PARIS (Reuters) – A massive fire consumed Notre-Dame Cathedral on Monday, gutting the roof of the Paris landmark and stunning France and the world, though firefighters saved the main bell towers and outer walls from collapse before bringing the blaze under control. Flames that began in the early evening burst rapidly through the roof of the eight-centuries-old cathedral and engulfed the spire, which toppled, quickly followed by the entire roof.The fire, after burning for about 8 hours, was largely extinguished by 0300 CET on Tuesday. Earlier, in addition to battling to prevent one of the main bell towers from collapsing, firefighters tried to rescue religious relics and priceless artwork. One firefighter was seriously injured – the only reported casualty.“The worst has been avoided,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters at the scene shortly before midnight.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14047/denmark-immigration
In the 1980s, the Social Democrats had formed a committee to examine the results of immigration. The negative findings that emerged were rejected by the party’s leaders, who instead released a pro-immigration report.
The bad news is that the Danish mainstream media and pro-immigration politicians do not tell voters the truth: that the presence of hundreds of thousands of unintegrated Muslims is endangering Danish society. Journalists have not been telling the truth out of denial; politicians possibly also for fear of losing immigrants’ votes.
Although Denmark is home to one of Europe’s most successful anti-mass-immigration movements, the bleak facts concerning the effects of mass-immigration have not been taken seriously by the mainstream media, and politicians are often reluctant to address the matter.
How did this situation come about?
In 1983, the Danish Parliament enacted a new “foreigners’ law”, the “Memorandum on Migration policy.” Preparatory work for the new law was performed by an official committee of public servants and Hans Gammeltoft-Hansen, chairman of the private (heavily subsidized) Danish Refugee Council. Going against the majority of the committee, which included the president of the Supreme Court, Gammeltoft-Hansen succeeded in promoting an alternative bill that opened Denmark’s borders to anyone claiming asylum.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14077/iran-yemen-takeover
After President Trump’s visit to the region, the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have ratcheted up their efforts to fight extremism. The UAE and other Gulf states have been participating with the US in a multinational mission.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been encircling Saudi Arabia with the apparent goal of taking over Saudi oil fields and holy sites, and the major international shipping lanes on either side of the Arabian peninsula: the Bab al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has also been occupying Syria and Iraq; running Lebanon by means of Iran’s terrorist proxy group, Hizballah, and funding yet another terrorist group, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, presumably in the hope of destroying Israel.
Even more alarming, by far, is that Iran is on the threshold of obtaining nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Iran, in short, has adopted a dangerous, expansionist ideology that needs to be taken seriously.
America must stop Iran from taking over Yemen.
One of the primary revolutionary ideals to which the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic of Iran are dedicated to upholding is not to limit the implementation of its version of Islamic laws to just Iran. The ruling clerics are also committed to exporting Iran’s revolutionary principle and expanding the fundamentalist mission to other nations.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273466/enemy-people-bruce-bawer
Since 9/11, thousands of deadly jihadist atrocities, big and small, have taken place around the world. Almost uniformly, the Western media totally ignore the small ones, and also ignore the big ones that take place in Israel, the Muslim world, and non-Western locations generally. As for the large-scale terrorist acts that occur from time to time in major Western cities – that is to say, the attacks that are too massive and too close to home for the media to get away with ignoring – the mainstream journalists who cover them devote a good deal of their time to tiptoeing around, or openly and vociferously denying, the connection between these actions and the religion of Islam.
Indeed, it is by now an indelible part of the media narrative in these instances that the real victims – or the first victims, or the ultimate victims – of jihadist terror are the members of Western Muslim communities who, we are repeatedly told, have been unfairly stigmatized ever since September 11, 2001, and who, in the wake of every new act of Islamic terror in the West, experience, or at least tremble in fear of, a fresh, powerful, and unjustified anti-Muslim backlash. Virtually never does any mainstream Western journalist ever acknowledge that jihadists, when they massacre infidel men, women, and children, are following explicit instructions set down in the Koran – the book that every believing Muslim on earth considers holy. Even now, going on eighteen years after 9/11, some journalists honestly don’t know that jihad comes right out the Koran; others do know, but would never publicly connect these dots. Neither would most politicians or media commentators or supposed “experts” in Islam. For to do so would be to violate the most important unwritten commandment of the post-9/11 Western world: namely, thou shalt not admit that those who commit murder in the name of Allah, far from being traitors to their faith, are, on the contrary, the most obedient of its adherents.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-west-and-middle-east-dictators-11555368174
Another spring, another set of political crises in the Arab world. This time autocratic rulers, long past their “sell by” dates, have fallen in Algeria and Sudan. In both countries, factionalized ruling elites, insulated for decades from political pressures other than backstairs intrigue, now scramble to satisfy angry throngs of protesters without any idea how this can be done.
We can recite the mantras of development theory and democracy promotion: Economic reform and political opening are what the region needs. Such platitudes are as useless as they are true. An inexorable buildup of economic and social pressure, like an upwelling of molten rock from beneath the Earth’s crust, threatens to engulf the dysfunctional postcolonial social orders in states from Pakistan to North Africa, and nobody, in the region or in the West, has the slightest idea what to do about it.
https://clarionproject.org/honor-killings-in-phoenix/
A Muslim man in Arizona was arrested for four honor killings — his wife, two daughters and the man with whom he believed his wife was having an affair.
According to Phoenix Police Sergeant Tommy Thompson, “[Austin Smith] said that the reason he shot these individuals is because in God’s eyes, it was all right for him to deal with someone in this manner who had been involved in adultery, extramarital affairs.”
Smith also told police he killed his seven-year-old daughter because she was “weeping for the wicked.”
According to court documents, he said spared his three-year old who was found hiding under a bed because she reminded him of himself.
As in many cases of honor crimes, some will protest this was merely a case of domestic violence (not withstanding the horrific nature of the crime). And in truth, what is the difference?
Quite simply, even though we don’t know Smith’s psychological profile, we can surmise someone capable of killing his children in cold blood – not to mention his wife and her suspected lover – has to be deranged on a certain level.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-notredame-fire/fire-devastates-notre-dame-cathedral-in-paris-idUSKCN1RR1UO
PARIS (Reuters) – A fast-moving fire consumed Notre-Dame Cathedral on Monday in a massive, roaring blaze that devastated the Parisian landmark, a searing loss for the city and for France.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14065/germany-european-army-allegory
Since taking office in 2013, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has done little to alleviate the problems in the military. The best-known projects during her tenure were kindergartens for the soldiers’ families; the procurement of flat screen television sets and mini-fridges for the barracks; the announcement of efforts to make the German army “more attractive for gay, lesbian and transgender people”; buying uniforms for pregnant soldiers, and making battle tanks suitable for pregnant soldiers. As worthwhile as these efforts may be, they do little to address the core problems.
“Apparently the readiness of the Bundeswehr is so bad that the public should not be allowed to know about it.” — Tobias Lindner, a Greens Party member, serving on the budget and defense committees.
“We are committed to the emergence of a European army”, German chancellor Angela Merkel pledged in January, backing a plan first launched by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Merkel thus confirmed a position she had voiced in November 2018, when, speaking to the European parliament in Strasbourg, she said: “We have to look at the vision of one day creating a real, true European army.”
Members of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the German federal parliament (Bundestag) wanted to know what was meant by the term “European army” and submitted this question to the government.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14027/eu-appeasing-iran
Despite Iran’s destructive behavior, such as support for terror and militia groups across the region, the European Union has chosen to help the ruling mullahs of Iran, ostensibly to maintain the flimsy, illegal, never-signed, unratified “nuclear deal” — but possibly even more as an embarrassingly transparent attempt, if the EU could be embarrassed, to navigate around US economic and political pressure and continue doing business with the regime.
If the EU does not change its position and continues its support of Iranian leaders and the nuclear deal, Tehran’s aggressive policies in the Middle East will persist, and Tehran will keep on pursuing its subversive agenda of attacking Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States via Yemen, Israel through Syria and Lebanon, and the US via Venezuela.
While President Donald Trump may have his critics, his hard-line sanctions are the only kind of political message the Iranian leaders can understand.
The European Union, in an unfathomable move, has been taking the side of the Iranian government, and turning its back on its old transatlantic partner, the United States, which recently announced plans to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), reportedly to take effect this week.
The Trump administration has taken a tougher stance towards Iran’s dark and hegemonic ambitions. Meanwhile, despite Iran’s destructive behavior, such as support for terror and militia groups across the region, the European Union has chosen to help the ruling mullahs of Iran, ostensibly to maintain the flimsy, illegal, never-signed, unratified “nuclear deal” — but possibly even more as an embarrassingly transparent attempt, if the EU could be embarrassed, to navigate around US economic and political pressure and continue doing business with Iran’s regime.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/slovakia-communist-central-planning-mindset/
Soviet troops are long gone, but red tape and disregard for the rule of law live on.
Bratislava, Slovakia — Thirty years ago, I traveled throughout Europe reporting on the fall of Communism for the Wall Street Journal.
So this year I looked forward to retracing my steps in the countries that kicked central planning to the curb. Most are now full members of the European Union and will elect members to its parliament next month. I wanted to see how things had worked out.
For my first leg of travel this year, I accompanied the Free Market Road Show, a merry rotating group of economists, journalists, and business leaders who for the last dozen years have traveled through up to 45 cities a year holding public forums and attracting media coverage. Their message is simple: The path to prosperity is to enhance the rule of law, lower taxes, respect individual freedom, decentralize government, and limit burdensome regulations. The show’s sponsor, the Austrian Economics Center, believes that the road show has helped shift public opinion toward that view. Certainly the center’s director, free-market economist Barbara Kolm, has prospered. Last year, she was named vice president of the Austrian Central Bank.
Our first stop on the Road Show was a mere 40 miles from the Road Show’s headquarters in Vienna, which evoked a warm memory for me. On New Year’s Eve in 1991, I stood in front of the castle in Bratislava and witnessed the birth of a new nation: Slovakia, which was peacefully separating from Czechoslovakia with a show of fireworks and a 21-gun salute.
