As always, thanks for tuning in/bearing with us/tolerating us!!!
MFBB.
Here’s a scene from downtown Mogadishu. Hang on, I MEANT to say here’s a scene from Shoreditch, London, from yesterday. Can you feel the diversity? Have you had enough of it? pic.twitter.com/7ajNqjZcYM
— David Vance (@DVATW) December 30, 2019
The scary thing about this? It’s in LEEDS, in England. pic.twitter.com/3XY9Iy11jP
— David Vance (@DVATW) December 30, 2019
"(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Boeing safely landed its crew capsule in the New Mexico desert Sunday after an aborted flight to the International Space Station that threatened to set back the company’s effort to launch astronauts for NASA next year.
The Starliner descended into the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in the frigid predawn darkness, ending a two-day demo that should have lasted more than a week. All three main parachutes popped open and airbags also inflated around the spacecraft to ease the impact.
“Congratulations, Starliner,” said Mission Control, calling it a successful touchdown.
A test dummy named Rosie the Rocketeer — after Rosie the Riveter from World War II — rode in the commander’s seat. Also returning were holiday presents, clothes and food that should have been delivered to the space station crew.
After seeing this first test flight cut short and the space station docking canceled because of an improperly set clock on the capsule, Boeing employees were relieved to get the Starliner back.
Recovery teams cheered as they watched the capsule drift down through the air and make a bull’s- eye landing. The touchdown was broadcast live on NASA TV; infrared cameras painted the descending capsule in a ghostly white.
As the sun rose, close-up views showed the large white and black capsule upright — with hardly any scorch marks from re-entry— next to a U.S. flag waving from a recovery vehicle. The astronauts assigned to the first Starliner crew — two from NASA and one from Boeing — were part of the welcoming committee.
It was the first American-made capsule designed for astronauts to make a ground landing after returning from orbit. NASA’s early crew capsules — Mercury, Gemini and Apollo — all had splashdowns. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which made its orbital debut last winter, also aims for the ocean at mission’s end.
Minutes after touchdown, top NASA and Boeing officials poured into Mission Control in Houston to congratulate the team.
The capsule’s first trip to space began with a smooth rocket ride from Cape Canaveral on Friday. But barely a half hour into the flight, it failed to fire its thrusters to give chase to the space station and ended up in the wrong orbit.
The problem was with the Starliner’s internal clock: It did not sync up with the Atlas V rocket, throwing off the capsule’s timing.
The capsule burned so much fuel trying to orient itself in orbit that there wasn’t enough left for a space station rendezvous. Flight controllers tried to correct the problem, but between the spacecraft’s position and a gap in communications, their signals did not get through. They later managed to reset the clock.
Boeing is still trying to figure out how the timing error occurred. The mission lasted nearly 50 hours and included 33 orbits around the Earth.
Last month’s parachute problem turned out to be a quick fix. Only two parachutes deployed during an atmospheric test because workers failed to connect a pin in the rigging.
NASA is uncertain whether it will demand another test flight from Boeing — to include a space station visit — before putting its astronauts on board. Boeing had been shooting for its first astronaut mission in the first half of 2020. This capsule is supposed to be recycled for the second flight with crew; each Starliner is built to fly in space 10 times..."
"In Aue-Bad Schlema ist es am Heiligabend in einem Pfarrhaus zu einer Messerstecherei mit zwei Verletzten gekommen. Die evangelisch-lutherische Kirchgemeinde St. Nicolai hatte am 24. Dezember Bedürftige ins Pfarrhaus geladen. Keiner sollte allein den Weihnachtsabend verbringen müssen. Wie die Polizeidirektion Chemnitz mitteilte, gab es jedoch Streitigkeiten mit einem 53-jährigen Mann aus Syrien, der daraufhin der Veranstaltung und des Pfarrhauses verwiesen wurde. Offenbar hatte es eine Auseinandersetzung während der Ausgabe von Geschenken gegeben.
Schlichtungsversuch endet blutig
Kurze Zeit später tauchten mehrere Männer aus dem arabischen Raum im Pfarramt auf. Es entfachte sich ein erneuter Streit, welcher in Tätlichkeiten gegen einen 34-jährigen Iraner eskalierte. Ein 51 Jahre alter Mitarbeiter der Kirchgemeinde wollte den Streit schlichten und wurde dabei niedergestochen. Bisherigen Erkenntnissen zufolge wurde ihm ein Messer in den Bauch gerammt. Er wurde schwer verletzt. Der Mann sei noch in der Nacht notoperiert werden, sagte der Außendienstleiter der Polizeidirektion Chemnitz gegenüber einem MDR-Reporter vor Ort. Der Iraner erlitt leichte Verletzungen. Die Polizei fahndet nach den flüchtigen Tatverdächtigen..."
"Within the last few years, over 50 papers have been added to our compilation of scientific studies that find the climate’s sensitivity to doubled CO2 (280 ppm to 560 ppm) ranges from <0 to 1°C. When no quantification is provided, words like “negligible” are used to describe CO2’s effect on the climate. The list has now reached 106 scientific papers."
"NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine showed off the completed core stage of the first-ever Space Launch System rocket during a news event held today (Dec. 9).
The event was held at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the core stage of the rocket that will launch the first Artemis mission was recently completed. That flight, the first step toward NASA's goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024, will carry an uncrewed Orion capsules around the moon in 2021.
"Think of it as NASA's Christmas present to America," Bridenstine said, referring to the core stage's imminent departure for testing at another NASA facility, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
All told, the core stage is 212 feet tall (65 meters) and includes four engines and two liquid- propellant tanks. "I'm going to call it the ninth wonder of the world," Douglas Loverro, the new head of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said during the event.
Bridenstine's speech was more about celebration than announcements, but the discussion left in the air several concerns that NASA is facing about both the rocket and the larger Artemis program.
NASA has contracts with Boeing for only the first two SLS rockets, Bridenstine said, not later iterations of the launcher. But it's the third rocket in the series that will send astronauts to the moon in 2024 to meet the agency's much-touted goal.
The agency also continued to avoid offering a schedule for Artemis flights or a cost estimate for the SLS rockets. Bridenstine has been demurring on offering a launch date for the uncrewed first Artemis mission, deferring that question to the new director of human exploration. Although he called Loverro up to the stage at the event, no date was announced.
Similarly, NASA has deflected questions about the anticipated price per rocket of the SLS program. In his comments, Bridenstine argued that cost will depend on how many rockets NASA ends up commissioning — the more rockets, the lower the individual price will end up. In October, the agency expressed interest in as many as 10 SLS rockets for the Artemis program..."
"A church in Malmo has a new altarpiece meant to celebrate inclusivity by replacing Adam and Eve in paradise with gay couples in suggestive poses, while depicting the serpent tempting them as a transgender woman.
The controversial work of art is not new. Photographer and artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin painted it in 2012 and tried to donate it to the Skara Cathedral just before the church was preparing to conduct the first same-sex wedding in its 1,000-year history.
The openly lesbian artist, who has a history of blending religious imagery with pro-minority activism, said at the time that she wanted to test if the Church of Sweden was as gay-friendly as it claimed to be when it embraced same-sex marriage in 2009. The Skara Cathedral politely declined the gift, saying it was about political activism and not faith.
But over seven years have passed, and now Wallin has got her way, even if it isn’t in her home city. St. Paul’s Church in Malmo accepted the painting called “Paradise” as its new altarpiece and unveiled it on Sunday, the first day of Advent. Helena Myrstener, the pastor, said that “history was written” in the hanging of the “LGBT altarpiece” as she tweeted a photo of the painting..."
"...I can no longer remember when I first used the line, but, as I've said many times before, sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive.
Back when President Trump was Candidate Trump, he famously proposed a soi-disant "Muslim ban" on entry to the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on".
Which was a rationale to which I was rather partial - because a failure to "figure out what the hell is going on" is a big part of why we're where we are a generation after 9/11. Mohammed is now in the Top Ten boys' names in America, which means it will sooner than you think be, as it is in Europe, among the Top Five boys' names, and eventually the Number One. [UPDATE: See Michelle Stone's comment below.]
Well, the "Muslim ban" never happened, after being struck down by judges and filleted into meaninglessness by the lawyers of the permanent bureaucracy. But you would think, given the mountain of corpses piled up on 9/11, that at the very minimum Saudi nationals would no longer be being given pilot training in Florida. After all, fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and half of those who flew the planes received their lessons in the Sunshine State.
Yet today Americans pick up their papers to read:
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A Saudi Arabian military pilot training in the United States opened fire Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola, leaving three people dead and several others wounded before Florida sheriff's deputies shot and killed him.
Or as The New York Times headlined it:
~ Florida Shooting Updates: Authorities Say It's Too Early to Know if It's Terrorism
We know it's a Saudi national gunning down Americans, but it's "too early to know" if it's terrorism. Could be just "mental health issues" or "workplace violence" or "pre-traumatic stress disorder" or "involuntary self-radicalization" or whatever. Nothing to worry about and always remember (to reprise another old line of mine) that "Allahu Akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here".
On "the day that everything changed" nothing changed - except the rate of Muslim immigration to the west, which doubled. A US immigration bureaucracy both cruel and stupid enough to ban a World War Two RAF pilot for life for staying with his wife until her death when she was stricken ill in the US and taken to a New Jersey hospital cannot stop itself admitting Saudi trainee pilots to kill Americans...."
“The first three encounters of the solar probe that we have had so far have been spectacular,” said Prof Stuart Bale, a physicist at the University of California, in Berkeley, who led the analysis from one of the craft’s instruments. “We can see the magnetic structure of the corona, which tells us that the solar wind is emerging from small coronal holes; we see impulsive activity, large jets or switchbacks, which we think are related to the origin of the solar wind. And we are also surprised by the ferocity of the dust environment.”
Over the next six years, the car-sized spacecraft will follow an ever-closer elliptical orbit, eventually swooping so near that it will technically “touch” the sun. A drawback of being at such close quarters is that Parker will not be sending pictures home. If it swivelled towards the sun its camera would melt, so the spacecraft’s instruments gaze sideways, measuring the stream of supersonic charged particles that make up the solar wind.
Previously, scientists observed that the sun’s wind appears to have two main components: a “fast” one that travels around 700km per second (and comes from giant coronal holes in the sun’s polar region; and a “slow” wind, travelling below 500km per second, whose origin is unknown.
The Parker probe traced the slow wind back to small coronal holes dappled around the sun’s equator – solar structures that had not previously been observed. Coronal holes are cooler, less dense regions, through which magnetic fields stream out into space, acting as channels for the charged particles to flow along.
The observations also point to an explanation for why the corona is so blisteringly hot.
“The corona is a million degrees, but the sun’s surface is only thousands,” said Prof Tim Horbury, a co-investigator on the Parker Solar Probe Fields instrument at Imperial College London. “It’s as if the Earth’s surface temperature were the same, but its atmosphere was many thousands of degrees. How can that work? You’d expect to get colder as you moved away.”
Parker’s sidelong observations revealed that the particles in the solar wind appeared to be released in explosive jets, rather than being radiated out in a steady stream. “It’s bang, bang, bang,” said Horbury.
This rapid release of energy from the sun’s interior into its atmosphere could help explain why the atmosphere is so staggeringly hot compared to the solar surface, he said.
Another surprise was the dustiness of the area close to the sun. During the nearest approach of its orbit, the probe was peppered with a fine dust, chipping tiny pieces off its heat shield that showed up as white streaks in images captured by the high-resolution camera. It is thought to be the remains of asteroids and comets that came close to the sun, causing them to evaporate, leaving behind just a dusty haze.
The new observations were made when Parker was about 15m miles (24m km) from the sun, but it will eventually fly to about 6m km of its surface — more than seven times closer than the previous closest mission, the Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976.
The extreme conditions faced by Parker has required the use of unconventional materials and spacecraft design. The craft’s white ceramic heat shields will reach a temperature of nearly 1,400C (2,552F) during the mission’s closest approach. As it passes close to the sun, its solar panels are retracted into the shadow of the heat shield, with just a tiny area remaining exposed to generate power. The craft has also broken the record for the fastest moving spacecraft, relative to the sun. It will reach speeds of nearly 435,000 mph (700,000 km/h) in 2024.
“It’s a very bold mission, it’s really extreme and it’s an enormously impressive engineering effort,” said Horbury."
Vandaag heeft de Duitse rapper K.I.Z. een muziekvideo gepubliceerd waarin hij AfD-politici Weidel, Höcke en Gauland afslacht.
— K. Elias (@KolyavB) November 29, 2019
Deze linksextremist trad 1,5 jaar geleden op in Chemnitz tijdens het concert voor "tolerantie en diversiteit" n.a.v. onrust daar.
Erg tolerant hoor 🤨 pic.twitter.com/w4SNHUMCYV
"... Ein Deutschrapper namens “Tarek K.I.Z.” produziert ein Musikvideo (siehe oben), in dem er einige unschwer als AfD-Spitzenpolitiker erkennbare Personen auf widerwärtigste Art und Weise abschlachtet. Das Blut spritzt und fließt in Strömen, während einem alten Herrn mit Gauland-Hundekrawatte der Kopf abgeschlagen und einem Alice-Weidel-Double der Bauch aufgeschlitzt wird. Auf weitere Schilderungen dieser abartigen Mordphantasien sei an dieser Stelle verzichtet und auch das Video sollte sich niemand mit empfindlichen Magen antun.
Aber was ist nun die politisch-mediale Reaktion auf diesen eklatanten Ausbruch von Hass? Umgehende Löschung des Machwerks auf Youtube und allen sozialen Netzwerken? Sperrung der Social-Media-Kanäle der rappenden Volksverhetzer? Anzeigen empört-schockierter Gutmenschen? Twittersaltos von Stegner bis Söder? Sondersendungen in Funk und Fernsehen mit vor Empörung bebenden Kommentatorenstimmen? “Wut, Abscheu und Entsetzen”?
Natürlich nicht, leider alles wie erwartbar, wenn man das miese politische Spiel im Lande durchschaut hat. Auf Youtube hat man sich gerade mal dazu durchgerungen, vor dem Abspielen des Clips einen Warnhinweis vor expliziter Gewaltdarstellung anzuzeigen. Ansonsten “buiseness as usual”. Keine Löschorgien trotz Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz. Beredtes Schweigen bei der etablierten Politik. Keine “aus Worten werden Taten”-Statements.
Betont neutrale Berichte im GEZ-Fernsehen, in denen ganz entspannt über das Video und die Rolle der Kunstfreiheit sinniert wird. Zaghafte Kritik in manchen Zeitungen, wenn sie denn überhaupt einen “Nachrichtenwert” in diesem politisch motivierten Mordaufruf erkennen wollen: Klar sei es gut, überall und immer gegen die AfD zu agitieren, aber muss man dafür jemanden gleich noch den Kopf abschlagen …? Und der “Künstler” selbst erhält großzügig PR und darf via Medien treuherzig beschwichtigen: Alles nur “Movie”, entspannt euch wieder!
Auch wenn das Bild abgedroschen ist: Man stelle sich nur eine Sekunde das gleiche Szenario unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen vor. Undenkbar – und deshalb ein weiterer Beweis für die unerträgliche politische Doppelmoral im Lande, die einer Seite (fast) alles erlaubt, während der anderen Seite die Luft zum Atmen abgeschnürt wird. Und die diesen Zustand dann auch noch klaglos hinnehmen und nicht “wieder auf Opfer machen” soll. Was für eine perverse Situation."
Deze video laat zien waarom wij vandaag #Molenbeek niet in mochten. #islamisering pic.twitter.com/dsBJysKuKJ
— Sam van Rooy 💛 (@SamvanRooy1) November 3, 2017
Angela Merkel saying that freedom of expression ends once someone engages in "hate speech" or "extreme speech" and that this is necessary for preserving a "free society".
— BasedPoland (@BasedPoland) November 29, 2019
Who gets to define what "hate speech" is?
1984#NewSpeech#MinistryOfTruth pic.twitter.com/bmMpIPjXG2
Meet the #LondonBridge Terrorist. His name is Usman Khan. He was convicted of terrorism in 2012. He was released in 2018 (🤷♂️). He killed again yesterday. Police are trying to work out why a terrorist might terrorise. 🙄 Meanwhile, please keep an eye for Islamophobia. pic.twitter.com/cmgBjXo1Fz
— David Vance (@DVATW) November 30, 2019
"Jack Merritt, 25, from Cottenham, was today named by his father as one of two victims killed by Khan at a prisoner rehabilitation conference at Fishmongers' Hall, where the attack began yesterday afternoon.
Mr Merritt was the course co-ordinator for Learning Together, an education scheme run by the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology that killer Khan had attended on Friday.
The group had been hosting a conference at the Grade II-listed building when the attack began, with Khan one of the former criminals attending the rehabilitation seminar for prisoners.
Mr Merritt's father David said in a tweet that his son 'would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily'.
'R.I.P. Jack: you were a beautiful spirit who always took the side of the underdog.'
He also said his son had been a 'champion' for those who had been 'dealt a losing hand by life, who ended up in the prison system'.
Giving a statement outside Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said Khan was subject to an 'extensive list of licence conditions' on his release from prison and that 'to the best of my knowledge he was complying with those conditions'."
'It's not the refugee outflows that cause terrorism, it is terrorism, tyranny, and war that create refugees.' https://t.co/HnE18wqbPr
— Jack Merritt (@JackmerrittJack) November 18, 2015
Best of British.
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) November 30, 2019
Top lads taking down a terrorist after he killed 2 on #LondonBridge
Give them honours and rewards. Heroes still walk amongst us.
Love them. And you @BasedPoland pic.twitter.com/RqV3rnDlAt
Britain will look very different in 2031. Will more diversity bring more tolerance, too? http://t.co/5ySdTVSm8A pic.twitter.com/gkbFEKuQ1g
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 9, 2015
"INTRODUCTION
__________________________________________________________________________________
“Diversity is our Greatest Strength™!” Undoubtedly you’ve heard the phrase from time to time. The most powerful institutions of the world are in unanimous agreement that diversity is unquestionably a colossal benefit to our societies; economically, culturally, and genetically. This includes:
the mainstream media, education system, corporate entities, government officials (both Left and Right), various supranational organizations, such as the UN, EU, IMF, World Bank, etc.1
Not only does the entire global elite espouse a pro-diversity message, but they have also deviously engineered a scenario in which it is almost entirely forbidden to oppose their unanimous consensus.
Any individual who dares to question the enormous, quantifiable benefits of Diversity™ faces severe threats of social, economic, and legal punishments. Social penalties—which have been engineered via a relentless, 24/7 pro-diversity propaganda bombardment from every source of information imaginable—include social shaming (loss of social status), isolation, loss of friendship, and familial
rejection. The questioning individual is decried as a “hateful bigot” and cast out of “polite society” as a pariah. Economic penalties include loss of employment or employability and, increasingly, rejection from public services, such as banking or transportation. These penalties operate similarly to China’s “social credit” system, but are widely regarded as non-tyrannical because “private corporations can do whatever they want” (strategic Libertarianism). In more tyrannous countries individuals who question the benefits of diversity face fierce legal repercussions, see, for example,
the United Kingdom’s insane “Hate Speech” laws, which roughly translate to “offending someone
who isn’t a White male is illegal.”
All in all, those who care about the truth and the overall happiness of society are in a pretty sticky situation. Fortunately, as this so-called “Diversity Experiment” progresses, the disparity in opinions between the relentlessly pro-diversity global elite and the vaguely-diversity-skeptical general populace is becoming more and more abyssal. The number of normal people speaking out
against this transparently engineered and wholly unnatural agenda is growing exponentially."
This is unbelievable. The Jihadi shot dead on #LondonBridge was not only a convicted terrorist who had been released on a tag but he was a guest of a Cambridge University sponsored conference in London today on “prisoner rehabilitation”. You just couldn’t make this stuff up! 😱 pic.twitter.com/40oO2JZHXY
— David Vance (@DVATW) November 29, 2019
THIS is the result of socialism. pic.twitter.com/NN3j0QyRvn
— PragerU (@prageru) November 23, 2019
"Stiglitz, in London to publicise his new book, says that for the past six or seven years he has been growing increasingly disturbed by America’s growing inequality and the simmering anger it has caused.
“I began to say ‘if we didn’t fix this problem we are going to have a political problem’ and historically a Trump figure, a fascist kind of figure arises.”
Asked whether he really thinks Trump is a fascist, Stiglitz says: “I certainly think he has those tendencies. He is restrained by our institutions and every day those institutions work we feel relieved. We don’t know what the bounds are and we don’t know how far he would push those bounds.
“A couple of things are most disturbing – the attack on the press and the attack on the foundations of knowledge which goes beyond the press.
A couple of things are most disturbing – the attack on the press and the attack on the foundations of knowledge
“We have never had a president who day after day lies and is unaffected by it. Normally everybody you deal with is tethered by a sense of responsibility and truth, but not him.
“I think the other thing you have seen with some of these fascist leaders is using ‘us versus them’ as a way of dividing society.” Stiglitz says Trump is using racism and misogyny to divide America. “To me it is deeply, deeply disturbing.”
"New York (CNN Business) Black unemployment fell to a record low in August, helped by a jump in the number of black women on the job.
The unemployment rate for black workers fell to 5.5% from 6%, according to the Labor Department data. The previous record low of 5.9% was set in May 2018.
The unemployment rate for black women fell to a record 4.4% from 5.2% in July. The unemployment rate for black men crept up to 5.9% from 5.8%. But the previous month's rate was a record, so the rate is still near its historic low.
Unemployment among workers who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino also fell in August to 4.2%, which matched a record low set earlier this year.
Minority unemployment has been tracked by the Labor Department since the early 1970's. Both black and Hispanic or Latino unemployment numbers have traditionally been higher than white unemployment, and it remains so today. White unemployment was 3.4% in August, up from 3.3% previously. But this is the smallest gap on record between the respective unemployment rates for blacks and whites...
"...and historically a Trump figure, a fascist kind of figure arises..."
“I don’t think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security. Society can’t function without shared prosperity.”
“I see the election of 2016 as an election of protest. Bernie represented a return to the old values: a middle-class lifestyle, a home, a secure retirement, education for your children, healthcare. Jeremy Corbyn is saying the same thing in the UK.”
Het is gebeurd: de #azan in #Amsterdam. Opdat de hele buurt - moslims én niet-moslims - er steeds weer aan wordt herinnerd wie de baas is (#Allah).
— Sam van Rooy 💛 (@SamvanRooy1) November 16, 2019
Dit is je reinste bezetting, onderwerping en #islamisering, en een niet te onderschatten overwinning voor de totalitaire #islam. 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/qnZVlfXWbR
"Imam Elforkani of the Blauwe Moskee on Henri Dunanstraat expects that the mosque’s intention to use loudspeakers will cause a discussion, but not much problems. “Amsterdam is a tolerant city, right?” he said to Parool."
This is what Christian persecution looks like in #Algeria where the state has launched a campaign to close churches. Yesterday, police unexpectedly showed up at this church and at one point, brutally beat the pastor and other believers. pic.twitter.com/pKjLd5zcWr
— Open Doors USA (@OpenDoors) October 18, 2019
"Although Christians make up a mere one percent of Algeria's Muslim-majority population, they continue to be persecuted by the government in Algiers. The most recent example is the closure in mid-October of three churches and the forced eviction of their congregants by police.
William Stark, regional manager of International Christian Concern (ICC), told Gatestone that shuttering the churches is just part of a broader campaign that began two years ago to target places of Christian worship.
Stark said his organization's sources in Algeria report that 12 churches have been closed by Algerian authorities since the beginning of 2019 alone:
~ "The closing of the latest three churches is most concerning, as it came only days after members of the l'Eglise Protestante d'Algerie (EPA) -- an umbrella organization for Protestant churches -- staged a peaceful sit-in against earlier church closures, and therefore suggests that it was an act of retaliation by Algerian authorities against those Christians willing to protest.
"One impetus for the protests is a 2006 law stating that any non-Muslim worship be conducted in specific, designated buildings. But since this law came into effect, no Christian places of worship have been designated by the government of Algeria."
According to the ICC, one of the churches that was shut down -- the Full Gospel of Tizi-Ouzou , with approximately 1,000 members -- is the largest in Algeria. Its lead pastor, Salah Chalah, also happens to head the EPA.
The pastor reportedly attempted to meet with government representatives multiple times, with no success. While his church was being raided by police, he was beaten with a baton.
Stark explained to Gatestone:
~ "The mere existence of an open Christian minority seems to challenge Algeria's national identity as a Muslim nation. The fact that this small, nonconforming minority is openly projecting its own image of what it means to be Algerian is at least part of the reason that it is being targeted."
Chapter I, Article 2 of Algeria's constitution determines that "Islam is the religion of the State."
According to the US State Department's 2018 Report on International Religious Freedom, in Algeria:
~ "Proselytizing of Muslims by non-Muslims is a crime... According to media reports, authorities charged five Christians from Bouira Province, three of whom belong to the same family, with 'inciting a Muslim to change his religion' and 'performing religious worship in an unauthorized place.' On December 25, a judge at the court of Bouira acquitted the five individuals. In March a court in Tiaret convicted and fined two Christian brothers for carrying more than 50 Bibles in their car. Prosecutors said the accused planned to use them for proselytism; the brothers said they were for church use only. The court fined each man 100,000 dinars ($850). In May another court convicted a church leader and another Christian of proselytizing, sentenced them to three months in prison, and fined them 100,000 dinars...
"Some Christian leaders and congregants spoke of family members abusing Muslims who converted to or expressed an interest in Christianity. Media reported unknown individuals vandalized two Christian cemeteries, smashing tombstones and ransacking graves. Individuals engaged in religious practice other than Sunni Islam reported they had experienced threats and intolerance, including in the media."
#BreakingNews Christians in #Algeria stage a church sit-in to protest Algeria shutting down the two largest churches in the country. Police forcefully remove protesters and seal the church. 1500 Christians lose places of worship.
— International Christian Concern (@persecutionnews) October 16, 2019
More info: https://t.co/YBVoBkxsFB pic.twitter.com/GuvPTWUVVz
"On Friday October 25th, as part of their Germany tour, the citizens’ movement Pax Europa (BPE) were in Offenbach. BPE members hung up 160 posters at 80 locations and distributed thousands of flyers to interest citizens in the event. The planned mosque construction by Millî Görüş in the already strongly “enriched” city means it has great need for information.
The establishment parties are happy about the €4.5 million project with a minaret for 600 Muslims. It is estimated that 14,000 Muslims live in Hessen’s fifth-largest city, and to date there are already ten mosques. Friday’s rally at the Aliceplatz between 12 noon and 7pm included a very exciting discussion with the citizens (See video). According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, the magistrate of the city reacted to the posters on Tuesday with a statement in which it wished to have “no imported debates on the subject for parties to catch votes”. If a mosque was a topic, then it would be discussed by those affected. Well, this magistrate is obviously badly informed. The BPE is not a “party trying to catch votes”, but rather a citizens’ movement that has been enlightening people about Islam for over 15 years. And this magistrate should be grateful when the discussion is enriched with extensive facts about the threat of political Islam. The BPE provided citizens with information that has been withheld from them by the mainstream media and the old parties.
OP Online also reported about the poster campaign and the BPE rally, tendentiously as expected, and called it a “controversial right-wing populist campaign”:
“Offenbach is not a good place for hate demonstrations by right-wing or right-wing populist movements: in 2017, an appearance by the AfD politician Alexander Gauland at the Stadthof in front of just forty sympathizers was drowned by the whistling concert of the counter-demonstrators.
“Also the action of the right-wing populist ‘citizen movement Pax Europa’ (BPE) planned for Friday (October 25, 2019) is already encountering resistance. The fact that the BPE is advertising its event throughout the city with the right-wing populist and Islam opponent Michael Stürzenberger, who has been watched by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and convicted of incitement of the people, has caused controversy.”
"One night last week, explosions took place in three different locations in and around Stockholm. There were no injuries this time, just the usual shattered windows, scattered debris and shocked people woken by the blast.
The police bomb squad was already on its way to the first explosion in the district of Vaxholm when it had to turn around and prioritise the detonation at a residential building in the more densely populated city centre. Residents whose doors had been deformed by the shock wave had to be rescued. The third target (seemingly unrelated) was a facility belonging to a Syriac Orthodox church, which had already been bombed twice in the past year.
‘Normalisation’ is a term that we have come to associate with domestic violence: the victim begins to think of abuse as a part of everyday life. Explosions have become so normalised in Sweden that SVT, Sweden’s equivalent of the BBC, did not even mention the three explosions in the country’s capital on its national news programme that evening. Instead, the main domestic story was the purported censorship of ‘big female bodies’ on Instagram. Apparently, we mustn’t be referred to as ‘women’ any more, but ‘female bodies’, lest anyone’s gender be assumed. The explosions were left to the local news.
To understand how Sweden arrived at this degree of normalisation, consider the statistics: between January and June this year, more than 100 explosions were reported in the country, up from about 70 in the same period last year. A total of more than 160 suspected attacks with explosives were reported last year. There are no comparable figures available for earlier years because it’s such a recent phenomenon. Until recently no one would have thought of adding a column on bombings to the national Swedish crime statistics.
Wilhelm Agrell, professor of intelligence analysis at Lund University, has warned that the situation has become so dire that the integrity of the Swedish state is in jeopardy. ‘The state’s monopoly on violence, the actual token of a sovereign government, has been hollowed out bit by bit and no longer exists,’ he wrote a few weeks ago. ‘The armed criminal violence is having effects that are increasingly similar to those of terrorism.’
At first, it was argued that these are just wars between gangs: awful, but avoidable if you just steer clear. But the bombings have now increased to such an extent that it’s impossible to ignore the collateral damage. The biggest blast so far, which took place in the university town of Linköping in June, demolished two residential buildings and damaged more than 250 apartments. A police spokesman called it a ‘miracle’ that no one was severely injured.
A bombing in the university town of Lund in September left a female student with severe facial injuries. She was passing by a shop on her way home after a night out when an explosive device detonated. Witnesses saw people jumping out of windows. Just weeks before, a young woman was murdered in an affluent neighbourhood in Malmö, in an attack which police believe was aimed at her boyfriend. Karolin Hakim, a doctor, was carrying her young child when she was gunned down. As she was lying on the ground, the shooter put a bullet in her head. Her baby is now in a government protection programme.
As inured as Sweden has become to gang violence, the country was shaken by this cold-blooded murder of a mother with a baby in her arms. Justice Minister Morgan Johansson declared on Twitter that the state would chase Ms Hakim’s killer ‘to the ends of the earth’. But gang violence has severely strained police resources. A month after the murder, more than a hundred witnesses are yet to be heard. So much for chasing anyone to the ends of the earth: there weren’t even enough police to knock on doors around Malmö.
Only days after the murder of Karolin Hakim, another young woman fell victim to the gang wars. Eighteen-year-old Ndella Jack was killed as someone fired an automatic weapon into her flat in western Stockholm, probably aiming for her husband, a well-known figure in Stockholm’s gang scene. Less than a week after the murder, associates of Ms Jack’s husband were lured to a middle-class suburb of Stockholm, where they had been promised information about her killer. Shots were fired, missing the targets and hitting instead a taxi driver and a resident in a nearby building. One victim, also a university student, lost his sight in an eye after it was hit by a bullet."
"Stefan Löfven, Sweden’s Prime Minister and the leftist Socialist Party leader has ruled out the possibility of stripping Swedish Islamic State Fighters of their citizenships, and has said that they have the right to come back to the country.
Nyheter Idag recently reported that Löfven stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had previously warned those who were traveling in and around the region in which IS had been fighting, that those individuals who were captured shouldn’t anticipate any assistance from the Swedish government at a consular level.
The prime minster did, however, state that he would refrain from stripping the Islamic State fighters of their Swedish citizenship, asserting that it was their right to return to the country if they desired. He then said that upon their return, it would be up to the intelligence service and law enforcement to keep track of the returning terrorists whereabouts and to potentially arrest and prosecute them."