14 Signs That the World Economy is Getting Weaker
The truth is that just about wherever you look around the globe things are getting even worse. China is experiencing a substantial economic slowdown, and Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in an effort to keep the Japanese economy moving. Unemployment in Europe continues to get even worse, and the riots this week in Spain and in Greece have been absolutely frightening at times. In the United States there are a whole host of signs that another recession is approaching, and the number of American CEOs that say that they plan to eliminate jobs in the coming months is rapidly rising. The world economy is more interconnected today than ever before, and that means that we are all in this together. Just remember what happened back in 2008 and 2009. The economic pain that started on Wall Street was felt in every corner of the planet. So anyone that believes that the United States (or any other major nation for that matter) is going to escape the next wave of the economic crisis is simply not being realistic. Why do you think central banks all over the world are in “panic mode” right now? They are firing all of their ammunition and printing money like there is no tomorrow in an attempt to keep the system together. Unfortunately, it is not going to work.
If the powers that be had an “easy button” that would quickly fix everything, they would have pressed it by now. But despite all of their efforts things continue to unravel. If you want to get an idea of where we are headed, just look at what is already happening in Europe. Unemployment has risen above 24 percent in Greece and above 25 percent in Spain.
Those two nations are on the “bleeding edge” of the next wave of economic problems. Unemployment is rising almost everywhere else in Europe as well, and things are eventually going to get really bad in Asia and in North America too.
So hold on to your seat belts — it is going to be a bumpy ride.
The following are 14 signs from around the globe that the world economy is getting weaker…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
JP Morgan Secretly Stockpiles Silver and Gold; Blood Money (Gld, Slv, Agq, Iau, Jpm)
They [JP Morgan] buy the physical silver at the same time they sell the future (on Comex) futures trade in contango (higher price than spot physical) they get zero interest rate cash from FED so borrow the money for free, they own the vaults to store the silver… so as the future comes to maturity they can either settle against their physical long or roll the future to collect more free contango… This is pure arbitrage paid for by the FED. This has been going on for over 30 years and why shouldn’t they be allowed to have 25% of the Open Interest? There is no manipulation because they are short the futures and long the physical and have “ZERO” price risk, but nice profits! It’s brilliant trading and completely 100% legal and that’s why they will never be charged with manipulation because there is none going on. Sometimes it’s just that easy!
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The bottom line to the JP Morgan bullion prices suppression scheme is, if bullion prices reflected the weakness of the U.S. dollar, the Fed would have to stop printing them. Congress would be forced to make the tough decisions regarding the public account, and the wrongs can be righted more quickly with less, much, much less pain — and most likely less suicides, too.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain Falls to Pieces, As Predicted
Be Very Careful, Beloved Spain … Two weeks ago I was interviewed by the Catalan newspaper El Punt Avui. I said it would be unthinkable for the Spanish state to stop Catalan secession by military force. Such action would violate EU Treaties and lead to Spain’s suspension from the European Union. You do not do such things in the early 21st Century. “No pots ser membre de la UE si utilitzes la força” was the headline. I may have underestimated the vigour of the Spanish officer corps. First we have the robust comments of Colonel Francisco Alaman comparing the crisis to 1936 and vowing to crush Catalan nationalists, described as “vultures”. “Independence for Catalonia? Over my dead body. Spain is not Yugoslavia or Belgium. Even if the lion is sleeping, don’t provoke the lion, because he will show the ferocity proven over centuries,” he said. — UK Telegraph
[…]
Spain now has a Right-wing nationalist government with Opus Dei links, the Partido Popular … The mood is becoming dangerous … Former army chief Lt-Gen Pedro Pitarch said his views reflect “deeply-rooted thinking in large parts of the armed forces”.
Gen Pitarch said Catalan independence is out of the question, though he also said Madrid had bungled the crisis of the regions disastrously. “Are we looking at a failed state?” he asked.
Now we have an explicit threat from the Asociación de Militares Españoles (AME), an organisation of retired army officers, warning that anybody promoting the break-up of Spain (“fractura de España”) will face treason trials in military courts.
This from El Mundo: The attitude of the Catalan government and members of its parliament is inadmissible. The Armed Forces are guardians of the Spanish state and its territorial integrity under Article 8 of the Constitution.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain Drains Schools and Parents of Money
One of the biggest victims of cuts in Spain has been public education. Schools reopened this month with bigger classes, fewer teachers and increased fees for things like school lunch. DW looks at how they’re coping.
Alvaro Laje, 13, and his friends crowd outside their Madrid school on the first day of classes, discussing what happened over summer vacation. The city started construction on a parking garage where they used to play, which means now they’ll have to stay inside during recess.
“It’s the yard where we used to play football and basketball,” said Laje.”They’ve gotten rid of it just to make some extra money — to build a parking lot.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain Capital Flight Continues Into 13th Month
Investors remain extremely wary of leaving their financial resources in Spain. Fresh data from Madrid show that capital is still moving out of the country on a large scale, reaching an alarming outflow level.
Capital flight from crisis-stricken Spain continued in July. Around 15 billion euros ($19 billion) in net financial resources left the country in that month, the Bank of Spain reported on Friday.
That marked a considerable slowdown compared with the 56 billion euros that made their way out of Spain in June, but that’s about the most positive spin that can be given with regard to the latest figures.
A longer-term look reveals that about 235 billion euros in portfolio investments, bank deposits and credits flowed out of Spain in the first seven months of the year. There was a positive balance of nearly 18 billion euros in the same period in 2011.
Capital flight actually continued into its 13th consecutive month, with a total of 331 billion euros making it out of Spain during that period. That’s about one third of the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP).
It remained unclear whether investor sentiment would improve tangibly after Madrid’s announcement of its 2013 austerity budget, which critics criticized for having the potential to strangle consumption and growth.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain to Borrow $267 Billion of Debt Amid Rescue Pressure
Spain plans to borrow 207.2 billion euros ($266.5 billion) next year, the Budget Ministry said today, as pressure builds for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to tap the European rescue fund instead of financial markets.
Spain’s debt will widen to 90.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2013 as the state absorbs the cost of bailing out its banks, the power system and euro-region partners Greece, Ireland and Portugal. This year’s budget deficit will be 7.4 percent of economic output, Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro said at a press conference. Spain’s 6.3 percent target will be met because it can exclude the cost of the bank rescue, he said.
Spain’s borrowing plans may test investors’ willingness to continue financing the government with the European Central Bank waiting to buy the country’s debt should Rajoy agree to conditions. The government this past week unveiled 43 measures designed to boost economic growth that Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said go beyond the European Union’s recommendation for Spain’s restructuring.
The budget “seemed to be an indication that Spain would be asking for some official financing soon,” Megan Greene, director of European economics at Roubini Global Economics LLC, said in a Bloomberg radio interview Sept. 28. “There’s huge political pressure on Spain already.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Publisher Who Transformed the Times, Dies at 86
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who shaped the destiny of The New York Times for 34 years as its publisher and as chairman and chief executive of its parent company, died Saturday at his home in Southampton, N.Y. He was 86.
His death, after a long illness, was announced by his family.
Mr. Sulzberger guided The Times through a long, sometimes turbulent period of expansion and change on a scale not seen since the newspaperâ€(tm)s founding in 1851.
The paper he took over as publisher in 1963 was the paper it had been for decades: respected and influential, often setting the national agenda. But it was also in precarious financial condition and somewhat insular, having been a tightly held family operation since 1896, when it was bought by his grandfather, Adolph S. Ochs.
By the 1990s, when Mr. Sulzberger passed the reins to his son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., first as publisher in 1992 and then as chairman of The New York Times Company in 1997, the enterprise had been transformed. The Times was now national in scope, distributed from coast to coast, and it had become the heart of a diversified, multibillion-dollar media operation, which over the years came to encompass newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations, and online ventures.
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Rashid Khan has lived here 24 years and proudly says he was one of the first Muslims in the area. He had to go to Riverside for worship because there was nothing here. One can only imagine the emotions such a pioneer felt Friday, first at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley and later at a wonderful community appreciation banquet. “I had a tear in my eye but my face was full of joy,” he says of the momentous day…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Christian Activists Decry ‘Sharia Law’ At Arab Event
CN) — A Michigan sheriff’s department let a “hostile mob” of Muslims enforce “sharia law” during an Arab Festival, a Christian group claims in federal court. “The Muslims at the Arab Festival were enforcing sharia, which is Islamic law,” the complaint states. “Under sharia, blasphemy is severely punished. And in line with the Islamic legal dictates of sharia, the Christian Gospel is treated as criminally offensive speech and violence ‘for the sake of Allah’ is reinforced by arresting or removing the Christians. In short, sharia is being enforced by a hostile mob, and defendants are aiding and abetting its enforcement by permitting the Muslims to silence the Christians’ message through violence.” Bible Believers, a group of travelling evangelists, says the outburst has been brewing for years, ever since the city Dearborn, “in cooperation with the American Arab Chamber of Commerce (‘AACC’), the sponsor of the Arab Festival, decided to institute and enforce a drastic, and ultimately unconstitutional, restriction on the right of Christians to effectively evangelize at the Arab Festival by restricting their right to distribute literature.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Dearborn Muslims Rally Against the First Amendment
by Henry Payne
Led by a newspaper publisher, Muslim activists will call for putting limits on American free speech at a Dearborn rally this evening. You can’t make this stuff up. Nearly a decade after Dearborn’s streets celebrated America for bringing down Saddam Hussein and opening a door to democracy in the Mideast, the same city will be the epicenter today of calls to squelch free speech. Protesting the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” that has sparked protests in the Mideast, rally organizer Tarek Baydoun says that so-called blasphemy laws are necessary to prevent speech that hurts the “the religious feelings of Muslims.”
This assault on the First Amendment in the name of the prophet Mohammed is a sad day in America — and confirms fears that Muslim-American activists do not understand the fundamental separation of church and state in the American Constitution. “There is a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence,” said Arab-American News publisher Osama Siblani, a self-proclaimed “moderate” who is apparently oblivious to how gutting the First Amendment would affect his own business. The Dearborn organizers seek an international law banning what they define as anti-Mohammed speech that would supersede American law. The rally comes just days after President Obama reaffirmed America’s commitment to free speech in a U.N. address…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Democratic Senators Offer Gun Control Amendment for Cybersecurity Bill
Democratic senators have offered an amendment to the cybersecurity bill that would limit the purchase of high capacity gun magazines for some consumers.
Shortly after the Cybersecurity Act gained Senate approval to proceed to filing proposed amendments and a vote next week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the gun control amendment, came to the floor to defend the idea of implementing some “reasonable” gun control measures.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Federal Gov. Limits Sales of “Nobama Brew” To State of Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY — Requests are pouring in for a local brewer’s new novelty beer but the government is saying he can’t sell the brew outside of Oklahoma.
Rick Huebert’s “Nobama Brew” has been a smash hit in the sooner state.
The owner of Huebert Brewing Company can barely keep up with demand.
That’s great news not just for the company but for all of Oklahoma.
Huebert Brewing Marketing Director Christa Miles said the company tries its best to keep work local.
“We have people from Minco, Oklahoma that provide the boxes [for the beer],” Miles said. “We have people from Henrietta that do our bottling, we have all of our labels that come from the Moore area”
Rick Huebert said he’s also been getting dozens of requests from outside the state for major quantities of “Nobama Brew.”
“Just yesterday we had a request for about 3,000 cases from Texas and New Jersey,” Huebert said.
But Huebert has to respond to all of those requests the same way: No.
When Huebert asked the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to approve the label for “Nobama Brew,” he specifically requested to be able to sell the beer nationwide; that request was approved via written application.
But the TTB official who approved the request, Kent “Battle” Martin, added a line to the application that reads, “THIS PRODUCT IS ONLY FOR SALE IN THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.”
“[The form] says two things,” Huebert said. “It says I can sell it federally but then it also says I can only sell it in the state.”
We called Martin to ask why the line was added.
He told us to contact a man with TTB public relations.
That man has yet to return our phone call.
But when Rick Huebert’s lawyer, Randy Malone, called Martin, the TTB official gave a different response.
“[Martin] misunderstood that we wanted to sell outside of Oklahoma,” Malone said. “[That] is the impression I got from him.”
Malone, who has been practicing alcohol licensing law since 1989, also said he’s never heard of the TTB making such an error before.
But Huebert doesn’t understand how the TTB could misunderstand a simple application, especially one the agency processes all the time.
“From a business owner’s perspective, it seems like the federal government is doing everything they can to push down business,” Huebert said.
Huebert can re-submit the label for approval but he’s afraid by the time it gets approved the election will be over and the novelty of the beer will have worn off.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Global Bacon Shortage? Stephen Colbert Blames Obama and ‘Creeping Sharia Law’
by NBC news staff
Stephen Colbert was in rare form on Wednesday, offending a laundry list of religions with his political theories behind the pending bacon shortage and the movement to get people praying for a Romney win. Not surprisingly, the bacon story came first. The expected dearth in the supply of America’s favorite breakfast meat has been all over the news, and Colbert isn’t buying the explanation that a drought is the cause. “Just think about it — who’s not supposed to eat bacon? Well, Jews first, but most of the Jews I know eat it anyway. No, I’m talking about the really observant Jews — Muslims. They won’t even touch bacon. Which means this bacon shortage is nothing less than creeping Sharia law.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
If U.S. Troops Fight WWIII, Who Fights the Coming American Civil War?
U.S. troops available for deployment to fight a full-blown war is 1.4 million, with an additional 2.1 million, if all of NATO were to oblige.
On the other hand, if the Chinese commanded its people to deliver up every able 18-year-old male to fight a full-blown war, 6.5 million would need a uniform. When all 18-year-old Chinese men are knocked off in first rounds of battle, another 6.5 million 19-year-old vengeful can step in, with another set of 17-year-old men coming of age at the rate of 500,000 per month.
With that back-of-the-napkin estimate of manpower available on both sides, some group buried deeply within the true power structure out of reach of an American president must believe that the prize gained from winning a war with Iran is truly that large.
And what if a conventional ground invasion strategy turns into a nuclear one? What prize is worth that? With most of the Middle East and North Africa stirred into a frenzy of anti-American sentiment, how does that “snake pit” make it any easier on those wishing to control the region?
“What Washington has done, by destroying the secular governments that sat on these Islamist forces by destroying Saddam Hussein, by practically destroying Assad, by destroying Gaddafi, they’ve unleashed all of the virulent and extremist Islamist forces that are determined to throw off all forms of Western influence,” former Asst. Secretary of Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts told Infowars’ Alex Jones.
“So how can they control it now? They can’t. The way it was controlled was by the people we’ve overthrown. So we’ve produced this snake pit for ourselves,” he adds.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jews-for-Obama, You Are Delusional!
First, let me introduce a bit of dry statistics.
There are 6 million Jews in the United States of America; 3 million of them — adults. The latest polls invariably show that approximately 75% of them would vote for Barack Hussein Obama on November 6.
Translated into plain English, that means that 2 million 250 thousand American Jews are absolutely and incorrigibly delusional!
Several million Jews are delusional?! How could it be? Isn’t it a ridiculous oxymoron? Aren’t Jews supposed to be one of the smartest people on earth? Isn’t the author of this article a secret anti-Semite?
Well, I can assure everybody that I’m not an anti-Semite, since I’m a Jew myself. And not a self-hating Jew, like, say, Noam Chomsky or George Soros.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims in Michigan to Rally Against First Amendment
by Michael Warren
“We ? Prophet Muhammad”
Muslim Americans in Michigan, including a local newspaper editor, will be rallying Friday in Dearborn to protest the YouTube film, “Innocence of Muslims” and advocate for blasphemy laws. Here’s an image of a poster advertising the rally […]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims to Hold Anti-Hate Rally Saturday
Muslims in Tulsa, and some others who support them, will hold a rally Saturday afternoon to “stand up for the tradition of Prophet Muhammad,” Islamic Society of Tulsa spokeswoman Sheryl Siddiqui announced Friday. The “United Against Hate Speech” rally will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. at the intersection of 101st Street and Memorial Drive, she said in a written announcement. Participants are asked to dress in white, if possible, she said…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim, Mahdi, Or Anti-Christ?
Obama’s unequivocal defense of Islam at the expense of every other religion — Christianity in particular.
Why have some religious leaders in the East speculated as to whether President Barack Obama might be Islam’s Mahdi, or Twelfth Imam? The prophecy of the Mahdi is, for the uninitiated, the Muslim approximation of the Jewish or Christian Messiah. He is embodied in different ways depending on the branch of Islam with which one is dealing, and is of different levels of significance.
At present, the Shiite Muslim sect places the greatest stock in the Mahdi, and the entire Iranian paradigm as expressed by their leadership centers around this figure, his rise to power, and Iran’s role in bringing about his advent. This is largely the reason for their current political comportment, as they believe that fomenting an Islamic revolution is part of this process. The Mahdi, once in power, is prophesied to subjugate (read “kill”) all remaining infidels, and establish Islam in the four corners of the Earth.
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What we must understand is that the hatred the Muslim world has for the US is not rooted in national identity, practices, or culture. It is rooted in its Christianity. Christianity had its genesis in Judaism, thus they have hated us since the days of Ishmael and Hagar (his Mother) and the disrespect shown the founder of the Arab peoples. This has never been forgotten. The fact that Israel sprang from the seed of Abraham (and thus the Arabs and Jews are related) is lost in the shuffle. God promised that there would always be “enmity” between the two races, and as usual He has proven to be correct.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sen. Lieberman Urges President Obama to Sign Executive Order to Take Over the Internet
It is more and more brazen everyday. The political establishment hates our free speech. They hate the fact they no longer have a monopoly on the flow of information nor control the news anymore. The internet and alternative media now dominates the information war. They are losing the Public relations battle where a good majority of the American people have lost faith in the government and now see them as a threat to our freedom and security as a nation.
Even the political elite Zbigneiw Brzezinski and Hillary Clinton stated we have lost the information war. That is because the internet has bypassed the main stream dinosaur media. The major news outlets and newspapers have been losing viewers and readers because they are seen as a propaganda arm. They are losing revenue and are on the verge of collapse because they cannot compete with the alternative media.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Temecula: Smiles, Hugs at Groundbreaking Ceremony for Temecula Mosque
The protests, marathon public hearings and years of meeting in homes and business parks were just memories Friday afternoon. That’s when members of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the upcoming start of construction on its long-in-the-works mosque project. The mosque, which will be built in two phases, will be the center’s first permanent home for its members, who have worshiped in members’ homes and commercial areas in both Temecula and Murrieta. “This is a glorious day. A day to celebrate. Be proud to be in America, a Muslim in America,” said Emad Rasheed, the center’s chairman, addressing a cheering group of the center’s members…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama’s Federal School Curriculum
Three years after the Department of Education announced a contest called Race-to-the-Top for $4.35 billion in stimulus funds, some parents, teachers, governors, and citizen and public policy groups are coming to an awful realization about the likely outcomes:
1. A national curriculum called Common Core Regionalism, or the replacement of local governments by federally appointed bureaucrats
2. A leveling of all schools to one, low national standard, and a redistribution of education funds among school districts
3. An effective federal tracking of all students
4. The loss of the option of avoiding the national curriculum and tests through private school and home school
Working behind the scenes, implementing these policies and writing the standards are associates from President Obama’s community organizing days. In de facto control of the education component is Linda Darling-Hammond, a radical left-wing educator and close colleague of William “Bill” Ayers, the former leader of the communist terrorist Weather Underground who became a professor of education and friend of Obama’s.
When these dangerous initiatives are implemented, there will be no escaping bad schools and a radical curriculum by moving to a good suburb, or by home schooling, or by enrolling your children in private schools.
How was it that 48 governors entered Race-to-the-Top without knowing outcomes?
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It is not clear what Ayers spoke about at this particular conference. But my analysis of his courses and methods at the University of Illinois determined that his purpose is to radicalize future teachers—and by extension their students—for the purpose of sparking a revolution and overthrowing capitalism.
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In an April 28, 2010, Education Week article, “Developing an Internationally Comparable Balanced Assessment System,” Darling-Hammond claimed that the new assessment system is “designed to go beyond recall of facts and show students’ abilities to evaluate evidence, problem solve and understand context.” Bill Ayers, throughout his writings, likens the testing for “facts” to a factory or prison system, and agrees with Darling-Hammond’s emphasis on criteria like “student growth along multiple dimensions.” Such buzzwords thinly disguise an agenda of replacing the objective measurement of knowledge and skills with teachers’ subjective appraisals of students’ attitudes and behavior.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Battle for the Soul of the Republic
The National Security Agency (NSA) mega-data center, combined with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) special relationship with Google, and the federalization of local police using Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funds to pay for monitoring both the locations and the conversations of anyone they wish — without a warrant — suggest that the government of the United States of America (USA)-from local to national-is no longer in friendly hands.
As a professional intelligence officer and a retired Marine Corps officer, I am deeply offended, personally threatened, and patriotically alarmed. Evil has triumphed across the United States of America. Every single institution — from academies to civil society to commerce to the government and law enforcement at all levels, the media, the out of control military-industrial complex, and the bottom-feeding non-governmental and non-profit organizations that suck at the federal government tits gorged with printed money — has failed to respect the Constitution. There is neither intelligence nor integrity at the highest levels of all of our institutions.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Vote ‘President by Proxy’ Valerie Jarrett Out of Office on Nov. 6
Find out who Valerie Jarrett really is and you find out who Barry Soetoro Obama really is.
Put a skirt on Barack Hussein Obama and parade him before the world.
Call him President Valerie Jarrett. That, more than anything else, is who and what Barack Obama really is.
With full apologies to the awesome Investors.com, who called Valerie Jarrett “Obama’s Rasputin”, Rasputin’s got nothing on Jarrett. At least the mad monk came out of the dark, front and center into the palace, whereas Jarrett gets to hide on the taxpayers’ tab in the deepest of shadows.
In the sewer of Chicago politics, the Iranian-born Jarrett has never faced a court of law as one of the city’s prime slum landladies, and likely never will. Jarrett rose to power on the backs of the poor living in her ramshackle, rat-infested rental properties.
[…]
As an example of her power and influence, it was the power-crazed Jarrett who power called off three strikes against Obama bin Laden.
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“Her father-in-law, Chicago writer and TV commentator Vernon Jarrett, was an associate of noted communist Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor during his teen years. (Investor’s Daily.com). “When Vernon Jarrett died in 2004, he was given a salute on the pages of People’s Weekly World, a house organ of the Communist Party USA.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What the Military Kept From the Public on Microwave Radiation
Eldon Byrd, a scientist for the Naval Surface Weapon Centre, USN, in one of his lectures in 1986 on the effects of microwaves stated: ‘We can alter the behaviour of tissues, cells, organs and whole organisms… you can cause up to six times higher foetus mortality and birth defects in laboratory animals, and these fields are so weak you can hardly detect them…You can do genetic engineering with ELF [extremely low frequency] weak magnetic fields without micro-surgical techniques that are currently employed to do genetic engineering. It is known how to induce malignant diseases in human cells and how to cure them. You can entrain human beings’ brain waves across a room with a very weak magnetic field.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
When Did Communism Become an American Dream?
Sadly, too many Americans don’t know what communism is, or they foolishly think that it died with the fall of the Soviet Union. Nothing could be further from the truth. Communism is alive and well, but it isn’t just in Russia or China anymore.
The 2012 election is not a referendum on Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. It is a referendum on American society. It is a contest between two opposite American Dreams and the outcome will tell us nothing about Romney and Obama, but everything about the American people.
It is a test of ALL Americans, those who vote and those who don’t bother, and those who think they can afford to play 3rd party games on the sidelines, even in the most important election in U.S. history.
Unfortunately, before we can answer the subject question, I will have to teach the definition of communism first. Baby-boomers were never taught not to destroy their own country by overloading productive members of society with the high cost of free-stuff for folks like the common Obama supporter. But they won’t be able to claim ignorance after reading this column…
Senator McCarthy was right. There was a very strong communist movement operating out of California via the Communist Party USA, now headquartered in New York. There is a like-minded competitor organization, the Socialist Party USA (aka Democratic Socialists of America) also operating out of New York. The two share a common dream for America and that dream is entirely un-American.
These organizations knew that they had to change strategies to advance communism in the U.S.A. — so they changed strategies. Communist Party USA member and Michigan congressman John Conyers formed the Congressional Black Caucus, used to exploit the black population via racial divisions, for the sole purpose of advancing the Communist Party agenda.
The Socialist Party USA (DSAUSA) formed the Congressional Progressive Caucus via Socialist Party USA member Bernie Sanders, congressman from Vermont. Their strategy was to work like parasites from inside the American two-party system, rather than in direct competition with it. The goal was to seize control of one or both parties from inside. They now control the DNC and have moles inside the RNC as well.
[Comments: A must read for every American.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Youngest Guantanamo Bay Inmate Transferred to Canada
The youngest prisoner and last Western inmate at Guantanamo Bay military base has been returned to his native Canada. Omar Khadr will finish serving his prison sentence in Ontario.
Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was caught in Afghanistan in 2002, was flown from the US naval base to a military base in Ontario. He was then transferred to the Millhaven maximum-security prison, where he will finish serving his eight-year sentence.
A U.S. war crimes tribunal in 2010 sentenced Khadr, now 26, to eight years in prison in a plea deal that included him admitting to the murder of Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, conspiring with al Qaeda to commit terrorist acts and making roadside bombs to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as well as spying and providing material support for terrorism.
Under the terms of the plea deal, Khadr has been eligible to return to Canada since last October.
The case has proven controversial internationally owing to Khadr’s age at the time of his capture and the nature of his detention.
Khadr was born in Canada but spent most of his childhood in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
His now-deceased father, Ahmed Khadr, was an alleged al Qaeda financier, though Omar disputed the allegation.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: Call for CCTV at Every Mosque in France After Series of Attack
A mosque in Limousin region in west-central France has been vandalised with neo-Nazi graffiti
France’s leading anti-Islamophobia NGO has called for surveillance cameras to be installed at every mosque in the country following the latest in a series of attacks on mosques. A mosque in Limousin region in west-central France excrement was smeared on its doors in the early hours of September 12 in an incident that reflects a growing trend, according to the chair of Islamophobia Observatory set up by France’s Muslim Council, Abdallah Zekri. “It is time that town councils took this problem seriously and started putting cameras in front of mosques, as is already the case for synagogues,” Zekri said…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
A young man wielding a plastic gun shot Czech President Vaclav Klaus in the arm today — but the plastic pellets left him totally unharmed.
Pavel Vondrous was wearing military camouflage when he approached Klaus during a ceremony to open a bridge in Chrastava, a village 60 miles north of Prague.
He opened fire on the President at close range with a handgun that is often used in a game called airsoft, similar to paintball, Nova TV said on its website.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Three Injured in Attack on Swedish Soccer Fans in Naples
Trouble ahead of Napoli v AIK Solna in Europa League
(ANSA) — Naples, September 20 — Three people were injured after a group of Swedish soccer fans were attacked here by Napoli supporters ahead of Thursday’s Europa League match between the Naples side and Sweden’s AIK Solna.
The Swedes, who were actually Napoli supporters, were attacked by hardcore ultras fans wielding baseball bats and knives outside a pizzeria, said police.
The attackers covered their faces with scarves.
The owner of the pizzeria, who tried to speak in the defence of the Swedes, was injured, as was a 41-year-old Swedish national who organized the trip and another 23-year-old. None of the injuries, mostly to the legs and buttocks, are said to be serious.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Rome Pothole Sparks Mussolini Granddaughter Ire
Rome, 19 Sept. (AKI) — Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini has blasted Rome city council after her car got stuck in a giant pothole collecting her son from school in the upscale Villa Torlonia district.
“This is shameful — it could have been really dangerous. I invite the mayor (Gianni Alemanno) to come and inspect the city streets,” said Mussolini, a mother of three.
There was another big pothole a few metres further down down the road on which her son’s school and several others are located and the pedestrian crossing had disppeared, Mussolini said.
“It’s just one big battleground,” she fumed.
Traffic wardens took an hour and a half to come to her aid after she was unable to reverse her car out of the pothole, Mussolini claimed.
“What are they doing instead of dishing out parking fines to mothers collecting their kids from school?”
A former glamour model and actress turned conservative lawmaker, Mussolini is the niece of movie star Sofia Loren, whose sister married Benito Mussolini’s youngest son, Romano Mussolini.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Dirty Restaurants: Police Shut Down 2 Chinese Diners in Rome
(AGI) Rome, 22 Sept. — Italy’s NAS, office for the prevention of the adulteration of beverages and foodstuffs, shut down 2 Chinese restaurants located in Trastevere, one of Rome’s most popular nightlife neighborhoods. The NAS inspectors charged the owners of both restaurants with committing health-code violations. The restaurants were found dirty with unsafe electrical systems in the kitchens, that could pose a risk to customers. The adulteration squad seized 3 tons of typical Chinese foodstuffs. They were deteriorating, dirty and roach contaminated. Some of the products, which were found unsafe due to poor refrigeration, were being sold to customer as fresh.
The two Chinese businessmen were charged also with administrative violations for bad sanitary levels and for gross misconduct. The fine for such charges is of about EUR 7,000.
The amount of the seizure is approx.EUR 1,700.000.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Peruvian Arrested in Rome for Trying to Rape a Tourist
(AGI) Rome — A 19-year old Peruvian was arrested by the Railway Police Friday night for trying to rape a Danish tourist. The incident occurred near Rome’s Termini Station and more specifically in a cafe on Via Giolitti where the man assaulted the tourist and tried to drag her into the bathroom, touching her intimate parts. The girl managed to escape and launch the alarm. The Polfer agents of Rome’s Termini Station department arrested the man while the girl was taken to the Umberto I polyclinic University hospital.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Magistrates Call for Action by Parliament on Corruption
(AGI) Turin — The Italian magistrates’ governing body said the Parliament must update regulations to effectively fight corruption. “I think the Parliament cannot avoid its responsibility which, as the Head of State said, is to update regulations to effectively counter corruption”, said the deputy chairman of the Magistrates’ Governing Council, Michele Vietti, when asked to comment on the anti-corruption bill, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Fondazione con il Sud foundation, in Turin.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Make-Up Among Italian School Girls Leads to Skin Problems
Girls as young as 8 use mascara and rouge
(ANSA) — Rome, September 25 — Dolls and stuffed animals are taking a backseat to mascara and rouge among Italian elementary school girls — enough to spark an epidemic of make-up-induced dermatitis.
Girls as young as seven or eight are focusing on their looks — as are their parents, who either doll them up or help them beautify themselves, the president of the Italian Federation of Pediatricians (FIMP), Giuseppe Mele, warned Tuesday. “The use of make-up among girls has led to the sudden rise of allergic or contact dermatitis, recording a 16.7% increase in such pathologies in the 8-12-year-old age group,” Mele told journalists at a Rome presentation of the Sixth National FIMP Congress, which will take place in Genoa September 27-29.
“The trend to note is that today children increasingly are considered like ‘toys in the shop window’, a spectacle and an ‘accessory’ of parents’ desires,” Mele declared.
Mele also warned that marketeers increasingly target children directly, rather than indirectly through their mothers — “a phenomenon to monitor closely,” Mele added.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Northern Irish Protestants Set Off on Ulster Covenant Parade
Northern Ireland’s police force was on high alert on Saturday for one of the largest Protestant parades in years. Marchers marked the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant.
As many as 30,000 pro-British marchers took to the streets of Northern Ireland on Saturday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant.
The day is considered by local Protestants as being one of their most significant.
The Covenant, signed by more than half a million Protestants in 1912, rejected rule from Dublin and pledged allegiance to Britain, and laid the groundwork for the division of Ireland in 1921.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said Saturday’s deployment was its biggest in over 20 years on fears that the huge gathering could lead to clashes with Belfast’s Catholic minority.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Brussels: Final Call on Recruitment of Dockers Rules
Now barriers for the implementation of single EU market
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, SEPTEMBER 27 — The Commission has sent today a reasoned opinion to Spain for non-compliance with the EU Treaty of the regime organising the recruitment of port workers (dockers). Spain is obliging cargo-handling companies in several Spanish ports to financially participate in the capital of private companies managing the provision of dockers and not to allow them to resort to the market to employ their staff, unless the workforce proposed by this private company is not suitable or not sufficient.
Cargo-handling providers from other Member States wishing to establish themselves in Spain might be discouraged from doing so because of the barrier this provision raises on the market for cargo-handling services. This is the second stage in the infringement procedure. If Spain fails to react satisfactorily, the Commission may refer the matter to the EU Court of Justice.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Tibetan Lama ‘Reincarnation’ Rediscovers Himself in Ibiza
As a toddler he was identified as a reincarnation of a Tibetan lama, sent to a monastery in India where he was locked away from the outside world and worshipped as a god.
Now, aged 27-years-old the Spaniard who was recognised by the Dalai Lama as Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, has swapped his monastic robes for a life on the party island of Ibiza where he plays bongo drums, chills out to trance music and dreams of becoming a documentary film maker. Osel Hita Torres has spoken out about his extraordinary childhood and his decision to abandon life as a spiritual leader, thwarting the dreams of his parents and the Tibetan monks who guided him until he left the monastery shortly after his 18th birthday…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Raw Video: Police Provocateurs Caught Inciting Violence in Spain
How to win friends in Madrid. [video]
Undercover police attempting to incite violence are busted by protesters.
In this clip, the undercover officers are pilloried by the man filming.[video]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘It’s Safer to Insult the Prophet Mohammed Than to Contradict the Armed Wing of the ME Brigade’
by Damian Thompson
The article you’re about to read will almost certainly be referred to the Press Complaints Commission. I’ll explain why later. Anyway, here goes. This week I noticed that the Telegraph’s medical columnist, Dr Max Pemberton, was being horribly slagged off on Twitter. His crime? He’d commented on the fact that scientists at Columbia University had found no evidence that two specific viruses were linked to ME, which Max described (choosing his words carefully) as “the condition characterised by extreme fatigue and muscle pain”.
The Columbia finding was a terrible blow to many ME sufferers, who hoped that these viruses were the Holy Grail of a biological cause for their illness. But, as Max explained, it wasn’t widely reported because medical journalists are frightened of the militant wing of the ME lobby…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Free Speech or Islamophobia? Enough Coalition Roundtable With Marwan Muhammad
[JP note: No text, but click on the link to see the coalition’s flyer advertising an event on 3 October 2012 at the London Muslim Centre, London. Link to Enough Coalition here http://www.enoughcoalition.co.uk/ ]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Hundreds Gather to Protest at Anti-Islam Film
by Kathie Griffiths
Mosque leaders who praised the 700-strong turnout at yesterday’s protest against an anti-islamic film are now imploring governments across the world to ban it. And they are calling for all countries to act firmly and decisively against any social media sites that refuse to adhere to any future outlawing of offensive videos and posts which contain blasphemy. The Innocence of Muslims film made by the American Coptic Church has triggered a wave of unrest among followers of the Islamic faith across the world…
[JP note: It is a puzzle why Kathie Griffiths continues to finger the American Coptic Church as the organisation behind the film.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
A man who raped a woman after she was enticed to a Rochdale flat has today been jailed. Babar Ali, aka Zakir Mir, born 05/05/1969, of Rathbone Street, Rochdale pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing at Minshull Street Crown Court to an offence of rape. He was today, 27 September 2012, sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment and signed the sex offenders register for life. On the night of Thursday 22 March 2012, the 16-year-old victim was with a friend in Oldham town centre when her companion received a call from a man she knew, inviting them for a few drinks at a Rochdale flat. The pair caught a taxi into Rochdale and were dropped off on Oldham Road, near a takeaway called Big Chef. They were met by two men and were taken up to a flat at the back of the takeaway where they were given alcohol. A short time later the victim was taken to an adjacent room where she was raped by Ali. The victim and her friend later left the flat and she called the police the following day.
Detective Constable Michael Berger, of Rochdale CID, said: “This young victim was subjected to horrific and prolonged ordeal at the hands of Ali. The victim and her friend were persuaded to come to the flat, but once there, Ali demonstrated truly predatory behaviour. The victim was quite rightly left deeply traumatised, but she had the courage to contact the police the next day and she put her trust in us to investigate this. Without the victim there would not have been a case against Ali so we must pay tribute to her bravery.”
Greater Manchester is nationally recognised as a model of good practice in terms of support services available to victims.
- If you or someone you know has been raped or sexually assaulted, we encourage you not to suffer in silence and report it to the police or a support agency so you can get the help and support available.
- You can call Greater Manchester Police on 101, or alternatively people can refer themselves to St Maryâ¿¿s Sexual Assault Referral Centre on 0161 276 6515.
- St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Manchester provides a comprehensive and coordinated forensic, counselling and medical aftercare service to anyone in Greater Manchester who has experienced rape or sexual assault. Services are available on a 24-hour basis and people can access them either as a self-referral or via Greater Manchester Police.
- Manchester Rape Crisis is a confidential support service run by women for women and girls who have been raped or sexually abused. Confidential helpline: 0161 273 4500. Black and Minority Ethnic helpline: 0161 273 4514.
- Survivors Manchester offers support and counselling for adult male survivors of sexual abuse and rape, regardless of when the event happened. Contact 07919 246 267.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Martin Sewell is a family Solicitor from Kent
This week has had two primary news stories directing our attention to the same difficult subject of adolescent sexuality and the response of the adult world to it. Both stories should be sounding a klaxon to alert us that we have got all this seriously wrong.
In the Rochdale case, we have read of a long history of targeted abuse of vulnerable girls in the 13 to 15 age group by a group who had no interest in their individuality; I mean no disrespect to them by referring to them as from “the underclass”, but by doing so we can emphasise that they are presented in our media as very different from the missing 15 year old Sussex schoolgirl, Megan Stammers. One group is plainly known to the agencies responsible for protecting the poor, the vulnerable and excluded who slip through the protective net on a regular basis; the other hits the headlines as the seeming antithesis. In the latter case, Megan’s mother told the Daily Mail: “She is always in at 7pm, she is not one of these kids to roam the streets, she doesn’t go out drinking or anything like that. She doesn’t like the dark so she had never been out after dark,’ She added: ‘It is completely out of character, this is not her, she is not like this.”
In the former case, the threat was external, overtly exploitative, and, yes, “foreign” (whilst in Megan’s case the danger came from the wolf within within the fold). The Rochdale girls suffered more anonymously and brutally, whilst Megan’s exploitation is clothed in the language of “relationship”, though both should be identified as plain abuse by adults who should know better. Even as we discuss the wrongs, we have to treat the northern lasses as a “job lot”, whilst Sussex Megan has a name, a face and a personality. The differentiation and exclusion continue. I was struck as I Iistened to one “expert” on radio 4 defending under age sex and the “choices”of girls like Megan with the words “young person” and “relationship”, whilst subtly referring to others of the same age as ‘children” being “abused”. That is illustrates the double standard of such excusing minds.
Last night I met an ex-social worker friend, now a priest, and we compared notes: we were often on different sides of court cases but each of us had reached a common conclusion on these matters. These cases need to take us to some fundamental questions about how we protect young people, and part of that process involves making the progressive liberal establishment own the consequences of its actions. You can see those results in courts, prisons, drug rehabilitation hostels and sink estates throughout the country. My friend had been chatting to a workman at her house about Megan’s case. He would have no problem condemning the Rochdale abuse, but in the second case he softened “…but they’re in love” he intoned, as my friend struggled to contain her anger. Therein lies our confusion.
There are two approaches to framing laws and policies; the one clear, unambiguous, sometimes harsh; the other amorphous, inconsistent and malleable. We have moved from the former towards the latter, to our detriment. It is time to ask a simple plain question. Does the age of consent mean anything anymore, and if so what should be done about it? I have concluded that the pragmatic evidence is clear that society has a legitimate interest in delaying the onset of sexual activity amongst the young. I am sure I did not think this when I was 15. I have become a fogey, but that, I fear, is the price of maturity. I hope it is contagious.
A lifetime of working with, and for, children like those who suffered in Rochdale has taught me how wrong we have been to allow the surrender of childhood and adolescence to the progressive zeitgeist. By fearing to defend a defensible unambiguous standard we open many children to be let down and exploited by poor parenting, commercial interests, inadequately protective public institutions and social experimenters. Nobody with that background is under any illusion that children who engage prematurely in adult behaviours , whether sex, alcohol or drugs, tend to end up with poorer outcomes. Their problems swiftly become generational and grow exponentially to society’s cost.
There may be some highly resilient girls who make it through relatively unscathed, but the majority who fall into premature adulthood are highly ill equipped to do so, and most have tragic regretted outcomes for themselves and society. Put bluntly this behaviour costs us a fortune. Normally when we can help the vulnerable by limiting the freedoms of the advantaged, our progressive friends are highly in favour, but here we threaten their sacred cows of “self fulfillment” and the cult of the transgressive, so they turn their back. These poor girls of the underclass aren’t worth the effort.
Malcolm Muggeridge — who saw much of this coming — identified part of the problem. “Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.” Amazingly. our progressive friends fail to notice that “respecting lifestyle choice” and “marketing opportunity” are almost synonymous. The commercial sexualisation of even the very young is built on the grubby premise that the sooner you can be “at it” the better. The philosophical roots of the problem are laid bare in the blog entries of Mr Forrest, the teacher in question, where we can hear how contemporary progressive society slithers through the cracks of an unclear social policy. “How do we, and how should we define what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable…. you have to have faith in your own judgement”. If only he had added “ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”. It is a philosophical wet dream.
No doubt he thought Victoria Gillick utterly delusional when she sought to protect the age of consent at the cost of the much vaunted” harm reduction” approach. Her heroic failure meant that the abuser was armed with a powerful persuasion: “It’s not wrong…society pays for underage contraception and abortion… your parents need not know…it’s plainly such a hypocrisy to condemn us…” The protective parent was simultaneously disarmed, and continues to know that the police are usually not interested in ‘infringing human rights” in this area even though the convention permits countries to limit freedom of expression proportionately. In one aspect however, Mr Forrest’s blog showed unintended insight; his feelings “hit him like heroin”; doubtless they did. Heroin deprives one of all moral values, rendering one selfish, impervious to the interests of others and single mindedly intent on personal gratification. Welcome to moral relativism.
And there lies the problem. The simple law that says that anyone engages in sex with a minor at their peril, would be hard work to enforce, and we should have to back it up with a whole range of attitudinal changes. It used to work: it could again if we had the will to do so. Whether we are prepared to carry that fight forward depends upon answering one simple question. Do you think we should robustly protect the vulnerable girls of the underclass, and give them a chance of a better life or do we go with those who think they are not worth the trouble?
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rochdale Council of Mosques Strongly Condemns the Offensive Film
The Rochdale Council of Mosques has expressed its “disgust” at the film that has been released on the internet in what they consider to be an attempt to “deliberately incite and aggravate Muslim communities”. A spokesman said: “Globally we have seen a now predictable response to this movie and in many Muslim lands people have expressed their anger and disgust at the symbolic buildings that represent the United States and other foreign countries — namely the embassies and other official buildings. As Rochdale Muslims we too are enraged by this film that misrepresents Islam and the Blessed Prophet Muhammad — May the Peace and Blessings of Allah be Upon Him. Muslims hold all prophets of God Almighty, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, in the highest regard. They are the chosen messengers of the pure divine Lord and any attempt to misrepresent and show them in a negative light is deeply painful and regrettable. The Prophet Muhammad is believed to be the seal of all the messengers, the last and most beloved and we therefore hold him in the highest esteem. We feel that any publication which defiles a pure and holy character should not be allowed to be published and should in fact be prosecuted as material that incites racial and religious hatred. We are pleased to see that the Vatican, the centre of the Catholicism in the world, has also released a statement condemning the film. ‘The serious consequences of unjustified offence and provocations against the sensibilities of Muslim believers are once again evident’, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement released last week. We have been informed, there are some rallies organised by individuals in Rochdale. However, the RCM has made a decision not to hold a demonstration and would instead lobby MPs for international action against attempts to incite religious hatred. Everyone agreed that holding rallies and expressing their feelings in peaceful way is a democratic right of people which they can exercise. Rochdale Council of Mosques would urge the organisers and the participants of these rallies to be peaceful. As a Rochdale Council of Mosques we first and foremost condemn the actions of this individual who has clearly caused the intended grief and anger across the globe. As an organisation of Muslims who are always working for peace, harmony and cohesion across the borough and beyond we area appalled at this deliberate attempt to defile our blessed and Holy Prophet. We would ask all members of our community firstly to remain calm and not be ignited by this film towards violence.”
[JP note: Gibberish.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rochdale Grooming Review: One Child’s Story
by Jackie Long
The phrase “missed opportunities” sounds almost benign, as if nothing too awful has happened, just that things could have been done a little bit better. It is a popular choice of words in official reports and reviews where agencies — the police or social services — concede that they have failed in some way. But let’s look at what “missed opportunities” meant in reality for one of the young girls involved in the Rochdale grooming case. For Sarah it meant that being raped and horrifically sexually assaulted on a daily basis happened not just for a string of dark days but stretched out into years. Between the ages of 12 and 18 she was passed round strangers like a “piece of meat”, ferried from town to town for sex in cars or cheap hotels, beaten and violently threatened. That was her life. That was how Sarah spent her childhood…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Vienna’s autumn on the wine hiking trail opens shortly — with lots of opportunities to sample good wines and enjoy the views of the city.
Vienna is unique in being the only capital city in the world to have vineyards within the city boundaries — in fact there are 700 hectares of vineyards and 230 vintners in the areas around Kahlenberg, Nussberg, Bisamberg, and Mauer.
The Vienna Wine Hiking Day is held every year in the autumn. The Vienna Wine Hiking Trail is accessible only on this weekend. The trail cannot be accessed during the rest of the year, because it runs through private vineyards.
There are two routes.
Route 1 leads from Neustift am Walde to Nussdorf. In between are Sievering, the Wien Cobenzl winery, and Grinzing, all legendary locations in the Viennese wine and Heuriger tavern traditions. For those who prefer a small section as opposed to the full length of the Wine Trail, your walk can also start here. After all, a hike on the Wine Trail is not supposed to too strenuous — sipping outstanding wines and enjoying the breathtaking views are what it’s all about.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Why Italy Refuses to Recognize the World’s Fifth-Largest Religion
The small ceremonial daggers that Sikhs must carry at all times are such an important part of their religion that the London Olympic organizers allow them to be worn during events. So why does Italy have such a problem with them?
Flavia Amabile, Rome
Should a boy scout walking around with a Swiss-army knife be considered dangerous? Should Swiss-army knives be banned altogether? Well, for the Italian interior minister, if the small knife is carried for religious reasons, then the answer is yes.
Last May, after years of court cases and appeals, the interior minister announced that it was refusing to recognize Sikhism as a religion, on the grounds that the kirpan, the small ceremonial dagger that Sikhs must carry at all times, is dangerous.
The announcement was a great disappointment for the Italian Sikh community. “We are sad. Obviously we respect Italy and its laws, but after all these years of honest work in this country, we were hoping for a positive outcome,” says Harwant Singh, president of the Italian National Sikh Dharam Parchar Committee.
“I’m surprised that legal status is denied to a community which is a symbol of integration. They are the pillars of the production of the Parmesan cheese, just to give an example,” says Andrea Sarubbi, a member of parliament with the center-left Democratic Party, who is trying to find a solution to the dispute.
The first Sikhs arrived in Italy in the 1980s. They moved to northern and central Italy, where they worked hard without complaining, glad to create their own Italian families. Today, there are 60,000 Sikhs in Italy. “We wanted to live and stay here forever,” says Singh. “We have always followed the rules. We are a peaceful community, but we wish others respected our religion too.”
Despite being founded in the 15th century and being the fifth-largest religion in the world, today in Italy, the Sikh religion has no legal existence. It is just an association like any other.
Traditions and rules
Sikhs have to follow many rules. Men cannot cut their hair and must cover their heads with turbans. They also have to carry a comb, which is a sign of cleanness, traditional pants, a steel bracelet — and the much disputed kirpan dagger.
The turban has also been an issue in the past. The Italian Interior Ministry only authorized its use in official ID photos in 1995. Even if, once in a while, there are some problems at airport security checks, the issue of the turban is considered settled…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Cui Prodest? — Who Stands to Gain From “The Innocence of Muslims” Film?
Was the controversial “The Innocence of Muslims” film a false flag operation designed to undermine freedom of expression in the West? A rather interesting article on the issue of the authorship of the film has recently been published by Walid Shoebat. [1] In many ways the article makes a lot of sense. Please take some time to read his essay which can be found HERE.
[…]
Mr. Shoebat, himself a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, certainly has a unique perspective on their operations. Even though he has turned his back on them and become a peace activist his insights are still valid, he knows how they think and how they work. It is good that the Western world has an informed person like Mr. Shoebat to shine light onto these matters.
From Walid’s article:
“Court documents reveal that Nakoula Bacile Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin.
Eiad is a Muslim terror supporter and is not an Egyptian Copt.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Stop Persecuting US in the Sinai, Jihadists to Morsi
After military ops and 14 death sentences, Cairo protest 10/6
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, SEPTEMBER 27 — Egyptian jihadist groups on Thursday announced an October 6 protest at the presidential palace against what they say is government persecution against them, especially in the Sinai region.
The government must stop “investigating and prosecuting jihadists and stop committing violations during Sinai operations, which are carried out without distinction between perpetrators and victims, solely to appease foreign powers or national movements,” Masri al Youm online daily reported Mohamed al-Zawahiri, brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, as saying. An Ismailia court two days ago confirmed death by hanging sentences against 14 jihadists convicted of participating in an attack on a police station and a bank in el-Arish last year, killing six police officers.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Govt is Walking the Course With Firm Steps — Morsy
President Mohamed Morsy asserted that relations between Egypt and the US are normal and based on mutual respect. The US side, whether leader, officials or public figures, announced that they support the Egyptian revolution and new Egypt, Morsy told Al-Hayat television. “We had inherited a heavy burden in the march of the Egyptian-US relations, as a result of the corruption of the former regime which marginalized the real interests of Egyptian citizens,” he added. Morsy said that he thinks that the US side is trying to change their past stances.
As for the situation in Sinai, Morsy said that the number of Egyptian troops currently in the peninsula is enough to establish security there. “We are moving towards developing it and giving its citizens their full rights,” he stressed. He also asserted that Egypt respects its international treaties and will act firmly if other parties to those agreements violated them.
The Egyptian leader said that Egypt seeks to end bloodshed in Syria, ruling out the possibility of resorting to Arab or foreign military intervention. Egypt rejects any military action in Syria, he said.
Speaking about a recent phone conversation with US President Barack Obama, Morsy said that it was cordial and marked with mutual respect. The US president deplored the anti-Islam film, Morsy said, noting that he also offered condolences to the US leader over the US deaths in Libya. Morsy said he conveyed that Egypt is capable of protecting its guests as well as foreign interests. The conversation did not witness any negative tone like some reports claimed, Morsy added. Morsy asserted that the Egyptian people “are not the enemy of any side”, but also will not tolerate any attack or interference in the country’s domestic affairs. In the past, Morsy said, the US administrations used to take sides against the interests of the peoples in the region, including the Egyptian and Palestinian peoples. The situation is now different, he said, especially after the US supported the revolution, not the dictatorships…
[JP note: Mercy, mercy.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s Copts Abandon Sinai After Threats, Attack
ost Christians living near Egypt’s border with Israel are fleeing their homes after Islamist militants made death threats and gunmen attacked a Coptic-owned shop, a priest said on Friday.
The departure of nine families that made up the small Christian community in the border area of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula will fuel worries about religious tolerance and the rise of militancy after the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Pro-Salafist Rally in Benghazi Turns Violent
Hand grenades lobbed at security forces and cars set ablaze
Benghazi: Libyan demonstrators lobbed hand grenades at security forces and set cars ablaze after a rally in Benghazi on Friday in support of a hardline Salafist group which was evicted from the second city. More than 200 men converged on Benghazi’s Al Jalaa Hospital, which was guarded by members of Ansar Al Sharia until Friday of last week, when anti-militia protesters forced them out, an AFP correspondent reported. “We want Ansar Al Sharia to come back and protect this hospital,” a placard read. The crowd then marched on a nearby security forces building.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Muslims Order Christians Out of Their Village in Egypt
by Mary Abdelmassih
(AINA) — Copts in the North Sinai border town of Rafah have started leaving their homes after receiving an ultimatum from Islamists to leave “within 48 hours” or be killed. According to confirmed reports 9 Coptic families have left the town. The remaining 23 Coptic families are still there, waiting to leave. “it is difficult for us to leave as most of us are shop-owners and have property, so it is not easy just to leave everything and go,” said one Copt who is still with his family in Rafah. The Copts are all confined to their homes, afraid to venture out.
However, two days ago. masked men on motorcycles sprayed Coptic stores with bullets, but no one was hurt.
The nine Coptic families who left Rafah were government employees and the Governor of North Sinai offered to transfer them to neighboring Sinai Province capital, Al-Arish, to take posts there instead.
About three weeks ago a Coptic shop owner received a hand-written threat that “all Christians should leave Rafah within 48 hours, otherwise they will be killed.” Copts reported these threats to security but were told not to take the threats “earnestly,” because threats were during the time of the YouTube clip mocking Mohammad. “We thought the writers of these threats were just being vindictive against the Copts since it was claimed that a US Copt is responsible for it [the film],” said a Copts resident of Rafah.
Coptic families went with church representatives and met with the Governor of North Sinai asking for protection, he promised none, but just transferred nine government employees to work in Al-Arish.
The Coptic Church issued a statement this afternoon, after a meeting of the Holy Synod, signed by acting Patriarch Anba Pachomios, condemning the forced displacement of the Copts from Rafah, demanding that the “responsible state agencies address those that are trying to undermine the state authority and show it unable to protect its citizens.”
The statement further said “nearly one month ago the media had published the violations against the Copts but the Egyptian authorities have not taken the necessary measures to protect the Egyptian families, who have the right to live safely in their homes.” It went on say that the series of Coptic displacement started with El-Ameriya (AINAÂ 2-9-2012), then Dahshour (AINAÂ 8-1-2012) and now has reached Rafah.
Political parties and human rights organizations were angered by the forced displacement of the Rafah Copts. Many believe that this is the “method Islamists are using to change Egypt demographically, since they want an Islamic state in Sinai, all Copts have to go out,” said Coptic activist Mark Ebeid.
Dr. A. Shokr, vice-president of the National Council for Human Rights, said that they will support the displaced families as well as send a fact-finding mission next week to Rafah.
The Muslim Brotherhood Party “Freedom and Justice” published an article today saying that following an interview with H.G. Cosman, Bishop of North Sinai, no Copts were displaced. Bishop Cosman denied giving an interview to a Muslim paper and confirmed that some Coptic families have left Rafah and live in Al-Arish, and that some, fearing for their lives, are transferring their furniture and belongings from Rafah to Al-Arish because of the deteriorating security conditions..
Novelist and Sinai activist Mosad Abu Fagr commented to ElYom7 daily that what is happening in Sinai now indicates that president Morsi was defeated in his war in Sinai, and his adversaries already control the area, and because Christians are the weakest link in Rafah, it started with them. The rest will be displaced and the Islamists will take control of the areas of Rafah, Sheikh Zuwaid, Arish and Bir al-Abed. All of Sinai will be lost and become under the control of the Islamists.
| — Hat tip: Mary Abdelmassih | [Return to headlines] |
It should come as no surprise that the State Department has much to answer for in the abysmal manner in which it so disastrously allowed the horrific murder of the American Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans by Muslims in Benghazi, Libya to occur. What took place was an act of barbarism deliberately planned and perpetrated on the very anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity by fellow Muslims against Americans upon American soil.
And who must bear full responsibility for not adequately protecting the hapless ambassador and his staff in Benghazi? Well, it has to be none other than Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, and appeaser to all and every tyrant and international thug in the world.
Her craven apologies to the ever hate filled and murderous Muslim world by blaming an amateurish video, purportedly the excuse for mass Islamic violence and killings, has been enough to make Neville Chamberlain look decidedly heroic and resolute. But then she takes her queue from her boss, the Appeaser and Apologist in Chief; Barack Hussein Obama.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Warns of Terrorist Threat to Missionaries in Egypt
(AGI) — Cairo, 29 Sep — The US Cairo embassy has issued a terrorist threat alert, warning of possible attacks against female American Christian missionaries in Egypt. The embassy quotes “credible information” suggesting “terrorist interest in targeting US female missionaries in Egypt,” urging US citizens “exercise vigilance, taking necessary precautions to maintain their personal security.” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Fisherman Killed by Israeli Navy Fire
Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported, Friday, that a Palestinian fisherman was killed by Israeli navy fire west of Beit Lahia, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The fisherman’s brother was wounded in the attack. Dr. Ashfar Al-Qdura, spokesperson of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip told the Maan News Agency that Fahmi Salah Abu Rayyash, 22, was shot and seriously injured by Israeli fire on Friday morning, and died of his wounds at a local hospital on Friday evening. Al-Qudra added that Fahmi was shot by one round of live ammunition in his abdomen and another round in his right foot. Yousef, the brother of Fahmi, suffered mild injuries and received the needed medical treatment.
The attack is part of ongoing violations carried out by the Israeli army and navy against Palestinian fishermen in the coastal region; these attacks led to dozens of casualties, while dozens of fishermen were also kidnapped by the army. Since 2000, fishermen have been denied their right to sail and fish, as Israel reduced the area of fishing from 20 nautical miles, which was established upon in the agreements signed between Palestinian and Israel, to 6 nautical miles in 2008. However, Israeli forces have continued to prevent fishermen from going beyond 3 nautical miles since 2009…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Iranian Minister: Israel Already Crossed Nuclear ‘Red Line’
Israel has already crossed its own nuclear “red line,” Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Saturday in response to remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week at the UN General Assembly.
During his speech at the United Nations in New York, Netanyahu used an illustrated bomb diagram to call for a “clear red line” to be drawn with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, which he says is being used to develop atomic weapons.
Vahidi responded in kind on Saturday, saying Israel has already breached its own nuclear red line.
“If having the atomic bomb is passing the red line, the Zionist regime, that possesses dozens of nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction, has passed the red line years ago, and it has to be stopped,” Vahidi (pictured at top) told the ISNA news agency.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Schools Increasingly Religious in Turkey
Turkey may be a secular country, but the government is turning several secular schools into religious institutions under controversial education reforms. And the schools are being received with mixed results.
Many parents in Turkey were in for a shock this month when they discovered that their children’s schools had been turned into Imam Hatips. Religious schools were originally created to teach future imams or religious leaders.
But not everyone was unhappy at the change: at one school, a mother, wearing a headscarf, believes it’s a good thing.
“I want my child to learn about his religion (…) because we are a Muslim country so religion must be part of our education,” she said.
Another parent was less enthusiastic about the change.
“We want our children to be educated according to the principles of secularism,” he said.
He believes that things are changing in Turkey. Imam Hatips used to be part of Turkey’s education system, but most of them were closed down in the 90s as part of the pro-secular military-inspired crackdown on the country’s Islamic movement.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Surreal: Clinton Pledges $45 Million in Aid to Al Qaeda in Syria
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US would be providing an additional $45 million in “non-lethal aid” to the “opposition” in Syria, reported the Associated Press. The Western press chose their words carefully, ensuring that the term “civilian opposition” was repeatedly used to describe the armed terrorist forces attempting to violently overthrow the Syrian government.
In reality, the “opposition” in Syria constitutes foreign terrorist legions flowing across Syria’s borders, and in particular, staging and crossing over from NATO-member Turkey. In fact, it was recently admitted by the terrorist legions themselves that their headquarters has been located within Turkish territory for the duration of the conflict. In a recent France 24 article titled, “Free Syrian Army move HQ from Turkey to Syria,” armed militants claimed they had only just recently “moved from Turkey to within Syria.”
While the Western media attempts to portray heavily armed foreign terrorists as “Syria’s civilian opposition,” it has been revealed that entire brigades are led by Libyan terrorists drawn from the ranks of the US State Department (#29), UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf), and UN-listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Budget and Oil: Putin and Government on Another Collision Course
The budget fails to realize the election promises made by the head of the Kremlin. The government finds necessary funds from the coffers of the state Rosneftegaz, undisputed reign of Putin loyalist, Igor Sechin. Open war on the privatization of oil.
Moscow (AsiaNews) — The energy sector has once again become a battleground between the liberal wing of the government and President Putin. This takes place on the eve of the discussion in the State Duma of the 2013-2015 budget, the 1st of October. The head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, has reprimanded the government for presenting a budget that, in fact — with the revenue available — recognizes the unsustainability of his campaign promises (including an increase in pensions). In response to criticism, the Ministry of Finance has found the budget funds for the implementation of presidential plans: proceeds from the state Rosneftegaz, headed by former energy minister and architect of Putin’s energy policy, Igor Sechin (pictured left). These funds were previously considered untouchable.
The proposal of the Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev is include in the budget, 95% of 130 billion rubles (4.2 billion euro) of dividends collected by the public company with its shares in Gazprom (11%) and the major proliferation Rosneft (75%), headed by Sechin. In this regard, the same Sechin had already been accused of “conflicts of interest” by the Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich (Medvedev loyalist).
The Prime Minister promised that the Rosneftegaz funds will be spent not only to achieve the decrees of the president, but also for development projects in the Russian Far East, Putin’s key campaign promise.
The move by Medvedev has a clear political side. According to analysts: the “expropriation” of Rosneftegaz, as some newspapers have called it, makes the aims of Sechin (a bitter enemy of the Prime Minister) to expand state presence in the Russian energy through the participation of its Rosneftegaz in the vast program of privatization of the sector, economically unfeasible. The powerful former minister and long time ally has complained to Putin, but the head of the Kremlin so far has made no comment. Probably it will come to a compromise along lines already suggested by Dvorkovich who on September 28 has reduced the percentage of funds to “be withdrawn”, talking about a sum ranging between 50% and 95%.
From the formal point of view, the government does not need the presidency to decide on Rosneftegaz dividends, but “consultations are ongoing” with the Putin administration, Dvorkovich said. Revealing that the battle is still open.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Russia to “Liberate the World From US Occupation”
Russia and its ally China are planning to replace the United States as the world’s leading power. Part of that plan involves ensuring that the US dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency… which will spell economic disaster for this country.
[…]
The shift in global power centers is economic and political at present. If Barack Obama is re-elected and continues his mission of destroying the US military… the stage will be set for war… a war that America will have little chance of winning.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Afghan Troops Told Not to Take Take Revenge for NATO Cultural Offenses
Afghan troops have been issued with a new manual urging them not to take violent revenge when their Western counterparts mistakenly offend their cultural traditions.
The booklet is intended to bridge the divide cultural divide between local forces and Nato troops and avoid the misunderstandings that have sometimes ended in violence, the Washington Post reported. It warns Afghan soldiers that their international allies may blow their noses in public or “show their excitement by patting one another on the back or the behind”, both taboos in Afghan culture. The pamphlet, entitled “Cultural Understanding — A Guide to Understanding Coalition Cultures”, also cautions that Westerners may put their feet up desks without realising that showing the soles of feet is considered a serious insult in Islamic culture…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Afghan Troops Get a Lesson in American Cultural Ignorance
KABUL — During the Vietnam War, American soldiers shipped out armed with government-issued guides to the distant land and the mysterious people. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military has tried training sessions, embedded cultural advisers, recommended reading lists and even a video game designed to school the troops in local custom. But 11 years into the war, NATO troops and Afghan soldiers are still beset by a dangerous lack of cultural awareness, officials say, contributing to a string of insider attacks that have threatened to undermine the military partnership.
So the Afghan army is trying something new: a guide to the strange ways of the American soldier. The goal is to convince Afghan troops that when their Western counterparts do something deeply insulting, it’s likely a product of cultural ignorance and not worthy of revenge. The pamphlet is intended to “strengthen our understanding of our [NATO] counterpart,” according to an English translation of the pamphlet that was provided to The Washington Post. But in doing so, it also reveals seemingly minor — and rarely acknowledged — cultural faux pas that have created palpable tension between the two forces. “Please do not get offended if you see a NATO member blowing his/her nose in front of you,” the guide instructs…
[JP note: Beyond satire.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Bomb Kills 2 Police Near Afghan Training Academy
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan authorities say a roadside bomb has killed two policemen in Herat province of western Afghanistan, just hours before a ceremony to hand a nearby police training academy over from NATO to Afghan control…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
British Father to Face Death by Firing Squad for Smuggling Crystal Meth Into Indonesia
A British father of one has been sentenced to death by firing squad for smuggling drugs into Indonesia, it has emerged.
Gareth Cashmore, 33, a roofer from Wakefield, West Yorks, was arrested a year ago after customs officials said they found 6.5kg of methamphetamine — crystal meth — hidden in a compartment in his suitcase.
He was originally handed a life sentence. But it only emerged last night that Indonesian judges raised his penalty to death at an appeal hearing in May.
Gareth Cashmore told The Sun from his cell: ‘I’ve got a son, how would you feel?’ But he added: ‘I hope to be out to see him before he’s grown up. I’ll survive this by hook or by crook.’
Mr Cashmore’s mother Lynne said she could not understand why her son had been sentenced to death when Umar Patek, the mastermind behind the Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people in 2002, had not.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Experts Fear a ‘Talibanization’ of Afghan Justice
The lashing of a teenage girl in Afghanistan for having an “illegal relationship” has caused an uproar inside and outside the country. Experts fear a “Talibanization” of the Afghan justice system.
On September 16, three mullahs in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni sentenced 16-year-old Sabera to 100 lashes for having an “illegal relationship” with a boy. On Monday, September 24, hundreds of students and rights activists took to the streets to protest so-called “desert trials” such as the one which tried Sabera, which take place without due process of law and are held by the Taliban and local clerics.
The protesters demanded the government take measures to stop such unlawful trials and punishment. A day later, Afghan authorities reported the arrest of five people connected to Sabera’s lashing. Authorities said they were investigating the case.
Sabera’s sister Shafiqa was among the demonstrators. She had watched the sentence being carried out.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
India’s Gargantuan Biometric Database Raises Big Questions
The government of India has amassed a database of 200 million Indian residents’ digital fingerprints, iris scans, facial photographs, names, addresses and birthdates. Yet this vast collection of private information is only a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of data it ultimately intends to gather. The Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), the agency that administers Aadhaar — India’s Unique Identity (UID) program — has a goal of capturing and storing this personal and biometric information for each and every one of India’s 1.2 billion residents. Everyone who enrolls is issued a 12-digit unique ID number and an ID card linked to the data.
Once it’s complete, the Aadhaar system will require so much data storage capacity that it is projected to be 10 times the size of Facebook. And while it’s optional to enroll, the program is envisioned as the basis for new mobile apps that would facilitate everything from banking transactions to the purchase of goods and services, which could make it hard for individuals to opt out without getting left behind.
India’s is the largest biometric ID scheme in the world, and the masssive undertaking raises serious questions about widespread data sharing, a lack of legal protections for users’ data, and concerns about whether adequate technical safeguards are in place to keep individuals’ information safe and secure.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistani Protestant Bishop Injured in Lahore
(AGI) Rome- Pakistan Christians are under attack from Islamic extremists angry at the film US-made film, The Innocence of Muslims. Following the attack on St. Paul’s church in Mardan, a bishop was assaulted, beaten and injured. Local sources of the Vatican news agency Fides report that protestant bishop Naeem Samuel of the Trinity Evangelical Church Prayer, was attacked yesterday as he was leaving church in Youhanaabad, a suburb of Lahore (Punjab province), where about 10,000 Christian families live.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Kidnap Victim Shot Dead by Masked Gunmen
A Bradford dad-of-four kidnapped in Pakistan and freed after his family paid a £15,000 ransom has been brutally slain by masked gunmen after he bravely returned there to give evidence against his alleged abductors. Malik Iqbal, 55 was shot in the head in front of female relatives by two balaclava-wearing assassins who burst into the house in Rawalpindi where he was staying in the early hours of yesterday. His nephew, who had travelled with him, only escaped the slaughter because he was collecting dry-cleaning from a nearby shop…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Soldiers Ordered Not to Shoot Taliban as They Plant Mines… ‘Because it Wakes Up Locals’
Soldiers were ordered not to open fire on Taliban fighters planting mines in case they disturb local people, it has been claimed.
U.S. military chiefs ordered troops to exercise ‘courageous constraint’ and even warned them they could be charged with murder if they shot any Taliban without permission from above.
The claims were made by a former Royal Marine who spoke out following the inquest into the death of Sergeant Peter Rayner last week.
At the hearing in Bradford, his widow Wendy Rayner revealed how her husband was blown up days after senior officers had apparently ‘laughed off’ his complaints that insurgents were being allowed to plant explosive devices unchallenged.
[…]
Outside Bradford Coroner’s Court Mrs Rayner fired a further broadside at the Ministry of Defence, calling for rules of engagement to be changed to protect soldiers.
‘They are not allowed to return fire unless they are fired upon. But all the lads have expressed concern because the patrol area was filled with IEDs.
‘They can shoot at us and take us out but the lads can’t do that to them.
These terrorists and Taliban can do what they want yet our soldiers try to do their job and get persecuted by the law.
‘If they are going to be soldiers let them be soldiers and do their jobs. The job is hard enough as it is.
‘There will be an internal investigation, but I think the rules of engagement need to be looked into if someone is planting IEDs and threatening lives.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Filipino Muslim Leaders Caution Against Violence in Protesting Anti-Islam Video
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines—Muslims, no matter how hurt they are, should not resort to violence in protesting against the anti-Islam film, “The Innocence of Muslims”, Muslim clerics in Mindanao said. Ustadz Al Mahdi Baginda of the National Ulama Conference said while the film ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad, “reacting violently will not make us different from the one who created the film.” He said it was clear that the filmmaker was trying to incite violence among Muslims because it can also justify the story portrayed in the film.
The film initially showed Egyptian Muslims attacking Egyptian Christians and burning their homes while Egyptian police forces, who are also Muslims, just watched and stood from a distance. The rest of the film depicts scenes featuring the main character, referred to as the Prophet Muhammad…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK, Canada, Australia & USA Issue Phillippines Terror Alert
(AGI) Manila — The UK, Canada and Australia joined the USA in issuing a security alert to their citizens in the Philippines.
The alert was sounded after the US embassy warned of the possibility of actions against American citizens in Manila, the capital of the archipelago. A UK Foreign Office statement said, ‘The attacks could be indiscriminate and that is why we advise British nationals to exercise particular caution and extra vigilance’.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Proof Smart Meters Are Being Used To Spy On Us
If you have ever wondered if your smart meter is being used to spy on you, well now there is proof that governments and private organisations are using data collected from smart meters.
Information about power usage, which can be used to identify when a home is being occupied, is being shared with third parties including government agencies, private organisations and off-shore data processing centres.
This unethical breach of privacy was discovered on the website of one of Australia’s largest electricity retailer, Origin Energy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Kenya: Police Comb Forest After MRC Clash
Nairobi — Police were still combing the forest in Kilifi where suspected members of the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) are believed to be hiding, following Thursday’s killing of eleven people. Those killed were shot or hacked to death when residents clashed with the MRC members who were allegedly found taking an oath, according to police. “There was a confrontation between residents and the criminals, and our officers intervened only to find the criminals armed,” Aggrey Adoli, police chief for Mombasa said. “Twelve people were killed,” he said. Some of those killed are MRC members while others are residents — including a village elder.
Kilifi divisional police chief Beatrice Gachao said the area remained tense even as more officers were deployed to the forest and neighbouring villages. She said a police officer wounded in the confrontation is recuperating at the Pandya Hospital in Mombasa. Several suspected MRC members were arrested and detained for interrogation on Friday. “An investigation is going on; we want to know what exactly happened,” Adoli said. Police said they believe the MRC members were taking an oath in the forest because some of their paraphernalia and a flag were recovered. Members of the MRC have threatened to lobby the coastal people to secede from the rest of Kenya, arguing that they have been neglected by governments over the years. A Mombasa court recently ruled that the group is legitimate, although the government still insists it remains illegal.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Nigeria: Police Announce Discovery of Bomb Factory in Kano
The Police Command in Kano State on Thursday announced the discovery of a bomb factory at Hawan Hotoro Area in Kano metropolis. The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Ibrahim Idris, who confirmed this while briefing newsmen in Kano, said two suspected owners of the factory were arrested during the operation. Idris told newsmen that assorted bomb manufacturing materials were also discovered during the operation. He said the factory, which had been cordoned off by mobile policemen, would be demolished. The commissioner said three vehicles were also found and taken to the police headquarters, Bompai, Kano. Idris said other items discovered were 100 detonators, the main primer for the construction of Improvised Explosive Device (IED), concentrated salt, used to mix with ammonium nitrate. Others included: T and T, a high calbre military chemical for bomb making; battery chargers, laptop computers, finished IEDs, four AK 47 rifles and eight fully loaded magazines. Idris commended members of the public for providing useful information to the police and assured the people that the command would intensify raid on flash points until total peace was restored in the state. (NAN)
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Somalia’s Al-Shabaab Islamists Abandon Last Major Stronghold of Kismayo After Government Assault
Somalia’s al-Shabaab Islamist group has conceded the loss of its last major stronghold after an attack by Kenyan and Somali government troops on the port city of Kismayo.
Gunmen from the movement, which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, withdrew from Kismayo overnight following a combined siege by their Western-backed opponents. “We moved out our fighters … from Kismayu at midnight,” al Shabaab spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, told Reuters on Saturday. The loss of Kismayo, which provided al-Shabaab with lucrative revenues via control of its Indian Ocean port, could prove a final nail in the coffin for the movement, which once controlled most of southern Somalia and also the capital, Mogadishu. It imposed a Taliban-style regime throughout its fiefdoms, with stonings and public executions commonplace. However, Sheikh Rage threatened to strike back with a guerrilla campaign against the African Union forces, both in Kismayo itself and the surrounding countryside…
[JP note: Sheikh Rage sounds as if he may well be an import from the mini Mogadishu’s mushrooming in the West’s centres of civilisation.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
South Africa: Third Truck Burnt in Khayelitsha
Another delivery truck was set alight in Khayelitsha next to Town Two yesterday allegedly by striking South African Trade and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) truck drivers who are demanding a 12 percent wage increase. Two trucks were set alight in separate incidents in Cape Town on Wednesday. A delivery truck of medication to local clinics was petrol bombed in Nyanga’s Emms Drive on Tuesday and another flat-bed truck carrying a skip was set alight on Klipfontein Road near Crossroads. Yesterday the delivery truck from Premier Food in Epping was attacked in spine road after returning from delivering food to Makhaya Cash Store…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Tanzania: Sharia Law Touted at ‘Katiba’ Meeting
Miteja — SEVERAL residents here called for introduction of sharia law through which thieves will have their hands chopped off and those committing adultery stoned to death.
Speaking at a meeting with members of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) at Miteja and Kinjumbi Ujamaa villages, the residents favoured adoption of Islamic laws. “Application of sharia laws will end corruption, theft and promiscuity,” said Mr Hassan Abdallah Seif, a resident of Miteja village. Mr Mohamed Kionjo said capital punishment should be maintained. He dismissed demands by human rights activists charging that “anyone who kills must be killed.” “Even in the United States those convicted of murder are executed by lethal injection,” he said. Mr Abdallah Mselem, and several other villagers, suggested that Fridays be declared as days of prayer and that Muslims should be allowed to stay with their families at home…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Composer Michael Nyman is packing his bags and moving to Mexico — because he has had enough of crime-riddled London and yobs throwing peanuts on buses.
Mr Nyman, who composed the score for the 1993 film The Piano, told a local newspaper that he was going to permanently move to La Roma, in Mexico City, after becoming increasingly worried about the level of violence in London.
But the talented artist, who lives in Islington, North London, admitted he had never been a victim of serious crime in the borough, the Daily Telegraph reported.
He told one of the borough’s newspapers that every day Upper Street, the main road of Islington, is carpeted with bouquets of flowers remembering people who had died there.
He said: ‘You see more flowers left by lampposts as memorials to murdered citizens than you do in Mexico City.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Journalists Reporting on Lignano Murder Arrested in Cuba
(AGI) Rome, 26 Sep — Four Italian journalists following a lead in August’s Lignano Sabbiadoro murder have been arrested in Cuba. News of the arrest of Ilaria Cavo (Mediaset), Fabio Tricarico (Mediaset), Domenico Pecile (Messaggero Veneto) and Stefano Cavicchi (Corriere della Sera) was first reported by all-news channel TgCom and later confirmed by the Italian foreign ministry. With the arrests carried yesterday, foreign ministry officials have contacted the families of the arrested and have dispatched embassy staff to secure the four Italians’ prompt release. Informed of the arrests late last night in Cuba, embassy staff were not in a position to establish contact with local officials, but it is understood that Pecile and Cavicchi have already been released. The four journalists were apparently following a lead concerning Reiver Laborde Rico brother and alleged accomplice of Lisandra Rico, accused of murdering Paolo Burgato and Rosetta Sostero on August 19.
Videonews editor-in-chief Claudio Brachino today explained that Ilaria Cavo was arrested on her way out of Cuba having finished researching her report. Brachino said “she did nothing which could be characterised as illegal, she simply interviewed people.” The cause of the arrests has not yet been disclosed, but it is understood that Cavicchi was held on visa grounds.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Population of England to Rise 4.5m in a Decade as Growth Rate ‘Gets Faster’
The number of people in England will rise by more than four and a half million over the next decade, official estimates said yesterday.
The estimates mean population growth over the next ten years will outpace the historic record increase of the past decade.
Figures on future growth, from the Office for National Statistics, were made public following Home Secretary Theresa May’s suggestion earlier this month that no specific effort would be made to keep Britain’s overall population below the symbolic 70million level that one Labour minister promised would never be reached…
The figure follows the acknowledgement from the ONS earlier this week that numbers in England and Wales went up by four million between 2001 and 2011, the fastest rate of increase in more than a century. The population boom is thought to be driven by both immigration and higher birthrates.
Immigration and births to migrants were responsible for around 70 per cent of growth, with the rest accounted for by higher birthrates among mothers born in Britain.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Big Mother Will Watch Over You
The Nanny State has reached a point where three quarters of Danes would turn to the government for help instead of their families
Big Mother. The Holy Welfare State. The Nanny State. The nation’s social safety net is called many different things by many different people. Depending on who you ask, the Danish system of social assistance is either a shining example of nurturing to be followed by the rest of the world, or a bloated monstrosity that robs the populace of individualism, initiative and ambition by attempting to meet their every need.
Whatever one’s opinion, Big Mother is completely interwoven into the national psyche. Fully 75 percent of 1,000 Danes asked in a recent Centre for Political Studies (CEPOS)/Norstat poll said that they would turn to the state before their own families in times of need.
Henrik Gade Jensen, a senior fellow at CEPOS, found those numbers disturbing.
“It is remarkable that 75 percent of Danes would rather depend on the state than their own family,” Jensen said. “This clearly shows that the welfare state has become so extensive that we have forgotten our obligations to ourselves and our loved ones.”
Jensen said that the constitution’s intent was never that the state would take the place of families and individuals when it comes to caring for the nation’s citizens.
“The Danish constitution only intended that the most vulnerable with no other options had a safety net,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Cardinal Bagnasco Comes Out Against Unwed Couples
(AGI) — Vatican City, Sept. 24 — In his opening address to Italian bishops, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco invited politicians and the public to consider “the negative consequences” that will be caused by a “supposed vanguard” pushing for legal recognition of couples living together, through which, “beyond the words, want the same rights as families founded on marriage, without an increase of duties.” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
One in 66 Britons is Gay or Bisexual — Not One in Ten, As Previously Thought
Only one in every 66 people say they are gay or bisexual, a nationwide survey revealed yesterday.
The numbers are in contrast with the decades-old and widely accepted 10 per cent figure for the gay population, and the 6 per cent estimate used by Whitehall when civil partnership legislation was drawn up in 2003.
The Office of National Statistics survey found that 1.5 per cent of men say they are gay, 0.7 per cent of women say they are lesbian, and 0.4 per cent of people identify themselves as bisexual.
The scale of the gay population — a subject of deep sensitivity among both gay rights groups and their opponents — has remained virtually unchanged since the ONS began large-scale surveys three years ago.
Campaigners against same-sex marriage said the figures showed that the gay population was ‘tiny’, and questioned David Cameron’s policy of changing the laws.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: JK Rowling Has Turned Her Back on the Culture That Made Her Great
by Charles Moore
The Harry Potter author made a fortune from the provincial life that she now so clearly despises
‘People round here are ****** mental,” says Gaia the 16-year-old sexpot from London in JK Rowling’s new novel The Casual Vacancy. This is an accurate summary of life in Pagford, the small West Country town in which the action takes place. Take it from me that Gaia is right, and thus save yourself from reading the 500 pages of swearing, rape, drug abuse, suicide, drowning, self-harm, pseudonymous internet denunciations, domestic violence, acne and meetings of the parish council which Miss Rowling has just inflicted upon her devoted global fan-base. If you have seen the film Hot Fuzz, in which the Neighbourhood Watch association turn out to be a gang of murderers obsessed with winning the Village of the Year competition, you will get the feel of the plot. The difference, however, is that Hot Fuzz is a comedy. The Casual Vacancy is grimly in earnest.
JK Rowling has told the world that this is a book she “had to write”. She detests snobbery, she says, and she wishes to expose it. She has very simple codes to indicate who is bad. Anyone who has a slightly out-of-date, petit-bourgeois Christian name, like Howard, Shirley or Maureen, is bad. Such people’s evil is proved by the fact that they have carriage lamps outside their doors, refer to the sitting-room as the “lounge”, wear deerstalkers (indoors!) and candlewick dressing-gowns. They have — for no cliché is unturned in this book — hanging baskets, fake log fires and privet hedges. They look down, snobbishly, on poor people, such as those who live in the Fields, a council estate uncomfortably close to Pagford. The word JK Rowling keeps on using is “smug”. She uses that word smugly…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
As the UN Opens Its General Assembly Session, It is Already Thinking Up New Global Taxes
A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another “tiny” tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets. A royalty on all undersea mineral resources extracted more than 100 miles offshore of any nation’s territory.
The United Nations is at it again: finding new and “innovative” ways to create global taxes that would transfer hundreds of billions, and even trillions, of dollars from the rich nations of the world — especially the U.S. — to poorer ones, in line with U.N.-directed economic, social and environmental development.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Islamic Countries’ Appeal, “Laws Against Religious Hate “
(AGI) New York — The Foreign ministers of 57 countries belonging to the Islamic Cooperation Organization condemned the movie on Mohammed produced in America and urged the adoption of laws against “religious hate inducement.” In the communiquee’ issued at the conclusion of their meeting held at the end of the UN general assembly, the Muslim countries warned that freedom of expression must be used with “responsibility’“ and urged the governments around the world to “take the all of the needed measures, including the adoption of laws against acts that induce hate, discrimination and violence” on the basis of religion.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
1 comments:
I am afraid that here in Britain our politicians of the last 60 years seem have completely lost the plot with regard to immigration.
The Labour Party let in 4m in ten years the largest increase ever and now we are told we are getting another 4.5.m in tne next ten years the biggest increase ever. The population of Britain was 30m a hundred years ago and the country's optimum population and one which without mass immigration we could have got back down to from the 50m in 1950. Now we are letting in 65 people an hour.
The Home Secretary, Teresa May, has said she is not worried about a population of 70m in what is already the fourth most densely populated country on earth. She is echoing the words of her Labour predecessor.
The population of Britain is now 63m, in ten years it will be nearly 68m. At this rate by 2030 it will have gone beyond 70m and if nothing is done then by 2050 it will be 80m nearly as many as the much larger Germany.
Those who protest do so in quite educated English tones but it is pointless for all our politicians seem to care about is money and votes. The English countryside that attracts our tourist will be barely visible soon. By the way, of those mothers who are British born, many of those will be second or third generation immigrants and if they are muslims then they will be under strict instructions not to limit their families.
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