A homeless man named Vincente Montano entered a movie theatre in Nashville carrying a can of pepper spray, a hatchet, a pellet gun, and a backpack with a fake bomb. He attacked several people in the theatre before he was shot dead by police. No motive for the attack has yet been determined.
In other news, the wreckage found on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean has been positively identified as coming from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared a year and a half ago.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Dean, Fjordman, JD, Jerry Gordon, LP, MC, Phyllis Chesler, SG, 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.
Commodities Are Crashing Like it’s 2008 All Over Again
Dear commodities investors: Welcome back to 2008!
The meltdown has pushed as many commodities into bear markets as there were in the month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which spurred the worst financial crisis seven years ago since the Great Depression.
Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent from recent closing highs, meeting the common definition of a bear market. That’s the same number as at the end of October 2008, when deepening financial turmoil sent global markets into a swoon.
A stronger U.S. dollar and China’s cooling economy are adding to pressure on raw materials. Two of the index’s top three weightings — gold and crude oil — are in bear markets. The gauge itself has bounced off 13-year lows for the past month.
Four commodities — corn, natural gas, wheat and cattle — have managed to stay out of bear markets, due to bad weather and supply issues.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Puerto Rico Triggers Historic Default as Austerity Spiral Deepens
America’s home-grown “Greece” is trapped in a vicious circle as a shrinking economy and an exodus of workers pushes the debt ratio through the roof
Puerto Rico has triggered the biggest municipal default in US history, risking years of bitter legal warfare with creditors and an austerity “death spiral” with echoes of Greece.
The island Commonwealth finally ran out of money on Monday after a desperate effort to stay afloat, and missed a final deadline for a $58m payment — handing over just $628,000.
It implies a sweeping default on much of its $72bn debt burden, equal to 100pc of Puerto Rico’s gross national product (GNP) and more than five times the debt ratio of California or Texas.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Record Imports Swell US Trade Deficit
Record imports, the strong dollar and growing consumer demand helped to widen the US trade deficit by 7.1% in June.
The gap between US exports and imports increased to $43.8bn, up from May’s revised deficit of $40.9bn. Analysts had been expecting a deficit of $42.8bn.
Record imports of food and cars meant total imports rose 1.2% to $232.4bn.
The dollar, which has gained 15% against the currencies of the United States’ main trading partners over the past year, also makes its imports cheaper and exports less competitive.
The trade deficit with the European Union is at an all time high, with exports to the bloc down 2.3% in June while imports were up 4%.
The deficit with China also increased by 3.3% in June to $31.5bn.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Next Financial Crash. “The Writing is on the Wall”. Don’t Say “You Weren’t Warned”
It was said after the last financial crash that “no one could’ve seen it coming”. This was not so back then and is not so today.
If you were looking for the truth in 2007, the average investor had ample warning from many sources warning of what was to come.
The warnings are now much louder, far easier to hear and coming from some mainstream and even “official sources”. Are you listening?
After the biggest financial and social crash in history occurs, “they” will say you were warned! Who are “they” and how exactly were we warned? For several years and in particular the last 12 months, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) have been issuing warning after warning. They have truly warned us as I will show you. Do I believe they did this out of the goodness of their hearts? No, I believe it has been in “c.y.a” fashion followed by their laughter because the sheep have and will sleep through it all until it’s too late. Thanks to Larry White from http://www.Lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com a full listing of the recent warnings has been compiled and logged. I had seen each one of these over the last year and have even commented on a couple of them but it never really registered with me there were so many.
Normally I try not to “link” articles to death, this one is different because it is important you see how many and just how in depth the warnings have been!
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Babylon Code, Android Soliders & the Multi-Dimensional Nature of Artificial Intelligence
The big debate right now among scientists like Stephen Hawking, computer gurus like Bill Joy, and the world’s military is on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and things like killer-robots that use AI”autonomous robots that have self-evolving AI could be given the power to kill people and to destroy nations. Every nation with an economy and scientific community to support it is involved in a futuristic arms race to build armies of killer robots because they will essentially be unstoppable on the battlefield except by other killer robots.
In 1942, Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction author who wrote I-Robot and other books, developed the Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
But already there are concerns from some of the world’s leading scientists that the planned killer robots, androids, and cyborgs will not have safeguards that will prevent them from deciding to kill human beings. In addition, as futurist Ray Kurzweil and others are suggesting, a “Singularity” is coming when machines with AI will surpass Mankind in intelligence and capability in the relatively near future. A soulless and self-evolving robot, android or cyborg using Artificial Intelligence will not be limited by moral absolutes such as right and wrong. Why should it? Its programmers, typical modern people, long ago rejected any moral accountability by rejecting things like the Ten Commandments and embracing the prime directives of Darwinian evolution: “survival of the fittest” and “might makes right.”
If brute Darwinian force is the moral operating principle of contemporary Man, and it is, then intelligent machines using AI will operate on a purely Darwinian level. It will be impossible to program them to act with any restraint towards killing or subjugating human beings because even if such restraint was programmed into the machines they would quickly find a way to transcend their programming.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Backyard Chickens Must be Registered in North Carolina for Your Own Safety
In North Carolina, the state’s Department of Agriculture wants to protect you against the avian flu. So regardless of the number of chickens you have, you must register for a state farm ID number as of August 1, 2015. Surprisingly, this if free. Not surprisingly, this is mandatory.
Up until the recent avian flu fear, farm registration was voluntary. Now, even families with two or three hens in a nifty little moveable chicken tractor in the backyard must register.
According to State Veterinarian (who knew there was a State Veterinarian?) Doug Meckes, this is vital. “In planning our response for highly pathogenic avian influenza, one problem we’ve come across is that we can’t protect birds that we don’t know exist. We need to know where poultry are located so we can properly protect commercial and backyard flocks.”
Chicken owners must fill out a FORM LIKE THIS and declare all of their animals. According to the state’s website, this won’t be used for any other purpose than health tracking. “Information gathered through registration will be used solely for animal health purposes. This critical data will provide animal health officials with necessary contact information in case of an animal health concern and help identify animals and premises that may have been affected.”
Of course, I figure once you register your chickens, they’re no longer really your chickens. The state is just letting you use them. Think back to Michigan, a couple of years ago, when a farmer was forced to destroy his heritage pigs because the state said so. Who can forget the shepherd in Canada whose beloved sheep were thought to be a threat and summarily destroyed? Personally, I’d prefer that my chickens remain happy little libertarian chickens, footloose, fancy free-ranging, and unfettered by a license.
[Comment: Perhaps this information will be used in the future by the Communists to confiscate the food when the time comes, just as in Soviet times…]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
California Could Allow More Felons to Vote, In Major Shift
California election officials are reversing a policy that prevents 45,000 felons from casting ballots, placing the state in the forefront of a movement to boost voting rights for ex-criminals.
California has until now maintained that state law prohibits felons from voting not only when they are in prison or on parole but also when they are under community supervision.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Tuesday that the state would now back voting rights for felons on community supervision, which is generally overseen by county probation departments.
The shift affects a growing number of felons because under the state’s effort to reduce prison and jail crowding, the vast majority of nonviolent offenders are being released into community supervision programs.
Padilla said the decision was “compelled by conscience.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Conservative Republicans’ Immutable America
In the previous articles, which I devoted to the police and the military, I explained how the view conservative Republicans have of the police and the military, which was adequate fifty years ago, is outdated, because currently the police and the military have not much to do with the image conservatives keep in their minds. Far from being agencies to defend and protect Americans, today’s American police and military have become oppressive forces to guarantee submissiveness at home and abroad.
Nevertheless, tough conservative Republicans have a benign image of current U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and others),[1] contrary to the police and the military, those agencies didn’t evolve over time from their mission to serve and protect the American people. Since their very creation, the true purpose of these agencies was to serve only the interests of the oil magnates, international bankers and transnational corporations who created them.
Traditionally, the U.S. had no central intelligence agency. Usually, intelligence needs had been carried out by Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, the Secret Service, the Customs House the Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice and the State Department’s own intelligence agency. The first attempt to create a civilian, independent intelligence agency was made by a group of Wall Street bankers and oil magnates, particularly the Rockefellers.
Most books about the Central Intelligence Agency claim that the CIA was an offshoot of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). What they don’t mention, however, is that the OSS itself was an offshoot of a select group of scholars handpicked in the Fall of 1917 by Colonel Edward Mandell House, President Woodrow Wilson’s confidential adviser, acting on behalf of powerful Wall Street bankers to act as spies and intelligence analysts allegedly to brief President Wilson about the U.S. options for a postwar world, which eventually turned into a veritable intelligence agency. This secretive group was called “the Inquiry.”[2]
Since its very creation the Inquiry was organized and acted like an intelligence agency. In the first place, it was divided in several study groups. Some of these groups studied different geographic areas and countries: Africa, Austria-Hungary, Balkans, the Far East, Italy, Latin America, Pacific islands, Russia, Western Asia and Western Europe. Other groups were devoted to study Diplomatic History, Economics, International Law and Cartography. This division was quite similar to what later was known as the CIA’s “desks.”
Secondly, the Inquiry’s activities were surrounded in secrecy. Even its bland, disingenuous name, “the Inquiry,” was adopted to hide the true purpose of the organization.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Goldman Sachs Hires Fogh Rasmussen as Advisor
Goldman Sachs has hired former Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as an advisor, reports Danish newspaper Berlingske. Also a former Danish PM, Fogh Rasmussen is tasked to solve a public dispute over sales of stakes in Dong, Denmark’s state-controlled power producer, to the American investment banking firm.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
According to the tax returns, the Clintons gave $3 million in 2014 to the Clinton Family Foundation, a small private foundation that the family uses as a pass-through to other charities. Records show the CFF disbursed $3.7 million in 2014, including $1.8 million to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Half of Blacks Say Police Have Treated Them Unfairly
WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of blacks in the United States — more than 3 out of 5 — say they or a family member have personal experience with being treated unfairly by the police, and their race is the reason.
Half of African-American respondents, including 6 in 10 black men, said they personally had been treated unfairly by police because of their race, compared with 3 percent of whites. Another 15 percent said they knew of a family member who had been treated unfairly by the police because of their race.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hatchet-Wielding Gunman Attacks Tennessee Movie Theater Before Being Killed by Police
A man armed with a gun and a hatchet attacked a movie theater in the Nashville area on Wednesday afternoon before he was shot and killed by a SWAT team after exchanging fire with an officer, authorities said.
One man was injured by the hatchet. That man and two other people also needed treatment after being “blasted with pepper spray” by the attacker, said Don Aaron, a Nashville police spokesman.
The suspected attacker was a 29-year-old man, the Nashville police said Wednesday evening. Earlier, Aaron had said police believed he was 51 and from the area. The hatchet-wielding man’s identity was not immediately confirmed in the hours after the incident.
Police were called to the scene just before 1:15 p.m. local time for reports of “an active shooter” inside the Carmike Hickory 8 movie theater in Antioch, southeast of downtown Nashville, Aaron said during a news conference. Less than an hour after officers were called, police reported that the “active shooter situation” was over and the suspected gunman was dead.
“We believe the imminent threat has been ended,” Aaron said…
| — Hat tip: LP | [Return to headlines] |
Hawaiian Telescope Project Sparks Protests at Astronomy Meeting
Demonstration over Thirty Meter Telescope comes after arrests near Mauna Kea construction site.
Demonstrators carrying Hawaiian flags — some upside-down, as a sign of distress — held a press conference outside the Honolulu convention centre to make their case against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which is set to be built on Mauna Kea. “TMT: no more desecration” read one sign. “We don’t want your big toy telescopes on our sacred mountain” read another.
Mauna Kea’s 4,200-metre summit currently hosts 13 astronomical observatories on state land leased by the University of Hawaii (see ‘Starry summit’). The US$1.5-billion TMT would be the largest of them all, and some Native Hawaiians say that it violates the environment and spirit of the mountain.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Jeb Bush: Obama ‘Speaking the Truth’ On Racial Injustice
A Republican presidential candidate saying something positive about President Barack Obama is so rare that it counts as news. And though it was followed by some caveats, Jeb Bush did give the president credit for “speaking the truth” on racial injustice during a speech to the National Urban League on Friday.
Bush was touting his record on education when he decided to quote something Obama said during his eulogy for the African-American churchgoers killed in Charleston, South Carolina last month.
“When President Obama says that ‘for too long we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present,’ he is speaking the truth,” Bush said to applause from the audience in attendance. “But we should be just as candid about our failures in addressing injustices of the more recent origin,” he added in an attempt to move the focus from past to present.
At the same event, Hillary Clinton offered up some direct criticism of Bush by calling his super PAC’s slogan into question.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Louis Farrakhan Cites Koran, Calls for 10,000 to “Rise Up and Kill Those Who Kill US”
The video excerpt posted on Louis Farrakhan’s Facebook page urges “10,000 in the midst of the millions, 10,000 fearless men who say death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny” to engage in mass murder.
The Facebook page posted on Monday also carried the hashtag “#JusticeOrElse.”
“Death is sweeter than to continue to live and bury our children while the white folks give the killer hamburgers,” Farrakhan said.
Farrakhan cited the Koran:
The Koran teaches persecution is worse than slaughter. Then it says, retaliation is prescribed in matters of the slain.
Retaliation is a prescription from God to calm the breaths of those whose children have been slain. So if the federal government will not intercede in our affairs, then we must rise up and kill those who kill us.
The minister than called for violence against police and those who support them. “Stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling,” Farrakhan said.
The establishment media has yet to condemn Farrakhan’s incitement.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Magazine in Hot Water After Afro Tutorial for White Girls
Allure Magazine has made some enemies after featuring step-by-step instructions for how white girls can achieve an “Afro.”
To break it down, “Afro” comes from the word “African.” So for Allure Magazine to publish a tutorial for an Afro, but not feature an African-American model, is the issue at hand.
The hair tutorial is published in its August 2015 issue, titled “You (Yes, You) Can Have An Afro.*” The asterisk: “even if you have straight hair.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Making Deception the Law of the Land
Objection to GMOs arises not only from those who do not want consumers in grocery markets to serve as test animals but also from those who oppose state sponsored monopolies and oligopolies. Although GMOs are touted as safe, there is virtually no limit on the kind of genetic manipulation that can be performed to alter the genome of plants and animals, and there are no human studies capable of proving GMOs safe beyond the near term. For all we know certain GMOs in the market today or in the future will end up being linked to mutagenicity (birth defects) or carcinogenicity (cancer). Although birth defects are visible in the short-term, cancer is ordinarily not. Cancer often has a very long etiology, often taking decades to go from initial occurrence to overt and diagnosable disease. That long etiology makes disclosure of ingredients a critical factor in assessing whether environmental inputs from the food supply contributed to or were the causative bases for cancers.
Because HR 1599 hides from consumers the foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients by pre-empting state disclosure laws, it masks from physicians, health authorities, and scientists the products containing specific GMOs. Under that law, if a product containing a GMO were responsible for an adverse health effect, public health authorities would be hard pressed to find it as the causative agent. The label would not reveal the ingredient and, so, those evaluating disease would have a hard time linking the disease to the GMO.
Monsanto and major agricultural concerns invest heavily in the creation of patentable GMOs because it is an effective way to remove food from highly competitive markets and place it in a monopoly market, their own. When farmers seek crops, many are led to believe that GMO-containing crops are superior. They sign contracts for those crops, often at initially attractive rates, only to be locked into a monopoly market where rates can be raised at the seller’s whim. Once a farmer plants GMO-containing seeds in his farmland, he is in effect locked into GMO crop production. GMO crops ordinarily do not yield seeds that can be replanted and any reliance on GMO containing seeds, even if by dint of the fact that GMO containing pollen pollinates a non-GMO plant (thus making it a GMO plant), is viewed as patent infringement by Monsanto and big agriculture. In this way, if a farmer decides not to renew his GMO seed contract, he becomes fair game for a patent infringement action, and he is locked out of the organic market because his fields are already polluted. Through this conundrum, Monsanto and big agriculture can gobble up the entire domestic agricultural market, but their sights are on an even bigger target: the world agriculture market.
The so-called DARK Act (Denying Americans their Right to Know) passed the House protects and advances this plan for GMO domination and, through that means, agriculture market dominance and control by GMO producers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NASA Asteroid-Sampling Mission Being Readied for 2016 Launch
NASA’s first-ever mission to bring pieces of an asteroid back to Earth is undergoing final checkout ahead of next year’s launch.
NASA’s Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft, or OSIRIS-REx, is progressing through assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) here at a Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company facility.
Following its September 2016 liftoff, OSIRIS-REx will head for a 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) asteroid named Bennu. Once the spacecract arrives, in 2018, it will carry out a tricky dance with the space rock for more than 500 days. Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid that could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and could host organic molecules like those that may have seeded life on Earth, researchers say.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Nashville Theater Attacker Identified, Was Armed With Pellet Gun
ANTIOCH, Tenn. — A man armed with a hatchet and a pellet gun unleashed a volley of pepper spray at audience members inside a movie theater Wednesday before being fired at by a police officer and shot dead by a SWAT team as he tried to escape out a back door, police said.
The attacker, identified as a 29-year-old Vincente Montano in a report by the Tennessean, was carrying two backpacks, one of which hung from his chest, and he wore a surgical mask, possibly to protect himself from the pepper spray he unleashed in large amounts during the showing of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said. He said three people were blasted with the spray and treated. There were eight people in the theater, including the assailant, Aaron said.
As he fled out the back, the attacker encountered a SWAT team and was shot dead, Aaron said. About two dozen gunshots could be heard in a 10-second period in raw video footage posted online by WKRN TV. Police initially said that the assailant had been armed with a gun and that he exchanged fire with the first responding officer, but Aaron said later Wednesday that the man had been armed with a pellet gun…
| — Hat tip: SG | [Return to headlines] |
by Diana West
Robert Conquest has died at age 98. He was a gigantic hero of truth and the voiceless.
On a professional note that is also personal, Robert Conquest’s tremendous body of work — and, I would add, the consternation and controversy his work engendered amid the “intelligentsia” — has been and will remain a guiding inspiration.
In many ways, American Betrayal is itself a paean to Conquest…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Snowden Revelation Confirms Existence of Echelon Surveillance System
Another Edward Snowden revelation reveals that the United States government has lied about the existence of ECHELON, a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.
ECHELON was reportedly first planned with the establishment of the national security state in 1947 and codified in a treaty signed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“Until Snowden placed the full capacities of the NSA and other government spying agencies in plain sight, ECHELON was largely just another codename in the conspiracy-theorist’s notebook,” writes Lucas Matney for TechCrunch.
In 1988 the British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell wrote an article titled “Somebody’s listening” for the Statesman that revealed the existence ECHELON. The massive and indiscriminate surveillance program was later confirmed during an investigation conducted by the the European Parliament and also by the author James Bamford in his books on the NSA.
[Comment: Used to get around the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Don’t spy on your own citizens…ECHELON group of countries spy on each others citizens. Country A spys on country B citizens and makes the data available to country B government. So the letter of the law is observed — country B is not spying on its own citizens. ]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Some Americans Refuse to Give Up on Confederate Flag
Many Americans assumed the Confederate flag was retired for good after governors in South Carolina and Alabama removed it from their statehouses this summer and presidential candidates from both parties declared it too divisive for official display.
But people still fly it, and not just in the South, despite announcements by leading flag-makers and retailers that they will no longer sell products showing the secessionist battle flag.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Latest: Theater Attacker Was 29-Year-Old Local Man
ANTIOCH, Tenn. — The latest on reports of shots fired at a Nashville-area movie theater (all times local):
6:10 p.m.
Police now say the man who attacked moviegoers at a Nashville-area theater was a 29-year-old local man.
Earlier Wednesday, police had said the man was 51. He died in a shootout with police. Investigators say he was wielding a hatchet and gun and was carrying two backpacks, one of which had a fake device made to look like a bomb.
Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said investigators need to fingerprint the attacker and do other analyses before releasing his identity.
Anderson says investigators also have not yet found the gun that the attacker used to shoot at police.
| — Hat tip: Dean | [Return to headlines] |
They Live, We Sleep: A Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in [John Carpenter’s movie] They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture. A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Å1/2iÅ3/4ek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a 2014 study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism — a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tiny Cubesat Will Hunt for Water Ice on the Moon
A spacecraft the size of a cereal box will soon be hunting for water on the moon.
NASA has given the go-ahead to a mission called Lunar IceCube, a public-private partnership that will send a tiny cubesat to do water-ice prospecting from an elliptical orbit around the moon. The spacecraft’s observations could aid future robotic and human exploration of Earth’s nearest neighbor, mission team members have said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Renews Push for Trans-Pacific Partnership
After fierce resistance from Australia and several Asian countries, the United States is again making an aggressive move to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) approved in all member states.
American Secretary of State John Kerry has flown to Singapore, where he will meet with several Asian dignitaries to hammer out a deal on the TPP. A few sticking points, such as Americans’ insistence on strict regulations of patented prescription drugs, have caused other states to balk at the agreement, with Australia making the loudest protests over the lack of free trade agreements within the agreement.
While many economists support the agreement, several politicians have criticized the secretive nature of the policy, and have pointed out that there have been few studies done of how much it would benefit American workers, with the precedent of NAFTA indicating that it could be less beneficial for low-skilled workers than many economists expect.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
1.3 Million Dutch Nationals Have Two Passports
The number of Dutch nationals with two passports reached 1.3 million at the beginning of last year, a rise of 3% on 2013, the national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday. Almost half of the dual nationals are also Moroccan or Turkish, the CBS said. European Union citizens account for around 280,000, of whom 61,000 are also German and 45,000 also British. The statistics office said this is the last time that updated official figures over dual nationality will be made available. Changes in government policy mean that since 2014 the population register has only included people who were born in the Netherlands and does not record if they also have a second nationality.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
1000 Demonstrate Against SD Posters
Sweden: Around 1000 people have taken part in a demonstration at Stockholm’s Norrmalmstorg square, to protest against an ad campaign by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrat Party, reports the TT news agency.
Earlier Tuesday the Bishop of Linköping strongly criticized the campaign. Bishop Martin Modéus writes on his Facebook page that the campaign is “a record low in shame in Swedish political history”.
But, while the protests rage against the posters at a Stockholm subway station, a local public relations company says they are all positive for the anti-immigration party, as their goal is to be controversial and to get as much attention as possible.
Most of the posters have been vandalized, while Stockholm Public Transport has received nearly 2,000 complaints, and around 80 formal complaints have been filed with the Parliamentary Ombudsman or the Advertising Ombudsman.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Anjem Choudary Faces UK Terrorism Charges Over Islamic State
Radical UK preacher Anjem Choudary is one of two men who has been charged with inviting support for Islamic State militants, Scotland Yard says.
He is accused of “inviting support” for so-called Islamic State (IS) between 29 June 2014 and 6 March this year.
He and another man, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, have each been charged with one offence under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Hopes to Conclude US Free Trade Deal Next Year
(BRUSSELS) — The EU hopes that talks on the world’s biggest free trade deal with the United States can be completed next year, a senior official said Tuesday, as the two sides get down to tackling the toughest issues.
In an interview with AFP, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said she will meet US Trade Representative Michael Froman in Washington in September to prepare the next round of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in October.
“We will put everything on the table, see where we are and how to advance,” she said, in order to strike a deal between two giant economies which are home to some 850 million people and account for about half of global output.
“I hope we will be in a position to make joint announcements with Mr. Froman to give substance to the negotiations,” the former Swedish politician added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Saudis Savaged Over Paris Hospital Bills
Saudi royals who took over a public beach in southern France recently should have paid their country’s outstanding hospital bills before leaving the country, a top French doctor has said.
“Before leaving, the King of Saudi Arabia could pay its €3.7 million bill to the hospitals of Paris. A gesture of politeness,” tweeted Patrick Pelloux, a Paris-based emergency services doctor and activist.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany: Chief Prosecutor Sacked in Media Treason Row
Germany’s justice minister on Tuesday fired the chief prosecutor in an escalating row sparked by a controversial treason case against a blog accused of revealing state secrets.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
‘Hate Speech’ Probe Into Swedish Anti-Begging Ad
The Swedish Chancellor of Justice has launched an investigation into whether or not a controversial anti-begging campaign on the Stockholm underground constitutes hate speech.
The ad campaign by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party, which is aimed at tourists, includes images of people sleeping on the streets and huge signs in English apologizing for begging in the capital.
“Sorry about the mess here in Sweden. We have a serious problem with forced begging! International gangs profit from people’s desperation. Our goverment (sic) won’t do what’s needed,” read messages on billboards above the escalators at Stockholm’s Östermalmstorg station.
The campaign has been hit with a wave of criticism since it appeared on Monday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iraqi Airways Banned by Swedish Authorities
Swedish authorities have banned Baghdad-based carrier Iraqi Airways from flying to and from Sweden with immediate effect, said the Transport Agency on Wednesday.
The Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) said in a statement that the airline did not meet necessary safety standards required within the European Union.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Earmarks €18m to Rebuild Colosseum Floor
Italy has earmarked over €18 million to rebuild the arena floor in the Colosseum where gladiators once fought wild beasts, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said on Tuesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Fugitive Mafia Godfather Protected ‘At High Level’
An Italian prosecutor who has been hunting the fugitive head of the Sicilian mafia for the past 10 years says he has eluded capture because he is “protected at a very high level”.
Matteo Messina Denaro, who has been on the run since 1993, “leaves Sicily” often and with apparent ease, Teresa Principato told Il Fatto Quotidiano daily in an interview published Tuesday, a day after 11 of his henchmen were arrested by Italian police.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Invites Iran’s Rouhani for Rome Visit
Italy on Wednesday invited Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani to Rome for an official visit, as its foreign minister held talks in Tehran following last month’s historic nuclear accord.
Paolo Gentiloni delivered the invitation from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Rouhani’s website reported, a week after France asked the moderate president to visit Paris in November.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rome Mulls Hiking Fines for Fountain Dips
Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino is considering increasing fines for those caught jumping into the city’s fountains as part of a plan that will also see €50,000 injected into sprucing the treasured monuments up.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Hunt of Fugitive Sicilian Mafia Boss Finds How Secret Messages Were Buried on Farms
ROME — The No. 1 Cosa Nostra fugitive communicates with henchmen using written messages buried in dirt or hidden under boulders on sheep ranches and comes and goes from Sicily, possibly thanks to high-level protection, investigators said Monday after nabbing some of his alleged accomplices.
In early morning raids in the countryside of western Sicily, police took into custody 11 men investigators contend helped convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro wield power despite being at large since 1993.
Investigators described how Messina Denaro, 53, disdains telecommunications and relies on handwritten notes, or “pizzini,’“ to relay orders. The notes were wadded tight, covered in tape and hidden under rocks or dug into soil until go-betweens retrieved them. The messages were ordered destroyed after being read.
Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia as a mastermind of 1993 bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan, The attacks were aimed at intimidating investigators after “Boss of Bosses” Salvatore Rina was arrested in Palermo following two decades as a fugitive. After the 2006 arrest of Bernardo Provenzano, after 43 years in hiding, Messina Denaro became the most-wanted Mafia chieftain.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Jewish Athletes Under Siege in Germany
by Phyllis Chesler
Jewish athletes, from all over the world, who have assembled in Germany for the Maccabi Games, are being taunted and attacked by Muslims, neo-Nazis, and leftists.
Two “youths” cursed and threw an object at six Jewish men. They have not yet been found. An Arab Muslim was arrested for shouting anti-Semitic slurs at two security guards at the hotel which is housing the 2,000 Jewish athletes, their fans, and their guests. The hotel is 900 meters away from the Al Nur Mosque, “a hotbed of radical Islam.”
Alon Meyer, the head of the German umbrella organization for the Maccabi, has advised the athletes to hide their kippot and Jewish stars, to take taxis rather than walk—and to avoid walking in Neukolln, a Muslim “no go” zone.
| — Hat tip: Phyllis Chesler | [Return to headlines] |
Jihadist Who Fled Spain is Arrested in Germany
German police have detained a suspected Islamic State jihadist who fled Spain last month, the Spanish interior ministry said on Wednesday.
The Moroccan national, who lives in Spain, was detained on Tuesday in Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, the ministry said in a statement.
A Spanish court had issued a warrant for his arrest.
The ministry said he was “very active on social networking sites, playing the role of recruiter by touting the benefits of joining (Islamic State) fighters”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: ‘Dijsselbloem is Sidelining the Democratic Process’
The Netherlands may be proud to have one of its own mingle with the high and mighty but the fact is that Jeroen Dijsselbloem is side lining the democratic process, write David Hollanders and Merijn Oudenampsen.
The Eurogroup is accountable to who exactly? It’s an informal club with a foggy organisational structure. It minutes are not accessible to the public. As Max van Weezel rightly noted in Vrij Nederland, national parliaments can ask questions in advance about what their ministers will propose in Brussels but they have no way of knowing what is being decided in the back rooms. Parliaments are being side lined, a state of affairs which the Dutch Council of State warned against in 2013 when it said the strong increase of informal European coordination could have a detrimental effect on the democratic process.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Record Number of Hate Crimes Reported in 2014
A record number of hate crimes were reported to the police last year, according to statistics published Wednesday by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå).
During the course of 2014, the council counted about 6,270 cases in which hate had been a possible motive behind the reported crime, up by about 14 percent from the year before.
Brå estimates that xenophobia and racism were behind the majority of the cases reported last year, at 69 percent.
But the type of hate crime that has increased the most in recent years is fueled by anti-Christian sentiment, according to the reports seen by Brå, which writes on its website that reports of those crimes have more than tripled since 2010, to over 330 reports filed last year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: SD Anti-Begging Ad Under Scrutiny by Chancellor of Justice
A controversial anti-begging advertising campaign in Stockholm’s Östermalmstorg subway station is being investigated by the Office of the Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern) to determine whether its message qualifies as hate speech.
The campaign by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats pictured people sleeping on the street and apologized for “the mess”. Critics regard the posters as racist disparagement of Roma migrants here.
“We’re going to look at these texts and see if it crosses the line, according to the existing rules,” David Löfgren, a rapporteur at the office of the Chancellor of Justice, tells Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: One Injured in Stockholm Suburb Drive-by Shooting
A person was taken to hospital on Tuesday afternoon after a drive-by shooting in a Stockholm suburb.
Bredäng is a relatively calm suburb in southern Stockholm, but it has been an occasional trouble spot in recent years. It was one of the areas in the Swedish capital affected by a wave of riots and car torching two years ago.
“I heard the shots. It’s terrible. You feel scared and unsafe, this is nothing we’re used to,” an unnamed neighbour told Aftonbladet on Tuesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Three Stabbings Within Hours in Malmö
Three men were stabbed within hours of each other in separate incidents in the southern Swedish city of Malmö overnight. It’s just the latest spate of violence to hit the city this summer.
Malmö, which is Sweden’s third largest city, has been rocked by a series of violent incidents in recent weeks, including numerous shootings and explosions.
Earlier in July four grenade attacks were reported in under a week.
Police said they believed the attacks were linked to a case which saw three young men sentenced for their roles in a bombing in the Rosengård area — which has a reputation for violence and gang related crimes — on Christmas Eve.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Anti-Begging Posters Taken Down
Stockholm’s public transport operator has stopped parts of an anti-begging campaign in the underground after protesters climbed on to escalators and tore down the controversial advertisements.
On Wednesday afternoon SL confirmed that the posters would not be put up again for security reasons.
“It’s purely a safety assessment. Yesterday a bunch of protesters came down into the underground and jumped up on the parapets at the escalators. That involves a risk, both to potential activists, but also to other travellers passing by,” SL spokesman Jesper Pettersson told the TT newswire.
Only the advertisements above the escalators have been stopped, he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK Kicks Out US Journalist Investigating Former PM’s Alleged Pedophilia
“They banned me for two years from entering the UK.”
A reporter from the US who was investigating allegations that former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath abused minors at a children’s home on the island of Jersey says she was prevented from carrying out her work by the British authorities.
A journalist from the US told a London radio station that she was forced to leave the UK in 2011 by the authorities after attempting to investigate allegations that former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath had sexually abused orphans at a children’s home on the island of Jersey.
Leah McGrath Goodman, a finance journalist, told LBC radio that while she was carrying out investigations into the tax haven, a British Crown dependency in the English Channel, she came across allegations of child abuse committed by powerful and influential people in British society. “Ted Heath was one of the more prominent allegations.”
Despite her British visa, McGrath Goodman says that she was thrown out of the country after being detained at London’s Heathrow airport when she returned to the UK to investigate the allegations further.
“There was a notation on my file that told them to put me in custody. They detained me for 12 hours; they went through all my things.”
“They took away everything, my phone, my passport, I didn’t have anything. I didn’t know what was going on. Eventually I found out that that was why [because of her investigation into the pedophile allegations], but it was only right before they deported me.”
“And then they banned me for two years from entering the UK.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Anjem Choudary Charged With Supporting a Terror Organisation
Anjem Choudary, the radical cleric, has been charged with supporting the banned terror group, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
The 48-year-old, from Ilford, was charged along with Mohammed Rahman, 32 with inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, namely Isil,
Both men were detained in custody and will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday afternoon.
They were initially arrested in September 2014 by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command (SO15) on suspicion of being members of the proscribed organisation and have been on police bail since then.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Broadmoor Hospital Staff Slashed With Broken DVDs by Muslim Converts
Police are investigating the incident at the high-security psychiatric site in West Berkshire. It is said to have been sparked after the Muslim patients were told they could not pray in the day and dining rooms.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Visit the World’s Most Amazing Old-Growth Forests
Here are some of the best places to hug centuries-old trees
Europe’s last old-growth forest straddles the borders of Poland and Belarus. The Bialowieza Forest is only about 580 square miles, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in age—there are trees here that date back thousands of years. (In fact, there are so many old trees that ones that first blossomed during the Middle Ages are still considered young.) It isn’t just the trees that make this forest exceptional, however: The wildlife is notable too, especially the revived European bison.
Excessive hunting and logging brought this large mammal to the verge of extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But in 1951, the Polish Communist government began breeding and protecting the bison. Today, there are thought to be 1,500 roaming this forest.
Both the bison and the historic nature of the forest have earned the forest the distinction of being a World Heritage Site.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
2nd Civil Society Forum — Southern Neighbourhood: Report Highlights Main Issues
A report highlighting outcomes and issues addressed at the 2nd Civil Society Forum for the Southern Neighbourhood has been issued this week. The Forum, held on 28-29 May 2015 in Brussels, gathered Civil Society organisations from the Southern Mediterranean and the EU, academic and think tank organisations and media and professional communicators from both sides of the Mediterranean.
The Forum was an opportunity to reinforce the commitment to making civil society an active partner in discussions on the EU’s relations with the Southern Neighbourhood. A key element was discussion on the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy, a topic addressed in several of the plenaries and in three working group sessions. The other working groups examined selected topics from 2014 meetings, identified by participants both as in need of action and suitable for a cooperative regional approach.
The main themes that emerged were:
- Need for greater understanding of the revised ENP and the actions it will encompass.
- Greater involvement of the south, across governments and civil society, in planning policy actions.
- Framing of north-south relationships as true partners, not as aid donor/recipient dressed with the title ‘partnership’ for political reasons.
- Positive reaction to being asked to contribute to the ENP review, accompanied by the plea that civil society input should be listened to and not discarded in favour of reaching accord with governments.
- Civil society needs a role not just in the review but also in implementing and monitoring consequent actions.
- The need to see EU policy reflecting a cohesive and coherent approach from Member States — not necessarily the case at the moment.
- Accepting that many of the key issues — economy and employment, migration and mobility, gender, youth unemployment, apathy and potential for radicalisation — are interlinked and need to be tackled in a way that sees such links.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Med Culture is an EU-funded regional programme with the aim of sustaining the creation of institutional and social environments propitious to culture as a vector for freedom of expression and sustainable development. This should be accomplished by reinforcing the capacities of the public and private cultural sectors as vectors for democratisation, and economic and social development for societies in the Southern Mediterranean.
Med Culture is part of the regional programme “Media and culture for development in the Southern Mediterranean” which has been allocated a total budget of €17 million over a four-year period, of which €9 million is for the award of grants on a co-financing basis, and €8 million for one capacity-development mechanism on media (Med Media) and one capacity development mechanism on culture (Med Culture).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Libya to Get Electricity From Egypt, Tunisia to Ease Blackouts — Tripoli Govt
Libya will import electricity from Egypt and Tunisia and rent generators as it struggles with power outages that have plunged its main cities into darkness, the Tripoli-based prime minister said.
Four years of fighting following the ousting of leader Muammar Gaddafi has hobbled Libya’s oil industry and power grid, with damaged plants and foreign firms reluctant to deliver spare parts needed to repair them.
Outages in the capital Tripoli lasting up to 18 hours a day have forced the country’s biggest steel company to close as well as dozens of bakeries and petrol stations.
Half of Clintons’ charitable giving in 2014 went to their own foundation
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia Beach Massacre ‘Linked’ To Museum Killings
There are “strong” links between June’s Tunisia beach massacre and the killings at the Bardo Museum in the country’s capital in March, British police say. […]
[Could it possibly be the ‘religion of peace’? ]
| — Hat tip: MC | [Return to headlines] |
Scientists Warn ‘Supercharged’ GMOs Could be Used as Bio-Weapons
Scientists and environmentalists are concerned that a new technique for generated “supercharged” genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be misused and trigger a health emergency or natural disaster.
The “gene drive” technology allows GMOs to spread rapidly in the wild. The fear is that these organisms could fall into the wrong hands or accidentally spark a catastrophe. The technology is being touted as a way to revolutionize medicine and agriculture, and supporters say it could, in theory, halt the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and yellow fever, and eliminate crop pests and invasive species like rats and can toads.
But many scientists are warning that people with nefarious intentions or fumbling handlers could release the gene-drive technology from the lab and harm the environment and human health. It even has the potential to be used by terrorists as a bio-weapon directed against people or livestock because the genes — which are capable of spreading like a virus — will be cheap and easy to produce.
“Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed with gene drives carrying cargo for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,“ said David Gurwitz, a geneticist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tourist Waves Israeli Flag at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Causes Uproar
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, AUGUST 4 — A French tourist waving an Israeli flag at the Al-Aqsa mosque complex on Tuesday morning angered Palestinian worshippers. The Quds news agency has published photos of the man as he was shoved and insulted by Palestinians. Israeli police intervened and took him away. ‘‘The man was hit but not seriously injured,’’ said a spokesman.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS ‘Price List’ For Child Slaves Confirmed as Genuine by UN Official Zainab Bangura
A United Nations official has said that she has seen a ‘price list’ for child slaves that has been circulated amongst Isis fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Zainab Bangura, the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict, said that she was given a copy of the list during a trip to Iraq in April.
The list surfaced online in November last year, but proved difficult to verify as genuine. Now , Bangura says she can confirm that the document is real, after spending time in the region.
Speaking to Bloomberg, she said that girls get “peddled like barrels of petrol”, and are sometimes bought so they can be sold to their families for thousands of dollars in ransom money.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS or Al Qaeda? American Officials Split Over Top Terror Threat
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s top intelligence, counterterrorism and law enforcement officials are divided over which terrorist group poses the biggest threat to the American homeland, the Islamic State or Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
The split reflects a rising concern that the Islamic State poses a more immediate danger because of its unprecedented social media campaign, using sophisticated online messaging to inspire followers to launch attacks across the United States.
Many intelligence and counterterrorism officials warn, however, that Qaeda operatives in Yemen and Syria are capitalizing on the turmoil in those countries to plot much larger “mass casualty” attacks, including bringing down airliners carrying hundreds of passengers.
This is not an academic argument. It will influence how the government allocates billions of dollars in counterterrorism funds, and how it assigns thousands of federal agents, intelligence analysts and troops to combat a multipronged threat that senior officials say is changing rapidly.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Jihadists Threaten Germany in Killing Video
Two German-speaking jihadists claiming to belong to the Isis militant group threatened Germany with attacks in an execution video broadcast online Wednesday.
The five-minute clip shows the men use assault rifles to kill two bound and kneeling male hostages in the Syrian ancient city of Palmyra, which Isis fighters took in May.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
John Kerry on the Risk of Congress ‘Screwing’ The Ayatollah
In an interview, the U.S. secretary of state argues that rejecting the nuclear pact will confirm the Iranian leader’s anti-American suspicions, deal a devastating blow to a diplomatic breakthrough, and increase the likelihood of war.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Past and Present Agreements With “Theocratic, Totalitarian, Genocidal” Regimes
By Dr. Harold Reisman and Jerry Gordon
In the current discussion of the Iran nuclear agreement with world powers and Germany, led by the United States, certain eerily familiar patterns emerge. There was a direct line from the appeasement by Britain and France that sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the onset of WWII and the horrors of the final solution for European Jewry that witnessed the murder of Six Million men, women and children in unspeakable ways. Hitler clearly had that in mind when during his table talk discussions with Albert Speer, his Munitions Minister, he referenced the Ottoman genocide of the 1.5 million Armenians during WWI, when he was alleged to have remarked, and “who hears any more of the Armenians”. Further, Hitler expressed admiration for the ‘manliness” of Islamic Jihad, wistfully ruing the adoption of Christianity by the Germanic tribes. As we know from Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide. President Wilson’s representative to the Sublime Porte from 1913 to 1916, the German general staff were enthusiastic boosters of sending genocidal jihad letters to Mosque leaders in the Ottoman Empire seeking the destruction of not only the Armenians, but other kaffirs, unbelievers, the Greeks in Smyrna and tolerated Jews. Following the Farhud; the Arab Nazi pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2d, 1941 , the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Hajj Amin Al Husayni, who had fomented the Arab riots of the 1920’s and 1930’s in Mandatory Palestine fled first to Mussolini’s history and hence to Berlin to be given an audience with Herr Hitler in November 1941. This was just a few months when the final solution conference was held in Wansee in the former home of a Jewish department store magnate. Al Husayni, visited Nazi death camps with SS Commander Heinrich Himmler impressing upon the necessity of killing the Jews, to avoid their escape to the Palestine Mandate. The echoes of these precedents are heard in the declarations and a book published by Ayatollah Khomenei, “Palestine” seeking the elimination of Israel, occupying lands once conquered by Islam, are deemed a waqf a trust by their god Allah in perpetuity. Despite the Administration promotion of the current nuclear pact with Iran, we hear declarations of “Death to Israel”, “Death to the Jews”, and “Death to America.” These are the ravings of what former CIA-director, Ambassador R. James Woolsey has called “a theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal imperialist “ regime led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei seeking world domination. The parallels are too eerily familiar echoed in the warnings by Israeli Prime Minister why the Iran nuclear pact provides a path to a nuclear bomb with only one purpose: to kill Jews.
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia Advertises for Eight New Executioners as Beheadings Rise
Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners.
It’s recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death sentences, which are usually beheadings carried out in public.
Apparently no special qualifications are needed for the jobs, whose main role is “executing” but also involves performing amputations on those convicted of lesser offences.
The advert was posted on the civil service jobs portal.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Stark Contrast Between Netanyahu and Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal
Despite technical difficulties, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a wide audience of both US and Canadian Jews including persons of other “ethnicities and faiths” at 1:30PM EST on August 4, 2015. The electronic venue was a high definition webcast from Jerusalem sponsored by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COPMAJO). JFNA President Stephen Greenberg, who introduced the Prime Minister, told both he and those watching, including this writer, that more than 10,000 had signed up, ‘with thousands more” gathered to watch and hear Netanyahu’s address and his response to questions from viewers in Cincinnati, Boynton Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York. President Obama and Vice President Biden held forth in a two hour gathering to a more intimate audience of 20 Jewish leaders of various denominations and political persuasions at the White House Treaty Room organized by Greg Rosenbaum National Jewish Democratic Council.
Netanyahu cautioned that acceptance of the nuclear deal with Iran would give the Islamic regime “two paths to the bomb” possibly resulting in a nuclear war, triggering a regional nuclear arms race. President Obama was alleged to have remarked at his closed door White House session that rejection of the deal would force the US to under military action and that “rockets would rain down on Tel Aviv.”…
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
State Dept. ‘Doesn’t Know’ Legal Authority Behind Obama’s Green Light to Attack Syrian Troops
Asked what legal justification the Obama White House’s decision to strike Syrian government forces was based on, State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said, “I frankly don’t know.”…
The Obama administration has proven in the past that it has little concern for obtaining legal authority or Congressional approval prior to committing US troops overseas.
Obama brazenly undermined the power of Congress by insisting his authority came from the United Nations Security Council prior to the attack on Libya and that Congressional approval was not necessary.
“I don’t even have to get to the Constitutional question,” said Obama, a move that Congressman Walter Jones said constituted, “an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.”
Libya has since been overrun by tribal warlords and Islamic State militants, with the former US-backed rebel commander Abdelhakim Belhadj now leading ISIS forces in Tripoli.
As the video below documents, the announcement that Syrian forces would be targeted amounts to a de facto declaration of war. While ISIS continues its bloodthirsty rampage, killing thousands of Christians and Muslims, the Obama administration and its allies seem more preoccupied with destabilizing the governments of Syria and Iran.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Pentagon’s $500 Million Syrian Rebel Force Defeated in First Battle
The Anti-Media previously highlighted the failure of the Obama administration’s plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL). While the plan was to train and equip 5,600 moderate Syrian rebels, only 54 rebels actually crossed the border from Turkey into Syria.
On July 31, these rebels, known as Division 30, were attacked by al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. They performed poorly in the firefight and had to withdraw from their base near the town of Azaz. As the Associated Press reported,
“Clashes between members of al-Qaida’s [al-Nusra Front] branch in Syria and a rebel faction in the country’s north believed to have been trained by the U.S. government have stopped after the rebels left their headquarters, activists said Saturday…Rami Abdurrahman…said members of the Division 30 faction fled to a nearby area controlled by a Syrian Kurdish militia. Abu al-Hassan Marea…confirmed Saturday that Division 30 fighters have withdrawn from their headquarters. Abdurrahman and Marea said Division 30 had less than 60 fighters and that on Friday alone the group lost five fighters and 18 others were wounded.”
Furthermore, there are reports that a number of the moderate fighters were captured by the al-Nusra Front. The Pentagon has denied these reports, but to affirm its claim, al-Nusra Front posted a video of the captured fighters on its Youtube page. According to AFP (via Yahoo News), “Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch has posted a video purportedly showing its capture last week of members of a US-trained rebel force it accuses of aiding US-led air strikes against its fighters. The Pentagon denied on Thursday that any graduates of its training programme for moderate rebels had been captured in Syria. The video released by Al-Nusra… depicts five men walking through a field in a straight line, hands behind their heads, supervised by one hooded man and one armed man. One of the apparently detained men tells the camera he was recruited by the US, through intermediaries, to receive training in Turkey for a month and a half. He said the trainees were each given an M16 assault rifle and some cash to ‘fight Al-Nusra’ in Syria.”
To add insult to injury, there are reports that the commanders of the 54 U.S. trained and equipped rebels have also been captured by the al-Nusra Front rebels. As The Telegraph reports,
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Syrian Resident in Spain Who Died Trying to Mediate With Islamic State
“Crush them and kill the conspiracy in the cradle.” The order given by the spokesman for the Islamic State (ISIS), Abu Mohamed Al-Adnani, to declare war on the other rebel groups fighting in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Asad was not waived for the veteran jihadist who came to negotiate — a Syrian resident who lived in Spain for many years, and who paid with his life for his intervention.
On February 23, 2014, two months after Al-Adnani’s message was posted on the social networks, Mohamed Bahaiah, known as Abu Khaled al Suri, was murdered along with several of his men in the Syrian city of Aleppo in a suicide attack carried out by ISIS fighters. Bahaiah was the envoy of Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian pediatrician who took over from Osama bin Laden at the helm of Al Qaeda Central, sent to negotiate an end to the internal disputes within ISIS.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey: Travel Company Offers Halal Cruise
A travel company in Turkey is offering the country’s first 100% halal cruise, aimed at religiously observant Muslims, it’s reported.
Travellers joining the ship when it sets sail at the end of September will find gender-segregated sports facilities, spas and Turkish baths, the Anadolu news agency reports. There will also be no alcohol, no gambling and no pork products on the voyage across the Aegean Sea, the report says. Even the ship’s furnishings are being carefully considered. “We don’t even have a painting on a wall of the ship which is against Islamic values,” project manager Gokmen Aydinalp tells the agency.
Travellers on the four-night trip, called On the Trail of the Ottomans, will visit sights in Rhodes and Crete. “It will not be just a cruise which does not have alcohol or pork-related products,” says Kemal Gunay, general manager of Fusion Tour, which is running the cruise. “It will be a cultural and historical tour which promises an atmosphere of social networking.”
Halal tourism is a booming industry in Turkey. Hotels catering to Muslim holidaymakers’ requirements are on the increase, offering features such as women-only swimming pools or beaches.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Russia’s Pole Claim Sparks ‘Arctic Battle’ Fear
Norwegian commentators have expressed alarm at Russia’s renewed claim on the North Pole, with the Aftenposten newspaper predicting a “battle for the Arctic”, arguing: “The only question is how dramatic it will be”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Re-Submits Arctic Claims to UN
Russia Tuesday (4 August) announced it had submitted a revised application to the UN seeking the expansion of its Arctic shelf border, rich in oil and other natural resources.
The move is likely to add to the simmering tensions on who has jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic with the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway all in the race.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Submits Arctic Claim to UN in Move to Seize Oil and Gas Rights
Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday that it had submitted a bid for vast Arctic territories that could contain large quantities of oil and gas to the United Nations.
The ministry said in a statement that Moscow was claiming over 463,000 square miles of Artic sea shelf extending more than 350 nautical miles from the shore.
The Arctic is believed to hold up to 25 percent of the planet’s untapped oil and gas supplies, and Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the territory. The competition has intensified in recent years as shrinking polar ice is opening new opportunities for exploration.
Russia was the first to submit its claim in 2002, but the U.N. sent it back for lack of evidence. It submitted a partial revision regarding the Okhotsk Sea in 2013 and the commission issued a recommendation the following year, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Malaysia Confirms Plane Debris is From Flight MH370
(Reuters) — Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed on early on Thursday that a Boeing 777 wing segment discovered in the Indian Ocean island of Reunion is from the missing Flight MH370, the first real breakthrough in the search for the plane that disappeared 17 months ago.
“The international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370,” Najib said in a televised statement.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in March last year enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Plane Debris Belongs to MH370, Malaysian PM Says
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday that experts in France have determined that a barnacle-encrusted airplane wing fragment belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — the latest twist in an exhaustive search for the plane that vanished in March 2014.
All 239 passengers and crew aboard the flight are presumed dead. About two-thirds of those on the plane were Chinese.
Authorities believe the plane most likely crashed offshore from Australia in the east Indian Ocean. Oceanographers say it’s feasible the wing fragment floated thousands of miles in a counterclockwise direction across the ocean before washing ashore on the French island.
Malaysian authorities said this week they’ll seek help from territories near Reunion Island to search for more debris.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UN: Afghan Civilian Casualties Hit Record High in 2015
Nearly 5,000 civilians have been killed or hurt in the Afghan conflict in the first half of this year, according to the UN. The spike points to a deteriorating security situation since the withdrawal of foreign troops.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
US Urges China to End Land Reclamation as Tensions Rise
The United States has called on China to stop building artificial islands in the South China Sea. China has refused to discuss the matter that has concerned its neighbors during a regional security forum.
China has sparked alarm across southeast Asia by expanding tiny reefs and constructing military posts to reinforce its claims over some of the world’s busiest commercial sea lanes.
The United States and southeast Asian countries have called for Beijing to halt such activities, which have dominated discussions at the regional security forum, but China has refused.
Speaking Wednesday at a Southeast Asian regional security forum in Kuala Lumpur, US Secretary of State John Kerry told foreign ministers from the group of that the United States shares their desire for negotiated settlements to contested claims over territory in the South China Sea.
“We want to ensure the security of critical sea lanes and fishing grounds, and we want to see that disputes in the area are managed peacefully and on the basis of international law,” Kerry said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
What Does China’s Manufacturing Slowdown Mean?
A key private survey shows that Chinese manufacturing slowed to a two-year low in July, dashing hopes the economy may be steadying. DW examines the reasons for the slowdown and its impact on economic performance.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Drug Tunnel Resembling El Chapo’s Escape Route Found at Mexican Border
Mexican authorities have discovered a 123-meter tunnel at the border near Tijuana, which was reportedly being built by the Sinaloa cartel to transport drugs to the United States.
Details of the sophisticated tunnel, which included rail track and lighting fixtures, were revealed by Mexican law-enforcement officials on Sunday. The route was discovered on June 30 but so far no arrests have been made.
The tunnel appears to be similar to the passageway used by Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán to escape from a maximum security prison on July 11.
Over the years, the cartel leaders have employed the use of tunnels to move quantities of drugs to the United States.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“Belgium is Not in an Asylum Crisis”
The Michel administration is earmarking 15 to 20 million euros per three months to create 2,500 extra places for asylum seekers. A reception centre in Holsbeek (Flemish Brabant) to accommodate people returning to their home country, will be reopened after it had just been closed. The measures are put in place to deal with rising numbers of immigrants.
Yesterday saw as many as 265 different applications by asylum seekers to get a residence permit on just one day. If the trend of increasing numbers continues, Belgium will be facing a major shortage in September if nothing is being done. Belgian now boasts a capacity of 18,400 places, but nearly all of these have been taken at present.
The Asylum and Migration Secretary Theo Francken (Flemish nationalist) says that the upward trend started in May, and that it is being confirmed. The federal government is now creating 2,500 extra places in the short run, in army barracks and present reception centres, and also by reopening a centre in Holsbeek. “As a west-European country, we want to guarantee that we have a humane policy, offering people on the run a bath, a bed and bread.”
The government had put aside some 80 million for this purpose. The extra places are costing 15 to 20 million every three months.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
As Migrants Die at Sea, Latvians Protest Against Quotas
Latvians have protested government plans to accept 250 applicants for asylum over the next two years. More than 2,000 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean between Africa and Europe this year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Belgium to Increase Reception Centres for Asylum Seekers
The Belgian government needs to create 5,000 more places for people seeking asylum, reports Le Soir. It plans to turn barracks into reception centres to deal with the growing number of applicants. Some centres, such as the one in Holsbeek, will be have to be reopened.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Belgium: “This is a Great Source of Concern”
Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen, an umbrella organisation representing the interests of refugees, calls it “very worrying” that the Belgian government does not succeed in dealing with asylum applications properly on the spot. The organisation was commenting on the fact that 50 asylum seekers had to be refused on Monday as the waiting room was too crowded.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Charity Says Refugee Children at Risk of Exploitation, Disease as Migration Overwhelms Greece
ATHENS, Greece — Thousands of child refugees and migrants entering Greece are at risk of exploitation and disease as local authorities are overwhelmed by the wave of immigration, an international charity said Wednesday.
Save the Children said that children are still living in “appalling conditions” in reception centers, where food, water, medicine and a safe place to sleep are in poor supply.
At least 110,000 people, mostly refugees from Syria and other war zones, but also economic migrants, have reached Greece’s Aegean Sea islands from neighboring Turkey this year — a 400 percent increase over 2014.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
City to Appoint Two Illegal Immigrants as Commissioners
Huntington Park became the first city in California to appoint two undocumented immigrants as commissioners on city advisory boards, a lawmaker confirms.
City Councilman Jhonny Pineda has picked Francisco Medina to join the health and education commission and Julian Zatarain for the parks and recreation commission.
The 32-year-old lawmaker told CBSLA online producer Deborah Meron that he promised voters while running for office that he would create more opportunities for undocumented residents.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Fears of Humanitarian Crisis in Serbia as Refugees Stream in
At the crack of dawn hundreds of refugees, most of them Syrians, stream into Serbia’s southern valley of Presevo after a perilous journey they hope will lead to a new life in the European Union.
“It’s a dangerous road, we’ve been walking for days,” says Mahmoud Rashid, a 25-year-old Kurd from northern Syria’s devastated city of Aleppo.
For several weeks the men and women, some carrying babies, had mostly walked — crossing through minefields on the Syrian-Turkish border, camping in forests, and hiding from mafia gangs as they passed through Greece and Macedonia.
At Presevo, they are met by local officials who usher them into a temporary reception centre to receive medical aid, food and shelter.
The majority hope the stay in Presevo, a mostly-ethnic Albanian town of some 30,000, will last only a few hours — the time it takes to apply for asylum in order to get a document legalising their stay in Serbia for 72 hours.
Once the precious piece of paper is in hand, the plan is to board a train or bus to the northern town of Subotica on the Hungarian border.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Frenchman Caught With Nine Migrants in His Car
A Frenchman faces up to five years in prison after he was caught trying to smuggle a carload of migrants from Italy into France. The incident comes amid reports of hard-up French people turning to part-time people smuggling.
The 35-year-old man from Nice was crossing the Italian-French border on Monday night when police pulled him over, Le Parisien newspaper reported.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Enlists Army to Deal With Migrant Influx
The German government has enlisted the help of its army to deal with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in the country every month. Nearly 80,000 migrants arrived last month alone, putting the country on track to receive 450,000 by the end of the year. Soldiers are being enlisted to help set up tents and other facilities as immigration centres are overrun.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rome ‘Too Crowded’ For More Migrants: Mayor
Rome receives the second-largest number of refugees among Italian cities, but Mayor Ignazio Marino has warned that the Italian capital is reaching saturation point.
His warning comes less than a month after violent protests broke out over the arrival of 100 refugees in Casale San Nicola, a suburb in the outskirts of the city.
Concerned about how to accommodate more refugees, Marino said the city is “overcrowded”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Juncker Urges EU Members to Resist ‘Populist’ Rejection of Migrants
EU governments have a duty to help the flood of migrants arriving in Europe and not cave in to “populist” demands to turn them back, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday.
In an interview with AFP Wednesday, Juncker said he was disappointed that EU ministers had failed late last month to agree on how to distribute a total of 40,000 mostly Syrian and Eritrean migrants from overstretched Italy and Greece.
They agreed to start relocating a little over 32,000 of the arrivals among the EUs 28 members in October, falling around 8,000 short of the target agreed by EU leaders at a summit in June.
“Ministers, unlike citizens, have an obligation to act. We made proposals that went far, while still being modest given the scale of the problem,” Juncker said referring to the proposals from the Commission, the executive arm of the EU.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Latvian Nationalists Protest Against Immigration
Around 250 nationalists Tuesday protested in Riga, Latvia’s capital, against the country taking in a planned 250 refugees under an EU resettlement scheme, reports AFP. “I don’t feel that EU institutions are listening to our concerns about taking in refugees from very different cultures,” said MP Raivis Dzintars.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Refugee Children in Court Against Move to New Settlement Centre
A group of asylum seekers living at the Almelo refugee centre have gone to court to stop the government sending them to a new location because the constant moving is having a serious impact on the children. In total, 52 children are among the group of 108 asylum seekers who have asked judges in The Hague to stop the move, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Refugee Registration Staff ‘Routinely’ Subject to Violence: Volkskrant
Workers at the four main Dutch refugee registration centres are routinely subjected to aggressive behaviour by asylum seekers, the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday. The paper says that between 2012 and 2015, officials had to deal with 300 incidents, ranging from intimidation, swearing, threats and physical violence. The paper bases its claim on reports obtained under freedom of information legislation. The actual total is higher because incidents at the Schiphol registration centre are included in a different system, the paper says. One worker, named as Maaike, told the paper she had to deal with aggression once every two months. It is part of the job, she told the paper. ‘There is a lot of tension and emotion.’
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
On Island of Lesbos, A Microcosm of Greece’s Other Crisis: Migrants
The number of refugees and migrants arriving on Lesbos and on other Greek islands has surged to a full-scale disaster, and only squalor awaits them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Post American Culture: Reframing the Immigration Debate
Dayanand Saraswati, Indian sage, said in 1883, “Having thus given a cursory view of the Koran, I lay it before the sensible person with the purpose that they should know what kind of a book the Koran is. I have no hesitation to say that it cannot be the work of either God or of a learned man, nor can it be a book of knowledge. Here its very vital defect has been exposed with the object that people may not waste their life falling into its imposition. The Koran is the result of ignorance, the source of animalization of human beings, a fruitful cause of destroying peace, an incentive to war, and propagator of hostility among men and a promoter of suffering in society. As to defect of repetition, the Koran is its store.”
This four-minute video on Muslim immigration sobers even the greatest optimist.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Report Cites ‘Latinization of U.S., ‘ Warns of ‘Backlash’ Against Whites
A study of the growing Hispanic immigrant population declares that the country is on the verge of the “Latinization of the United States,” a “browning of America” that by 2050 will be 29 percent Latino — and politically influential.
Published in the authoritative journal “Ethnicities,” the immigration analysis by two California experts noted that while big states such as California and Florida are home to most Hispanics, there has been a recent growth surge exceeding 300 percent of mostly Mexicans to Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and Arkansas.
The analysis is focused on how to economically handle the surge so that Latinos do not get left behind — or out of the middle class. The numbers and characterization of the new immigrants spells out the influence of the Hispanics.
And they warned that there could be a backlash as whites try to hang on to power.
“In fact, the current struggle that persists in Arizona may well be a bellwether for the potential backlash that is bound to ensue in others parts of the nation, as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant population no longer enjoys the political security associated with their past majority status,” said the authors.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Man Held Over Brother’s Death Inside Suitcase
A Spanish judge on Tuesday remanded in custody a French man of Moroccan origin whose brother died entering Spain illegally hidden inside a suitcase, in the trunk of his car.
The 34-year-old man was arrested and faces charges of involuntary manslaughter after his younger brother was found dead inside a suitcase onboard a ferry bound for the mainland from Melilla, a Spanish territory in North Africa.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden Rejects 10 Percent of Minors Seeking Asylum on Their Own
Swedish Radio News reports that so far this year, a larger percentage of unaccompanied minors coming to Sweden seeking asylum have gotten permission to stay in the country.
This year, 90 percent of them have gotten to stay, many of them coming from the Middle East or war-torn nations like, for example, Afghanistan.
Last year, 87 percent of children coming alone to sweden for asylum-purposes got to stay. The year before, 82 percent got permission to stay.
Sweden receives the largest number of these children in all of the EU, and this year the number 12,000 are expected to come, compared to 7,000 last year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Doctors Urged to Refuse to Do Migration Tests
The Swedish Pediatric Society has called on its members to refuse to carry out age tests for the Migration Board.
Recent years have seen a great increase in the number of unaccompanied young people applying for asylum here. It’s much easier for someone under the age of 18 to get refugee status, so the Migration Board has been commissioning x-ray studies to determine age.
But the Pediatric Society says the tests are too inexact and unscientific. The society’s Anders Hjern tells Swedish Radio News “The problem with the examinations is that they have very low precision. The speed with which wisdom teeth develop and the speed that we grow varies widely among different people during the teenage years.”
But Fredrik Beijer of the Migration Board says the refusal of the pediatricians to carry out more tests will have a negative effect: “So far it’s meant that it’s harder to do our investigations. In many cases we have felt forced to make decisions based on the material we’ve had. The worse the material in the case, the more it can hurt the applicant.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Katie Hopkins Questioned by Police for ‘Inciting Racial Hatred’ Following ‘Vile’ Migrant Column
Katie Hopkins has been questioned by police over an allegation of inciting racial hatred.
It comes after she shockingly compared migrants to “cockroaches” and insisted she “doesn’t care if migrants die while trying to leave their countries by boat”.
Metropolitan Police confirmed they’re investigating an article and questioned a 40-year-old woman over it, but she wasn’t arrested.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UN’s Multicultural Agenda Flooding Germany With Muslim Migrants
In 2012 Peter Sutherland, the non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and the UN’s special representative for migration, urged the EU to “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states and create “multicultural states” in Europe.
On Saturday the German daily Die Welt reported this process is well underway. It cited a telephone conference between the interior ministers of German states that revealed “302,415 asylum seekers have already been registered” this year in the country.
The figure is higher than the one reported by the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) which recorded 258,000 current requests for asylum.
The Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, however, said the unofficial “internal numbers” at the BAMF suggest as many as 600,000 asylum applicants in 2015. In 2009 official figures put the Muslim population in Germany at around 4 million, or roughly five percent of the population, representing the largest population of Muslims in Europe.
In November Felix Strüning of the Stresemann Foundation said Germany’s SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) has downplayed the actual numbers on the influx of Muslim immigrants in the country in order to stifle criticism of the multicultural agenda mentioned by Peter Sutherland.
Strüning writes for Citizen Times that “the number of refugees entering Germany has risen exponentially. And this implies a massive increase in the percentage of the population of Muslim persuasion,” a fact the SVR has “blithely swept under the rug.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood and the Demonic Population Control Agenda of the New World Order
Did you know that Planned Parenthood gets more than half a billion dollars from the federal government every single year? Did you know that the Obama administration gives an additional 35 million dollars each year to the United Nations Population Fund to promote abortion and sterilization around the globe? And did you know that the radical new sustainable development agenda that is being launched by the United Nations in September includes a goal of providing access to abortion services to every single woman on the entire planet by the year 2030? The things that you are going to read about in this article are very disturbing. The demonic population control agenda of the New World Order is greatly advancing, and Barack Obama and the U.S. government are at the tip of the spear.
No matter which political party has been in power, the U.S. government has been giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood year in and year out. They just kept on doing this even though they knew that Planned Parenthood was harvesting body parts from aborted babies and selling them to medical researchers to be used in sick and twisted experiments. It was common knowledge that this was happening in the abortion industry, but nobody was really talking about it. Thankfully, a series of undercover videos has been released recently which has caused this horrific practice to make headlines all over the planet.
Just this week, a fifth video was released. This one actually shows a Planned Parenthood official discussing the sale of “intact fetal cadavers”… “So, if we alter our process and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this,” she says, adding “I mean that’s — it’s all just a matter of line items.”
You can watch the entire video right here. It is hard to even fathom that people could be so evil. We are talking about a level of depravity along the lines of a Josef Mengele.
Now it is all out in the open, and most Americans don’t seem too concerned about it. Barack Obama has already pledged to stop all attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and he is very proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. The following is an excerpt from a speech that Obama delivered to Planned Parenthood in 2013…
“That’s why no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing the past few years have shown,” Obama said. “It’s that Planned Parenthood isn’t going anywhere.”
“It’s not going anywhere today, it’s not going anywhere tomorrow,” Obama said.
Barack Obama is also very committed to advancing the population control agenda of the United Nations.
As I mentioned above, the United Nations is launching the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development in September. The Pope is actually traveling to New York to deliver the speech that will kick off the conference where this agenda will be publicly unveiled. But what most people don’t realize is that population control is at the very core of this new agenda. According to the finalized text of this new agenda, the UN is setting a goal of making abortion services available to every woman on the entire planet by the year 2030. The following comes from the official text of the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development…
We are committed to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education.
And of course the UN has already been working hard to promote population control all over the world for many, many years.
For fiscal year 2015, the U.S. Congress approved 35 million dollars in funding for the UN population fund. This is an organization that has been caught red-handed implementing some absolutely horrific population control measures all over the world. For instance, just check out what happened in our neighbor to the south…
An independent investigation has found that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in its association with the National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO), supports involuntary sterilization and coercive family planning in Mexico.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
SJW’s Go After ‘Baddest Woman on the Planet’ For Transgender Comments
Perpetually offended keyboard warriors target ‘Rowdy’ Ronda Rousey.
Rousey made the comments two years ago when it was revealed that Fox, who had already competed in two fights against other women, had been born a man. The revelation sparked a debate about whether Fox should be legally allowed to compete against women.
Rousey, also an Olympic bronze medalist in judo, stated at the time:
“She can try hormones, chop her pecker off, but it’s still the same bone structure a man has… It’s an advantage. I don’t think it’s fair.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spanish Museum Promotes Eugenics Race Cult
Infowars traveled to Valencia, Spain, and to the City of Arts and Sciences, an architecturally extravagant museum complex, with a aquarium, performing arts center, observatory and science museum.
It was there that they discovered an agenda to condition the public into accepting eugenics and race cleansing as “helpful” for the population.
But it’s done so deceptively that the public will stay ignorant to the fact that their global masters want them dumbed down and subservient.
This should be a wake up call.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Homosexuals Are Aiming for Your Kids
The New York Times reported on July 27, 2015 that the “Boy Scouts End Ban on Gay Leaders.”
The Boy Scouts of America claims its child abuse prevention program is the best in the country. However, there have been over 2,000 cases of abuse in the Boy Scouts. Here are some examples.
- In 2005, the man who ran that program, Douglas Smith Jr., was sentenced to eight years in a federal prison for trafficking in child pornography on the Internet.
- David Watkins, a former Boy Scout leader, has been charged with sodomizing a boy under 13 years of age in his troop.
- Scout leader Brett Tayler was charged with more than 30 counts of child molestation and exploitation. He is suspected of molesting at least 10 boys from ages 6-9 years old.
- Scout leader Peter Robert Stibal II was sentenced to 21 years for sexually abusing four Scouts from 2003 to 2008 and possessing child pornography.
If such crimes have already come to the light in the Boy Scouts, one must ask why the radical homosexual lobby is determined to force the BSA to allow homosexuals to infiltrate their organization.
I warned America that Canadian Scouts (CS) decided to allow females, atheists, agnostics, homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals to join the CS. In 1999, they approved the establishment of an all-homosexual troop, which now marches in Canada’s “gay pride” parades. Within five years, scouting membership dropped over 50 percent. Many scouting camps and offices were closed, and the staff was laid off…
Boys who become scouts to receive a healthy, moral upbringing are instead becoming lifetime victims of criminals who prey on children.
Even worse is the lack of justice these young boys receive. Canada’s epidemic of child sex abuse is largely swept under the rug to protect pederasts.
Brian Rushfeldt, president of Canada Family Action, stated, “The notion that we need to protect homosexuals more than we need to protect children … has been a disturbing trend.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ancient Galaxy is Most Distant Ever Found
Astronomers have spotted the farthest-flung galaxy in the known universe.
The newfound galaxy, known as EGSY8p7, lies about 13.2 billion light-years from Earth — meaning astronomers are now seeing the mass of stars as it existed just 600 million years or so after the Big Bang that created the universe.
No galaxy yet discovered can provide such a deep window into the universe’s ancient past, study team members said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Could We Fly From London to New York in an Hour?
Airbus has won a patent for a hypersonic passenger plane which could potentially fly from London to New York in an hour.
Dubbed Concord 2.0, the jet would be capable of flying more than four times the speed of sound.
Documents lodged with the US Patent Office refer to an “ultra-rapid air vehicle and related method for aerial locomotion”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Facebook Responds to YouTube Star’s ‘Lying, Cheating, Stealing’ Charges
Facebook has been prioritizing video and challenging Google-owned YouTube as a video hosting site and creators’ haven, but some video bloggers are not succumbing to the massive social network. Hank Green, a longtime YouTube star whose VlogBrothers channel boasts 2.6 million subscribers, charged Facebook with “cheating, lies and theft” within its sales pitch.
Green, in a blog post published on Medium Monday, claimed that Facebook is inflating the numbers it uses to describe the views and reach videos receive on the site. For example, Facebook counts a video as viewed after three seconds while YouTube waits until 30 seconds, Green notes. That means a Facebook video could be considered watched by a user even when someone is passively scrolling without the sound on.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Macabre Mousetraps Show Age-Old Ingenuity in the Vermin Wars
There have been more than 4000 patent applications filed for mousetraps — the most for any type of device, apparently. But despite these ingenious, or perhaps crazy, contraptions, our furry adversaries are still around, biting our bread, scratching our cupboards and leaving droppings on our floors. It seems that Jerry always has the last laugh.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Study Offers First Genetic Analysis of People With Extremely High Intelligence
The first ever genetic analysis of people with extremely high intelligence has revealed small but important genetic differences between some of the brightest people in the United States and the general population.
Published today in Molecular Psychiatry, the King’s College London study selected 1,400 high-intelligence individuals from the Duke University Talent Identification Program. Representing the top 0.03 per cent of the ‘intelligence distribution’, these individuals have an IQ of 170 or more — substantially higher than that of Nobel Prize winners, who have an average IQ of around 145.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Servando Gonzalez has a very interesting three part essay concerning the Council on Foreign Relations.
But;
Eisenhower gave a warning speech on his departure from the Presidency to America about the industrial/military complex getting out of hand. Was this speech his atonement for past sins or is Mr Gonzalez wrong for including Eisenhower as a member of the CFR? There was a very good military reason for ordering General Patton into Bohemia rather than continue the race to a bombed out Berlin where just about everything ceased to exist, and that was to retrieve Nazi wonder weapon secrets hidden within the caves that SS General Kammler had been operating from since 1943.
The question that needs to be asked here is; who within the military hierarchy knew that location would reveal the many military secrets of the Third Reich?
Too, Mr Gonzalez does not mention the role within the CIA that the Nazi Abwehr played under General Gehlen, as the second world war was coming to a close and into the next decade. An oversight?