France

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News/Politics 1-16-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

We’ll start with the good news…..

1. The man who helped save others from the Paris gunmen is being rewarded.

From TheIndependent  “The Malian national who was hailed as a hero for helping hostages to safety during the kosher supermarket siege in Paris is to be given French citizenship, French media have reported.

Lassana Bathily was the subject of an online petition signed by around 300,000 people, calling for him to be given a French passport as well as the Legion d’honneur, the country’s highest honour.

Mr Bathily has been widely praised for his actions to save people who would otherwise have been held captive by the extremist terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who was later shot dead by police.”

“A 24-year-old Muslim, Mr Bathily was also able to escape the supermarket siege through a fire escape after he had shepherded the customers to safety, and relayed information on what was happening inside to police officers.”

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2. Good Kitty!

From TheNYPost  “Eat your heart out, Lassie!

Masha, a long-haired tabby cat, saved the life of a baby abandoned in the streets of Russia — after she climbed into the box he was discarded in and kept him warm, health officials said.

“The baby had only been outside for a few hours and thanks to Masha … he was not damaged by the experience,” a hospital spokesman told Central European News.

The whiskered hero even meowed to get the attention of a passerby.

“She is very placid and friendly, so when I heard her meowing, I thought that perhaps she had injured herself,” said Obninsk city resident Irina Lavrova. “Normally she would have come and said hello to me. You can imagine my shock when I saw her lying in a box next to a baby.””

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3. Police have foiled another terrorist plot in Belgium.

From ABCNews  “Two suspects died in a gunfight as authorities searched locations they believe are tied to a terror plot in Belgium, an official said.

The deaths occurred after individuals at a location in Verviers, Belgium, opened fire on police with automatic weapons, Magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said. Besides the two suspects killed, a third was arrested, he said, adding that no police or civilians were injured.

A neighbor at the apparent site of the confrontation in Verviers, near the city of Liege, told ABC News he heard two explosions and dozens of gunshots over about five minutes, and that four or five police cars remained on the scene afterwards.”

“”These search warrants were executed in an investigation concerning several people who we think are an operational cell concerning certain people who came back from Syria,” Van der Sypt said. “During the investigation, we found that this group was about to commit terrorist attacks in Belgium.”

Operations were ongoing into the evening in multiple parts of Belgium, including in Molenbeek, Brussels and Vilvoorde, a federal police official told ABC News.”

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4. Islamic threats and terror training centers in the US? Yep. But don’t worry, our govt. says they’re watching them. I feel safer already… 🙄

From FoxNews  “Mauro discussed five top organizations linked to Islamic extremism that are located in the United States.

One such example is the hamlet of Islamberg in the Town of Hancock, New York. Located 145 northwest of New York City, the secluded community is home to an unknown number of Muslims inspired by Sufi cleric Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani. Mauro said the compound is spread across 60-70 acres. 

He showed O’Reilly a video given to him by a law enforcement source that shows members marching with rifles in apparent guerilla warfare training. As the group, Muslims of the Americas, is not designated as a foreign terrorist organization, they are able to operate in the United States with little more than FBI ‘monitoring’, Mauro said.

Another notable location is the Dar-al Hijrah mosque in the Seven Corners section of Falls Church, Va. The mosque was once led by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen killed overseas after joining al Qaeda. The mosque, near Washington, D.C., is now led by an imam who Mauro noted has said ‘Muslims shall be first in line for the arms for jihad.”

Siraj Wahhaj, a radical imam whom O’Reilly discussed earlier this week, runs the Masjid At Taqwa mosque in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Wahhaj will be speaking at an upcoming conference in Texas.  Mauro called him “one of the most radical imams in the country.” 

That last mosque in Brooklyn should sound familiar. It’s the one attended by the man who recently assassinated two NYC policemen before killing himself.

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5. Duke University must’ve had a moment of clarity.

From MSN  “Duke University has canceled its plan to use the tower of its chapel for a weekly, amplified call to prayer for Muslims.

In a release Thursday, the university said Muslims will instead gather on the quadrangle before heading into a room in the chapel for their weekly prayer service.

“Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. “However, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.”

Under the canceled plan, members of the school’s Muslim Students Association would have recited the call lasting about three minutes from the bell tower. However, the plan drew the ire of evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, who urged Duke alumni to withhold support because of violence against Christians that he attributed to Muslims. He wrote on Facebook that the decision is playing out as “Christianity is being excluded from the public square.””

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News/Politics 1-8-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread, with a few to start things off.

1. Looks like some Democrats are waking up to the unworkable realities of ObamaCare. But the President is still threatening to veto a legislative fix. He changes it illegally anytime he wants, so he’s probably unfamiliar with the concept of legal legislative fixes.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Congressional lawmakers, including Democrats, rebuked the White House on Wednesday for refusing to allow tweaks to Obamacare, saying President Obama is reneging on his promise to work to fix problems in the law.

A day after the White House said it would veto a bill to re-establish the 40-hour workweek standard, House and Senate members said they would press ahead and dare the president to oppose them.”

“Under Obamacare, businesses must count as full-time employees anyone who works at least 30 hours a week.

Critics say that is pushing employers to cut some workers’ hours to stay below the threshold for having to comply with the Obamacare business mandate. They want to restore the 40-hour definition.”

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2. One of the 3 suspects in the attack on a French paper’s office has turned himself in.

From APNews  “One man sought in the deadly shooting at a French satirical paper has turned himself in, and police hunted Thursday for two heavily armed men with possible links to al-Qaida in the military-style, methodical killing of 12 people at the office of a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

President Francois Hollande, visiting the scene of France’s deadliest such attack in more than half a century, called the assault on the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo “an act of exceptional barbarism.”

France raised its terror alert system to the maximum — Attack Alert — and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas. Fears had been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home.

French brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, should be considered armed and dangerous, according to a police bulletin released early Thursday. Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, a small town in France’s eastern Champagne region, said Paris prosecutor’s spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre. She did not offer details on Hamyd’s relationship with the men.”

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3. Isn’t Graham kinda stating the obvious here?

From HotAir  “Before you start in the comment section, I know. It’s Lindsey Graham. He’s a RINO. Amesty or something. In response to the terrorist attack this morning in Paris, he’s the first elected official to call it like it is, firmly and unreservedly. In an interview taped just a few minutes ago with Hugh Hewitt that will air at 7:06 EST, the senior senator from South Carolina had this to say, especially after Egypt’s President al-Sisi spoke out publicly for the need to reform Islam.

LG: I think the President of the United States is undercutting the president of Egypt. We’re in a religious war. These are not terrorists. They’re radical Islamists who are trying to replace our way of life with their way of life. Their way of life is motivated by religious teachings that require me and you to be killed, or enslaved, or converted. The President of the United States tip-toes around the threats we face, and he is trying to diminish the religious aspect of this war. Why? I don’t know. And he is not engaging the enemy in an aggressive fashion, which makes it more likely we’ll get attacked. What he’s doing is pretending to want to destroy ISIL when in fact, he’s trying to get out of office without having to commit American ground forces to do the job as part of a team in the region, because he made a campaign promise. His campaign promises, Hugh, are getting a lot of people killed.”

“I hope so, because this is not a cartoon problem. Our way of life doesn’t fit into their scheme of how the world should be. If you stopped talked about radical Islam, if you never did a cartoon again, that’s not enough. What people need to get is they can’t be accommodated. They can’t be negotiated with. They have to be eventually destroyed. And the way you destroy them over time is to have the people within the religion turn on them, have the capability to keep them at bay within the countries where they exist. That requires capacity building. That requires partnerships. But the way you defeat radical Islam is the way the KKK was defeated. People in the South over time turned against them. They got more educated. They rejected the extreme philosophy. And we’re going to have to invest in countries and people that would reject radical Islam, side with them, partner with them to keep the war over there. And here’s what I would say to President Obama. Your strategy of containing or destroying ISIL will not work. Your goal of containing them until you get out of office puts our country at risk. You’re not a very good commander-in-chief. Your policies to take the intelligence gathering process and destroy it by treating terrorism as a common crime is going to hurt this country. And to my fellow members of Congress, you’re part of the problem, too. If you don’t find a substitute for these Defense and intelligence cuts, you’re reducing our ability to defend this nation. There’s a perfect storm brewing, and I am going to keep talking about this until we get some action.”

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News/Politics 7-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Finally, some action.

From MSNNews  “A bipartisan deal to improve veterans’ health care would authorize at least $17 billion to fix the health program scandalized by long patient wait times and falsified records covering up delays, the bill’s chief supporters said Monday.

The agreement includes $10 billion in emergency spending to make it easier for veterans who can’t get prompt appointments with Veterans Affairs doctors to obtain outside care; $5 billion to hire doctors, nurses and other medical staff; and about $1.5 billion to lease 27 new clinics across the country, the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees said.

The bill also would expand a scholarship program for veterans to include surviving spouses of military members who died in the line of duty, allow all veterans to qualify for in-state college tuition, and grant the Veterans Affairs secretary authority to immediately fire senior executives, while providing employees with streamlined appeal rights.”

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2. Looks like ranchers are the only ones the govt is restricting land access to.

From TheHill  “Federal land protections are hampering efforts to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, Republicans say.

The Interior Department controls about 800 miles along the dividing line with Mexico, or about 40 percent of the total, with other land in the region owned by the Forest Service.

GOP lawmakers argue federal regulations intended to protect land and wildlife have become an obstacle for Customs and Borders Protection officers because they restrict their ability to drive near the border, build infrastructure or install surveillance technology.

“There is no doubt that the restrictions on accessing land along the border have made it more difficult for the Border Patrol to do their job,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who traveled to McAllen County, Texas, earlier this month to meet with officials about the surge of child migrants into the United States.”

Smugglers know this too, and are using it to their benefit.

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3. Yet another ObamaCare failure.

From HotAir  “ObamaCare advocates have spent the summer trying to put the sunniest spin possible on the law, and they’d better make the best possible use of the time. Premium increases will hit in the fall as insurers adjust for the less-than-optimal additions to the risk pools in 2014, and the best that advocates can argue is that the average increase percentage might just barely avoid double digits. That, National Journal notes, was the the pace of premium increases without ObamaCare, too; so much for bending cost curves downwards, eh?

This fall, though, it won’t be business as usual for ObamaCare policyholders in another important way. Most people assume that their existing policies will automatically renew, and after all the struggles that these consumers had in getting enrolled the first time around, they had to be looking forward to avoiding the process for 2015. And they’re right about autorenewal, but they’re in for a big surprise about what it means:

If you have health insurance on your job, you probably don’t give much thought to each year’s renewal. But make the same assumption in one of the new health law plans, and it could lead to costly surprises.

Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the government, say industry officials, advocates and other experts. If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock over their new premiums. Too high, and they’ll owe the tax man later. …”

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4. Illegal immigrants are demanding representation at White House meetings. I don’t know why they’re whining, they already have it from Obama and his advisers from La Raza.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Illegal immigrants picketed the White House Monday afternoon, calling on fellow immigrant-rights advocacy groups to refuse to meet with the Obama administration until President Obama specifically includes illegal immigrants in any future meetings.

“We are among the millions of people who will either benefit or be harmed by the decisions the President makes, and we are here to represent ourselves in any future negotiations,” said Rosi Carrasco, one of organizers, in a statement announcing the action.

Billing themselves “undocumented immigrant leaders,” the organizers said they will erect a picket line to symbolize their demand.”

And a real President would have INS there to round them up for deportation. But thankfully for them, we don’t have one of those.

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5. Vive la France!

From MSNNews  “France announced Monday the country would welcome Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homes as ISIS continues to take much of northern Iraq.

In a joint statement, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve denounced ISIS and extended help to Iraqi Christians.

“France is outraged by these abuses that it condemns with the utmost firmness,” they said. “We are ready, if they so desire, to help facilitate asylum on our territory.”

The announcement followed a rally on Sunday in support of Iraq‘s persecuted Christians, during which about 5,000 people gathered outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Geneviève Jacques, president of France’s refugee N.G.O. La Cimade, told France 24 that the country had to offer help as Iraq’s neighboring countries like Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon have already been flooded by refugees.”

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