Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/9/2018

In an interview, the Italian archbishop Luigi Negri spoke out strongly against mass immigration into Europe. The Most Reverend Negri said that uncontrolled migration will lead to the “crushing and extermination of our society.”

In other news, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for Migration, is advocating for more immigration, saying that it is a necessity that the European public must simply accept.

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

Thanks to Charles Low, JD, KS, Reader from Chicago, 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.

Financial Crisis
» A Curious Thing Happened When Ontario Hiked Minimum Wages by Over 20%
 
USA
» Damore Lawsuit Highlights Google’s Links to ‘Antifa’ Domestic Terrorists
» Is Trump Really Crazy?
» New Englanders at Risk of Freezing After Liberals Shut Down Coal Power Plants
» Poll: 33% of NFL Fans ‘Purposefully Stopped Watching’ This Season
» Sen. Rand Paul Says Injuries From Altercation With Neighbor Left Him in “Living Hell”
» Standing Ovation as Trump Touts End of Death Tax: ‘Keep Your Farms in the Family’
» Watch: Teacher Questions Superintendent’s Massive Raise, So She’s Attacked and Arrested
 
Canada
» Divorce Cases With Islamic (Sharia) Marriage Contracts Pose Challenge for Courts
 
Europe and the EU
» “Spare us the Thought Police!” Germans Rage as New Hate Speech Law Backfires
» Brexit News — EU Says Members Must Fill Brexit Blackhole Amid Spending Cuts
» British Actress Says Weinstein Used Oprah as Bait for Sex
» France’s War Against Firefighters and Police
» George Soros’s Romanian Ghosts, Part Two
» Mafia Raids in Germany, Italy: Police Make Over 170 Arrests
 
Australia — Pacific
» Australia: African Street Gangs Invade Homes, Terrorise Residents in Melbourne
» Leading Suppliers of Baby Formula Find Solution to Keep ‘Daigou’ Buyers From Emptying Supermarket Shelves and Sending the Product Back to China
» Tatt’s All, Folks: Almost Two Kiwis a Day Have Visas Cancelled in Crackdown on Foreigners With Criminal Records
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» South Africa Train Crash: 200 Injured Near Johannesburg
 
Latin America
» Julian Assange: Ecuador Seeks Mediator in ‘Unsustainable’ Standoff
 
Immigration
» “It Hasn’t Stopped!” Lorry Drivers Are Attacked by Calais Migrants Every Day, Haulage Boss
» Any Republican That Will Not Pledge to Support Trump’s Border Wall Should Not be Running for Congress
» Czech President: ‘10 Million Migrants From Africa Could Come to European Union’
» France: Record 100,000 Asylum Applications in 2017
» Italian Archbishop: Uncontrolled Immigration Will ‘Crush’ European Society
» Mass Migration: The European Commission’s “New Norm”
» Orbán: Europe’s Migrants Aren’t Muslim Refugees, They’re ‘Muslim Invaders’
» Overton Window Shifts as Orban Throws Down the Gauntlet on Muslim Migration, EU Demands Demographic Decline
» Pope Francis: Migrants Must ‘Conform to the Rules of the Country’ Hosting Them
» UK: Virgin Trains Stops Selling Daily Mail, ‘Concern Over Editorial Position on Immigration’
 
Culture Wars
» Fired Engineer Damore Sues Google for Discrimination Against White Male Conservatives
 
General
» Meet M77232917, The Newly Discovered Largest Prime Number
» Understanding the Meltdown and Spectre Exploits: Intel, AMD, Arm, And Nvidia
 

A Curious Thing Happened When Ontario Hiked Minimum Wages by Over 20%

For the latest example of the unintended consequences of higher minimum wages, one has to look no further than a pair of Tim Horton’s franchises in Ontario, Canada. Faced with a 21% hike in minimum wages starting January 1st, with hourly rates going to $14 from $11.60, owners of the two restaurants said they had no choice but to cut employee benefits and eliminate paid breaks to offset their higher costs. Per the Financial Post:

Employees at the Tim Hortons locations owned by the children of the co-founders of the franchise say they have reduced employee benefits and cut back paid breaks to help offset Ontario’s $2.40 jump in hourly minimum wage.

Jeri Horton-Joyce and Ron Joyce Jr. wrote a letter to employees at their two Tim Hortons restaurants in Cobourg, Ont., that those who want to continue receiving dental and health benefits will have to pay a portion of the plan’s costs themselves. Those working at the restaurant for more than five years will have to pay half, while those working from more than six months to five years will pay 75 per cent.

Employee breaks will also no longer be compensated, the letter dated December 2017 read. For example, those working nine-hour shifts will be paid for eight hours and 20 minutes, while those on three-hour blocks will be paid for two hours and 45 minutes.

“We apologize for these changes,” the letter, widely circulated on social media, read. “Once the costs of the future are better known we may bring back some or all of the benefits we have had to remove.”

The alternative would be for the franchises to simply raise prices to offset their higher cost structure, which they did not, demonstrating how little confidence in pricing power businesses have despite the constant media cheerleading about the “coordinated global recovery.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Damore Lawsuit Highlights Google’s Links to ‘Antifa’ Domestic Terrorists

In addition to allegedly showing intimidation of conservatives, racist and sexist attitudes, and a paranoia about right-wing thinkers, the class action lawsuit brought by ex-employees James Damore and David Gudeman against Google also accuses the company of turning a blind eye to support for the violent “Antifa” movement from its employees.

Antifa is an umbrella term that describes the most radical and violent elements of the grassroots left. Antifa blocs have reportedly been involved in numerous acts of political violence in the first year of Trump’s administration, most notably in Berkeley, California. Antifa-linked groups were also responsible for widespread damage to property, acts of violence, and general lawlessness at the G20 summit in Germany last year. The Antifa movement has been condemned by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and has been classified as domestic terrorists by U.S. security agencies.

Google, according to information released in the Damore lawsuit, is less keen to distance themselves. Numerous posts on internal company communication channels show employees agreeing with, and endorsing Antifa and political violence.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Is Trump Really Crazy?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Michael Wolff’s sensational exposé of the supposed chaos of the Trump White House is no doubt largely a mix of fantasy, exaggeration, and some accidental truth. The postmodernist author even admits that his own methodologies defy verification, and so leave it up to the reader to distinguish his facts from fiction.

Wolff’s theme is that Trump is hopelessly petty, childlike, and uninformed. The few adults in the room around him—primarily, we are asked to believe, Wolff’s chief source, Steve Bannon—must cajole, pamper, and flatter him to get anything done, when they are not backstabbing one another.

Fair enough—Trump certainly may be naïve and uninitiated. No one doubts that he is thin-skinned and far too often goes down Twitter cul de sacs. But Trump’s naiveté is not quite what Wolff thinks.

Rather, no sane president should ever have let a writer with Wolff’s dubious and often discredited background into the White House. That such a rogue was even allowed through the door raises the question of administration sobriety…

           — Hat tip: KS [Return to headlines]
 

New Englanders at Risk of Freezing After Liberals Shut Down Coal Power Plants

Thanks to years of left-wing environmentalism in the New England states, energy suppliers are now struggling to fulfill the demands of local residents seeking to merely stay warm during this intense winter. After the snow melts, will liberal New England residents have a change of heart about shutting down the sources of energy that are needed to keep their homes, schools, and businesses heated?

The Hartford Courant reported, “Officials at ISO-New England, operators of the region’s power grid, said energy demands during the recent arctic weather have placed major pressures on energy generators, forcing power companies to rely more on coal and oil to produce electricity.”

Daily Caller — While New England’s power grid operator predicted it would have enough energy supplies to meet demand this winter, it admitted there could be problems if record-low temperatures set in.

“While New England has adequate capacity resources to meet projected demand, a continuing concern involves the availability of fuel for those power plants to generate electricity when needed,” grid operator ISO New England reported in November.

“During extremely cold weather, natural gas pipeline constraints limit the availability of fuel for natural-gas-fired power plants,” the grid operator noted.

That’s exactly what is happening right now.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Poll: 33% of NFL Fans ‘Purposefully Stopped Watching’ This Season

A new poll found 33% of NFL fans boycotted the league the year, with the majority citing support for President Donald Trump as the reason…

In other news, President Trump was greeted with roaring applause at the college football championship game between the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium on Monday night:

[Comment: Did you see the college football stadium erupt for Trump? Fake news never showed this…]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Sen. Rand Paul Says Injuries From Altercation With Neighbor Left Him in “Living Hell”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul says he was in “living hell” in the weeks following a violent attack by his next-door neighbor outside his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in November.

In his first appearance on a Sunday show since the alleged assault, Paul told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that he’s getting a “little better each day.” The attack left Paul with six broken ribs, cuts on his face and fluid buildup in his chest.

“It was sort of, I guess, a living hell for the first four or five weeks. Couldn’t get out of bed without assistance, six broken ribs, damage to my lungs, two bouts of pneumonia. It was really a tough go of it. But each day I feel a little bit better. This last month I’ve been doing better,” Paul said.

The violent scuffle occurred Nov. 3 at Paul’s home while he was doing yard work. The neighbor, Rene Boucher, allegedly tackled the senator from behind. Boucher was charged with assault and pleaded not guilty.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Standing Ovation as Trump Touts End of Death Tax: ‘Keep Your Farms in the Family’

Attendees of the American Farm Bureau Annual Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, rose to their feet with boisterous praise on Monday when President Donald Trump heralded the end of the death tax in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

During his speech at the convention, Trump pointed out that not one Democrat voted for the Republican congressional leadership’s tax cut plan.

The president focused on the effect on farmers of reduction of regulatory burdens and change in the estate tax under the new tax law:

All American businesses, including American farmers, will be able to deduct 100% of the cost of new equipment in the year you make the investment. That is something that I think is going to be the sleeper of the bill, you deduct it all in one year as opposed to over many years, that’s a tremendous thing.

And from now on, most family farms and small business owners will be spared, and you’re gonna be spared and it really is the word punishment, of the deeply unfair estate tax known as the death tax — so you can keep your farms in the family.

The estate tax comments were met with huge applause and a standing ovation from the crowd. Trump even stepped back from the podium for a moment as the crowd rose.

“Obviously you love your families or you wouldn’t be standing for that one,” Trump went on.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Watch: Teacher Questions Superintendent’s Massive Raise, So She’s Attacked and Arrested

Vermillion Parish, LA — Illustrating the brutal nature of servitude police have to their rulers, an innocent English teacher was assaulted and arrested this week for merely asking why the superintendent was getting a raise when the rest of the school system is suffering. The entire infuriating interaction was captured on video and serves to make a powerful statement about who police protect.

Deyshia Hargrave, an English language arts teacher at Rene Rost Middle Schools, was addressing the Vermillion Parish school board meeting Monday night when the incident began. Hargrave — along with dozens of other teachers and staff — had filled the meeting Monday night to discuss the issue of teacher salaries and pay raises.

During the meeting, the panel gave the opportunity for anyone in the audience to voice their concerns over the vote to give the unelected superintendent a new 3-year contract with a $38,000 a year raise. Naturally, everyone in the audience wanted to speak out against this “slap in the face” because teachers in Vermillion Parish barely make $38,000 a year.

During the time for public comment, Hargrave was called upon to speak, stood up, and very eloquently and calmly voiced her concern that classroom sizes have greatly increased over the last few years as teachers’ salaries remained stagnant. Hargrave explained that they need more resources at the teaching level and watching an unelected new superintendent get a massive raise because of who he knows was disappointing.

The board headed up by president Anthony Fontana — a local defense attorney often referred to as a “tyrant” — couldn’t have cared less about Hargrave’s concerns. Still, Hargrave sat peacefully as the board voted themselves a massive raise in front of all the suffering teachers.

After the vote, Hargrave was given the floor again and was being addressed by superintendent Jerome Puyau — who was likely giddy over his new $38,000 raise — when, for no reason, a city marshal’s deputy approached Hargrave to remove her from the room.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Divorce Cases With Islamic (Sharia) Marriage Contracts Pose Challenge for Courts

in the first paragraph of this online news article; At first blush, the recent Ontario Superior Court case of Akkawi v Habli looked like any other run-of-the-mill divorce case — a judge resolving issues of child and spousal support and division of family property.

           — Hat tip: Charles Low [Return to headlines]
 

“Spare us the Thought Police!” Germans Rage as New Hate Speech Law Backfires

As we reported recently, in what was officially a noble attempt to eliminate online hate speech in social media, and unofficially a devious crackdown on free speech, on January 1, 2018, Germany passed a law that forces websites to censor content deemed illegal under the new law and have it deleted within 24-hours. Ironically, as we observed last week, just hours after the law’s passage it immediately backfired when it claimed its first victim, a German satirical magazine’s Twitter account which “parodied anti-Muslim comment.”

Incidentally, this perfectly predictable if “totally unexpected” outcome is exactly what we, and many others had warned would happen. And now, it is finally dawning on Germany that any time the government gets involved in defining what is allowed and what isn’t — especially when it comes to that most fundamental of liberties, free speech — the result is always a disaster.

According to Germany’s top-selling, and most popular newspaper, Bild, the new German law meant to curtail online hate speech is “stifling free speech and making martyrs out of anti-immigrant politicians whose posts are deleted.”

The law which took effect on Jan. 1 can impose fines of up to 50 million euros ($60 million) on sites that fail to remove hate speech promptly and threatens the profitability of such social media giants as Twitter and Facebook.

“Please spare us the thought police!” read the headline in Wednesday’s Bild above an article that called the law a “sin” against freedom of opinion enshrined in Germany’s constitution, Reuters reported.

While the law requires social media sites to delete or block obviously criminal content within 24 hours, Bild Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt said it could be applied against anything and anyone since there was no definition of what was “manifestly unlawful” in most cases.

Intended to prevent radical groups from gaining influence, “it was having precisely the opposite effect,” he warned.

“The law against online hate speech failed on its very first day. It should be abolished immediately,” Reichelt wrote, adding that the law was turning AfD politicians into “opinion martyrs”.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Brexit News — EU Says Members Must Fill Brexit Blackhole Amid Spending Cuts

European budget commissioner Guenther Oettinger told members they will have to accept cuts to spending programmes, but at the same time spend more cash on “cohesion projects” and poorer nations.

The German MEP revealed the EU faces an £11billion shortfall due to Brexit, which forms part of an overall £18billion budget blackhole caused by other crises including migration.

But unveiling his masterplan to prop-up the ailing bloc in the wake of the UK’s departure, Mr Oettinger instead encouraged a spending splurge.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

British Actress Says Weinstein Used Oprah as Bait for Sex

Television personality Oprah Winfrey lectured America about the pervasive sexual abuse culture in Hollywood during her Golden Globes speech Sunday.

What Winfrey failed to mention was her close relationship with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, a fact British actress Kadian Noble brought up in November as the #MeToo fallout was in full swing.

Noble said at a press conference in Manhattan that she had met Weinstein in 2014 at an event in London with Oprah “swinging off his arm,” which Noble said impressed her because she was hoping to advance her career.

“I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me,” she said at the conference. Instead, Weinstein gave empty promises of career advancement to lure Noble to his hotel in France, where he allegedly raped her.

“I felt completely played,” she said. “I still can hear the rattle from his belt, like him undoing his belt while he had grip of me.”

“It seemed like it went on forever and he basically took, just completely touched me inappropriately and got me to put — force my hand in places,” she added.

The incident prompted Noble to file a sex trafficking lawsuit against Weinstein in a Manhattan federal court in November.

“Harvey wasn’t acting alone. Harvey wasn’t allowed and enabled to do what he did to Kadian and other women without help,” said Noble’s attorney, Jeff Herman.

At least 30 actresses, including Angelina Jolie and Gwenyth Paltrow, have come forward against Weinstein, alleging he used his enormous power to sexually assault them without fear of reprisal.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France’s War Against Firefighters and Police

France’s Minister of the Interior, Gerard Collomb, was clearly happy on January 1st. Why? No terrorist attack had occurred on New Year’s Eve. Collomb warmly thanked the 140,000 police officers, soldiers, firefighters, and civil security associations who had been mobilized to block any potential terrorist attack. To give just an inkling of the size of this security deployment on New Year’s Eve, consider that the entire French army (land forces only) consists of only about 117,000 active-duty soldiers.

All French governments since 2015 have denied that Islam is at war with France, but the Ministry of the Interior nevertheless mobilized higher numbers of security personnel than the French army has soldiers, to make sure that this New Year’s Eve would be a peaceful event.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

George Soros’s Romanian Ghosts, Part Two

Mirel Palada, one of thousands of young Eastern Europeans to receive a scholarship from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), said the only requirement was that recipients return home after their study abroad ended. When Palada finished his year (1997-98) at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, he went back to his country of Romania, obtained a Ph.D in sociology, and—among other occupations—served as press secretary for former Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta.

At the time, Soros did me a favor. [He hoped] to see the favor returned—that I would feel indebted, and become one of his minions.

Today, however, Palada holds mixed feelings about the opportunity that Soros provided him.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Mafia Raids in Germany, Italy: Police Make Over 170 Arrests

German and Italian police have detained scores of people with alleged ties to the ‘Ndrangheta mafia. The suspects formed part of a transnational network involving bakeries, funeral services and vineyards, police said.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Australia: African Street Gangs Invade Homes, Terrorise Residents in Melbourne

Australia is considering new measures to deport criminal migrants as young as 16, following a spate of violent home invasions and street robberies.

A parliamentary committee chaired by Jason Wood, a Liberal Party MP from the state of Victoria, proposed the plans, which have the backing of party leader Matthew Guy.

The reaction follows four violent attacks in the suburbs of west Melbourne, including a home invasion in which a four men of African men smashed their way into a house, assaulted the 59-year-old woman inside, and held her down while up to ten cohorts ransacked the property, stealing or smashing several items and bashing down walls.

“She’s traumatised. I wonder how we’ll be able to stay here,” one family member told Australian press. “How are you meant to go back to normal after this?”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Leading Suppliers of Baby Formula Find Solution to Keep ‘Daigou’ Buyers From Emptying Supermarket Shelves and Sending the Product Back to China

Australian baby formula suppliers A2 Platinum, Aptimal and Karicare have guaranteed to get a maximum of three tins of baby formula to parents within 24 hours

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Tatt’s All, Folks: Almost Two Kiwis a Day Have Visas Cancelled in Crackdown on Foreigners With Criminal Records

Almost two New Zealanders a day are having their visas cancelled as part of a crackdown on foreigners with criminal records living in Australia.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

South Africa Train Crash: 200 Injured Near Johannesburg

Emergency services in South Africa say that at least 200 people have been injured in a train crash.

No fatalities have been reported so far in the incident in Germiston, a town around 12 miles (20 km) east of Johannesburg.

Many of the passengers were commuters on their way to work.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Julian Assange: Ecuador Seeks Mediator in ‘Unsustainable’ Standoff

Ecuador says it is considering inviting a third-party mediator to tackle its long-standing disagreement with Britain over the fate of Julian Assange.

The foreign minister said the situation was “unsustainable”.

The Wikileaks founder has been confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012, claiming political asylum.

He was originally wanted on sexual assault allegations in Sweden, which have since been dropped, but says he now fears extradition to the US.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

“It Hasn’t Stopped!” Lorry Drivers Are Attacked by Calais Migrants Every Day, Haulage Boss

LORRY drivers are being attacked on a daily basis in Calais, Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association said.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Any Republican That Will Not Pledge to Support Trump’s Border Wall Should Not be Running for Congress

Now that Donald Trump is president, he is the national leader of the Republican Party, and anyone that disagrees with his most important policy proposals should not be running for Congress. We need to send people to Washington that will help our president get things done rather than standing in the way. For decades, illegal immigrants have been pouring across our unsecured southern border, and this has created havoc in communities all across America. We must build Trump’ s wall, and we must insist that every Republican that wants to run for a seat in Congress take a pledge to support the president in this endeavor.

Those of us that are pro-Trump are certainly not against immigrants. After all, Trump’ s own wife is an immigrant. We just want everyone to come in through the front door, but right now we have a system of immigration that is completely backwards. We have made it exceedingly difficult to try to come in through the front door, and meanwhile we have left the back door completely wide open. Drug dealers, gang members, terrorists, sexual predators and other lawbreakers have taken advantage of our lack of security, and this must end immediately.

I am a 100% pro-Trump candidate for Congress, and if I am fortunate enough to win my race I will do whatever I can to get Trump’ s wall built. My stand is getting noticed all over the nation, and at this point big names such as Ann Coulter are supporting my campaign for Congress.

President Trump isn’ t asking much. According to Time Magazine, he has requested just 18 billion dollars over the next decade to extend and repair the current wall…

The Trump administration has proposed spending $18 billion over 10 years to significantly extend the border wall with Mexico, providing one of its most detailed blueprints of how the president hopes to carry out a signature campaign pledge.

The proposal by Customs and Border Protection calls for 316 miles (505 kilometers) of additional barrier by September 2027, bringing total coverage to 970 miles (1,552 kilometers), or nearly half the border, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the matter.

In addition to that, Trump wants another 17 billion dollars in additional border security spending. So in all, Trump is only asking for 33 billion dollars over the next ten years. The following comes from the Daily Mail…

The Customs and Border Protection document calls for a total of $33 billion in new border spending, including $18 billion for the wall, $5.7 billion for technology gear, $1 billion for road construction and maintenance and $8.5 billion for 5,000 new Border Patrol agents, 2,500 border inspectors and other personnel, the U.S. official said.

This is a very, very reasonable proposal. But at this point the Democrats don’ t seem likely to budge. In fact, they are insisting on making DACA legislation a part of the upcoming budget agreement in January, but they aren’ t willing to give Trump any money for a border wall in order to make that happen.

Fortunately, Trump is not going to be pushed around. According to CNS News, Trump has made it abundantly clear that there will not be any action on DACA unless the Democrats are willing to agree to money for his border wall…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Czech President: ‘10 Million Migrants From Africa Could Come to European Union’

Czech President Milos Zeman has warned the European Union (EU) that unless the bloc fortifies its external borders, up to 10 million Africans will illegally migrate to the continent in the next few years.

Giving his weekly address on the Prague television station Barradov, President Zeman said: “If the European Union does not [gain] the courage to strengthen its external borders, for which it constantly chatters but does nothing, we will have 10 million refugees [from Africa] in the course of the [coming] years.”

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

France: Record 100,000 Asylum Applications in 2017

The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) has announced that France received a record-breaking 100,412 asylum applications in 2017, with many of the asylum seekers coming from Africa.

The asylum application total shows an increase of 17 per cent compared to figures from 2016 and has also seen the emergence of asylum seekers from new origin countries, mainly in Africa, Le Monde reports.

Among the top 10 nationalities seeking asylum, African countries made up over half of the nations of origin. The largest and fourth overall were asylum seekers from Sudan, followed by Guineans and other asylum seekers from French-speaking countries like Ivory Coast and Congo.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Italian Archbishop: Uncontrolled Immigration Will ‘Crush’ European Society

Immigration must be “rational,” says the fiery Italian archbishop Luigi Negri, because uncontrolled immigration leads to the “crushing and extermination of our society.”

“You can’t just open the doors, as if it were a party,” Negri states in an interview with Italian media Tuesday. It is essential to “highlight the economic, human and cultural costs of immigration,” since failing to do so means caving into “ideology.”

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Mass Migration: The European Commission’s “New Norm”

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, recently published a startling opinion, advocating for more immigration as an inescapable reality to which European citizens should just adapt without any further discussion.

The article illustrates much of what is wrong with European institutions, in particular the European Commission, a mixture of bureaucratic arrogance, false creed based on dogma rather than facts, and a disdain for democratic debate. The Commission, based in Brussels, is not elected but, according to EU treaties, it has a monopoly — yes, a monopoly — on initiating legislation at the European level. Each Commissioner is an appointed bureaucrat, one for each member state — often a former top politician, now sidelined in his country of origin, therefore with very little democratic legitimacy.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Orbán: Europe’s Migrants Aren’t Muslim Refugees, They’re ‘Muslim Invaders’

Calling multiculturalism an “illusion”, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed the Merkel government’s “chaotic and anarchic” migrant policy, which led to a flow of “Muslim invaders” entering the European Union.

Responding to the suggestion that Hungary was not showing sufficient “solidarity” with the European Union because Germany accepted 2 million migrants but Hungary will not accept 2,000, Prime Minister Orbán told German tabloid BILD on Sunday: “The difference is: They wanted the migrants. And we do not.”

“We do our work by protecting the external Schengen border with Serbia. That cost us an extra one billion euros since 2015 and Brussels will not reimburse us one cent,” Orbán added.

Asked why Hungarians are resistant to the bloc’s forced migrant redistribution policy, Mr. Orbán asserted that, “We do not consider these people to be Muslim refugees,” but as “Muslim invaders”. Drawing attention to the fact that migrants had travelled through safe countries before heading to more prosperous parts of Europe, the prime minister added that many are “economic migrants” and not in genuine need of asylum.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Overton Window Shifts as Orban Throws Down the Gauntlet on Muslim Migration, EU Demands Demographic Decline

Europe may be turning the corner on mass migration — at least in the popular discourse around the subject.

Writing — in a letter to the editor of the Financial Times — reader Will Thompson stated yesterday:

Sir, I read with great interest your report “Hungary and Poland fight their corner in clash with EU” (January 3), highlighting the competing visions among members of what the EU should look like. Perhaps certain matters such as immigration and judicial reform as raised by Viktor Orban and Mateusz Morawiecki should be reserved for the state. I can’t help but feel that if only these subjects had been discussed and taken seriously earlier within the EU we might not have ended up with a Brexit.

The fact that such a letter is being published in a key globalist outlet in 2018 is symptomatic of the overreach of the establishment in recent years. As Mr. Thompson says, without a push towards a United States of Europe, the European Common Market or a free trading Europe would almost certainly have remained attractive enough to Britons to not vote for Brexit, or have a referendum at all.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Pope Francis: Migrants Must ‘Conform to the Rules of the Country’ Hosting Them

Pope Francis returned to the topic of immigration Monday, insisting that migrants have an obligation to respect the laws of their host country as well as its cultural identity.

Those who are welcomed, the Pope said in his yearly address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, “must necessarily conform to the rules of the country offering them hospitality, with respect for its identity and values.”

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Virgin Trains Stops Selling Daily Mail, ‘Concern Over Editorial Position on Immigration’

Virgin Trains has stopped selling the Daily Mail because it disagrees with its editorial line on immigration, LGBT rights and unemployment.

Virgin has now hopped aboard the bandwagon of attempting to censor the British press. A statement from the company reads: “Different viewpoints are often valuable, and it’s certainly true that we choose to take our news from different sources depending on our view of the world.

“Thousands of people choose to read the Daily Mail every day. But they will no longer be reading it courtesy of VT (Virgin Trains). There’s been considerable concern raised by colleagues about the Mail’s editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights, and unemployment. We’ve decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs. We won’t be stocking the Daily Mail for sale or as a giveaway.

“We regularly review the products we have on sale for customers onboard our trains, and after listening to feedback from our people we have decided that we will no longer stock copies of the Daily Mail on services on our west coast route.”

Obviously this has nothing at all to do with the fact the Mail supported Brexit and Virgin founder Richard Branson is a staunch Remoaner who wanted a second referendum.

What a sad state of affairs when a major company seeks to silence a publication it disagrees with and stifle the free press. What will Virgin’s customers make of this?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Fired Engineer Damore Sues Google for Discrimination Against White Male Conservatives

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

It has been five months since James Damore was fired from his job as an engineer at Google after posting a memo to an internal message board that criticized the company’s diversity policies for ignoring differences between the sexes (and daring to use facts to back up his statements on the differences between the sexes).

And now, amid the ever-escalating identity politics of the new normal America, TechCrunch reports Damore, along with another former Google engineer named David Gudeman, who spent three years with Google, working on a query engine, has filed a class action lawsuit against the company in Santa Clara Superior Court in Northern California.

His claims: that Google unfairly discriminates against white, conservative men.

The lawsuit, filed by Dhillon Law Group, says it aims to represent all employees of Google who’ve been discriminated against due to their “perceived conservative political views by Google,” due to “their male gender by Google” and “due to their Caucasian race by Google.”

TechCrunch notes that Damore isn’t holding back any punches here.

According to his filing, Google employs “illegal hiring quotas to fill its desired percentages of women and favored minority candidates, and openly shames managers of business units who fail to meet their quotas — in the process, openly denigrating male and Caucasian employees as less favored than others.”

The suit also claims that “numerical presence of women celebrated at Google” was based “solely due to their gender” while the “presence of Caucasians and males was mocked with ‘boos’ during companywide weekly meetings.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Meet M77232917, The Newly Discovered Largest Prime Number

At more than 23m digits long, the number is something of a beast. But for mathematicians, the latest discovery from a global gang of enthusiasts is a thing of beauty: the largest prime number ever found.

Known simply as M77232917, the figure is arrived at by calculating two to the power of 77,232,917 and subtracting one, leaving a gargantuan string of 23,249,425 digits. The result is nearly one million digits longer than the previous record holder discovered in January 2016.

           — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago [Return to headlines]
 

Understanding the Meltdown and Spectre Exploits: Intel, AMD, Arm, And Nvidia

After two days of whirlwind developments, we finally have more of a complete picture of the new vulnerabilities that impact processors from the leading vendors. Reports initially surfaced two days ago that Intel’s processors are susceptible to a new hardware-based bug that cannot be patched with a mere microcode update. A report from The Register, based in part on a blog post, said that incoming Windows and Linux patches would correct the vulnerability but come with a 5-30% performance loss depending on the workload.

The industry remained silent due to NDAs that were scheduled to expire on January 9, the same date as a round of patches were scheduled to appear. After a day of silence while its stock slumped, Intel issued a statement and claimed the issue is not a hardware bug. Intel also announced that it’s working with other titans of the industry, such as AMD and ARM Holdings, to “develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively.” AMD has since released a statement and claimed that it has minimal exposure to the primary vulnerability.

The root issues behind the vulnerabilities weren’t clearly defined at the time, but a slew of releases from several of the parties involved, along with Google’s Project Zero team, have shed light on two new exploits that have served as the catalyst for the recent developments. We’ll cover the new exploits below; then we’ll get to the updates from Intel, ARM, AMD, and Nvidia.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

2 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/9/2018

  1. Luigi Negri for pope! And Dimitris Avramopoulos can’t honestly believe anyone’s gonna buy that rhetoric anymore.

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