“What would you do in a debate with him if he tried that? If he came over and leaned over back of you, what would you do?” Matthews continued before allowing the governor to directly speak about attacking the president.
“You would have to pick him up off the floor,” McAuliffe shockingly responded.
Amazingly, Matthews actually thought this direct (and possibly illegal) threat to the president was hysterical, going as far as to have the governor repeat said threat itself.
“OK, you mean, you’d deck him?” Matthews continued.
“Listen, this guy got in my space, you want to get in my space, I’ve always said, Chris, you punch me back twice as hard, and it wouldn’t be hard to do it,” McAuliffe responded.
“This guy thinks he can intimidate everybody. It’s disgraceful and embarrassing, but I tell you, when we take him on, back in his face with the facts, don’t take anything from him and hit him back as hard as you possibly can.” the liberal governor continued.
“But if he ever came over and leaned on me and got in my space, that would be the last time Donald Trump ever did that, I promise you that,” McAuliffe threatened.
Matthews ended the segment openly excited over the threats against the president while noting that the segment would go viral. Make no mistake folks, this is the mainstream media at its finest and is even more proof that anti-Trump media talking heads are actually trying to drum up enough anger against Trump that someone finally snaps and goes after him in a violent manner.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
In the almost twenty four hours since The Washington Post published an article, sourced anonymously, that claimed that President Trump had called multiple countries “s***holes” the media reaction has been downright hysterical.
— From claiming that Trump is evil, all the way to absurd claims that he is a terrorist sympathizer, the mainstream media has gone into full-scale meltdown mode while throwing out any semblance of objectivity.
Some of the reactions are truly insane and show that the vast majority of the mainstream media suffers from extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome and have no problem directly lying to their viewers as long as it is perceived to hurt the president.
The media watchdog website, Grabien News, compiled a list of the most insane comments made in the wake of the Washington Post story and it reads like a story about a bunch of actually crazy human beings pretending to provide political analysis…
As I noted in a previous report, these type of comments are designed to get someone to eventually attack the sitting president.
Make no mistake, this type of disinformation is specifically designed to put it out there that someone may need to take Donald Trump out in order to save the country from his evil.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Director Reiterates Faith-Based Belief in Working Crypto That He Can Break
Working cryptography’s pretty amazing: because of its fundamental theoretical soundness, we can trust it to secure the firmware updates to our pacemakers; the conversations we have with our loved ones, lawyers and business colleagues; the financial transactions the world depends on; and the integrity of all sorts of data, communications and transactions.
The FBI hates encryption, because they thought the digital world could be one where, for the first time in history, they’d be able to store and look through every conversation anyone has, anywhere, and crypto means that they can only spy on people with a warrant, using traditional techniques like hidden mics, informants, and subpoenas.
The FBI — along with many other law enforcement and surveillance agents — insists that it is possible to make crypto that will protect our devices, transactions, data, communications and lives, but which will fail catastrophically whenever a cop needs it to.
When technologists explain that this isn’t a thing, the FBI insists that they just aren’t nerding hard enough.
The latest example of this is FBI Director Christopher Wray’s remarks earlier this week at the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York, where he insisted that nerds just weren’t applying themselves, saying “I just do not buy the claim that it is impossible.”
[Comment: This attitidue is insane and shows the stupidity of these people. You can have either secure encryption or insecure encryption. ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hidden Code That Could Reveal D.B. Cooper’s True Identity
Investigators examining documents supposedly sent by D.B. Cooper believe a secret coded message may finally have confirmed the true identity of the infamous airplane hijacker.
A nine-digit number typed at the bottom of a letter, supposedly sent by Cooper, could only have come from one person — a maverick Vietnam veteran from San Diego called Robert Rackstraw, former FBI agents claim.
The former serviceman, believed to be alive and well, may have included the coded message to signal to his co-conspirators that he survived the leap from a Boeing 727 over Southwest Washington.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Missile Threat Alert for Hawaii a False Alarm
Washington (CNN) An emergency alert notification sent out on Saturday claiming a “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii” was a false alarm, according to state leaders and emergency officials.
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the emergency alert read.
While the message caused concern on social media, the Hawaii Office of Emergency Management quickly responded on Twitter, saying, “NO missile threat to Hawaii.”
[…]
Hawaii Gov. David Ige told CNN that human error caused the alert to go out.
“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change over of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button,” he said.
The warning went out to television and radio as well as cell phones, Ige added…
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Charges Maryland Businessman With Bribing Russian Official
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. authorities have charged a Maryland businessman with bribing a Russian official in an effort to win contracts to ship uranium to the United States.
U.S. prosecutors unsealed money laundering, foreign bribery and wire fraud charges against Mark Lambert, 54, in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Friday.
Lambert denies the allegations and plans to fight them in court, his attorney William Sullivan said during a pre-trial hearing.
Prosecutors allege Lambert, former co-president of a Maryland-based shipping company Transport Logistics International (TLI), bribed a Russian energy official through a series of shell companies in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland in exchange for contracts to ship nuclear fuel to U.S. utilities.
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a crime for businesses to bribe overseas officials to win business.
TLI executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For decades, Washington and Moscow had an agreement that converted uranium from Russia’s nuclear stockpiles to civilian grade fuel, which was shipped to the United States for use in civilian power plants.
The charges are the latest chapter in a sprawling federal investigation into corruption involved in Russia’s sale of uranium into the United States.
The uranium investigation drew increased public attention last year after an informant involved in the probe claimed to have evidence tying the former Obama Administration to Russian influence peddling, a charge former administration officials have denied.
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
Uranium One Scandal Indictment Unsealed — Mark Lambert Charged in an 11-Count Indictment
Executive Allegedly Paid Bribes to a Russian Official So His Company Could Win Highly Sensitive Nuclear Fuel Transportation Contracts
An indictment against a former co-president of a Maryland-based transportation company that provides services for the transportation of nuclear materials to customers in the United States and abroad, was unsealed today for his alleged role in a scheme that involved the bribery of an official at a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Austria’s Leader During France Visit: ‘Judge us on Our Actions’
In the first online news article: Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz appealed to Europe on Friday to give his conservative-far right coalition a chance, during a visit to France whose President Emmanuel Macron reached office by triumphing over the anti-immigration National Front.
| — Hat tip: Charles Low | [Return to headlines] |
A British satellite could provide a full colour, high-definition video of our planet from space, even picking up objects as small as 26 inches (65cm) big on the ground.
The ‘Big Brother’ video satellite, which is currently still a prototype can capture videos of individual people from orbit in high definition.
It was one of 31 payloads sent up in the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carrying dozens of satellites from India and six other countries.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Critics Weigh in on Germany’s Coalition Talks “Breakthrough”
Germany’s prospective deal for Chancellor Angela Merkel to head another grand coalition has been slammed by industry leaders as “expensive.” Asylum advocates say it hands hard-liners a “triumph” over human rights.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
EU News: Farage Reveals Four Countries That Will Bring EU Collapse in Less Than Ten Years
The European Union has been facing growing dissent from the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — with Brussels beginning court action against the countries for failing to uphold their duties as EU member states.
Mr Farage predicted the four Eastern European countries will ultimately lead the EU institutions to collapse in as little as 10 years.
He said: “I heard Andrew Marr a few months ago say that if you listen to the Prime Ministers of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia ‘they make Nigel Farage sound like a Foreign Office diplomat.’
“Something quite big is going on. I would say that in 10 years’ time the European Union will not exist and that will be a good thing”
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Prosecutors Deny AC Milan Money Laundering Investigation
In the first online news article: Italian prosecutors have denied media reports that they have opened an investigation into whether the deal to sell AC Milan to Chinese investors last year was inflated for money laundering purposes.
| — Hat tip: Charles Low | [Return to headlines] |
Milos Zeman Wins First Round of Czech Presidential Election
Milos Zeman, the pro-Russian and Eurosceptic president of the Czech Republic, will face a pro-EU rival at a presidential election run off after winning the first round of voting on Friday.
Mr Zeman secured 38.75 percent of the vote after 99.13 percent of votes in Friday’s election had been counted, the Czech Statistics Office said on Saturday.
His nearest rival, Jiri Drahos, was on 26.51 percent of the vote. The two will go head to head in a second round of voting on January 26-27.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Renzi’s Comeback Hopes Fade as Italy’s Self-Styled ‘Demolition Man’ Sinks in the Polls
ROME—In 2014, 39-year-old Matteo Renzi electrified Italy’s voters, sweeping to power on promises to “demolish” the country’s discredited political establishment and revive an economy still badly bruised from the sovereign-debt crisis.
Now, more than a year after he was forced to resign as prime minister, polls show Mr. Renzi’s popularity plummeting, frustrating hopes of a comeback for a young politician some hailed as the reformer Italy badly needs. His sinking fortunes and those of his center-left Democratic Party, Italy’s largest mainstream and currently ruling party, increase the chances that March 4 parliamentary elections will produce a hung parliament, undermining the prospect of a strong, stable government capable of rebooting Italy’s troubled economy.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
The Islamization of Germany in 2017: Part I
The Muslim population of Germany surpassed six million in 2017 to become approximately 7.2% of the overall population of 83 million, according to calculations by the Gatestone Institute.
A recent Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe estimated that Germany’s Muslim population had reached five million by the middle of 2016, but that number is short by at least a million.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘Arrogant’ Surgeon Avoids Jail After Branding Transplant Patients With Initials During Surgery
A surgeon who burnt his initials into a patient’s newly transplanted liver has avoided jail despite the bizarre “abuse of power” at a UK hospital.
Simon Bramhall, 53, resigned from his job at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2014 when it emerged he had also branded “SB” on a failed donor liver.
The “arrogant” NHS surgeon admitted to two counts of assault by beating last month. The surgeon used an argon beam machine to “write” his initials on the livers of the patients after transplants in February and August 2013.
Tony Badenoch QC said one victim initialed by the surgeon had been left feeling “violated” and was suffering ongoing psychological harm.
Patient A’s liver failed about a week after his transplant and another surgeon discovered the initialing, which was not related to the failing. A picture of the 4cm-high scrawl was taken on a mobile phone.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Imam Caught ‘Trying to Meet 15-Year-Old Boy for Sex’
Paedophile hunters have released footage which shows a respected imam allegedly trying to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex after grooming him with offers of money on a gay dating app.
The married father-of-five was snared by the vigilante group outside an address in Flixton, Greater Manchester, and was accused of traveling nearly an hour in the car to abuse the boy while his mother was at work.
‘Justice Will Be Served’ posed as a young boy on Grindr and filmed their encounter with the 45-year-old, who a mosque in Blackburn, Lancashire.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
How Russia Says it Swatted Down a Drone Swarm in Syria
On the night of January 5, a swarm of explosives-laden small drones, apparently controlled by Syrian rebels, attacked two Russian bases in western Syria, the Kremlin confirmed on Thursday. Authorities claim that Russian defenses destroyed or disabled all of the drones before they inflicted any damage on the bases.
But the threat from small, cheap, numerous, and armed unmanned aerial vehicles isn’t going away. The next swarm could be bigger and more dangerous.
Ten of the drones, which the Kremlin described as “aircraft-type,” assaulted Khmeimim air base, where Russia stages most of its air power in Syria. A rebel artillery attack on Khmeimim on December 31 reportedly damaged or destroyed several Russian warplanes.
Meanwhile, three drones attacked Russian facilities at the nearby port of Tartus. Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Syrian regime starting in late 2015.
Each of the drones carried 10 one-pound bombs under its wings, the Kremlin said. The Russian defense ministry published photos of, it claimed, intact bombs and drones Russian troops captured during the assault.
The Kremlin claimed that a Pantsir-S air-defense system shot down seven of the drones while Russian electronic-warfare specialists hacked six of the UAVs and ordered them to land, but three were destroyed when their explosives detonated. The Russian army recently commissioned its first dedicated counterdrone unit equipped with powerful electronic jamming systems.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
One day after Julian Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship, the Wikileaks founder tweeted a cryptic picture of a famous 1918 chess match in which Cuban chess master José Raúl Capablanca defeats U.S. champion Frank Marshall using a pawn.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Oil-Rich Venezuela on Brink of Collapse
With more oil reserves than anywhere else in the world, Venezuela should be drowning in riches.
Instead, the country, and its 30 million inhabitants are on the brink of collapse: financially, and, for many, physically.
In Caracas, the capital, men scavenge daily in the putrid Guaire River.
They pour down from the barrios, raking their hands through stinking, toxic mud in the hopes of finding the tiniest bit or metal, jewellery — anything of value — that they could sell for food.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
“Combative” Mohammed Abraar Ali Killed Police Officer Andrew Camilleri
A Christmas story postscript in sanctuary Criminalfornia.
On Christmas Eve, California Highway Patrol officers Andrew Camilleri and Jonathan Velasquez were patrolling the Bay Area for drunk drivers when they pulled to the side of Interstate 880. At 11:30 pm, according to Alameda County documents, a red Cadillac CTS-V drove “directly into the path of the patrol vehicle,” at a speed of approximately 120 miles per hour.
The crash wounded Velasquez and killed Camilleri, 33, whose wife Roseanna and children Elizabeth, Andrew Jr. and Ryder got the bluest Christmas anyone could expect. Camilleri had aspired to join the CHP since high school and was a model officer who loved to help stranded motorists. Information about the driver who had taken Camilleri’s life, on the other hand, was in short supply.
Initial reports identified him only as a 22-year-old man who had allegedly been intoxicated on alcohol and high on marijuana. A drunk, stoned driver killing a police officer is a serious matter, and many Californians wondered why the CHP had not released the driver’s name, booking photo, and any background information of interest.
Nothing emerged until more than a week later, on January 2, 2018. The CHP explains the delay as due to hospitalization but Californians could be forgiven for their doubts. As it happened, the state’s new sanctuary legislation kicked in on January 1, and the driver who had taken officer Camilleri’s life was identified as “Hayward man” Mohammed Abraar Ali. The CHP did not inquire about his immigration status.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How Europe Built Its Own Funeral Pyre, Then Leapt In
The single most significant issue of our time is not North Korea’s drive to develop long-range nuclear missiles. It is not the threat posed to Europe by the Russian land power or the threat posed to America’s Asian dominance by Chinese sea power. It is not Iran’s growing Mideast influence, nor the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections and possible “collusion” by the Trump campaign.
By — Robert W. Merry
No, the defining issue of our day is mass immigration into the nations of Western heritage. This growing inflow threatens to remake those nations and overwhelm their cultural identity. This is the issue that played the largest role in getting Donald Trump elected. It drove Britain’s Brexit vote. It is roiling the European continent, mounting tensions inside the EU and driving a wedge between the elites of those nations and their general populations.
Indeed, the central battlefront in the immigration wars is Europe, which accepted a trickle of immigrants in the immediate postwar era due to labor shortages. But over the years the trickle became a stream, then a growing river, and finally a torrent — to the extent that ethnic Britons are now a minority in their own capital city, refugee flows into Germany went from 48,589 in 2010 to 1.5 million in 2015, and Italy, a key entry point, received at one point an average of 6,500 new arrivals a day.
Throughout all this, the European elites celebrated the change and imposed a kind of thought enforcement regime against those who raised questions. The in-migration was initially hailed as an economic boon; then as a necessary corrective to an aging population; then as a means of spicing up society through “diversity”; and finally as a fait accompli, an unstoppable wave wrought by the world’s gathering globalization. Besides, argued the elites, the new arrivals would all become assimilated into the European culture eventually, so what’s the problem? Meanwhile, public opinion surveys over decades showed that large majorities of Europeans harbored powerful misgivings about these changes.
As British journalist and author Douglas Murray writes, “Promised throughout their lifetimes that the changes were temporary, that the changes were not real, or that the changes did not signify anything, Europeans discovered that in the lifespan of people now alive they would become minorities in their own countries.”
Murray, associate editor of the Spectator in London, is the author of a compact volume exploring this phenomenon. It is called The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, and it was published six months ago by Bloomsbury. The tone is measured but unflinching. The picture he paints of the European future is bleak…
Murray paints a picture of the European elites, globalist in outlook and contemptuous of nationalism and Western heritage, tossing aside popular sentiments in their drive to transform Europe. Sweden’s prime minister in 2006 captured the opinion of many European elites when he said, “Only barbarism is genuinely Swedish. All further development has been brought from outside.”
But European leaders, responding to popular sentiment, began talking tough on immigration around 2000 — while doing nothing to stem the tide. Murray calls this an “electoral trick” to mollify increasingly agitated voters. Around the same time the elites in government, think tanks, and the media began a campaign of vilification against anyone who dared to raise questions about where all this was going. Epithets of “racist” and “Islamophobe” were tossed around promiscuously. Jobs were lost, and standing relinquished in the realm of ideas, when rebels displayed the temerity to question the conventional narrative.
[Comment: Europe didn’t jump in, they were pushed in by traitorous globalist politicians.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration Minister Panned BT Opposition Over Ill Refugee Deportation Scandal
In the first paragraph of this online news article; Opposition politicians say they find Denmark’s minister for immigration Inger Støjberg ‘hard to trust’ after she admitted to poor practice by her ministry.
| — Hat tip: Charles Low | [Return to headlines] |
Switzerland’s New Immigration Statue Sets High Hurdle for Citizenship
A new law in Switzerland seeks to stanch the flow of immigrants into the small Alpine confederation renown for its historic adherence to principles of liberty and federalism.
Regulations promulgated by the law, which became effective this month, prevent immigrants who have received welfare in the past three years from being granted the vaunted status of “citizen” until they have paid the money back to the government.
An Austrian article written in German and translated into English by this author sets out the significant impediments to immigrants who seek asylum for the sake of banking Swiss francs.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Surviving a Mad Max World: How to Avoid Marauders and Looters After the Collapse
In the first online news article: Seems almost self-explanatory, right? I mean, what could be so involved with the term “living with the land,” right? There is a lot to it. There’s a reason to do this:
| — Hat tip: Charles Low | [Return to headlines] |
”Mr Farage predicted the four Eastern European countries will ultimately lead the EU institutions to collapse in as little as 10 years.”
Two to three years…max.
The so-called “elites” living in Europe and the USA are the most dangerous vermin since the Black Death. The can impose laws…like Hate Speech codes…elect officials like Merkel and Obama…and start wars to weaken the dying West. Only Trump, a nationalist, has confronted them and been swarmed by their powerful friends ( or purchased tools) in the media and inside all our sick institutions.
We must identify, corner and prosecute these beasties NOW. What these fiends have in common is a desire to attack all nation-states…except Marxist China.
I am sure everybody laughing in Hawaii, what a funny hijinks…
On a lighter note, it’s kind of fun to see our Chinese friends try their hand at the “Rambo” trope, and how they view/stereotype us on film:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/wolf-warrior-2/
I think it is interesting how the hero character has a physique that could be achieved by many males via proper diet and exercise. No obvious signs of steroid use like the typical Western action hero.
President Trump’s language (if he has been quoted correctly) may have been, shall we say, undiplomatic. However , if some of the countries referred to were paradise on earth, people wouldn’t want to emigrate!
I’m reminded of the survey published in the UK a couple of years ago, which concluded that overall, immigrants made a net contribution to our economy. However it broke the figures down to show that while EU nationals were indeed net contributors, those from outside were not. Strangely most of the media, the BBC included, chose to emphasise the broader picture.
This report perhaps?
“Those from the European Economic Area (EEA – the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) had made a particularly positive contribution in the decade up to 2011, the authors noted, contributing 34% more in taxes than they received in benefits and services.
if you look at the figures for the whole of the period under study, 1995-2011, immigration has been a drain on the public purse.
To the tune of about £95bn.
Non-EEA immigrants each took out about £21,000 more than they put in during that period.
And this group is the biggest – non-EEA immigrants make up two thirds of the UK immigrant population. So both groups of immigrants – EEA and non-EEA – considered together, take out around £14,000 more than they put in, amounting to a deficit of around £95bn for the public purse between 1995-2011.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25880373
Enrichment is expensive.
Thanks Itinerant. I think the report I recalled was a year or two later, but I didn’t keep the details- I’ve saved this one.
BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, quoted in your link, is/was very good at disentangling “statistics” to get at the truth. I see it was last on on the World Service in March 2016, sadly.
We got an update a few hours ago, the Ukrainian woman that attacked president Zeman was sentenced to 3 months probation time and banished from Czechia for a year. She said she considers herself innocent, but accepted the sentence. Her reasoning was that she wants to go home anyway. As for her reasoning for the attack, it was aparently because Zeman is on good terms with Putin. Considering she’s from Ukraine, no big surprise there. And aparently she wantedto warn us from electing Zeman president again.
According to her lawyer, she meant no physical harm and her raised hands were supposed to show she’s not armed. Seems she had a fake newspaper pass.
In my opinion she doesn’t look very Ukrainian, but who am I to judge.
Btw the whole court seems to have taken roughly 2 hours, as the police brought her in just before 5PM and the article was updated around 7PM.
Here’s the link (in Czech): https://www.novinky.cz/krimi/460456-ukrajinka-ktera-vybehla-pred-zemana-dostala-podminku-a-vyhosteni.html