Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/17/2019

Hundreds of passengers were evacuated from a train in Germany after a pistol was found in a toilet when the train was in the station at Frankfurt airport. A cleaner found the weapon, and it was unloaded, but the authorities decided to exercise an abundance of caution.

In other news, a transgender “woman” in Scotland who molested a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet in Kirkaldy was released from custody without serving any time in prison.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, 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 Crash is Coming: The Fed Went Dovish Because it Sees Systemic Risk
» The Most Dangerous Thing the Fed Ever Did Was Convince Investors That “It’s Different This Time”
 
USA
» Alyssa Milano Explains the Constitution to All the ‘2A Zealots’
» Crazy or a Traitor: Chuckie Schumer Praises North Korea and Middle East
» Democratic Rep. To Introduce Resolution to Make Climate Change a National Emergency
» Facebook Bans Jussie Wrongthink
» Hateful, Accusatory Tweets by Democrat 2020 Presidential Hopefuls and Friends Over Jussie Smollett Hoax
» How to Detect Truth From Lies in the Age of Fake News
» Man Jailed After Police Find 3D Printed Gun and US Lawmaker Kill List
» Most Americans Don’t Realize What Companies Can Predict From Their Data
» Nancy Pelosi Wishes Everyone a “Happy Thanksgiving” During Victory Lap Speech Over Spending Bill [Video]
» Ocasio-Cortez Announces Nationwide Tour to Promote Green New Deal
» Ocasio-Cortez Delivers ‘Inaugural Address’: ‘Right to Migrate’ Not Negotiable
» Report: Pope Knew of McCarrick’s Crimes But Considered Them Unimportant
» Socialist vs. Socialist: NYC Mayor DeBlasio Furious With Ocasio-Cortez Over 25,000 Lost Amazon Jobs
» The Green New Fascist Deal
» US Investigators Probing Years of WikiLeaks Activities: Sources
» Video: White Liberal Curses Out Black Conservative Woman
 
Europe and the EU
» Bruno Ganz, Who Played Hitler in Downfall, Dies Aged 77
» Carrefour to Lay Off 4% of Italy Workforce
» EU Calls on Italy to Clarify TAV Position
» France: ‘I Do Not Recognize My Country’: Yellow Vests Who Have Lost Eyes & Limbs Demand Justice From Macron
» France: Macron Govt: 8,400 Yellow Vest Protesters Arrested Since Movement Began
» Germany: Hundreds Evacuated After Gun Found on Train at Airport
» Germany: Merkel Too Toxic for Her Own Party
» Interview With a French Yellow Vest Protester: “We Will Fight Until the Elites Fall”
» Italy: De Luca Asks for Campania Autonomy
» Italy: Mattarella Says Concerned by EU Verbal Excesses
» Italy Challenges Amsterdam Getting EMA
» Juncker Changes Rules So EU Commissioners Can Take Sides in Elections
» M5S Starts EP Candidate Selection Featuring Merit System
» No Intention of Leaving Europe — Salvini
» One Arrested in Spain for Indoctrinating and Recruiting Young People to the So-Called Islamic State
» Pope Francis Calls Clerical Sex Abuse an ‘Urgent’ Challenge for the Church
» Swiss Burqa Ban Campaigner Calls for Ban on Muslim Prayers in Public
» The Self-Muzzling of the Free World
» Trump to Europe: Take Back 800 ISIS Foreign Fighters or We’ll be Forced to Release Them
» UK: Brexit Boost: Nigel Farage Takes Control as 100,000 People Join New Party in One Week
» UK: Children Were Being Abused on an Industrial Scale on Corbyn’s Doorstep… Yet He Did Nothing
» UK: Pro-EU Tories Brand Grassroots Deselection Campaign ‘Purple Momentum’
» UN Denounce Right Restrictions on “Gilets Jaunes” Protesters
 
Russia
» Vladimir Putin Finds Unlikely Ally in Polish Farmers
 
South Asia
» India’s PM Modi Warns Pakistan of Strong Response to Kashmir Attack
 
Far East
» ‘Made-in-China’ Diamonds Poised to Rock Global Market
 
Australia — Pacific
» Brexit Britain Victory as Australia Pledge to Fast-Track UK Trade Deal in Event of No-Deal
» From Supermax to ‘Supermosque’: Inside Australia’s Most Secure Prison Where Islamic Terrorists Now Fill Two Thirds of the Cells — But Serial Killer Ivan Milat Says it’s Better Than Most Jails
» Some of Australia’s Top Universities Are Accused of Selling Permanent Residency and Access to Jobs to Foreign Students
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Muslim Militants Slay Missionary Priest in Burkina Faso
 
Latin America
» Enormous Earthquake Reveals Hidden ‘Mountains’ 410 Miles Underground That Could be Bigger Than Any on Earth’s Surface
» Violent Protests in Haiti Trap More Than 100 Canadian Tourists, Aid Workers
 
Immigration
» Asylum Seeker Who Was a Soldier in Iran Before Illegally Sneaking Into Australia Uses a ‘Terminator 2-Style Weapon’ To Shoot His Terrified Victim in the Back During Home Invasion
» ‘Don’t Waste Your Money’: Scott Morrison Records a Secret Video Urging Asylum Seekers and People Smugglers Not to Make the Journey to Australia Warning ‘You Will Not Succeed’
» UK: Khan’s London: Migrants Jailed for Beating Man to Death With Shears, Pick-Axe Handles in Street
 
Culture Wars
» France Changes ‘Mother’ And ‘Father’ To ‘Parent 1’ And ‘Parent 2’ Under New Law
» Scotland: No Prison for Trans ‘Woman’ Who Attacked Underage Girls in Public Toilets
 

A Crash is Coming: The Fed Went Dovish Because it Sees Systemic Risk

Yesterday’s note caught a lot of attention.

In it, we argued that investing in stocks today based on the Fed getting dovish is like buying stocks after the Bear Stearns deal: you’re buying based on a development that reveals the financial system is in serious trouble.

Remember, the Fed didn’t become dovish for no reason… it because dovish because it sees systemic risk on the horizon.

Corporate America is perched atop a debt bomb of $10 trillion, of which roughly 1/3rd is junk… meaning unlikely to be paid back.

Rather than issuing debt to build factories or expand operations, these companies have been issuing debt to buy back shares, resulting in the system being MORE leveraged today than it was in 2007.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

The Most Dangerous Thing the Fed Ever Did Was Convince Investors That “It’s Different This Time”

As the infamous quote from the movie “the Usual Suspects” goes: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Similarly, as the billionaire investor and Oaktree Capital Management founder Howard Marks explained during a recent interview with RealVision’s Grant Williams, the most dangerous trick the Federal Reserve ever pulled was to convince investors that “it’s different this time”.

That in the post-crisis era, the central bank has discovered an elixir to eliminate the business cycle, installing in its place an everlasting bull market, abetted by a “goldilocks” economy, where every dip presents an immediate buying opportunity.

Williams described Marks in their interview as “a great student of [market] cycles” before questioning whether old-school thinking about the boom-bust nature of the markets was even still relevant in the post-crisis brave new world that QE and negative interest rates have brought us.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Alyssa Milano Explains the Constitution to All the ‘2A Zealots’

On Friday night, Alyssa Milano, who hasn’t “been relevant since Who’s the Boss,” decided to explain how the 2nd Amendment works to all the “2A zealots” out there because they obviously don’t know anything about our nation’s founding documents:…

[Comment: Buffoon.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Crazy or a Traitor: Chuckie Schumer Praises North Korea and Middle East

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed on the Senate floor Thursday that North Korea, Syria and Iran are doing more to fight climate change than the Trump administration is.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Democratic Rep. To Introduce Resolution to Make Climate Change a National Emergency

“If Trump can call a national emergency for a fake crisis at the border, then surely Congress should call a national emergency for a REAL crisis”

Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer on Friday announced his intention to introduce a resolution that would make climate change a national emergency.

“If Trump can call a national emergency for a fake crisis at the border, then surely Congress should call a national emergency for a REAL crisis,” he said in a statement.

[Comment: Bolshevik. Democrats and their deep state comrades are a clear and present danger to the Constitutional Republic of the United States.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Facebook Bans Jussie Wrongthink

Facebook will not allow its users to read my commentary on Jussie Smollett’s apparent hate hoax.

Facebook will apparently not allow its users to say that police believe Smollett, a black gay actor, may have paid his two “assailants” to attack him last month, and blamed it on white Trump supporters — this, even though that is being reported by multiple national media outlets.

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

Hateful, Accusatory Tweets by Democrat 2020 Presidential Hopefuls and Friends Over Jussie Smollett Hoax

New information coming from Chicago police sources suggests that ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett orchestrated the attack he claimed was carried out by two men who yelled: “This is MAGA country!”.

The CPD has asked to interview Smollett again after they arrested and then released two Nigerian brothers. Sources say that the brothers flipped on Smollett when they were threatened with being charged with battery. As it turns out, Chicago police discovered that the brothers bought the rope used to make a noose that was placed on Smollett’s neck at some point on the night of the supposed attack. They told police officers that they purchased the rope at Ace Hardware in Chicago.

Sources say at least one of the brothers bought the rope used in the incident at Smollett’s request. The sources also say the “Empire” actor paid for the rope, which was purchased at the Crafty Beaver Hardware Store the weekend of Jan. 25. The brothers were paid $3,500 before leaving for Nigeria and were promised an additional $500 upon their return.

They left for Nigeria later in the day on Jan. 29 after the attack…

On Jan 29, 2019, almost every single 2020 presidential candidate came forward on Twitter to bravely condemn the racist, homophobic, lynching, hate crime committed against the Empire actor Jussie Smollett (that we all now know was a hoax).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

How to Detect Truth From Lies in the Age of Fake News

Paradigm of fake news demands new methods of information consumption

Will Johnson interviews John Micheal Chambers and David Robert Steele about how to overcome fake news and where to go to find the truth.

Get both sides of the story, cross examine them, find the evidence and read between the lines to find veritas.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Man Jailed After Police Find 3D Printed Gun and US Lawmaker Kill List

A Dallas man has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison after officers discovered a 3D-printed assault rifle and a hit list of US lawmakers in his backpack, despite a court order that banned him from owning a gun, stated US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.

According to Cox, Eric McGinnis obtained a barrel, tactical stock, upper receiver, and a vertical grip — and then used a 3D printer to build the gun’s lower receiver, the section of the firearm which provides housing for internal components such as the hammer, bolt, action, and firing mechanism.

He then assembled the parts into a short-barrel AR-15 rifle and traveled to a nearby woodland with what federal attorneys called an extensive “hit list” of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including their home addresses. The list was titled, “9/11/2001 list of American Terrorists.”

The arrest of McGinnis occurred in 2017 after Grand Prairie Police Department in Texas heard rapid-fire shooting in a remote area of town. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

A second examination of McGinnis’ cellphone and computer by US Capitol investigators suggested he was overly obsessed with James Hodgkinson, the shooter who wounded Rep. Steve Scalise at a GOP Congressional baseball practice in Virginia in 2007, the federal prosecutor revealed at sentencing Wednesday.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Most Americans Don’t Realize What Companies Can Predict From Their Data

For example, data about a mobile phone’s past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school.

These predictions label who you are as a person and guess what you’re likely to do in the future.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Nancy Pelosi Wishes Everyone a “Happy Thanksgiving” During Victory Lap Speech Over Spending Bill [Video]

Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (CA) has a reputation for jumbling up words and sentences. She also has a reputation for gloating after major victories over Republicans, like the time she paraded through lawmakers with a giant gavel to celebrate the passing of the disastrous and unconstitutional Obamacare mandate.

Yesterday, during another one of her victory lap speeches, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) wished everyone a “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Pelosi started by telling Americans that Democrats were saluting THEIR victory (because, as we all know, it’s never about their constituents…it’s all about the power of the party), suggesting Republicans and President Trump caved to their demands. With all of the theatrics we’ve become accustomed to seeing when Nancy addresses reporters, Pelosi told them, “We saluted our victory — or the victory for the American people — earlier with chocolate. Chocolate from California, I call it the champagne of chocolate. So again, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.” Happy Thanksgiving?” How in the world is anyone supposed to trust that this woman is capable of being third in line for President of the United States?

Pelosi then told everyone they should now go home to their loved ones.

California Rep. Pete Aguilar, who is standing to the right of Pelosi can be seen attempting to correct her, as he laughs, asking, “Thanksgiving?”

Watch the incredible moment here, captured and tweeted by CBS reporter Bo Erickson.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Ocasio-Cortez Announces Nationwide Tour to Promote Green New Deal

Plan to de-industrialize nation, implement ‘social justice’ policies being shoved down America’s throat

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is taking the Green New Deal on the road to build support for her socialist pipe dream.

“Let’s go: ‘We’re starting a 15-city tour + a 50-State campaign, starting in early primary states, to build political and public support for a Green New Deal,’“ Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Thursday.

Her tweet included a video by far-left group Now This explaining the Green New Deal, which would implement a number of “social justice” and de-industrializing policies within 12 years.

The tour is also backed by Soros-funded groups Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement.

It remains to be seen how the socialist firebrand intends to travel to those 15 cities, but it will most likely be with fossil fuel-powered transportation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared a vote would be held for the Green New Deal shortly after its disastrous unveiling, prompting many Democrats to back away from the proposal they know full well can’t be fulfilled.

[Comment: Bolshevik. Democrats and their deep state comrades are a clear and present danger to the Constitutional Republic of the United States.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Ocasio-Cortez Delivers ‘Inaugural Address’: ‘Right to Migrate’ Not Negotiable

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) delivered an “inaugural address” in her Congressional District on Saturday afternoon, declaring that issues like the “right to migrate” will not be negotiable.

Addressing hundreds of supporters in the Bronx, the freshman lawmaker even had a swearing-in ceremony before uttering mostly platitudes.

Defending the Green New Deal after she and her office botched the rollout to much ridicule this week, the Democratic-Socialist claimed that the “Green New Deal is the legislation of indigenous communities in the United states” and many others.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Report: Pope Knew of McCarrick’s Crimes But Considered Them Unimportant

French author Frédéric Martel alleges in a new book that Pope Francis had been informed that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been having sexual relations with seminarians and priests but considered this fact “insufficient to condemn him.”

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

Socialist vs. Socialist: NYC Mayor DeBlasio Furious With Ocasio-Cortez Over 25,000 Lost Amazon Jobs

Dingbat Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is having a very tough week. Her “New Green Deal” is an embarrassing joke. She just killed 25,000 jobs for New Yorker’s living in and around her district, and she’s been accused of breaking ethics rules by hiring her boyfriend to work on her congressional staff.

Watch, as Ocasio-Cortez explains why losing 25,000 jobs for New Yorker is actually a good thing and how easily she believes Democrats will replace those jobs.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

The Green New Fascist Deal

By Mark Musser

The “Green New Deal” is a fascist utopian plan written by environmentalist lawyers that is purportedly designed to tackle the global warming apocalypse which capitalism, particularly of the American kind drunk on fossil fuels, has precipitated through economic recklessness and colonial racism. CO2, a trace gas measured in parts per million, is the primary culprit of a semi-apocalyptic global warming crisis that can only be averted through an all-wise cadre of Democratic green lawyers. That such utopianism, political legalism, and apocalypticism is presented as hard science demonstrates the general madness of the present time that is largely rooted in the Social Darwinian scientism of the 1800s, wherein German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was peddling a racist political biology together with strong ecological values that he characterized as Monism — which speaks of a monistic oneness or holism with nature along totalitarian lines that modern science was supposedly offering the constituents of the Second Reich. While Haeckel coined the term “ecology” in 1866, he mixed racial eugenics with his environmentalism. Today, environmentalism proffers anti-humanism, population control, ecological totalitarianism, and indigenous multicultural tribal racism that “The New Green Deal” is chock full of.

Austrian Nazi forester Guenther Schwab (1904-2006) was one of the most successful original popularizers of apocalyptic environmentalism in the 1950s and 60s, which included the CO2 global warming scare. Thanks to the great success of Schwab’s writings, real green Nazis like Werner Haverbeck, August Haussleiter, and Werner Vogel, among others, helped him lay the foundations for the German Green Party in the late 1970s. Yet, it was German researcher Hermann Flohn (1912-97) who took the global warming theory that had been bandied around by earlier European researchers and gave it teeth to increasingly bite its way into the main storyline of the West as the 20th century drew to a close. Flohn is considered to be one of the most critically important climate scientists of the 20th century, whose research merited a number of prestigious awards.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

US Investigators Probing Years of WikiLeaks Activities: Sources

LONDON: U.S. investigators pursuing a long-running criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange have dug into the website’s activities going back years, people who have been in contact with witnesses in the case say.

American investigators are gathering information and pursuing witnesses involved in both recent WikiLeaks disclosures and the website’s large-scale postings of U.S. military and diplomatic messages over several years from 2010.

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

Video: White Liberal Curses Out Black Conservative Woman

Lefty loses it after learning not all blacks are Democrat

While at Kent State University, a white liberal student cursed out a black conservative woman for standing alongside Kaitlin Bennett.

He offered Bennett a shirt that read “F*** Donald Trump” while wearing fake news pants.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Bruno Ganz, Who Played Hitler in Downfall, Dies Aged 77

Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in the 2004 film Downfall, has died aged 77.

The Swiss actor died at home in Zurich on Friday night, his management said.

Ganz was well-known in German-language cinema and theatre and also had roles in English-language films including The Reader and The Manchurian Candidate.

His most famous role, however, was as Adolf Hitler in Downfall. One particular scene depicting Hitler in apoplectic fury became a meme and spawned thousands of parodies online.

[Comment: Article dated February 16, 2019.]

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

Carrefour to Lay Off 4% of Italy Workforce

Up to 590 staff to go

(ANSA) — Milan, February 15 — French supermarket giant Carrefour Italia is to lay off some 4% of its Italian workforce or up to 590 people, according to its 2019-2022 business plan.

The company will invest some 400 million euros to boost its network, with 300 new outlets, and e-commerce, the plan said.

Layoffs will be kept to a minimum and where possible will be on a voluntary basis, the company said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

EU Calls on Italy to Clarify TAV Position

Commission spokesperson says project remains necessary

(ANSA) — Rome, February 15 — A European Commission spokesperson on Friday called on the Italian government to clarify its stance with regard to the TAV Turin-Lyon high-speed rail link project. The Italian transport and infrastructure minister this week published a new cost-benefit analysis of the TAV that gave the project the thumbs down. The 5-Star Movement (M5S) has long been against the TAV and wants it ditched. But Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, the head of the League, the M5S’s coalition partner, has said he thinks the project should go ahead and is not convinced by the new analysis. So the future of the project is uncertain.

“We have no comments about the content of the cost-benefit analysis but the Commission was clear with the Italian authorities about the need for further clarification about how Italy intends to respect the financing agreement,” said a spokesperson for Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc. “It remains an important project for Italy, France and the EU as a trans-European project and to reinforce cohesion”.

The spokesperson also said it was impossible to rule out the hypothesis that Italy could be asked to return the European funding it has received for the project if it is halted.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

France: ‘I Do Not Recognize My Country’: Yellow Vests Who Have Lost Eyes & Limbs Demand Justice From Macron

French anti-globalist demonstrations stretching into 15th week in Paris

French protesters have gathered for the 15th week of Gilets Jaunes rallies, with the injury toll from the civil unrest resembling that of a small war. Despite pleas from victims, however, Emmanuel Macron is tightening the screws.

“This is not normal. We are in France, one of the oldest and best democracies in the world,” said Fiorina Jacob Lignier, who lost her eye at a demonstration in Paris on December 8. “We usually condemn from afar other countries where this occurs, that this is happening here is unbelievable.” Lignier, a 20-year-old philosophy student, traveled from the northern city of Amiens to march on the Champs-Elysees to protest against fuel taxes with her boyfriend, Jacob Maxime.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France: Macron Govt: 8,400 Yellow Vest Protesters Arrested Since Movement Began

The French Interior Ministry has announced that around 8,400 Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protestors have been arrested since November, while the European Parliament has finally condemned police violence against the demonstrators.

Over a three-month period, the French authorities have arrested around 8,400 Yellow Vests, of which 7,500 were placed into police custody according to new figures released by French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, Le Figaro reports.

The announcement comes after Castaner revealed that there have, so far, been 1,800 convictions of Yellow Vest activists. Most recently Yellow Vest boxer Christophe Dettinger, who fought riot police with his bare hands, was handed a 30-month prison sentence with 18 months suspended earlier this week.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Germany: Hundreds Evacuated After Gun Found on Train at Airport

BERLIN (AP) — German police say hundreds of passengers have been taken off a high-speed train at the Frankfurt airport station after a pistol was found in a toilet on board.

The train, which was travelling from Dortmund to Munich, was stopped at the station and evacuated on Saturday after a cleaner found the weapon. Police told the dpa news agency that it wasn’t loaded. It wasn’t clear how it ended up on the train.

Some 700 passengers had to leave the train, which was searched for explosives as a precaution by police using sniffer dogs.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Germany: Merkel Too Toxic for Her Own Party

Angela Merkel’s migration policies and made up hunts on migrants left her reputation in tatters in East Germany. Now her own party is afraid she will do more harm than good.

Leaders of the Christian Democratic Union are rejecting campaign help before the fall elections. Matthias Rößler, President of the State Parliament of Saxony issued the following statement: “Campaigning by the Chancellor will not help us in Saxony”.

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

Interview With a French Yellow Vest Protester: “We Will Fight Until the Elites Fall”

Exclusive interview with the French Yellow Vest ‘Pierre’ in Paris by Swedish journalist and writer Katerina Janouch.

(Pierre is not his real name — and he wants to remain anonymous because he is worried about otherwise risking his job). He wants change in France, and he has participated in most of the protests that the Yellow Vests have arranged in Paris.

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

Italy: De Luca Asks for Campania Autonomy

After Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna

(ANSA) — Naples, February 15 — Campania Governor Vincenzo De Luca on FRiday wrote to Premier Giuseppe Conte to request autonomy for the southern region after applications from the northern regions of Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna.

“We asked to be linked to the discussion regarding Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia a month ago,” he said.

“We did not receive a reply and today we will formalise the request for differentiated autonomy for Campania too according to our line: defence of national unity, parity of conditions for all Italian citizens, levels of services equal for all and penalties and rewards for all those administrators who show they are or are not able to administrate in a correct way”.

Critics say the request by the three northern regions could sound the death knell for national solidarity as well as creating second-class citizens.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Mattarella Says Concerned by EU Verbal Excesses

After Slovenia protested Salvini’s Auschwitz comparison

(ANSA) — Rome, February 14 — President Sergio Mattarella replied to a Slovenian complaint about Italian officials’ statements on Foibe Remembrance Day by saying he was concerned about verbal excesses in the EU, the office of Slovenian President Borut Pahor said Thursday.

“I share Your concerns regarding the climate that is sometimes registered in Europe today”, Mattarella wrote in his letter to Pahor.

“I find, in fact, a raising of tones myself also, a lower consideration for the opinions of others, verbal excesses that should not have a place in our common European home”.

On the remembrance day for the thousands of Italian victims of Tito’s partisans, Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the children who died in the Foibe mountain pits and the children of Auschwitz “are the same”.

Deputy Forza Italia President Antonio Tajani, the European Parliament President, meanwhile ended a speech by saying “long live Italian Istria and Dalmatia”.

These statements spurred protests from Slovenia and Croatia.

The Foibe is the name given to the mass murder of Italian people in Venezia Giulia, Istria and Dalmatia, mostly by Yugoslav Partisans, during and after the Second World War.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy Challenges Amsterdam Getting EMA

Appeal lodged with EU Court of Justice says Moavero

(ANSA) — Rome, February 13 — The Italian government is challenging the decision to make Amsterdam the new seat of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which was forced to move from London because of Brexit, Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi said in a statement on Wednesday. The Italian State Attorney’s department has presented an appeal to the EU Court of Justice. Amsterdam was awarded the EMA over Milan in a tie-breaking lottery in 2017.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Juncker Changes Rules So EU Commissioners Can Take Sides in Elections

European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker has changed the rules governing the political activity of European Union Commissioners, allowing them to actively campaign in the upcoming EU Parliament elections.

Formerly the EU Commission, an unelected body which acts as the bloc’s executive and is the sole initiator of EU-level laws, was regarded as technocratic rather than overtly political, and not supposed to take partisan political stances of its own volition — at least in theory.

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

M5S Starts EP Candidate Selection Featuring Merit System

Graduates, people with language skills to get ‘credits’

(ANSA) — Strasbourg, February 13 — The 5-Star Movement (M5S) on Wednesday kicked off the process to select its MEP candidates for May’s European elections.

It will be possible to make a bid to be a candidate via the M5S’s Rousseau IT system until February 25.

The process features an innovative merit system in which candidates are awarded credits for various factors, such experience of volunteering for the M5S, having a degree and good foreign language skills.

The budding MEPs with more credits will appear higher up on the M5S’s list of possible candidates for the selection process, via a vote of M5S members.

The rules stated that M5S leader Luigi Di Maio will have the final word on which candidates run and who heads the M5S candidate lists. It said the M5S candidates who are elected will have to put 1,000 euros of their monthly MEP salary into a fund that the movement donates to causes for the benefit of the public. Candidates have to provide proof they do not have a criminal record and anyone who has stood for office for another party since the M5S was formed in 2009 is not be eligible.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

No Intention of Leaving Europe — Salvini

Want to change, improve it not abandon it says League leader

(ANASA) — Rome, February 15 — Italy has no intention of leaving the European Union, Deputy Premier and Euroskeptic League leader Matteo Salvini said Friday after the League’s economic pointsman Claudio Borghi said Rome should exit the EU if it is “still toxic” after May’s European elections.

“We have no intention of leaving Europe, we want to change it, improve it bit not abandon it,” said Salvini, who is also interior minister.

League economy pointman Borghi said earlier Friday that Italy should consider leaving the EU if the bloc does not change radically following the May 26 European elections. “I think that this is the last chance. If, after the European elections, the same mandarins led by Germany are the ones driving the economic, social and migratory policies, for the sole benefit of Germany and to our detriment, I’ll say we should leave,” Borghi said.

“We either manage to change it or we’ll have to come out”.

The League MP said the EU project was a “failure” and “toxic for Italy”.

“If the environment remains toxic, I’ll say let’s get out,” he said. Rome should say clearly if it wants to exit the European Union, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said.

“Let the Italian government say clearly whether it wants to leave the euro and the European Union,” Tajani said on Twitter.

“Too many ambiguities and ill-considered declarations only cause harm to Italy and the Italians”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

One Arrested in Spain for Indoctrinating and Recruiting Young People to the So-Called Islamic State

Europol supported Policia Nacional (Spanish National Police) in arresting a man in Ceuta (Spain) suspected of indoctrinating young people and promoting and disseminating jihadist terrorist propaganda. Police officers also carried out a search of his house.

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

Pope Francis Calls Clerical Sex Abuse an ‘Urgent’ Challenge for the Church

ROME — Pope Francis has asked Catholics to pray for an upcoming Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse, saying he intended to convoke the meeting as an act of “forceful pastoral responsibility.”

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

Swiss Burqa Ban Campaigner Calls for Ban on Muslim Prayers in Public

One of the key figures behind a successful campaign to have burqas banned in the Swiss canton of Ticino now wants Muslims banned from praying in public.

The move by political maverick Giorgio Ghiringhelli comes in the wake of a number of social media posts in the Italian-speaking canton showing photos of Muslims praying in the street and referring to the region as “Ticinistan”.

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

The Self-Muzzling of the Free World

To attend a meeting of the Danish Free Debate Society several years ago in Copenhagen, my name had to be submitted to the police in advance. A motley crew of academics, journalists, activists, and ordinary folks, the society meets regularly and informally to discuss books and political controversies. The gathering that cold December evening took place in a cozy walk-up apartment, where the subjects of conversation were a recently published tome on the history of free speech in Denmark and a biography of a wartime collaborationist politician. Over mulled wine and snacks, about 15 guests took part in a series of spirited debates that lasted into the wee hours.

These are not particularly inflammatory topics. And normally, meetings of the society do not take place under the watchful eye of the Danish security services. But in attendance that night was Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who, in 2007, published three drawings of a dog with the face of the Prophet Muhammad. Vilks started to receive death threats and has lived under total police protection ever since.

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

Trump to Europe: Take Back 800 ISIS Foreign Fighters or We’ll be Forced to Release Them

Late Saturday evening President Trump lashed out at allies Britain, France, and Germany via twitter related to the United States’syria withdrawal. He urged European nations to take responsibility for their own captured foreign fighters in Syria by repatriating and prosecuting them; otherwise, Trump warned, the terrorists could “permeate Europe” upon their release.

“The Caliphate is ready to fall,” Trump tweeted. “The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them…” He said that the US “does not want to watch” Islamic State (or ISIS) “permeate Europe,” which he indicated would be the inevitable outcome.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Brexit Boost: Nigel Farage Takes Control as 100,000 People Join New Party in One Week

NIGEL Farage’s new Brexit Party has recruited a massive 100,000 members just one week after being registered — and even before the party formally launched or even opened an office.

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

UK: Children Were Being Abused on an Industrial Scale on Corbyn’s Doorstep… Yet He Did Nothing

Much of Corbyn’s Islington North constituency was made up of white English and Irish workers alongside immigrants. Most inhabited either unrepaired private houses or dilapidated council estates. They suffered bad schools, stretched health services and one of the most corrupt Labour councils in the country.

But Corbyn never issued press releases about local issues. His frequent publicity flyers were about Palestine, Ireland, the Western Sahara or Nicaragua. He seemed oblivious to Islington being ranked as London’s worst borough for social services, housing, education and street maintenance.

Under Margaret Hodge, the council leader between 1982 and 1992, the People’s Republic of Islington boasted a red flag fluttering above the town hall and a bust of Lenin inside.

Despite levying London’s highest council tax, nearly half of its residents lived in 35,000 council houses plagued by crime, drugs, damp and dilapidation because Islington’s unionised labour force refused to undertake repairs…

Most shamefully, he didn’t seem to care about the systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable children in Islington’s residential homes, all of which were staffed by council employees, members of his old union, NUPE.

Horrifying evidence of sex orgies run from a ‘hot house’ on Islington’s Elthorne estate was exposed.

Children had been rented out from a brothel to paedophiles.

Among the many victims was Vivian Loki, a 17-year-old girl whose decomposed body was discovered on the estate six months after her murder by a paedophile.

Further north, at Gisburne House, another Islington home, children were being abused on an industrial scale. ‘All this,’ Islington social worker Liz Davies discovered, ‘was happening on Corbyn’s doorstep. He knew all about it because it was raised by [Conservative MP] Geoffrey Dickens in the Commons’.

In October 1992, five Islington council social workers, led by Liz Davies, confronted Corbyn in his office at the Red Rose Community Centre.

By then, dozens of drugged, hungry and distressed young people of both sexes living in 12 council homes were being routinely raped by council employees.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Pro-EU Tories Brand Grassroots Deselection Campaign ‘Purple Momentum’

Pro-EU Tory MPs are panicking over a grassroots campaign for their local constituency associations to deselect them as parliamentary candidates.

Some EU loyalists within the Tory parliamentary party, effectively led by former Attorney-General Dominic Grieve MP, have gone a step further than their largely Remain-voting colleagues by openly repudiating the British people’s vote to Leave the European Union and calling for a second referendum.

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

UN Denounce Right Restrictions on “Gilets Jaunes” Protesters

The right to protest in France has been disproportionately curtailed during the recent “gilets jaunes” protests and the authorities should rethink their law enforcement policies to guarantee the exercise of freedoms, say a group of UN human rights experts.

“Since the start of the yellow vest protest movement in November 2018, we have received serious allegations of excessive use of force. More than 1,700 people have been injured as a result of the protests across the country,” the experts said.

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

Vladimir Putin Finds Unlikely Ally in Polish Farmers

Poland is rarely an advocate of moves that might help Moscow. But as its farmers suffer from EU sanctions against Russia and fear incoming agribusiness, Putin’s anti-sanctions coalition has garnered an unlikely ally.

Several thousand Polish farmers descended on the president’s residence in Warsaw, demanding the government restart trade with Russia and restrict imports of food products from Western Europe.

“We have always exported our apples to Russia,” Agnieszka Jaworska, who owns and runs an orchard 50 kilometers (35 miles) south of Warsaw, told DW. Jaworska says incomes in the sector have halved since the Russian counter embargo was imposed in 2014. “Prices dropped dramatically, by over 50 percent.”

“We were the only business affected. We are paying the price. Russia is building its pipeline to Germany, but we are paying the price. I am against this. It’s not fair,” she added.

           — Hat tip: C. Cantoni [Return to headlines]
 

India’s PM Modi Warns Pakistan of Strong Response to Kashmir Attack

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan on Friday to expect a strong response to a suicide attack that killed 44 paramilitary policemen in Kashmir, ratcheting up tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The car bomb attack on a security convoy on Thursday was the worst in decades of insurgency in the disputed region. India said it had “incontrovertible evidence” of Pakistani involvement, a statement quickly rejected by Islamabad.

“We will give a befitting reply, our neighbour will not be allowed to de-stabilise us,” Modi said in a speech, after meeting security advisers to discuss options.

The attack comes months before national elections in India.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

‘Made-in-China’ Diamonds Poised to Rock Global Market

A diamond in the rough can fetch over $2,000 per carat. These precious stones are mined deep within the Earth where they were forged in extreme pressure and heat over thousands of years. However, companies in mainland China have now mastered advanced technology to manufacture them en masse in several weeks or even in days, with products almost indistinguishable from natural ones, reported Xinhua News Agency.

China, a significant consumer of mined diamonds, has a decent chance of becoming a large supplier of synthetic gems and could reshape the entire global diamond industry, analysts warn.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Brexit Britain Victory as Australia Pledge to Fast-Track UK Trade Deal in Event of No-Deal

AUSTRALIA will fast-track a trade deal with Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the nation’s trade minister has pledged in a show of support to its UK allies.

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

From Supermax to ‘Supermosque’: Inside Australia’s Most Secure Prison Where Islamic Terrorists Now Fill Two Thirds of the Cells — But Serial Killer Ivan Milat Says it’s Better Than Most Jails

The High Risk Management Correctional Centre at Goulburn — better known as Supermax — is home to some of the most dangerous men in Australia.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Some of Australia’s Top Universities Are Accused of Selling Permanent Residency and Access to Jobs to Foreign Students

Some top Australian universities have been accused of selling permanent residence to foreign students by taking advantage of the country’s visa laws.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Muslim Militants Slay Missionary Priest in Burkina Faso

A group of Islamic terrorists opened fire on a customs post in southern Burkina Faso Friday, slaying a missionary priest as well as four customs officials, Vatican News reported Saturday.

Father Antonio César Fernandez Fernandez, a Spanish priest of the Salesian order, had been working as a missionary in Africa for the last 37 years and helped to found the first Salesian community in Togo in 1982.

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

Enormous Earthquake Reveals Hidden ‘Mountains’ 410 Miles Underground That Could be Bigger Than Any on Earth’s Surface

In 1994, a huge 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck a sparsely populated region in Bolivia at a depth of around 400 miles below sea level. Now, an international team of scientists has analyzed data from this event to uncover previously unidentified “mountains” deep within Earth’s interior.

Most of us were taught in school that Earth is divided into different layers: an inner and outer core, the mantle and the crust. But this simplifies the picture slightly because, according to scientists, there is another layer called the “transition zone,” which splits the mantle in two.

For a study published in the journal Science, the team from Princeton University wanted to determine the roughness of the transition zones at the top and bottom-which lie at depths of 410 kilometers (255 miles) and 660 kilometers (410 miles) respectively. (The bottom of the transition zone is often referred to as the “660-km boundary.”)

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Violent Protests in Haiti Trap More Than 100 Canadian Tourists, Aid Workers

MONTREAL — Ottawa-based physician Emilio Bazile says food is running low for him and his 10-member medical team who have been trapped in southwest Haiti after protesters blocked major highways across the Caribbean country in an effort to pressure President Jovenel Moise to resign.

Bazile and three members of his group from the Maritimes are among more than 100 Canadians stuck in Haiti following violent protests that have claimed several lives over the past week.

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

Asylum Seeker Who Was a Soldier in Iran Before Illegally Sneaking Into Australia Uses a ‘Terminator 2-Style Weapon’ To Shoot His Terrified Victim in the Back During Home Invasion

A masked ex-Iranian soldier blasted a man in the back with a ‘Terminator 2’-styled rifle during a terrifying home invasion in Melbourne.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

‘Don’t Waste Your Money’: Scott Morrison Records a Secret Video Urging Asylum Seekers and People Smugglers Not to Make the Journey to Australia Warning ‘You Will Not Succeed’

In an attempt to stop people smugglers coming to Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison recorded the video with a clear message — people smugglers will not succeed.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

UK: Khan’s London: Migrants Jailed for Beating Man to Death With Shears, Pick-Axe Handles in Street

Three Romanian migrants have been imprisoned for beating a man to death with shears and pick-axe handles in the street in Ilford, London.

Fellow Romanian Sandel Serbu, 36, was ambushed by brothers Razvan Vladescu, 27, and Araman-Nardi Stoica, 25, and their relative Ionut Vasile, 28, according to an official statement from London’s Metropolitan Police Force.

The three men had tracked Serbu on a night out on November 12th 2017, apparently seeking revenge for an incident in which he had punched Vladescu at the Global night club on Ilford High Road.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France Changes ‘Mother’ And ‘Father’ To ‘Parent 1’ And ‘Parent 2’ Under New Law

The French Parliament has voted to banish the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from official paperwork in the education system.

The new naming convention is aimed at ending discrimination against same sex parents but critics argue that it “dehumanises” parenthood and may lead to rows over who gets classified as ‘Parent 1.’

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

Scotland: No Prison for Trans ‘Woman’ Who Attacked Underage Girls in Public Toilets

A trans “woman” was allowed to walk free from Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court in Scotland after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket restroom.

The attacker, whose name is given as “Katie Dolatowski”, waited for the young victim to come out of a toilet cubicle at a Morrisons supermarket in Kirkcaldy, Fife, then grabbed her by the face and forced her back inside.

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

8 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/17/2019

  1. Isn’t it tragic that it takes one form of totalitarism to conquer another form of totalitarism:
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-cyber/china-surveillance-firm-tracking-millions-in-xinjiang-researcher-idUSKCN1Q60CG

    I have no idea how a Western nation is ever going to deal with this, who values the ‘human rights’ of religious fanatics higher than those of their victims (both actual and potential as per their commitments cast in stone forever). China may more resemble an insect state than anything we consider human, but like those, it is programmed to survive.

  2. Ha! My familiar conspiracy therapists call the Chinese: insectoids.

    Sometimes I read news from China – this is a disgusting schizoid civilization. Chinese mandarins do not know the measures when they want to humiliate a person.

  3. https://twitter.com/OrwellNGoode/status/1097488159322066944
    …The fact that people are more terrified of an overused six-letter word than tackling a barbaric practice tells you everything you need to know about how cowardly British society has become.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1088494/racism-fears-female-genital-mutilation-uk-news
    ===============================
    I think the problem is not cowardice.
    You are just tired of “aliens.”
    You do not need them in any form. With FGM, or without FGM … you do not want them under any sauce …

    • Apologies to those who know this story already; in London’s Trafalgar Square is a statue of General Sir Charles Napier, early nineteenth century British military commander and colonial administrator in India.

      Some Hindu priests complained to him that the British had banned the practice of sattee (burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre), which they said was their custom. Napier said “I too have a custom: if any man here burns a woman alive, I will hang him. So build your fire, and I will build my gallows next to it”. We could do with him now.

          • I have no idea. I am not responsible for the actions of Soviet soldiers. In any case, they did not run away from my grandfathers. Maybe because the Germans did not behave like gentlemen in the occupied territories. My Belarusian grandmother talked about forcing girls to cohabit with them.

            There is no propaganda in this photo. I just wanted to point out the level of social degradation.
            No one else has the honor.
            And you are not responsible for the actions of these soldiers.

            It has always amused me how people identify themselves as a national or religious group and project all their problems. I think it is unnecessary.

            For example, I recognize only personal responsibility, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” – so it seems written in the bible.

          • If there was no propaganda in the photo, why link to it?

            Like it or not, human beings are inherently social. They enter the world ready to connect with those around them– for better or worse. The failure to connect results in feral children.

            I “recognize” more than “personal responsibility”, since I am part of the whole, whatever ‘whole’ that may be. The best-known iteration of that belief in English is from John Donne.

            For Whom the Bell Tolls

            No man is an island,
            Entire of itself.
            Each is a piece of the continent,
            A part of the main.
            If a clod be washed away by the sea,
            Europe is the less.
            As well as if a promontory were.
            As well as if a manor of thine own
            Or of thine friend’s were.
            Each man’s death diminishes me,
            For I am involved in mankind.
            Therefore, send not to know
            For whom the bell tolls,
            It tolls for thee.

            School children were once expected to memorize that poem and internalize its sentiments.

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