Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/15/2019

Today’s devastating fire at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris miraculously spared much of the interior, as well as the stained glass windows. President Emmanuel Macron vowed that the cathedral would be rebuilt.

In other news, a Florida man threatened to destroy the town of Indiatlantic with an army of turtles.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Dean, Dora, 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
» Alan Greenspan: Economy Will be Crushed “Very Dramatically” Because of Entitlements
» How Your 2019 Taxes Will be Spent
» Rabobank: MMT is “A Red-Pill/Blue-Pill Moment for Many”
» Republican Indifference on Deficits is Empowering the Socialists
 
USA
» “Big Brother is Watching”: Facebook ‘Accidentally’ Includes Secret Orwellian Messages on VR Controllers
» 30 Extremely Bizarre “Florida Man” Stories That Prove That America is in Far More Trouble Than We Thought
» AOC, Tlaib Met With AMP Members During Palestine Advocacy Day
» As Policymakers Embrace Transportation Innovation, Rail Gets the Cold Shoulder
» Border Collie Caught in Video Saving Life of Chihuahua Friend…
» Boston Globe Writer Suggests That Waiters ‘Tamper’ With Food of Trump Officials
» CBS Drama ‘The Good Fight’ Tweet With ‘Assassinate Trump’ Sparks Calls for Secret Service Investigation
» Either Facebook is Building Yet Another Massive Bit Barn in Iowa, And Doesn’t Want You to Know About It…. Or This is a Massive, Massive Coincidence. What’s a Zuckerberg? We’re Siculus!
» Florida Man Threatened to Destroy Town With Army of Turtles: Police
» Honor Killings in Phoenix
» Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli Plead “Not Guilty” In College Admissions Scandal
» Pelosi Orders Capitol Hill Police to Beef Up Security for Rep. Omar
» Pinkerton: Ilhan Omar is a Game-Changer for Democrats— And Not in a Good Way
» Redacted Mueller Report to be Released to Congress & Public on Thursday
» Reuters Propaganda Headline About Boy Thrown From Mall Balcony is Why People Detest the Media
» Stoned at Work
» Student Charged With Assault for Attacking Daily Wire Journalist
» The Left Officially Loses Its Mind
» ‘William Who?’ — Former Massachusetts Gov. To Challenge Trump for Republican Nomination
» Workers Find Dozens of Alleged Secret Graves at Juvenile Institution Where Boys Were Tortured, Raped
 
Canada
» Canada Lawmaker Says Trudeau’s Warning Against White Supremacy is Ethnic Attack
» Jason Kenney Will Win the Alberta Election in a Landslide. Here’s What He Should Do on Day One
» Montreal Terrorist Considered Targeting U.S. College and ‘Gay Club’ Before Attacking Airport
 
Europe and the EU
» Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Invited to Speak at England’s Glastonbury Festival
» Anger as France Sees 10 Catholic Churches Attacked in One Week — ‘God Will Forgive, Not Me’
» BuzzFeed Caught in Huge Lie About Notre Dame Fire
» Copenhagen in Flames After Right-Wing Protesters Provocatively Throw the Quran on the Ground
» EU Election Polls: Establishment Set to ‘Perform Poorly’, 29% Combined Back UKIP, Brexit Party
» France: Notre-Dame Cathedral: Firefighters Tackle Blaze in Paris
» France: Attacks Against Jews & Christians Continue to Rise
» France: “Paris is Beheaded”: Macron Vows to Rebuild Notre Dame After Horrific Fire; Interior Largely Spared
» Germany: Talk of ‘European Army’ Was Meant ‘Allegorically’
» ISIS Plans to Copy Paris Bataclan Massacre With a Swathe of Fresh Attacks Across Europe Are Revealed on a Hard Drive Dropped by Jihadis Fighting in Their Final Syrian Stronghold
» NATO Member Norway Admits it Cannot Defend Itself
» Sweden Orders ‘Arrest in Absentia’ of Russian Dad Who Took Kids Back From Muslim Foster Family and Fled to Poland
» Tony Blair Pleads for EU Referendum Re-Run So People Can ‘Reach the Right Conclusion’
» Tyranny, Oppression, Death and Destruction: The End Products of Democratic Socialism
 
North Africa
» Egypt Optimistic About Red Sea Exploration Prospects
 
Middle East
» Lebanese Patriarch Pleads for Repatriation of Syrian Refugees
» Red Cross Staff Kidnapped by ISIS: Charity Reveals Three Aid Workers Including Woman From New Zealand Were Seized in Syria Five Years Ago and Held in Jihadi John Jail as They Appeal for Information on the Hostages’ Whereabouts
» ‘We’ve Been Wanting to Come Home for a Very Long Time’: Children of Notorious Australian Terrorist Khaled Sharrouf Break Their Silence as They Describe the Horrors of Living Under Islamic State
 
Russia
» Russia Warns “New World Order” Being Formed
 
South Asia
» Bloody Jewel in Crown of British Empire: How India Was Mistreated During Colonial Rule
 
Far East
» Amazon Reviews Are Not to be Trusted: Report
 
Australia — Pacific
» From 24,000 Tonnes of Steel Reduced to Just 860, Children’s Nappies Made in China and Fears for Future Tradies: How Australia’s Manufacturing Industry is Being Sold to Asia — and Why Your Job Could be Next
» What Really Happens to Your Recycling: Factory Owner Lifts the Lid on Australia’s Great Plastic Waste Con and Reveals Nearly All Reusable Products End Up in Local Tips — or Shipped to ‘Dumping Grounds’ In South-East Asia
 
Latin America
» Ecuador’s Moreno: Assange Asylum Revoked Because He Used Embassy as ‘Center for Spying’
» Julian Assange’s Lawyer: Poop-Smearing Story is Total Crap
» Mexican Catholic Church Decries Government Failure to Halt Murder Epidemic
» Record Crime in Mexico: 8500 Homicides in First Quarter of 2019
 
Immigration
» “I Finally Agree With Cher” Trump Exposes Liberal Elites’ Virtue-Signaling Hypocrisy
» “Sleeper Cells: “ 10,000 Illegal Aliens From Terrorist Nations Roam Free in US
» Bernie Sanders US Healthcare Plan to Include Illegal Migrants — Report
» Lammy Demands Illegal Migrant Amnesty, Says Comparing Brexit Tories to Nazis ‘Not Strong Enough’
» New Study: Number of Germans Brutally Attacked and Murdered by Migrants Doubled in One Year
» Sanctuary Cities Welcome Illegal Aliens With ‘Open Arms’ While 38k American Veterans Remain Homeless
» Study: Number of Germans Murdered, Brutally Attacked by Migrants Doubles in Year
» Utter Chaos at Heart of EU Refugee Plan Laid Bare in Row Over Who Takes Migrants
 
Culture Wars
» Frankenstein Designer Kids: What You Don’t Know About Gender-Transitioning Will Blow Your Mind
» The Left’s New Teflon Candidate
 

Alan Greenspan: Economy Will be Crushed “Very Dramatically” Because of Entitlements

Former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan issues a warning about the United States’ inability to curb their entitlement spending. Greenspan says that the economy will “fade very dramatically” because of the burden of the socialist policies already in place: entitlements.

Many economic analysts have been warning about the level of spending on Ponzi schemes such as social security and other government handouts for decades. But whether Americans want to believe it or not, reliance on the government should be culled and for their own good. People lose the will to even want to do better in most cases when a check is handed to them because they exist.

Retirement is a Myth: The American Dream Turns Into a Nightmare

In an interview with CNBC, Greenspan finally said what needed to be said and those shocked by this claim were the one who needed to hear it the most. The government is $22 trillion in debt. The gravy train will derail at some point. Economic growth won’t last as the U.S. labors under the burden of growing entitlement programs, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tells CNBC. All this as communists call for “Medicare For All” a massive program full of heavy taxation, tyranny, control, and of course, entitlements.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

How Your 2019 Taxes Will be Spent

As another tax day arrives, Americans are surely wondering where their hard-earned federal taxes go.

This year, Washington will spend a staggering $35,148 per household and collect $26,677 per household in taxes. The resulting budget deficit of $8,471 per household will bring the total national debt to $177,000 per household.

Federal spending has soared nearly $7,000 per household since 2007 and is projected to rise another $7,000 over the next decade (all numbers in this article are adjusted for inflation). Unless spending is reined in, tax increases must eventually result.

All families have their own level of taxation and distribution of benefits. Yet using the national averages, Washington will spend this year’s $35,148 per household as follows:

Social Security/Medicare: $13,178. The 15.3 percent payroll tax, split evenly between the employer and employee, covers most of Social Security’s and a small portion of Medicare’s costs. The typical couple retiring today will receive Social Security benefits 13 percent higher than their lifetime contributions, and Medicare benefits that are triple their lifetime contributions into the system, even after adjusting for inflation and net present values. As 74 million retiring baby boomers are added to this fragile system, paying all promised benefits would eventually require raising the payroll tax to 33 percent, or imposing a 34 percent value-added tax (basically, a national sales tax). […]

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

Rabobank: MMT is “A Red-Pill/Blue-Pill Moment for Many”

For those who haven’t noticed, there has been a lot of discussion about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in the press of late. The following headlines have appeared in the past few weeks alone:

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fan of a geeky economic theory called MMT;
  • Kuroda Foe Says Japan Will Prove MMT a Mistake;
  • MMT Finds an Embrace in an Unexpected Place Wall Street;
  • This is How MMT Applies to Emerging Markets; and
  • MMT is Not a Recipe for Doom

Clearly MMT, which has actually been around for decades, is currently a hot topic at the highest levels. However, even a cursory glance above shows that it is not something there is any agreement over. By contrast, it’s divisive and very controversial…

So let’s start with some basics of what MMT believes before proceeding any further. As we shall see, the premises of MMT are very simple — but the implications for policy and for markets are staggering. Don’t tax, but spend

Fundamentally. MMT argues the following three things:

  • Sovereign currency-issuing governments, such as the US, are financially unconstrained;
  • Taxes are not needed to finance government spending; and
  • The role of taxes is to drain money out of the economy after the government has spent it in order to manage aggregate demand and keep it in line with available supply of resources.

In short, MMT argues the government can finance any budget deficit by de facto monetization and hence has no monetary limits. That might sound ridiculous in Eurozone countries because they no longer have monetary sovereignty. However, technically this is true for economies that control their own currency. Their governments do not need to raise taxes before spending: they spend first and then tax. Moreover, such governments can provide an unlimited stock of their own currency, if needed.

[Comment: If comrade AOC is for it, it must be bad for Amercians. MMT is basically a scheme to justify putting Amerrica into even more debt to the private banksters.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Republican Indifference on Deficits is Empowering the Socialists

They say money doesn’t grow on trees but many of today’s leading progressives, including candidates for president, may beg to differ. An economic theory called MMT or Modern Monetary Theory, which essentially says deficits don’t matter so go ahead and create more currency, is shaping the agendas of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. If the price tag on progressive dream items like government-run health care, the Green New Deal, free college and free income is too high, they argue, the solution is simple: print more money. According to MMT, money really does materialize on trees.

MMT backers look to countries like Japan whose debt is 2.5 times the size of its economy as proof that concerns about debt and deficits are overblown. But Japan has unique strengths that have allowed it to escape inflation and a debt crisis. As Ambrose Evans Pritchard writes in the London Telegraph, “Japan has been able to defy gravity for two decades … because it has a rich pool of captive savings and is the world’s top external creditor, commanding $3 trillion of net assets. America has no such cushion. Nor does Britain.”

Yet, MMT backers also point to examples closer to home — the U.S. economy and Republicans who, by their actions, also say deficits don’t matter.

As the national debt approached $22 trillion, President Trump declined to mention the debt and deficit for the second State of the Union in a row. White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly explained this omission by telling Republicans lawmakers that “nobody cares” about the deficit…

Republicans need a refresher course on deficits. First, they need to talk in human rather than economic terms. Spending and fiscal conservatism isn’t about dollars. It’s about freedom. Overspending and deficits are symptoms of a loss of freedom — especially for younger generations that will be strapped to unbearable debts from excessive promises that they have no benefit from or say in. You can’t counter socialism while ignoring rising deficits. Socialists always need other people’s money in order to enact their anti-freedom and anti-choice command and control policies. If you’re serious about stopping them you have to cut off their supply line…

President Trump’s decision to throw down the gauntlet against socialism during his State of the Union Address was wise. Tragically, the consequences of socialism are on full display in Venezuela where we’re seeing hyperinflation and despair…

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

“Big Brother is Watching”: Facebook ‘Accidentally’ Includes Secret Orwellian Messages on VR Controllers

Misstep or marketing campaign?

Tens of thousands of Facebook Oculus virtual reality (VR) controllers contain bizarre ‘hidden’ inscriptions warning that “Big Brother is Watching” and “The Masons Were Here” among other things ominous messages, according to Business Insider.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

30 Extremely Bizarre “Florida Man” Stories That Prove That America is in Far More Trouble Than We Thought

Needless to say, sometimes things don’t end well for Florida Man

“Florida Man” just keeps getting into more trouble.

In recent years, “Florida Man” has become one of the Internet’s hottest memes, and there is never a shortage of new material because residents of the state seem to have a knack for getting arrested for some of the most bizarre crimes imaginable. So earlier today when I saw a headline that said “Florida man strips naked and poops in Naples family’s yard”, I knew that I had to do this article. Normally my articles deal with very heavy topics, and even though this article will be much more light-hearted, I am still making a serious point. Without a doubt, the “Florida Man” headlines below are very funny, but the fact that there are so many of them should disturb all of us. The fabric of our society is literally coming apart right in front of our eyes, and if we continue down this path it is hard to imagine any sort of a positive future for our nation. So please keep that in mind even as you are laughing at these headlines.

If you are not familiar with the “Florida Man” meme, let me give you a few pointers before we get started.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

AOC, Tlaib Met With AMP Members During Palestine Advocacy Day

Members of the rabidly anti-Israel group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) met this week with U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during the group’s annual Palestine Advocacy Day. Ocasio-Cortez posed for a photo with AMP supporters outside her office on Capitol Hill, an AMP newsletter posted online shows. However, nothing was posted online saying what Ocasio-Cortez said to the AMP supporters.

Tlaib spoke to the group Monday, saying that she feels “more Palestinian” in Congress than she does anywhere else in the world.

AMP is the successor and alter ego of a defunct Hamas front called that formerly operated as the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)/American Muslim Society (AMS), a lawsuit filed in Illinois federal court claims. The IAP/AMS acted as the propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a network of U.S.-based organizations established to support Hamas politically and financially. Former Hamas political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzook created several organizations that formed the Palestine Committee and served on IAP’s board of directors prior to his deportation in the 1990s.

A federal court awarded Joyce and Stanley Boim $156 million in damages in 2004 in connection with the murder of their son, David, an American citizen, in a 1996 Hamas terrorist attack. IAP/AMS were among the entities held liable. Group leaders announced they were ceasing operations not long after that court decision.

The new lawsuit aims to hold AMP liable for the IAP/AMS’s damages from the original litigation.

Many IAP/AMS officers now work with AMP, including AMP Chairman Hatem Bazian, a University of California, Berkeley lecturer. Bazian and other former IAP/AMS leaders used a Yahoo! Bulletin board to discuss the “transition” to the group that eventually became AMP in 2006, the newer lawsuit said.[…]

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

As Policymakers Embrace Transportation Innovation, Rail Gets the Cold Shoulder

Federal legislation was introduced in mid-March that would require the nation’s major freight railroads to permanently maintain a minimum of two individuals in the cab of a locomotive. Several states have also introduced similar measures.

Serious arbiters who care about the future of transportation, particularly the movement of freight, should oppose these proposals and recognize them for what they are: mandates wholly incongruent with the innovation occurring across rail and other transportation modes.

Such policy would not improve safety. Instead, it would limit the competitive viability of a privately funded transportation mode and undermine bipartisan infrastructure goals.

Although predictions vary, experts agree that multiple transportation modes will operate within expansive automated networks in the future. Policymakers often welcome this future with open arms. In some cases, they are providing public research dollars to private enterprise to increase the speed of such technological gains, and the benefits that will flow to society as a result.

The federal government also predicts that freight demands will rise by nearly 40 percent by 2040, requiring more optimized delivery networks. Efficient railroads with capacity to handle this growth are essential to the nation’s economy. Railroads are developing and deploying amazing technologies to help deliver that future — including sonar, infrared lasers, ultrasonic technology, and drones. But minimum crew-size laws, like other such attempts to freeze historic methods of train operation in place forever, will substantially discourage innovation.

To prosper in the future, railroads must achieve the same kind of productivity and technological gains as their competitors. Failure to do so will reduce the relative cost effectiveness and efficiency of freight rail service, pushing freight to other transportation modes.

Proponents of crew-size mandates argue that safety requires two people in a locomotive cab. Some even have pointed to a few high-profile accidents. But policymakers could not conclude that these accidents would have been prevented by having a second person in the cab.

These safety arguments have been consistently rejected by independent authorities asked to examine this issue. As the U.S. Department of Transportation itself said in 2016, there is no data to show operations with two people in the locomotive are any safer than those with one. Indeed, some short line railroads and almost all passenger railroads, carrying the nation’s most valuable cargo, operate with one person in the locomotive.

The truth is, based on federal data regarding train accident rates and employee safety, recent years have been the safest in rail history. The train accident rate is down 44 percent since 2000.

Independent analysis has found these safety gains are attributable to prudent investment, maintenance, and a strong safety culture — not prescriptive policies. Railroads invest heavily in safety and work hard to instill a pervasive safety culture.

Indeed, our nation’s railroads have poured an average of $25 billion per year into rail infrastructure, including many significant safety-related investments. Spending increasingly goes towards technological solutions such as Positive Train Control, wayside detectors along the track to assess equipment in real time, and ground-penetrating radar that allows railroads to evaluate infrastructure conditions to prevent accidents.[…]

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

Border Collie Caught in Video Saving Life of Chihuahua Friend…

If you’ve ever watched the old classic “Lassie” on tv, you’ve seen some pretty spectacular saves by the actor dog. This video, however, posted by WBFF Fox 45 shows a real-life rescue scene of a quick-thinking border collie dog who risked its own life to save his little chihuahua friend.

According to the Daily Caller — The dogs’ owners were playing with their pets outside before one of them got in her car and reversed onto her snow-covered driveway.

The Chihuahua then wandered off, directly into the path of the car, before the Border Collie seemingly flew into the scene from out of nowhere and grabbed her furry friend by the neck to save it from injury.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Boston Globe Writer Suggests That Waiters ‘Tamper’ With Food of Trump Officials

What made Boston Globe columnist Luke O’Neil think it would be a great idea to call for waiters to ‘tamper’ with the food of Trump officials? It’s the toxic political climate created by the Democrats and the media since President Trump was elected. Thinking you’d be “serving America” by tampering with someone’s food is just one example of the sick and extreme depravity exhibited by the left. Sarah Sanders was even kicked out of a restaurant last year (see below). The owner of The Red Hen said she did it out of “moral conviction”. A new low doesn’t even exist anymore with the left because it’s hard to imagine they could go any lower.

O’Neil claims he’s a “long time” writer for The Globe and was furious when they edited and then deleted his article written and published for them. In the article, he called for waiters to contaminate the food of Trump administration officials:…

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

CBS Drama ‘The Good Fight’ Tweet With ‘Assassinate Trump’ Sparks Calls for Secret Service Investigation

The image garnered widespread backlash among Twitter users, who then reported the tweet to the Secret Service

CBS crime drama The Good Fight tweeted an image on Friday from a recent episode, entitled, “The One Where Diane Joins the Resistance.” The image showed a character pointing to a list of “target words” that included the phrases “Assassinate President Trump” and “Eliminate Mar-a-Lago.” The tweet, which has since been deleted, sparked backlash among Twitter users, many of whom reported CBS to the Secret Service.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Either Facebook is Building Yet Another Massive Bit Barn in Iowa, And Doesn’t Want You to Know About It…. Or This is a Massive, Massive Coincidence. What’s a Zuckerberg? We’re Siculus!

A legal entity called Siculus Inc plans to build a data centre covering 1 million square foot (c 92,900m2) next door to Facebook’s 2.5 million square feet (c 232,257m2) infrastructure campus in Altoona, Iowa.

The undertaking, codenamed Project Sequelant, has already been approved by the Altoona Planning and Zoning Commission.

Is the legal entity working on behalf of Facebook? Altoona city officials told the Des Moines Register they could neither confirm nor deny — even though Facebook has built data centres in the region through Siculus before, in 2013.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Florida Man Threatened to Destroy Town With Army of Turtles: Police

A self-proclaimed “saint” was arrested in a coastal Florida town Sunday after screaming obscenities and threatening to unleash an army of turtles, an arrest affidavit reportedly said.

Authorities received multiple calls about a man who was disturbing the peace at several businesses in Indialantic, a town about 75 miles southeast of Orlando, the affidavit said. The suspect, later identified as 61-year-old Thomas Devaney Lane, was calling himself “the saint” and allegedly said his army of turtles would “destroy everyone,” WKMG reported

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

Honor Killings in Phoenix

A Muslim man in Arizona was arrested for four honor killings — his wife, two daughters and the man with whom he believed his wife was having an affair.

According to Phoenix Police Sergeant Tommy Thompson, “[Austin Smith] said that the reason he shot these individuals is because in God’s eyes, it was all right for him to deal with someone in this manner who had been involved in adultery, extramarital affairs.”

Smith also told police he killed his seven-year-old daughter because she was “weeping for the wicked.”

According to court documents, he said spared his three-year old who was found hiding under a bed because she reminded him of himself.

As in many cases of honor crimes, some will protest this was merely a case of domestic violence (not withstanding the horrific nature of the crime). And in truth, what is the difference?

Quite simply, even though we don’t know Smith’s psychological profile, we can surmise someone capable of killing his children in cold blood — not to mention his wife and her suspected lover — has to be deranged on a certain level.

Yet, when we look at the underlying ideology that drove his behavior, we also have to conclude that believing that such actions are sanctioned by God is quite motivating. While Smith may be a convert to Islam, those steeped from birth in the honor culture indicative of many Muslim countries have taken in this ideology in a rational way — and when circumstances presented themselves, many have seen fit to act on it.

Take the case of Shafilea Ahmed, who was just 17 when her parents forced her siblings to watch as they stuffed a plastic bag into her mouth and suffocated her to death. Ahmed, whose family had moved to the UK, was horrifically abused by those same parents for years over the fact that she was too Westernized. Her murder was not a spur-of-the-moment decision — a crime of passion in a moment of anger — according to family members.

It took nine years before any family member was willing to break the silence and tell the police (who had never conclusively been able to prove the honor killing) what really happened.

“In a new documentary, ‘When Missing Turns To Murder,’ journalists, investigators and friends of the Ahmed family reveal the harrowing extent of Shafilea’s abuse, and the wall of silence the police were met with from her family and the wider community following her death,” The Sun reported the same week as the Arizona honor killings occurred.

To understand how honor killing is institutionalized in many Muslim countries, one only needs to look at their penal codes:

In areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, a man who kills a relative is either pardoned, given a suspended sentence or six months to three years imprisonment which is reduced further once appealed. In Syria, an honor killer was exempt from punishment until 2009 when the punishment for honor killing became a minimum of just two years in prison.

Jordan, which has one of the highest rates of honor killings, and in Iraq, punishments are significantly reduced for honor crimes, as directed by the penal code.

Since the Islamist government took over in Turkey, the country has the highest rate of honor killings in the world. While Turkey was trying to be accepted as a member of the European Union, the leniencies in its laws regarding honor killings were changed. Now, women who are considered to have violated the family’s honor are often forced to commit suicide (or their deaths are made to look like suicides) so that family members can avoid being sent to prison. The Turkish city of Batman in southeastern Turkey is now called “Suicide City” because of the high incidences of honor killings. Young boys are also often ordered by other family members to do the actual killing so they can get a shorter jail sentence as they are minors.

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli Plead “Not Guilty” In College Admissions Scandal

Aunt Becky is digging her heels in and setting up to fight the system.

Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli both pleaded not guilty Monday in “the largest ever college admissions scandal.” Loughlin, 54, and Giannulli, 55, both said they are waiving their right to appear in court for an arraignment, according to Fox News.

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

Pelosi Orders Capitol Hill Police to Beef Up Security for Rep. Omar

“The President’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger. President Trump must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi instructed Capitol Hill Police to heighten security arrangements around Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar in the wake of comments she made about the 9/11 terror attacks and the response from the president on social media.

[Comment: Perhaps she should spend more time controlling Omar and her big mouth.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Pinkerton: Ilhan Omar is a Game-Changer for Democrats— And Not in a Good Way

The disruption of the Democrats’ happy healthcare plan started on March 23, when Omar delivered a speech to a Council of American-Islamic Relations assembly in Los Angeles in which, bringing up 9/11, she said those words that will live in infamy: “some people did something.”

Actually, Omar’s words didn’t get much attention until they were highlighted by Mohamad Tawhidi, an Australian Muslim cleric who holds decidedly anti-jihad views. As he tweeted on April 8,

Ilhan Omar mentions 9/11 and does not consider it a terrorist attack on the USA by terrorists, instead she refers to it as “Some people did something,” then she goes on to justify the establishment of a terrorist organization (CAIR) on US soil.

Tawhidi’s tweet got things rocking. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, the eye-patch-wearing war-hero-turned-Texas-Republican-Congressman, tweeted on April 9,

First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as “some people who did something.” Unbelievable.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Redacted Mueller Report to be Released to Congress & Public on Thursday

Let the games begin (continue)…

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec announced this morning Attorney General William Barr is expected to send Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress and make it public on Thursday (ahead of the long weekend’s news cycle).

Those following Mueller’s investigation will pore over the report’s almost 400 pages for any new disclosures of contacts between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian operatives who interfered in the 2016 election, as well as evidence that the president sought to obstruct justice by interfering in the probe.

But, as Bloomberg reports, readers also will puzzle over sections that Barr has said he’ll blank out. He’s said the redacted material will be color-coded to indicate whether it involves classified material, grand jury information or damage to the reputation of a private citizen “peripheral” to the investigation.

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

Reuters Propaganda Headline About Boy Thrown From Mall Balcony is Why People Detest the Media

A young boy was thrown from a third-floor balcony of Mall of America yesterday in an act of attempted homicide (see previous report below).

The horror of someone doing something so violent to a 5-year-old is hard to grasp. What kind of monster does something like this?

The answer is that we still know nothing over 24 hours after this happened. Yes, we know that this man had a previous record and lives in the Bloomington area. He had been banned from the Mall of America and was known as a troublemaker. Yes, we know all of that but who is this man? Does he have a family? Where did he come from? What is his story? Not one bit of information has come out on this person to tell us who he REALLY is…This is one reason why the mainstream media has lost all credibility.

Another reason the media has lost all respect is because of misleading and fake headlines like the Reuters headline below:

“Man arrested after boy falls from balcony.”

This is sickening. A man threw/pushed a 5-year-old from a third-floor balcony at the Mall of America. “Man arrested after boy falls from balcony” is twisting what happened into a pretzel.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Stoned at Work

Marijuana use remains illegal in New York State, but the New York City council has voted to ban employers from testing job applicants for pot use as a condition of employment. Though the new law exempts certain employers from the ban, including transportation firms and federal contractors obligated to test for drugs, the council’s action is virtually unprecedented. Some courts in other states have ruled that workers using marijuana under medical supervision can’t be fired, but no other jurisdiction has so broadly banned preemployment testing. Advocates say that the new law will end the “stigma” associated with pot use, and they claim that testing for marijuana isn’t a good predictor of employee performance. But as with many of the arguments for legalization, these are dubious claims. The council’s action ignores substantial and growing evidence from scientific journals of pot’s negative effects, especially on younger people. And by telling employers whom they must hire, the council disregards the costs that marijuana use can inflict on a workplace.

Pot use in the workplace is nothing new. Federal contractors have been required to test for it since 1988, and testing has spread to many private-sector companies—especially those in industries where workplace accidents are dangerous and costly, including construction, manufacturing, and health care. By 2011, one survey suggested that as many as half of all employers conducted drug screening. There is compelling reason for the widespread testing. Early studies, including one 1990 report on postal workers, found that pot users were significantly more likely to cause accidents, miss work, and sustain injuries on the job than nonusers. A 2012 study published in the medical journal Addiction found that regular pot smokers displayed significantly less commitment to work than those who did not smoke…

None of these outcomes should be surprising. A massive 2017 survey by the National Academy of Medicine outlined numerous psychological and physical problems associated with marijuana smoking, including inhibited school performance, reduced earnings potential over time, and a heightened risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses. The former head of the Centers of Disease Control, Thomas Frieden (who also once served as New York City’s Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene), described the study’s troubling findings succinctly: “Way too little known; potential benefits unproven, some serious harms definite, many serious risks possible.”

Despite these problems, the sponsor of the city’s bill, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, described it as part of New York’s “progressive” agenda. To him, the biggest problem with marijuana is that by keeping it illegal the state is destroying the long-term employment prospects of many city residents who have been arrested for possession or failed to pass a drug test. It’s perverse logic, however. The new city law is yet another step in the direction of normalizing pot use—and that will only increase use, as we’ve seen elsewhere, with all the attendant problems that brings…

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

Student Charged With Assault for Attacking Daily Wire Journalist

Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire had an unknown liquid substancethrown on him during a lecture at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and now the student responsible has been charged with assault.

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

The Left Officially Loses Its Mind

This past Thursday night, Daily Wire writer Michael Knowles came to speak at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). A mob of thirty or so students and hangers-on heckled him, and one sprayed him with what proved to be a nontoxic substance. While the campus police wrestled the student to the ground, his or her or “hir” colleagues chanted the lethal and long since discredited mantra, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

For conservative speakers on college campuses, the disruption was business more or less as usual. What was not usual, at least not in this part of the world, was the “official” response. As quickly became clear, there are no “liberals” any more. Their young have cowed them here and elsewhere into a cringing, uncritical embrace of the progressive menu du jour.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

‘William Who?’ — Former Massachusetts Gov. To Challenge Trump for Republican Nomination

With a nearly 90% approval rating among Republicans, President Trump’s dominance of the party is beyond question. But that doesn’t mean some of the lingering #NeverTrumpers who tried, and failed, to stop him in 2016 won’t give their Quixotic quest one last go.

John Kasich, long considered the most likely candidate to challenge Trump for the 2020 nomination, has already admitted that “I can’t beat him”, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, another credible challenger from what’s left of the party’s moderate wing, has ruled out a run. But apparently Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, best known nationally for being Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson’s running mate in 2016, thinks he has a shot to best Trump in the Republican primary.

[Comment: This is not a serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.]

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

Workers Find Dozens of Alleged Secret Graves at Juvenile Institution Where Boys Were Tortured, Raped

Workers preparing to cleanup a fuel storage site near the infamous Dozier reform school—Florida’s first juvenile justice institution—discovered something far worse then pollution. Evidence of more than two dozen “clandestine” child graves was discovered as workers tested the ground.

Shockingly enough, this is the second time secret graves for tortured and raped children have been found nearby the school.

A report out of the Miami Herald detailed the horrific discovery this week:

A company hired to evaluate underground storage tanks adjacent to the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna performed a series of ground-penetrating radar tests on a parcel a little less than 500 feet from what is called the Boot Hill Cemetery at Dozier, an infamous youth prison linked to more than a century of chilling abuse.

A report on the study said there are 27 “anomalies” on the parcel consistent with human burials. If the 27 anomalies are, in fact, human remains, the total number of known burials on the campus would rise to at least 82 — though University of South Florida researchers who have studied the campus extensively believe there may have been 100 or more deaths at Dozier since its opening in 1900.

“Unmarked graves, by conscious design, are made to be hiding places,” said Jack Levine, a Florida children’s advocate who had raised concerns about Dozier when he was a young social worker for the state, according to the Herald. “What stays hidden almost forgives the crime.”

For years, state officials have contended that only 31 boys were buried at the site. However, independent forensic scientists using high-tech equipment have found far more than that.

In 2012, the University of Florida in Tampa announced that they found evidence of at least 50 graves on the government institution’s property.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Canada Lawmaker Says Trudeau’s Warning Against White Supremacy is Ethnic Attack

OTTAWA (Reuters) — Maxime Bernier, the founder of a right-wing party running in Canada’s October federal election, said on Monday that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s warnings about the dangers of white supremacy were an attack on an “entire ethnicity.”

Bernier, a former Cabinet minister who quit the Conservative Party last year to form his own faction called the People’s Party of Canada, has focused on limiting immigration and promoting free trade.

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

Jason Kenney Will Win the Alberta Election in a Landslide. Here’s What He Should Do on Day One

Much of what I’ll talk about tonight is contingent upon Jason Kenney winning the Alberta election tomorrow.

But I know enough about my home province to know that it’s done with Rachel Notley and her NDP destroyers. There’s no drama, there’s no contest. I think Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives will get up to 70 seats out of 87.

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

Montreal Terrorist Considered Targeting U.S. College and ‘Gay Club’ Before Attacking Airport

This Story Has Been Updated

A Montreal man convicted of transnational terrorism for a 2017 attack at a U.S. airport had initially considered targeting a college and “gay club,” prosecutors have revealed.

Before slashing the throat of a police officer at a Michigan airport, Amor Ftouhi used the public wifi at a McDonald’s to search Google maps for “guy club,” “gay club” and “aeroport.”

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

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Invited to Speak at England’s Glastonbury Festival

U.S. socialist firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been invited to speak at this year’s Glastonbury festival, reports the NME.

The U.S. Congresswoman, elected in 2018 to New York’s 14th Congressional district, has been asked to speak at the festival two years after hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn took to the same stage…

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has been known to have extreme views on climate change, even going so far as to question whether people should still have children. She said in one livestream, “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, is it okay to still have children?”

[Comment: Too bad AOC’s parents did not share her view. Glastonbury is a festival for communists, socialists, antifa and other assorted useful idiots programmed by universities.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Anger as France Sees 10 Catholic Churches Attacked in One Week — ‘God Will Forgive, Not Me’

A SEVEN day spree of vandalism has seen Catholic churches targeted across France sparking fears of a fresh wave of anti-Christian sentiment in the country, including one church being defiled with human EXCREMENT.

At least 10 incidents of vandalism and desecration of Catholic churches have been reported across the Channel since the beginning of February. French Roman-Catholic newspaper La Croix International reported how the attacks on churches took place across France. Senseless acts included the desecration of altars, the defacing of Christ on the cross and in an extreme case, human excrement being spread across the walls of a holy place of worship.

According to the outlet, one of the first attacks was on February 4 at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Houilles, Yvelines, where a statue of the Virgin Mary was found smashed on the ground.

The same church also had the altar cross thrown to the ground and the celebrant’s chair was damaged.

On February 5, an altar cloth was found burnt and crosses and statues torn down or disfigured at the recently refurbished Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France.

The fire was found early by a parish secretary and did not spread — but the altar and adjacent walls were badly damaged by smoke.

Following the incident, local district deputy Jean Terlier said in a statement: “I strongly condemn the vandalism of Lavaur Cathedral and I share the outrage aroused by this intolerable act.”

And Lavaur city mayor Bernard Canyon said: “God will forgive. Not me.”

On February 6, just a day after the Saint-Alain Cathedral incident, vandals at Notre-Dame des Enfants (Our Lady of the Children) church in Nimes broke into the tabernacle and scattered altar hosts on the ground.

According to local news reports, the vandals also drew a cross on the wall with human excrement and damaged other religious items in the church.

[…]

Day later, on February 9, a similar attack occurred at the Church of Notre-Dame de Dijon, Côte-d’Or, about 175 miles south-east of Paris.

The tabernacle was opened and the Eucharist scattered, while the altar cloth was soiled and a sacred missal was torn.

According to La Bien Public, Notre-Dame Father Emmanuel Pic believed the vandals wanted to show anger towards the “heart of the Catholic faith” as nothing of monetary value was stolen.

Father Pic said: “Nothing of value has been broken, but it is the intent that is very shocking. This is what characterizes profanity.”

And on February 10, St Nicolas in Houilles was subjected to another attack six days after the first mindless act of vandalism.

According to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, the tabernacle was found thrown on the ground. However, a 35-year-old man later confessed to committing the act to police.

It is unclear if the attacks are related, but police investigations into the wave of attacks are ongoing.

[…]

The fresh wave of attacks come two years a campaign of Christian persecution against Catholic churches across France and Belgium in 2016.

The incidents were said to be carried out by the Islamic State (IS).

One of the most gruesome attacks included the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, who was killed by jihadists while holding Mass at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy.

The fresh wave of attacks come two years a campaign of Christian persecution against Catholic churches across France and Belgium in 2016…

           — Hat tip: Dora [Return to headlines]
 

BuzzFeed Caught in Huge Lie About Notre Dame Fire

BuzzFeed lied about the reaction to the Notre Dame fire by claiming that a perfectly legitimate video showing respondents posting smiley emoticons in response to the blaze was a ‘hoax’.

It wasn’t a hoax.

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

Copenhagen in Flames After Right-Wing Protesters Provocatively Throw the Quran on the Ground

Violent riots erupted in the Danish capital on Sunday when the right-wing politician and Islam critic Rasmus Paludan, leader of the party Stram Kurs (Strict Course), held a demonstration in the district of Nørrebro, Denmark’s Radio reports.

An angry crowd of counter-protesters showed up and attacked Paludan’s demonstration, and when the police intervened, they were attacked as well.

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

EU Election Polls: Establishment Set to ‘Perform Poorly’, 29% Combined Back UKIP, Brexit Party

Two polls suggest UKIP and The Brexit Party hold a combined 25 to 29 per cent of Britons’ voting intentions ahead of European Parliament elections, while the establishment Labour and Conservative parties are set to “perform poorly,” according to YouGov.

The YouGov poll found that “voting intention for the two main parties has fallen since 2017, and both could perform worse still at the EU parliament elections,” adding that “large swathes of Britons [are] turning their backs on the main two parties and [are] moving towards groups with harder Brexit positions.”

While The Brexit Party (15 per cent) and UKIP (14 per cent) take third and fourth places respectively after Labour and the Conservatives, the research firm noted that “neither [Tories nor Labour] are far enough ahead for comfort” of the anti-establishment Eurosceptics.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France: Notre-Dame Cathedral: Firefighters Tackle Blaze in Paris

A fire has broken out at the famous Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, but officials say that it could be linked to renovation work.

Images on social media show plumes of smoke billowing into the air above the 850-year-old Gothic building.

Last year, the Catholic Church in France launched an urgent appeal for funds to save the cathedral, which was starting to crumble.

A major operation is under way to tackle the blaze, which broke out on Monday afternoon. An area surrounding the building in central Paris has been cleared, officials said.

           — Hat tip: Dean [Return to headlines]
 

France: Attacks Against Jews & Christians Continue to Rise

Attacks against Muslims at a 9 year low

The number of anti-religious attacks against Jews and Christians in France continues to rise, while attacks against Muslims are at their lowest for 9 years.

According to a group that studies hate crime attacks against Christians, February was the worst month for attacks on Christian churches since they began collecting data.

Other public Christian symbols have also been targeted, including summit crosses on mountaintops and public statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which have been decapitated or destroyed.

A deliberate attack on the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris which caused nearly a million euros in damage was reported by the mainstream media as a ‘brief fire’ in which no one was hurt.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

France: “Paris is Beheaded”: Macron Vows to Rebuild Notre Dame After Horrific Fire; Interior Largely Spared

Update 11: While the staggering outside damage to the historic French cathedral has yet to be assessed, it would appear that despite the massive damage to the frame and the wooden roof, the inside of the Notre Dame was miraculously spared.

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

Germany: Talk of ‘European Army’ Was Meant ‘Allegorically’

“We are committed to the emergence of a European army”, German chancellor Angela Merkel pledged in January, backing a plan first launched by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Merkel thus confirmed a position she had voiced in November 2018, when, speaking to the European parliament in Strasbourg, she said: “We have to look at the vision of one day creating a real, true European army.”

Members of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the German federal parliament (Bundestag) wanted to know what was meant by the term “European army” and submitted this question to the government.

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

ISIS Plans to Copy Paris Bataclan Massacre With a Swathe of Fresh Attacks Across Europe Are Revealed on a Hard Drive Dropped by Jihadis Fighting in Their Final Syrian Stronghold

Shocking documents detailing a wave of ISIS attacks across Europe have been discovered on a hard drive dropped by members of the terror group as they fled their last stronghold in Syria earlier this year.

The chilling plans are believed to be inspired by the terrorist attack in Paris four years ago, when ISIS killers stormed the Bataclan concert hall and other areas of the city and killed 130 people.

Two years later, they committed another atrocity in Manhattan where jihadis crashed into cyclists and runners in the city, killing eight.

ISIS are now planning to repeat this horrific attacks in a new wave of atrocities across Europe, including an attack on a high-speed train network in Germany and on an oil pipeline in Switzerland.

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

NATO Member Norway Admits it Cannot Defend Itself

The head of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ operational headquarters (FOH) has admitted that as a result of failing to upgrade the country’s military, Norway would not be able to defend itself in an attack.

Speaking to Norway’s state broadcaster NRK, Lieutenant-General Rune Jakobsen said, “If there is an attack in the classical sense, then we do not have the robustness that is necessary [to defend ourselves].”

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

Sweden Orders ‘Arrest in Absentia’ of Russian Dad Who Took Kids Back From Muslim Foster Family and Fled to Poland

Swedish authorities have ordered the “arrest in absentia” of Denis Lisov, the Russian father who fled with his three daughters to Poland after Swedish social services seized his kids and placed them with a Muslim foster family.

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

Tony Blair Pleads for EU Referendum Re-Run So People Can ‘Reach the Right Conclusion’

Iraq War architect and former New Labour prime minister Tony Blair has pleaded the case for a second referendum on Brexit in the Irish press, alongside former Irish leader Bertie Ahern.

Blair, who topped a list of the top 100 “worst Britons” during his premiership and even polled as less popular than his divisive hard-left successor Jeremy Corbyn as of 2017, claimed “Conversations between campaigners, politicians and the public will at times be difficult” ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections, which Britain has to participate in despite voting to Leave the European Union almost three years ago.

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

Tyranny, Oppression, Death and Destruction: The End Products of Democratic Socialism

To set the record straight, socialism in any form is a dystopia devoid of Freedom, Liberty and Justice. It doesn’t matter if it’s called liberalism, progressivism or a democracy because these words are used by socialists to obscure the true nature of their tyrannical communist ideology. The word democracy, that politicians and the media like to throw in our faces every day, is nothing more than a euphemism for socialism. Even the Naz’s referred to their form of socialism as a democracy.

Speech to the representatives of the international press at Geneva on September 28. 1933 Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, stated: “The modern structure of the German state is a higher form of democracy in which, by virtue of the people’s mandate, the government is exercised authoritatively.” Authoritatively, when used by socialists, means without question or recourse. That means there’s no higher authority or power. There’s no God, No Justice, No Freedom and No Liberty, and there’s no room for people who believe in a higher power or God’s laws.

Unfortunately, many American’s have been misled to believe that socialism is a fairer form of Government; a benevolent paradise. However, history reveals that socialism is more like a prison for the masses. To be exact, socialism is a system where misery and deprivation are shared by the masses, and wealth, power and abundance are only shared by the rich tyrants who run the socialist state.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Egypt Optimistic About Red Sea Exploration Prospects

(Cairo) Egypt is expecting major international interest in oil and gas exploration along its Red Sea coast, shortly after the country invited international companies to apply for concessions in the area.

The Ministry of Petroleum said on March 10 that it would accept bids by international oil and gas companies for exploration in ten spots along the Red Sea coast.

The announcement came hard on the heels of the completion and processing of seismic data about the Red Sea coast.

American company Schlumberger and the British company Tgs have invested $720 million on seismic studies along Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The two companies started operating in an area covering of 10,000 kilometers in July 2017. The results of the study were released in April 2018 and showed that potential investments by international oil and gas companies would be more than worthwhile….

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

Lebanese Patriarch Pleads for Repatriation of Syrian Refugees

The head of the Lebanese Maronite Church, Patriarch Bechara Raï, pleaded for the immediate return of Syrian refugees to their home country in his homily on Palm Sunday.

The bishop said that the refugees have become “the victims of two wars, the one fought with weapons, which destroyed their homes, and the one of the politics of ‘wait and see,’ which will destroy their cultural identity and their history.”

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

Red Cross Staff Kidnapped by ISIS: Charity Reveals Three Aid Workers Including Woman From New Zealand Were Seized in Syria Five Years Ago and Held in Jihadi John Jail as They Appeal for Information on the Hostages’ Whereabouts

New Zealand-born Louisa Akavi, 62, was traveling in a Red Cross convoy in Idlib, north-western Syria, when she and several other volunteers were taken hostage by gunmen on 13 October 2013.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

‘We’ve Been Wanting to Come Home for a Very Long Time’: Children of Notorious Australian Terrorist Khaled Sharrouf Break Their Silence as They Describe the Horrors of Living Under Islamic State

Zaynab, 17, Hoda, 15, and Hamza, eight, were taken from Sydney to join Islamic State by their mother in 2014. After the defeat of ISIS last year, they are now in the Al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Russia Warns “New World Order” Being Formed

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared today that the Western, liberal model of society is dying, and a new world order is taking its place.

Lavrov made the comments at his annual meeting with students and professors at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, reported Russian state news agency TASS.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Bloody Jewel in Crown of British Empire: How India Was Mistreated During Colonial Rule

From the East India Company to the Raj, India was a British colony until the mid-20th century. And despite nostalgic imperialists extolling the virtues of the empire’s rule, it left behind millions of victims.

The 1919 Amritsar massacre, the grim anniversary of which India marked on Saturday, is one of the best-known examples of the atrocities committed by the British during their two-century colonial rule of India. But, numerically, its total of 1,600 victims looks like a small blot among the millions of deaths India suffered during the empire’s prolonged misrule and exploitation.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Amazon Reviews Are Not to be Trusted: Report

A two-week investigation by The Hustle‘s Zachary Crockett into the seedy underbelly of Amazon’s “fake review economy” reveals rampant fraud — primarily from shady Chinese sellers bribing buyers for positive reviews.

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

From 24,000 Tonnes of Steel Reduced to Just 860, Children’s Nappies Made in China and Fears for Future Tradies: How Australia’s Manufacturing Industry is Being Sold to Asia — and Why Your Job Could be Next

Factory workers across Australia fear their jobs could be the next to go overseas following nappy company Huggies’ decision to move production offshore.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

What Really Happens to Your Recycling: Factory Owner Lifts the Lid on Australia’s Great Plastic Waste Con and Reveals Nearly All Reusable Products End Up in Local Tips — or Shipped to ‘Dumping Grounds’ In South-East Asia

The owner of a commercial recycling business in south-east Melbourne has vented his frustration with Australia’s mounting plastic waste crisis.

           — Hat tip: SS [Return to headlines]
 

Ecuador’s Moreno: Assange Asylum Revoked Because He Used Embassy as ‘Center for Spying’

Aside from releasing a brief video statement where he attributed the decision to revoke Julian Assange’s asylum to the Wikileaks’ founders’ repeated rule violations, as well as Assange’s refusal to stop interfering in global affairs, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has remained conspicuously silent in the days since British police entered his country’s London mission and arrested Assange on charges of skipping his bail and conspiring to break into a government computer.

But that changed on Sunday, when the Guardian published Moreno’s first interview with an English language news organization since Assange’s arrest. And in a revelation that appeared to undermine his insistence that Ecuador’s decision to revoke Assange’s asylum and citizenship wasn’t influenced by foreign powers, Moreno changed his story once again, telling the Guardian that Assange had tried to use the embassy as “a center for spying.”

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

Julian Assange’s Lawyer: Poop-Smearing Story is Total Crap

Julian Assange’s lawyer says the WikiLeaks founder definitely didn’t smear poop on the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy in London during his seven-year stint there.

Lawyer Jennifer Robinson on Sunday accused the South American country of spreading the “outrageous” claim as an excuse to kick the 47-year-old hacker out last week.

Ecuador has also claimed Assange didn’t flush the toilet, left dirty underwear lying around and didn’t do his dishes.

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

Mexican Catholic Church Decries Government Failure to Halt Murder Epidemic

Mexican Church leaders rebuked the leftist government for blaming past administrations for violence, when the current regime has failed to reduce the scores of murders carried out each day in the country.

The Archdiocese of Mexico City warned in a Palm Sunday editorial that the measures adopted by the new government of President Andre’s Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to combat the wave of violence in the country “are not enough” and demanded that it not dodge the issue by trying to pin the blame on past leaders.

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

Record Crime in Mexico: 8500 Homicides in First Quarter of 2019

Authored by Jennie Taer via SaraCarter.com

As President Trump declared a national emergency over the humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border, our southern neighbor Mexico is on track to record its most violent year on record, according to security experts.

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

“I Finally Agree With Cher” Trump Exposes Liberal Elites’ Virtue-Signaling Hypocrisy

By threatening to send migrants to sanctuary cities, President Trump has forced liberals to confront their hypocritical NIMBYism as they scramble to come up with excuses to justify why the migrants whom they’ve defended as victims of a ‘White Nationalist’ agenda are actually ‘too dangerous’ to live among the urban elite.

We’ve seen it already with Cory Booker’s admission that releasing migrants to sanctuary cities would “make us less safe.” Then on Sunday, legendary pop diva Cher tweeted that moving migrants to California’s sanctuary cities would be all well and good if it weren’t for the “50,000 American citizens who LIVE ON THE STREETS.”

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

“Sleeper Cells: “ 10,000 Illegal Aliens From Terrorist Nations Roam Free in US

Approximately 10,000 illegal immigrants from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism are living within the borders of the United States, according to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), first reported by Breitbart.

IRLI revealed last week that it had obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that revealed that the 10,000 illegals have not yet been deported despite having been ordered to leave the country.

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

Bernie Sanders US Healthcare Plan to Include Illegal Migrants — Report

The Vermont Independent lawmaker’s “Medicare for All” plan will include “every US resident.”

Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ newly-unveiled healthcare bill, dubbed “Medicare-for-all,” will extend US healthcare benefits to everyone, including illegal migrants, according to Fox News.

The bill, introduced by Sanders this week, did not reference immigrants directly, but clearly stated it would cover all US “residents.” The bill has received the support of Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Lammy Demands Illegal Migrant Amnesty, Says Comparing Brexit Tories to Nazis ‘Not Strong Enough’

Labour’s David Lammy has insisted that comparing the Brexit-supporting European Research Group (ERG) to the Nazis “wasn’t strong enough” and suggested the BBC should deplatform them, shortly after demanding an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

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

New Study: Number of Germans Brutally Attacked and Murdered by Migrants Doubled in One Year

According to statistics published by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Germans are significantly more likely to become victims of a crime committed by an immigrant than vice versa.

Its 2018 report “Crime in the Context of Immigration” analysed statistics of murders, homicides, assaults, robberies and offences against sexual self-determination and personal freedom.

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

Sanctuary Cities Welcome Illegal Aliens With ‘Open Arms’ While 38k American Veterans Remain Homeless

“We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or it’s poor management & high taxes!”

Sanctuary cities across the United States are responding to President Donald Trump’s threat to bus border crossers and illegal aliens to their jurisdictions, saying they plan to welcome all illegal immigration with “open arms” despite soaring homelessness problems.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Study: Number of Germans Murdered, Brutally Attacked by Migrants Doubles in Year

According to statistics published by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Germans are more likely to get hurt or killed in a crime committed by an immigrant than vice versa. At the same time, the number of serious offences, like homicides and assaults, committed by newcomers has increased in comparison to 2017.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

Utter Chaos at Heart of EU Refugee Plan Laid Bare in Row Over Who Takes Migrants

MORE than 60 migrants were trapped on a rescue boat for more than a week after EU countries bickered over who should be responsible from them.

The 62 migrants were eventually allowed to leave the German Alan Kurdi rescue boat after four EU countries reached a deal to take them in. Hardline Malta had refused to allow the migrants to disembark unless they could be distributed across the bloc. On Saturday night, Germany, France, Portugal and Luxembourg agreed to share the migrants between them.

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

Frankenstein Designer Kids: What You Don’t Know About Gender-Transitioning Will Blow Your Mind

Puberty-blocking drugs, mastectomies, vaginal surgery and fake penises — all with zero chance of reversal — these are just some of the radical experimental methods being used on children.

Puberty-blocking drugs, mastectomies, vaginal surgery and fake penises — all with zero chance of reversal — these are just some of the radical experimental methods being used on children. The madness must stop.

Imagine that you are the parent of a five-year-old boy who innocently informs you one day that he is a girl. Of course, the natural reaction would be to laugh, not phone up the nearest gender transitioning clinic. You have no idea how your little boy came to believe such a thing; possibly it was through something he heard at the daycare center, or maybe a program he saw on television. In any case, he insists that he ‘identifies’ as a female.

Eventually, possibly at the encouragement of your local school, you pay a visit to a physician. You hope this medical professional will be able to provide you and your child with some sound counseling to clear up his confusion. Prepare yourself to be disappointed. Your doctor will be forced, according to state and medical dictate, to follow the professional guidelines known as ‘affirmative care.’ It sounds nice and harmless, doesn’t it? In fact, the program could be best described as nothing short of diabolical.

Following the ‘affirmative care’ approach, the doctor is required to follow the child’s lead, not vice-versa, as many people believe the doctor-patient relationship in this particular case would best work. In other words, if the child tells the doctor that he believes he is a girl, the doctor must comply with that ‘reality’ no matter what biology tells him or her to be the case. But this is just the beginning of the madness.

As the child’s parent, you will be encouraged to start referring to your son as your ‘daughter,’ and even permit him to choose a feminine name, as well as matching clothes. Teachers will be instructed to let your son use the girl’s bathroom while at school. The question of the social stigma attached to such a lifestyle change, complete with bullying, is rarely brought into the equation. Therapists will seldom discuss with the parents the social implications of such a mental and physical change; indeed, many will insist the changes are ‘reversible’ should the child one day have a change of heart. If only things were that easy…

In other words, the medical community is monkey-wrenching with not only Mother Nature, but with the lives of children, with radical and irreversible experiments that have not been proven to promote the happiness and wellbeing of those on the receiving (or subtracting) end.

[Comment: This is child abuse.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

The Left’s New Teflon Candidate

Pete Buttigieg is gay. The Democrats can’t help themselves at this point when it comes to leveraging novelty, glass ceiling benchmarks in politics. First women, first black, first whatever. It’s like drug addiction. Once you go down that road, you need more. It never stops. Pretty soon it’s like Tourette’s Syndrome. The Democrats can only run now with First Candidates. Perhaps we should now call them the Party of Firsters.

The ironic beauty here is that these are all superficial reasons to vote for anyone and have zero to do with any actual policies or any real fiber. Democrats don’t care. It’s all they have left. And Martin Luther King, who preached the diametric converse of this, weeps. Instead of a progressive party, we have a stubbornly regressive one, entirely bigoted in its approach, which is externally based and not about positions of what people believe.

It’s as if the Democrats we talk to everyday in our own lives among family and friends view politics through the narrow lens of sports. They want to win and ‘be right.’ The actual policies don’t matter. It never mattered what Obama actually believed. He was the first black president. That was in itself all that was necessary to transform society. It never mattered what Hillary believed. She was poised to be the first woman president. Game, set, match.

Meanwhile you have millions of Democratic voters who think this way, like cheering fans in the cheap seats holding their banners and signs and yet none of them caring about actual economics or liberty.

It’s like my friend last week who messaged me on Facebook. He’s a Democrat. He sent me an article about Pete Buttigieg titled ‘Almost 70 percent of Americans okay with gay presidential candidate, poll finds.’ And then his own question to me at the top of the article; ‘How about you?’

It was pure high school peer pressure stupidity. A leftist tactic.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]
 

26 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/15/2019

  1. Russia Warns “New World Order” Being Formed – Russia has already tested this “order” on its citizens.
    New World Order – in fact, the New Middle Ages.

    • Lord Melbourne said: “What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” Yet we, the self-governed citizens are not the damn fools we are depicted to be.

      Yet our soi-disant elites have and are creating a world of darkness. The XX and XXI centuries are absolutely stuffed with teachable policy decisions that backfired disastrously. My prediction: barbarism ahead if no course change.

      The problem was best put in the Roman saying: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.

          • As regards translation it’s something like “If the world wishes to be deceived then let it be deceived”

          • As far as I can determine, Dymphna, many of the screen translations do so into either Vulgate Latin or Ecclesiastic Latin, which is often a mixture of Vulgate and Classical Latin, rather than in Classical Latin alone. Much may depend on the original time and place of the quotation at hand I suspect.

            One way of determining if the machine translation is either Vulgate, Vulgate/Ecclesiastic or Classical is when a sentence is punctuated, because Classical Latin uses little or no punctuation.

            Take for example the sentence in question, Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur. In Google translate ‘Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur’ produces the answer ‘The world wants to be deceived, so.’ and precisely the same punctuated translation when the original Latin is inserted without punctuation. Also, it translates ‘ergo’ as ‘so’ rather than ‘therefor’ as in the Classical.

            However, this could also be because ‘mundus’ is the second declension of a noun and ‘decipiatur’ is a conjugation of a transitive verb, but please don’t take that as gospel as my schoolboy Latin is over half a century old, it wasn’t very good then and the years do indeed condemn; machine translations can be misleading, and the only real solution is a Latin-English Dictionary and a Latin Grammar. ☹

          • Thanks, NaCly Dog; I had a good chuckle (partly at my own expense) over your reply. I did take GCE “O” level Latin twice, around 1965, and failed twice with a 9- the lowest possible score!

            Dymphna, I’m not clever enough with computers to apply machine translate to anything on a blog such as GoV.

        • Generally people tend to, or at least used to, know the most famous Latin quotes by heart 😉

      • You make a very good point.People like their illusions .

        Tell me lies tell me lies tell me sweet little lies.

        I’m not really fat ,I just have a little avoir du pois.

        Muslims are not really waging a religious war against all other religions , it’s just a few hotheads giving a peaceful tolerant faith a bad name.

        If we admit the truth the costs are just too great to both our livelihoods and our self- esteem and our popularity.

        We lose our jobs our friends ,possibly our marriage .We have to admit that we were slow in recognizing the facts ,due to either; a lack of interest in anything other than the Kardashians ,an unwillingness to be labelled a bad person(cowardice) or outright stupidity ,cupidity, certainly treachery and a desire to destroy Western civilization ,in the hope of accruing or preserving total global power.

        We have to own up to being vapid ,superficial ,mercenary ,power -hungry , cowardly duplicitous carpet baggers peddling a dangerous threadbare illusion to either keep us in power stay popular ,or bring us dominion over the globe.

        No politician will put the good of the people ,or the good of the country first, if he risks losing power and his position at the trough.

  2. .
    CrossTalk: Assange in Custody

    https://youtu.be/X5NdP7zktJg

    —————————————————-
    Ecuador said on Monday it has suffered 40 million cyber attacks on the webpages of public institutions since stripping Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of political asylum.

    https://www.breitbart.com/news/ecuador-says-hit-by-40-million-cyber-attacks-since-assange-arrest/

    Julian Assange’s ‘Aggressive Behavior’ Caused Him To Lose Asylum – Ecuador President

    https://youtu.be/VKt-6MYIeoE

  3. I worked for a company that used heavy machinery on the job site. The insurance company required random testing for alcohol and other drugs. If an employee had a detectable amount of drugs , he was immediately fired or the insurance would be canceled. I guess companies like that can no longer do any work in NYC.

  4. On Notre Dame. I was reading last night and also this morning that investigators strongly believe this was an accident. Mind you, while the fire was still burning. I guess France is well ahead of the rest of the world in investigations of arson when “conclusions” were out before the flames were put down. Very interesting when we do know about previous attempts on cathedral and whole rash of attacks on churches all over the France. Second thing, did anybody else had a feeling that it looked like they are not really even trying to put fire down while it was still in early stages. I did. In any case this is a loss for Western civilization and Christian Europe(whatever is left of it). Previous generations left us buildings and works of art that we today do not know how to repair, not to mention build. I’ll finish this post with a sad conclusion. Cathedral now looks more suited for modern day France that’s on flames on daily basis than it did yesterday before the fire. It was a museum to people and faith that don’t exist there anymore. And it was pretty disgusting to watch Macron giving a speech afterwards. Promises of rebuild and talk of symbols come quite appalling from a man that openly denounced French history, heritage and language as unnecessary for “modern France”. He should be really proud about himself. On the list of his achievements that includes killing and maiming his own folk now he can add destruction of church that stood there for 8 centuries. “Amazing “ results so far for this young man. He will only get “better” with time,no doubt.

    • Aye, and who do you be thinking the real perps were now? Maybe those fine young men who practiced their skills burning cars and have now turned their attention to that which be truly haram.

      • I can’t point my finger at anybody, because honestly I don’t know. Is France full of people who absolutely and utterly hate everything that has to do with Christianity ? Yes. Was there a whole barrage of attacks on churches through last couple of years? There was. Was anybody convicted? No. Luckily because of such prompt “investigation” and “conclusion”there’s no need to discuss issue any further. We got official version and everything else is hatred and racism. Although this is beneficial for French tourist board. I suggest a clever new offer. Get shot in Strasbourg for Christmas , in spring watch church on fire, summers are best spent on some promenade, but watch for those trucks. Trucks have mind of their own. Autumn is reserved for a nice rock concerts, that here and there finish with some funerals, but now I’m nitpicking . Basically there’s something for everybody in this great new reality which is France today. Pure joie du vivre

    • Macron The Moron exclaimed it can be rebuilt in 5 years. This is the uttering of an ignorant childish mind.

      The enormous oaks (if you can find them) needed to shape the roof beams need to season for at least this long before you can even start to shape them.

      Another issue is the collapse of the vaulted ceilings. These ceilings push the walls outward and the buttresses on the outside push the walls inward.
      Those two forces are keeping each other in balance.
      But now one of those two forces is greatly diminished and there is a real danger the walls might collapse inward.

      I estimate rebuilding the church might take 100 to 15o years.

    • This morning one of the biggest Czech news servers had a lovely article about right wing organizations using the fire to spread misinformation about cheering muslims and what have you.

      As a person fittingly commented: “the only thing this article is right about is that it can’t be told what religion the cheering tanned boys in the photos belong to.”
      It’s pretty self-explanatory in my opinion 😀

  5. This podcast by Michael Savage is the best analysis of the Notre Dame tragedy that you will hear. Dr. Savage’s amazing radio show was recently taken down from all major American markets including the millions of people in the NY metro area where I live.

    When you hear what he has to say, you will understand why. Luckily his podcasts are still available 24/7 online. They are simply the best in my estimation.

    https://youtu.be/b2YVYiF9eY4

    • It’s over an hour long, Seneca- how about an edited version? Some of us have lives…

  6. It’s tragic what is happening in France , even if they rebuild like this traitor Macron said it never ever be the same , this beautiful piece of history is gone .., heartbreaking..

    • They aren’t even sure how the rosette windows were made, so indeed it hardly is going to be the same.
      And, as a young boy I know joked, “if a whole forest was cut down to make the roof, I can already see green activists chaining themselves to trees in order to prevent another forest of being cut down to rebuild it” – sad, but true.

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