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The Spanish government provided funding between 2009 and 2011 to political NGOs leading the campaigns to delegitimize Israel through demonization, boycotts, lawfare and other forms of political attacks, according to an NGO Monitor report issued on Tuesday. The report provides comprehensive and detailed evidence of the use and/or misuse of official Spanish funds, including regional governments. The analysis, entitled "Assessing Transparency, Accountability, and Impact on Israel", issued in Spanish and English, was written by Soeren Kern and Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg. Kern is an analyst at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group; Steinberg is President of...

Matteo Messina Denaro, the so-called "boss of bosses" from Cosa Nostra or the Sicilian Mafia, has been a wanted man since 1993, and his days on the run may be drawing to a close as authorities seize the wealth -- $3.8 billion since 2009 -- that props him up as reported by Tom Kington for the Los Angeles Times: "investigators will not say whether they believe an arrest is imminent, but police have ramped up seizures of businesses they believe are fronting for Messina Denaro," and are hoping that he "could yet be betrayed by otherwise loyal entrepreneurs exasperated by...

One of the dumbest things a country can do in a recession is raise taxes. Yet, after pronouncing the end of austerity, Italy's "grand coalition" government, led by Enrico Letta, is going to hike the VAT. Why? It seems they need to hike the VAT to pay for a decrease in property taxes. Recall that Silvio Berlusconi was only willing to take part in Letta's grand coalition on condition property tax hikes were rolled back. Letta agreed to do that, but now Letta says Italy needs revenue hikes to make up for it. Grand Coalition Splintering Curiously, the International Business...

Roaming fees for voice calls, texts and internet access will effectively be completely scrapped under the proposals, which are part of a broader effort to create a single European telecoms market. The group of 27 European Commissioners voted in Brussels on Tuesday to drive the package through in time for the European elections in May next year, to come into force as soon as 1 July 2014. … They expect the death of roaming charges to typically wipe 2 percent off mobile operators’ revenues … The reforms are designed to encourage radical consolidation of European mobile network operators. A source...

Here is an interesting Gallup poll that came my way today from a friend "BC". The poll was taken last month. It shows European Countries Lead World in Distrust of Banks.   Thirteen percent of Greeks said they had confidence in their country's banks or financial institutions in 2012, leading the nearly all-European list of countries where trust in financial institutions was among the worst in the world last year. Seven European Union countries had trust levels lower than 30%, far below the median 55% across 135 countries. Even in the EU's largest funder of the eurozone bailouts, Germany, fewer than four...

Some two months after Israeli airlines went on a brief strike to block the Israeli-EU “Open Skies” agreement, the two sides inked the accord in Luxembourg on Monday, paving the way for more direct flights between Israel and EU countries. The European Union issued a statement saying that the deal was signed on the sidelines of the EU Transport Council meeting. … When the agreement comes into effect in 2018, EU airlines will be able to operate direct flights to Israel from anywhere in the EU, and Israeli carriers will be able to operate flights to airports throughout the EU....

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech... In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on...

In a throwback to its darkest past, the German government recently decided to back an initiative which singles out Jewish-owned businesses and targets them for detrimental treatment. Joining 13 other European Union members, Berlin has reportedly agreed to support efforts aimed at applying special labels of origin to products manufactured by Jewish owned factories in Judea and Samaria. The goal is to harm the livelihood of Jewish businessmen and entrepreneurs as a way of undermining the settlement enterprise. Needless to say, goods made by Palestinian-run plants in the territories will not similarly be branded.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3844.htm

The Netherlands may represent the first time that the counterjihad stars have aligned in a single country. Wilders’ popularity is rising and tolerance for Islamic terror is declining. More than three quarters of the Dutch (77 percent) believe that Islam is no enrichment for our country. More than two-thirds – 68 percent – say that there is enough Islam in the Netherlands. It is striking that a majority of voters from all political parties (from PVV to VVD, CDA, D66, PvdA, SP and 50plus) share this view. PvdA is the Netherlands Labour Party. SP is the Socialist Party. ... Maybe...

German government document gives backing to EU efforts to put “Made in Israel” label only on products from within pre-1967 lines. … Foreign Ministry officials downplayed as “nothing new” an answer the German government gave to a parliamentary question last month supporting EU efforts to specially label goods originating in Israeli-controlled territory beyond the Green Line. Berlin, the officials said, was merely falling into line with other EU countries which were pushing this issue. …

One of the UK’s largest trade unions is to ban its members from visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories on delegations organized by the Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), a London-based organization supporting cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian workers. The GMB, which has over 617,000 members from an array of sectors, voted on Thursday at its annual conference in Plymouth to uphold a 2011 decision to “take a lead in driving forward the boycott and divestment initiatives” of “companies who profit from illegal settlements, the occupation and the construction of the wall.” Last week, after the motion was moved...

Finding the right words can be tasking. Even when you’re the BBC and your grotesquely inflated salaries are paid by a mandatory fee just so you can spew out programming that no one in their right mind watches anymore, it’s still a trial to find the find the right way of telling the people what they should think.

Snipped--The German government is toughening its stance on economic refugees from Bulgaria and Romania, who it says have become a burden on social services. snipped--Germany will take measures to prevent poor immigrants from the two Eastern European countries from entering the country under false pretences to collect welfare benefits.snip--... give these new arrivals a message: "If you are working here illegally -- no matter how -- then please go back to where you came from!" he said on Friday.

I received still more emails from French and Canadian readers on preserving culture. Since it's a slow news day, let's take a look at them. Olivier writes "Wouldn't a true conservative pay at least some respect to local cultural norms instead of trying to impose some economic diktat from on down?" Talk about getting things ass backwards. It is the social police attempting to impose cultural and economic diktats to preserve the local bookstore and the local farm to the point of absolute absurdity. Email From Canada Reader Mike from Canada writes ... Hi Mish, I totally agree with the...

The French government is to take steps to break up a far-right group allegedly linked to the death of a left-wing activist. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has asked the interior minister to take steps "immediately" to dissolve the Revolutionary Nationalist Youth (JNR). Five people are under investigation over the death of Clement Meric, 18. He was badly beaten in a clash between far-right and anti-fascist activists in Paris on Wednesday, and later died. The Paris Prosecutor, Francois Molins said according to witnesses the two groups had run into each other by chance in a busy shopping district near St Lazare...

If you've ever had the great fortune of seeing the entrance to a mosque, you'll have noticed that there are two doors: one, the main, huge, is for men, another, small and lateral, for women (as in the picture below of the East London Mosque). Apparently we need "right-wing groups" now in England to protest sexism, because the Left totally condones it. The recently-formed England National Resistance (ENR) felt outraged that the North West Kent Muslim Association’s mosque in Crayford High Street has separate entrances for men and women. Particularly offensive is the fact that this was once a church,...

UK shale gas finds could mean US-type energy boom Liza Jansen Posted date: June 05, 2013 In: Business, Europe, Latest News | comment : 1 New estimates show there is a massive amount of untapped shale gas in the Northwest of England. Evidence that the UK might be close to experiencing the energy revolution that has transformed the US market continues to mount. IGas, an energy company awarded shale gas licences in Northern England by UK authorities, has announced it has found enough gas reserves to meet the UK’s needs for 60 years. IGas says there may be up to...

Do you remember the most Homeric of world trade negotiations, called the Uruguay round, which took place between 1986 and 1994? I was a teenager then and I remember that round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) vividly. I had taken to reading the austere Le Monde every day and remember the uncouth Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association in Hollywood, who particularly despised European film directors for pleading with their governments to exclude cinema, and the arts in general, from the negotiations. Valenti roared back: "Culture is like chewing-gum, a product like any other."...

The potential for social unrest in European Union countries is higher than anywhere else in the world and the already yawning gaps between rich and poor, a major trigger, are likely to widen globally, the International Labour Organisation said on Monday. Those most vulnerable, the report said, were Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. However the risk of social unrest had declined in Belgium, Germany, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden since 2010. Overall, the risk of unrest in the EU "is likely to be due to the policy responses to the ongoing sovereign debt crisis and their impact...

Government officials in Jerusalem accused Ireland on Wednesday of leading opposition inside the EU to placing Hezbollah, or at least its “military wing,” on the European Union’s terrorist black list. According to the officials, Ireland—which holds the EU’s rotating presidency—was supported in this position by Sweden and Finland at a working group on Tuesday that debated the issue. A consensus of the EU’s 27 states will be needed to blacklist Hezbollah’s “military wing,” a move now even backed by Germany and France. In the past these two countries have opposed this step, arguing that it could destabilize Lebanon, make European...

The labeling of products made by Jews in Judea and Samaria would damage Israel, a report by the Foreign Ministry said—but it would damage PA Arabs even more. According to the report, some 22,500 PA Arabs are employed inside Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria. These Arabs are among the highest paid laborers in the PA. … In addition, they have social rights, including health benefits and pension rights, that are usually unavailable to PA Arabs. … If the aim of the European Union is to assist PA Arabs, the report said, then the labeling of goods from Jewish-owned businesses...

Europe's struggles prove that "austerity" fails! So say the Big Spenders. With a condescending sigh, they explain that Europe made deep cuts in government spending, and the result was today's high unemployment. "With erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far," writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times. One problem with this conclusion: European governments didn't cut! If workers pick through garbage, cuts can't be a reason, since they didn't happen. That doesn't stop leftists from complaining about cuts or stop Europeans from protesting announced austerity plans. But if...

Poland has embarked on one of the biggest defence spending increases of any Nato member. The programme was launched by Bronislaw Komorowski, the president, in a signing ceremony that symbolically took place not far from the Belarus border. “Poland will be more secure and more credible as an ally and a key country in our part of Europe, able to defend its own territory and able to help others,” Mr Komorowski said during the ceremony in April. At a time when most Nato military budgets are under severe strain because of the economic crisis, Poland is undertaking a thorough modernisation...

A brigade of Dutch paratroopers will be integrated into a new German division of rapid reaction forces, German newspaper Rheinische Post reported on May 22. The 11th Airmobile Brigade—a mobile force of 4,500 troops that is equipped with light vehicles, mortars and anti-aircraft systems—will join 8,600 German soldiers to form the new division under German command. With paratroopers and special forces, as well as combat and transport helicopters, the group is designed to respond quickly to new threats and help evacuate endangered German and Dutch citizens. Until now, only Britain and America had a similar type of military structure. The...

Mrs Le Pen, leader of the National Front, told a rally in 2010 that the places in France where Muslims worshipped in the streets were "occupied territory". "For those who want to talk a lot about World War Two, if it's about occupation, then we could also talk about it (Muslim prayers in the streets), because that is occupation of territory," she said at a gathering in Lyon. In December 2012, French authorities asked the European Parliament to lift Mrs Le Pen's immunity as a European Parliament member (MEP) so she could be prosecuted. The BBC reports that a secret...

It took Kimberly Vlaminck three long years and nine painful laser treatments to finally look like herself again - her face no longer etched with 56 tattooed stars. Vlaminck, a 22-year-old from Belgium, made headlines around the world in 2009 after she emerged from a tattoo parlor with an entire constellation inked on the left side of her face. Initially, then-19-year-old Vlaminck lied to her parents and the media, claiming that she asked a local tattooist for only three stars near her eyes, but he kept adding more and more after she dozed off under the needle.

Belgian police have demanded that Lola, a theatre-starring donkey, be removed from the balcony of a cultural centre in Brussels after neighbours complained about her braying.Lola is staying on the first-floor balcony while she performs in a play at the Arab Cultural Centre, located in the same building in the Belgian capital. But police ordered Lola's keeper to move her indoors after receiving complaints about the donkey making too much noise. Despite the police demands, Lola was still outside on Friday, and the director of the cultural centre was berating her neighbours for interfering.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that despite the portrayal by the media of a deal for advanced missiles to be purchased from Russia as a future event, the fact is that Syria has already begun acquiring the S-300 missile system from Moscow.

The first air-defense missiles from Russia have begun rolling into Syria, according to the the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Speaking on a TV station owned by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad said that Russia will honor its promises to Syria, and had in fact already started to do so (via Rovin): The Syrian president has told Lebanon’s Hizbollah-owned TV station that Damascus received the first shipment of S300 Russian air defence missiles. Al-Manar said in a statement that when asked about the promised delivery of the S-300 surface-to-air missiles, Assad replied: “All the agreements with Russia will be honoured and some...

France and Germany are pushing to have a full-time official lead the economic and financial policies of the 17-country euro currency bloc. … French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a meeting in Paris that there needs to be a central figure to lead the Eurogroup. Speaking Thursday at a joint press conference, Hollande said he and Merkel “are in agreement that there should be more eurozone summits, with a full-time Eurogroup president with strengthened powers.” “We need more economic policy coordination, especially in the Eurogroup,” Merkel said. …

In an interesting development in the battle to see which country is bright enough to exit the euro first, a book urging a return to the Escudo (the prior Portuguese currency) became an instant a bestseller in Portugal. The Wall Street Journal reports Idea of Euro Exit Finds Currency in Portugal. A book by a Portuguese economist achieved a small feat on its release last month: It instantly topped Portugal's bestseller list, overtaking several diet books and even the popular erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey." The book, "Why We Should Leave the Euro" by João Ferreira do Amaral, has...

The recession in Europe risks hurting the world’s economic recovery, a leading international body warned Wednesday. In its half-yearly update, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said that protracted economic weakness in Europe “could evolve into stagnation with negative implications for the global economy.” The OECD again slashed its forecast for the economy of the 17-country eurozone, saying it will shrink by 0.6 percent this year, after a 0.5 percent drop in 2012. The OECD had predicted a 0.1 percent decline for the eurozone in its report six months ago—and this time last year, it forecast growth of nearly...

Riots" and "Stockholm" are two concepts that rarely pair up. But on Monday, angry masked youths in a suburb of the Swedish capital took to the streets to set fire to cars, toss rocks at police and ignite a parking garage. The disturbance was believed to be set off by the fatal shooting by police earlier this month of a 69-year-old man who allegedly attacked them with a machete. Authorities said at least 100 cars were damaged, and the fire in the garage forced an evacuation of an apartment building. About 50 residents were sheltered temporarily in buses. Police said...

Sweden needs a new story better equipped to deal with and include today's demographic diversity and create a new Swedishness that is separate from whiteness, write representatives from the Multicultural Centre (Mångkulturellt centrum) in Botkyrka near Stockholm. (...) Swedes do not stand apart from the world and its history of racism and colonialism. Our way of dealing with this has so far been to deny that race exists, while we have also wanted to affirm the unknown and the new. Most Swedes will claim they are colour blind, and only see a human before them when they meet someone new....

Hundreds youths hurling rocks, burning cars and smashing windows for the second day in a row in Stockholm say they are protesting against police brutality and inequality. In Sweden, critics of the multiculturalism policies lash out at immigration laws. Seven policemen were injured, at least ten cars and countless containers set on fire, and dozens of windows smashed in several heavily immigrant-populated neighborhoods of the Swedish capital on Tuesday. The police said some 300 people are now taking part in riots, which started in protest against the shooting of a man allegedly armed with a knife in the Stockholm district...

Sheesh! It took me 5 minutes of scanning about a half dozen articles before finally - finally - finding a media account of the riots by "immigrants" that have shocked Sweden in the last 48 hours that mentions where the rioters are from. I can say without a trace of irony, "Thank God for the BBC": Police in the deprived, largely immigrant suburb of Husby shot a man dead last week after he reportedly threatened to kill them with a machete. The founder of a local youth group told Swedish media the riots were a reaction to "police brutality". Prime...

Swedish Youth Riots Enter Third Day Tyler Durden 05/22/2013 11:32 -0400 Sparked by the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69 year-old man, traditionally calm-and-collected Sweden is suffering amid its third night of riots. It seems underlying tensions from high youth unemployment and rising nationalism against the nation's large immigrant population have been catalyzed by this seemingly unrelated event. As the Daily Mail notes, immigrant ghettos have been created where unemployment is high and there are few opportunities for residents with left-leaning commenters adding that the riots represented a 'gigantic failure' of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos...

A young Somali journalist in Sweden named Amun Abdullahi got herself in trouble with the politically correct elite by reporting the truth about the radicalization of young Somalis in Rinkeby (a culturally enriched suburb of Stockholm), where they were recruited for jihad by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab. The treatment meted out to Ms. Abdullahi made her decide to move back to Somalia. She acknowledges that Mogadishu is a dangerous place, but she considers Sweden more dangerous, because “here you cannot tell the truth.”

Rioters have lit fires and stoned emergency services in the suburbs of Stockholm for the third night in a row after a man was shot dead by police. More than 80% of Husby's 12,000 or so inhabitants are from an immigrant background, and most are from Turkey, the Middle East and Somalia.

HUSBY, Sweden (AP) -- Sweden has long been a bastion of generous social welfare and an egalitarian political culture. So many people were shocked when scores of youths hurled rocks at police and set cars ablaze during rioting in several largely immigrant areas near Stockholm this week. Few dispute that the violence was probably touched off by the fatal police shooting of an elderly man who had locked himself in an apartment wielding a knife. But some residents in the area accused police who responded to the violence of racism. For some, the real reason for the unrest is the...

A town in western Sweden has agreed to pay damages to a man who was told he wouldn't be hired if he refused to shake a woman's hand for religious reasons. The decision by officials in Trollhättan to pay the man 30,000 kronor ($4,500) means the municipality won't have to face a review of the case by Sweden's Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen). The incident stemmed from an office visit by a man who had been offered an internship with the integration division at Trollhättan municipality. When the man was set to meet a female supervisor at the office, he refused to...

Rioters took to the streets of a Stockholm neighborhood on Sunday, torching cars and throwing stones at police. Officers reportedly called residents “monkeys” and other derogatory terms as they protested against a recent police shooting. Between 60 to 100 people – most of them young men – took part in the riots which began around 10pm local time in the Stockholm district of Husby. Police turned up at the scene after a car was set on fire. Upon arrival, officers were met with stone-throwing protesters, Police Chief Daniel Mattsson said, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal. One policeman was...

In addition to the horrendous beheading of a British soldier in Woolwich by Muslim terrorists, Stockholm's suburbs have seen riots for the last four nights, with car burnings and crowds throwing rocks at the police, reminiscent of the recurring riots in France. Who are these rioters? The story on the Huffington Post has the following descriptions: "Gangs of youth... Around 50 youths...The youths set light to a parking garage... masked youths hurling rocks.... One policeman was attacked by youths." On the Bloomberg article with a link on Drudge, the rioters are described as "stone-throwing youths." The Washington Post: "Some 200...

Following three nights of violence that left cars smouldering in several Stockholm suburbs, The Local travelled to the north-western district of Husby where the disturbances began to see how the riots have affected local residents.

Rioters took to the streets of Sweden for the fifth night in a row on Thursday, torching cars, shops, schools and a police station. Firefighters were dispatched to 70 different location across Stockholm in response to blazes started by groups of youths. Two schools, including a Montessori school, were set on fire in two suburbs of the Swedish capital and up to 15 car fires were reported at locations across the city and beyond. The unrest began on Sunday night after the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old man in an area with a high population of immigrants. The man was...

Stockholm (Muslim) Rioting Continues For Fifth Night Swedish police seek reinforcements after youths set ablaze cars and attack property and schools in poorer suburbs of capital Guardian.co.uk Friday 24 May 2013 05.27 EDT Swedish fire crews extinguish a row of burning cars in Rinkeby after youths rioted in Stockholm suburbs. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters Police in Stockholm are to seek reinforcements after (Muslim) youths set cars ablaze and threw stones at police for a fifth night running, officials said. About 30 cars were set on fire in poorer districts in north-western and south-western parts of the Swedish capital on Thursday night,...

Youth gang riots in the Swedish capital Stockholm have entered fifth straight night. Hundreds of mostly immigrant teenagers tore through the suburbs, smashing windows and burning cars in the country’s worst outbreak of violence in years. At least six vehicles were torched throughout the city late on Thursday while the police called for reinforcements from other Swedish cities bracing for further unrest. Firefighters were putting out flames that engulfed several cars and a school in immigrant-dominated areas of Stockholm. The night before, the fire brigades were called to some 90 different blazes. On the fourth night of violence, youths torched...

Police in Stockholm called in reinforcements on Friday after youths set cars and a school ablaze in a fifth night of rioting, the worst to hit Sweden for years. Pupils at a primary school in Kista - an IT hub that is home to the likes of telecoms equipment maker Ericsson and the Swedish office of Microsoft - arrived to find the inside of the small red wooden building had been completely burnt out. While Thursday was slightly calmer than the four nights before, about 30 cars were torched and eight people, mostly in their early 20s, were detained, police...

th Day of Riots in Stockholm A north-western suburb of Stockholm has been hit by five days of riots, in which several schools have been burned out, numerous vehicles have been set on fire, and a police station was attacked. The suburb, Husby, is reportedly well known for its large immigrant population, which is comprised of incomers from predominantly Muslim countries, including Turkey, the Middle East, and Somalia. The riots are just the latest round of violence from an immigrant population that increasingly has left many in Sweden questioning the immigration policies of the country....