Month: February 2023

By Thomas Lifson

Is it wise public policy to appoint a self-confessed head case to an ultra-sensitive intelligence advisory board? The apparent motives behind this move are as questionable as the appointment itself.

Joe Biden’s handlers are attempting to sell the public on the absurd notion that, as he reportedly said yesterday, global warming “is the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced, including nuclear weapons.” There is no scientific proof at all that CO2 controls the climate, only flawed models of the admittedly far more complex climate that do not work to predict what actually happened, when retroactively applied to data from the past.

Meanwhile, the US is escalating the conflict in Ukraine by supplying more sophisticated weapons, risking nuclear retaliation by Russia, followed by escalation into nuclear Armageddon. Even the lefty Union of Concerned Scientists is alarmed to the point of advancing its doomsday clock closer to midnight than it ever has been.

The desire to sell climate hysteria and distract from reckless warmongering may have something to do with the appointment of a woman to his Intelligence Advisory Board, who, in my opinion, already is hysterical on the subject of climate, so much so that she has been unable to handle ordinary life functions by her own confession, something that is part of the definition of mental illness, colloquially known as being a head case.

Collin Anderson reports for the Free Beacon:

Biden on Thursday tapped Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the White House announced in a press release. While past presidents have used the board to probe high-profile national security threats and intelligence failures, it’s unclear whether Cobb will be able to stomach such sensitive and unsettling information.

That’s because the mere news of Trump’s upset win in 2016 sent Cobb into “an acute mental health crisis” that for weeks saw her unable to “get out of bed, despite having four children to tend to,” the climate scientist told Mother Jones in 2019. “I could not see a way forward,” Cobb recalled at the time. “My most resounding thought was, how could my country do this? I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don’t care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information I had contributed to.”

I am not a psychiatrist, but being unable to care for her 4 children sounds like a severe mental breakdown, one that had serious risks to the welfare of the children. That this was occasioned by election news that she didn’t like raises grave questions about her ability to handle information that she finds stressful. I suspect that members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board see highly disturbing information. What if Professor Cobb learns of a threat greater than the presidency of Donald Trump?  Will she be able to function? Will she be able to protect classified information?

Given the unfolding scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified material, appointing someone with self-reported mental issues seems an unwise risk.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/bidens_new_appointee_to_intelligence_advisory_board_suffered_acute_mental_health_crisis_and_was_unable_to_get_out_of_bed_.html

An influx of migrants into a region of Germany has left many locals struggling to find adequate housing, a number of area-mayors have claimed.

Senior officials from the Main-Taunus district in Germany, including mayors, district council heads and the region’s District Administrator, Michael Cyriax, have claimed that an influx of migrants has made it very difficult for local people to acquire adequate housing.

The officials aired their complaints in a letter sent to Germany’s federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, demanding that their national leaders take action to control the levels of immigration into the country.

According to a report by Bild, the local officials expressed frustration at the number of foreign arrivals into their small region, something which they say is now putting undue pressure on the local housing supply.

“Even today, many local families are finding it very difficult to find adequate living space, and this situation on the housing market is being exacerbated massively by the refugee movements,” the letter, which is signed by the mayor of Schwalbach, the home territory of the country’s pro-immigration Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, reads.

“The distribution of the refugees contributes to aggravating the situation,” it continued, adding that the region now has “hardly any space or vacancies that we could use for accommodation”.

The officials go on to demand that the national government begins “actively” controlling the number of migrants entering Germany, as well as cease implementing measures encouraging migrants to come to Germany for “economic reasons”.

Although refraining from using the exact same language, the letter sent by the officials to the Chancellor echoes claims made by a growing anti-mass migration protest movement in fellow EU nation Ireland.

Having struggled over the last 12 months with a rapidly expanding migrant crisis, the issue of mass migration has suddenly exploded onto the political scene over the last number of weeks, with many grassroots protests now taking place around the country amid tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers entering the country much smaller than many individual U.S. states.

Many protesters have largely marched under the banner of “Ireland is Full“, a slogan that has gained prominence amid the country’s housing and homelessness crises, which have seen many Irish people struggle to secure a roof over their heads at a time when the national government is willing to hand over accommodation to foreign arrivals.

Some left-leaning publications have even claimed that this unrest amongst the general public has even boiled over to violence in at least one instance, with it claiming that one migrant camp in the nation’s capital was recently attacked by masked men armed with sticks and baseball bats.

Such a telling of events has been challenged in the public sphere however, with the editor of news outlet Gript Media, John McGuirk, repeatedly pointing out a lack of evidence backing up the alleged attack.

“It is a simple statement of fact that the Irish Times has given many people to believe that migrants were physically attacked and assaulted when the Irish Times has zero – zero – evidence that this is true,” he said after an article commenting on the alleged attack was published on Gript.

“It is a disgrace,” he went on to add.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/01/germans-struggling-to-find-housing-amid-migrant-surge-mayors-claim/

France recorded significantly higher levels of crime across the board last year with burglaries, thefts, and sexual offenses all rising by double figures, according to data published by the French Ministry of the Interior on Tuesday.

“Almost all the indicators of recorded delinquency were up in 2022 compared to the previous year,” the ministry noted alongside the crime stats.

Theft from vehicles across the country skyrocketed by almost a third (30.3 percent). Domestic abuse was up by 16.9 percent, robberies were up 13.7 percent, and sexual offenses and burglaries rose by 11.4 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively.

Authorities recorded 948 homicides last year, up 7.8 percent over 2021, while 249,811 drug-related offenses were recorded, up 12.9 percent.

There was a total of 459,840 cases of fraud committed, up 7.2 percent, and drug trafficking crimes rose by 3.9 percent.

Violent robberies without a weapon were the only category of crime to fall last year, decreasing by 3.9 percent.

According to the available figures, while the trend was observed everywhere in France, some departments contributed particularly to the increase, in particular, “the Bouches-du-Rhône for the rise in vehicle theft and the North for the increase of vehicle accessory theft,” noted the interior ministry.

French Ministry of Justice statistics published late last year revealed French prisons have reached record levels of inmates, with more than 72,000 convicts behind bars, 20 percent over the country’s official prison capacity of 60,700 places.

The country’s justice department sought to resolve the issue of overcrowding by reducing the sentences of less than two years by three months, essentially granting them early release.

The policy, which took effect from Jan. 1 this year, enraged French magistrates concerned about repeat offenders, who insisted they hand down the sentences they do for good reason.

Government data published in March last year showed a quarter of France’s prison population is comprised of foreign nationals, costing the French taxpayer more than €700 million every year.

In an interview in October last year, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed half of crimes across the country are committed by “foreigners in an irregular situation or awaiting asylum approval.”

Despite the revelation, the French president refused to acknowledge an “existential” link between immigration and insecurity.

https://rmx.news/france/almost-all-crimes-across-france-rose-last-year-vehicle-theft-up-30-sexual-offenses-up-11/

by Giulio Meotti

Islam was sleeping, it seemed like a dead religion. Then came the imam with the black turban of the descendants of the Prophet. He is the man who would awaken Islam with the greed of the apocalypse and the permanent bloodbath.

Now we are struck silent by these faces of Iranian men and women whom the mullahs execute early in the morning in this country devastated by the “Islamic revolution”. A revolution that was hailed, defended, justified and sung to by the crème of Western and European progressive culture, including that of Italy.

• It was Iran, with the saga of Salman Rushdie, that first sentenced a writer to be killed because of his criticism of Islam.
• The hijab was first distributed by the Iranian embassy in Algiers.
• In Tunisia, the secular government was excommunicated by Iranian fundamentalists after 1981, when the Tunisian government banned the use of the headscarf in schools and public offices.

Today, Iran is ninth in Open Doors’ list of the ten worst countries for Christians.

There were no Taliban, ISIS or Boko Haram then. No one before Khomeini had dared to do things of this nature. For the first time in a hundred years, the ayatollah brought back the death penalty for an “adulteress” in Shiraz. Stoned, along with 51 others since 1979. Ali Montazeri, the successor indicated by Khomeini, who once called him “the fruit of my life”, will write: “The rest of the world believes that the only activity practiced in Iran is killing.”

In an interview with Khomeini on September 27, 1979, Italian writer Oriana Fallaci asked him if it was right to have shot a “poor prostitute”. “If your finger suffered from gangrene, what would you do?” Khomeini replied. “Do you let the whole hand, and then the body, get gangrene, or cut off the finger? What brings corruption to an entire country and its people must be rooted out, like the tares that infest a wheat field… We must eliminate corruption”.

Eight Christians killed for their faith in Iran by the Islamic Revolution were remembered recently at a memorial service in London. And there are the violent persecutions of Jews and Armenians, Zoroastrians, Sunnis, Ishmaelites…

In 1988, the year Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” appeared, torture and executions were on the rise in prisons across the Islamic Republic. Khomeini indicated Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and first Shiite imam, as the model that justifies these crimes: “If the commander of the faithful [Ali] was always casual, he would not have drawn his sword and would not have killed 700 in one go. The last people who rose up against him were against Islam, so he killed every last one of them.”

In a fatwa, an elderly and sick Khomeini ordered the prisons to be emptied and the inmates killed to the last one. Thirty thousand dead in all, reformers, dissidents, political opponents, writers. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 homosexuals have been executed by Iran in forty years of the Islamic revolution. The International Observatory of Human Rights has recorded 129 cases of amputees in the last twenty years. And Iran is still today the main perpetrator of execution of minors. At least 73 minors executed from 2005 to 2015.

The mystery, however, is how Khomeini was able to attract the ranks of secular Europeans and American liberals, libertines and materialists, structuralists and feminists, existentialists and theorists of the sexual revolution, up to communists of all sorts. Never mind that the ayatollah had defined secularism as “the work of Satan” and the Jews (“may God sink them”) as the most dangerous enemies, he was angry with music (“it generates immorality and lust”) and said that non-Muslims are “impure”.

In his Parisian exile in Neauphle-le-Château, from his villa in the hills a few kilometers from Paris, Khomeini was pampered day and night by journalists and intellectuals of the global left. Everyone wanted to touch and talk to the old ember-eyed imam. For weeks, the cottage in Neauphle-le-Château and the adjoining snow-covered marquee-mosque were transformed into the headquarters of the Islamic revolution and its international press centre.

To name a few:

• The philosopher Louis Rougier and the historian of the French Revolution Claude Manceron went to visit him, enraptured.
• Vincent Monteil, a former French military attaché in the Iranian capital, even converted to Islam.
• Rougier wrote an essay comparing Khomeini to David triumphing over Goliath.
• Andrew Young, the ambassador to the United Nations under the Carter administration, said Khomeini was “a social democrat” and compared his Islamic revolution to the American civil rights movement.
• The American ambassador in Tehran, William Sullivan, compared the imam to Gandhi.
• Richard Falk, a Princeton jurist and future UN envoy to the Middle East with an anti-Israel stance, in the New York Times warmed himself to the fire of the Islamic revolution.
• Iranologist Richard Cottam in the Washington Post defined Khomeini as “moderate and centrist”, a hermit who was not interested in power but who, once the Shah was defeated, would retire to the holy city of Qom. Of course, the exact opposite happened.
• From France, the poet Jean Genet, unaware of what mullahs were doing to homosexuals like him, expressed sympathy for Khomeini because he had dared to oppose the West.
• So did Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Sartre went so far as to declare: “I have no religion, but if I had to choose one, it would be that of Shariati” (Islam).

Libération, the newspaper of the left, headline: “Victorious insurrection in Tehran”. Entire front page to Khomeini’s glory.

Marc Kravetz, the newspaper’s special envoy and former leader of May ’68 turned reporter, recounts the “first big night” of the Iranian revolution: “Around 9 pm we heard the first cries. A long and modulated scream coming from the depths of the throat. Allahou Akhbar. It was no longer a slogan, it was no longer a cry of alarm, but pure music, beautiful as the song of wolves. Allahou Akhbar. On all the roofs of the city, from north to south, from east to west, the voices answered each other. Allahou Akhbar. The cry of holy war found its liberating energy in the night, broken from afar by the bursts of machine guns”.

For the occasion, Serge July, director of Libération, was also sent specifically to Tehran, from where he writes: “Joy has entered Tehran. Black is everywhere. On the turbans of the 1,100,000 descendants of the Prophet, on the walls of the buildings of the Tehran Polytechnic. The veil of Iranian women is a symbol of struggle”.

We are still there, with the left marching to the cry of “Allahu Akbar”, but this time in Paris.

The journalist André Fontaine, director of Le Monde, compared Khomeini to John Paul II in an article entitled “The return of the divine”, while the philosopher Jacques Madaule, referring to the role of Khomeini, wrote an article in the Monde entitled “The voice of the people” in which he wondered if “his movement will not open the doors to the future of humanity”.

Michel Foucault, the philosopher, in famous articles in the Corriere della Sera and in the Nouvel Observateur managed to praise Khomeini’s enterprise as “the first great insurrection against global systems, the most modern form of revolt”, defining the ayatollah “the holy man exiled to Paris”. L’Humanité, organ of the French communists, defined the imam as “the Islamic Lenin”.

The ayatollah who had organized everything from Paris, left behind piles of corpses with which he wanted to build the antechamber of a paradise already built on earth, like communism, and which our elites had mistaken for “democracy” and “progress ”.

Crocodile tears are shed today. They are worthless. That was the beginning of the period of great Western illusion and complicity, when the “progressives” believed they could dominate the Islamic locomotive. Illusion and complicity that continue to this day.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366774

Following the second day of mass mobilisation against the Macron administration’s pension reform, the unions have announced new social movements on 7 and 11 February.

After 19 and 31 January, the unions do not intend to stop there to show their opposition to the pension reform. At a press conference organised by the main unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, Unsa, Solidaires, FSU), they announced a third and fourth day of mobilisations on Tuesday evening.

They will be held on Tuesday 7 and Saturday 11 February, reported BFMTV. “The government must listen to the massive rejection of this project and withdraw it,” said Patricia Drevon, Confederal Secretary of Force Ouvrière, at the press conference. According to her, “no one has been fooled by the government’s propaganda”, and the movement must therefore continue.

The movement is growing

The protests of this Tuesday gathered at least 1.2 million people across France according to the figures of the Ministry of the Interior. This is an increase compared to the previous mobilisation on 19 January, when 1.1 million people took to the streets in many French cities. In Paris, the mobilisation was also higher with 87 000 participants compared to 80 000 on the previous day of mobilisation.

The CGT believes about 2.8 million participants had taken part throughout the country on Tuesday 31 January.

The day after the second mobilisation against the postponement of the retirement age to 64, the government nevertheless continued to defend its bill.

Invited Wednesday on France 2, Olivier Dussopt “took note” of the mobilization that he considered to be “large”. “It’s no use being in denial,” continued the Minister of Labour.

This fact should push the administration to explain, to convince, and do so with humility. If there is “room for manoeuvre” to improve the bill (currently being examined in committee at the National Assembly), particularly on the senior index, the government is not leaving any stone unturned regarding the postponement of the age to 64, he said.

But the government is in no mood to be humble about their pet project. On the eve of the arrival of the bill in Parliament, French PM Elisabeth Borne made it known that retirement at 64 was “no longer negotiable”.

“I agree with what the Prime Minister says,” said Gabriel Attal on France Inter. The Budget Minister also mentioned the employment of senior citizens and the possibility of discussing “binding measures” to encourage companies.

Faced with the massive mobilization, Elisabeth Borne said on Tuesday that she had “heard” the “questions” and “doubts” about the pension reform. The parliamentary debate “has started” continued the Prime Minister.

Leftist NUPES helping Macron to pass the bill

While the unions are pressuring the Macron administration, it is possible that this pension reform will be rejected by the National Assembly because the The New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES) has tabled thousands of amendments that can deprive the French of their victory.

“By filibustering, the NUPES can deprive the National Assembly of the opportunity to reject the pension reform. If this happens, then it [NUPES] will bear the responsibility,” said Marine Le Pen.

“I support the mobilisation against the pension reform and I am pleased that it is even greater today. For our part, we are present in the National Assembly to oppose this useless and brutal reform.”

Le Pen added: “Elisabeth Borne started the week by adding fuel to the fire, as she indicated that it was impossible to envisage any negotiation. I feel like I am reliving the Yellow Vests.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that the NUPES deputies had tabled a referendum motion which should be defended on Monday 6 February in the National Assembly. “If we want to democratically arbitrate the conflict that opposes us, then let’s make the French people vote,” concluded the far-left activist. But after a draw on Tuesday 31 January, the Presidency of the Assembly finally allowed the National Rally to defend its referendum motion on pensions.

https://freewestmedia.com/2023/02/01/french-unions-announce-more-marches-after-tuesdays-success/

Violent criminals and rapists who identify was transwomen are indeed women, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s leftist first minister, told journalists that rapists and violent criminals who claim to be “transgender” women are indeed actual women during an interview.

It comes after her Justice Secretary, Keith Brown, made a similar claim, arguing that anyone who claimed to be a woman — even if they were a violent sexual criminal — needed to be taken at “face value“, though this did not mean that they should be permitted to enter female prisons.

Speaking to UK broadcaster ITV later that day, Sturgeon doubled down on Brown’s stated position, affirming that such criminals are women despite the regional government now wanting to prevent them from being moved to women’s prisons.

“Look, transwomen are women, but in the prison context there is no automatic right for a transwoman to [be housed in a women’s prison],” Sturgeon said in response to a question on the subject of transgender criminals.

She went on to clarify that this exception did not mean that she didn’t really think that such “transgender” criminals were not really women, though appeared to struggle to explain to the interviewer how a transgender woman could be seen as equal to a biological woman considering they are being given different treatment.

The statement represents the latest chapter in the progressivism-fueled political disaster facing Sturgeon and her Scottish National Party over the housing of “transgender” prisoners in women’s prisons, even when they have a history of violence and even rape.

Such public controversy started with the case of convicted “transgender” rapist Isla Bryson — formerly Adam Graham — a convicted rapist who was looking to be housed in a women’s prison, something that, it transpired, greatly concerned much of the UK general public.

In response to the PR crisis that grew around the case, Scotland’s devolved government — which is headed up by Sturgeon — made the decision to freeze transfers of “transgender” convicts to women’s prisons, a move that appeared to contradict the SNP party line of radical, total support for transgender politics.

This radical line now appears to include backing the idea that people like Bryson convicted of rape are indeed real women, and not merely criminals gaming the system.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/

The martyrdom of Lena F. (24, name changed) lasted an inconceivable two hours – in May 2022, the student was raped by her neighbour in her flat in Dresden.

After the crime, Muntaser Al S. (35, in custody) asked his victim tauntingly: “Did you like it?” And shortly afterwards called the police himself.

On Tuesday, the trial against the asylum seeker, who is obliged to leave the country, began at the Dresden Regional Court.

He came to Germany in 2014 and is subject to a deportation ban. He was born in Jordan, but is considered a Palestinian. He has already committed a number of petty crimes, and a sexual harassment case is still pending.

That’s how it started in this case, too. First he molests the young woman, at the next encounter he kisses her on the shoulder – a short time later he ambushes her in front of the flat door.

“We’ll fuck now, otherwise I’ll slit your throat,” the Palestinian threatens his victim, according to the indictment.

Senior public prosecutor Ulrike Markus (56) reports: The perpetrator stabs the young woman in the cleavage and forearm with a long kitchen knife. He raped her several times – also abused her while she was sitting on the toilet.

The Palestinian made a confession at the trial. “It is true as the woman describes it.” The verdict is still pending.

The victim is severely traumatised, in psychological treatment, scarred for life. The woman had to interrupt her studies.

https://www.bild.de/regional/dresden/dresden-aktuell/dresen-asylbewerber-35-vergewaltigt-studentin-24-in-ihrer-wohnung-82745328.bild.html?t_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fm.bild.de%2F

On 30 January, another sickening case of incest involving a madrassa teacher was reported from Vazhikkadavu village in Nilambur taluk of Malappuram district, Kerala. A Pocso Court sentenced the accused to three life imprisonment and a fine of Rs.6.60 lakhs. He will remain in jail for the remainder of his natural life.

According to Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) A Somasundaran, judge Rajesh K of the Manjeri Fast Track Special Court found the madrasa ustad guilty of rape, aggravated sexual assault, penetrative sexual assault, and intimidation of the victim under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act.

It all began in March 2021, when the victim’s mother was allegedly not home. The then 14-year-old victim was attending online classes due to Covid-19. This was when the former madrassa instructor dragged his daughter out of her room and raped her. 

When the minor resisted, the depraved father hit her all over her body and slapped her into submission. He threatened to kill her mother if she revealed the torture to anyone. The madrassa teacher raped his daughter several times when no one was at home until October 2021.

The victim started attending school when physical education classes restarted in November 2021. During this time, she experienced some abdominal pain, for which she was taken to a local physician, but suspiciously the doctor found nothing wrong. In January 2022, she was admitted to the government medical college after feeling discomfort again.

Here, it was confirmed that she was pregnant. By then, she was five months pregnant. This is how the outside world learned about the horrible incest-ridden sexual abuse. The hospital officials informed the police, and the girl disclosed that her father, the madrassa ustad was the perpetrator. Police registered a POCSO case based on the girl’s complaint and arrested the accused.

Later, the court allowed the victim to abort her fetus. The court also ordered a DNA test that showed that the madrasa teacher’s unborn baby was growing inside his daughter. Somasundaran said that the conviction of the accused depended heavily on the DNA evidence and the victim’s and her mother’s testimonies.

Prosecutors proved the crime within one year of filing the FIR. The convict never got bail and is currently lodged in the Manjeri sub-jail. Authorities confirmed that he would be shifted to Kannur Central jail.

It remains unclear whether Kerala police investigated whether this teacher had harassed other students in the madrassa where he taught.

In August 2021, HinduPost reported that the same Manjeri court sentenced another 55-year-old madrassa teacher to double life imprisonment for repeatedly raping two of his minor daughters. The jail terms run concurrently, and he will be in prison until his death. The victims were aged just 15 and 17. When the girls complained to their mother, the madrassa teacher threatened to kill them. 

The accused has eight children and used to rape his daughters after feigning quarrels with their mother at night, following which he used to sleep with the minors. His eldest daughter and his wife were both pregnant with his children when the madrassa ustad raped his younger daughter. Malappuram is the epicenter of such atrocities against children.

Way back in 2012, it was found that Kerala is the most incestuous society in the whole of Bharat. Statistics released by the Home Ministry showed that 132 incest rape cases were registered between 2001 to 2011. Per capita, it was the highest in our country. 

Kerala also held the dubious record of being the only state where incest rape cases steadily increased over the years compared to other states. The numbers came to light after the National Human Rights Commission released data collected over the decade. Tamil Nadu came second, but the numbers had steadily fallen, and zero cases were reported in the last two years.

Interestingly, instead of releasing such accumulated data to create awareness, they began to fade away from public view. This was allegedly due to appeasement policies since only a particular community was primarily found to indulge in incest. Madrassa teachers rape not just girls but also sodomize minor boys. 

In 2015, it was found that 70 percent of the sexual offenses committed against children in the state involved incest. In Kerala, 3,640 cases (2019), 3056 (2020), and 3,559 POCSO cases were registered in 2021. These numbers were up from 1,375 cases in 2014. 

Earlier, the central government had amended the (Protection of Children Against Sexual Offenses) POCSO Act by including the death penalty for sexual assault on children. For reasons best known to judges, not a single offender has been awarded such a sentence.

https://hindupost.in/featured/madrassa-teacher-convicted-for-incest-in-malappuram-kerala/

In the Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, a Muslim family has sought police protection as the family wants to do Gharwapsi and convert to Hinduism. The family has been receiving threats from several people. A case has been registered on the basis of the family’s complaint lodged on January 27 and the family has been provided police security. 

The reported incident is from Nyay Khand 3 of Indirapuram police station limits. Mohammed Rais who resides in Ghaziabad along with his wife and two children since 2014 is originally from Dwarka. 

Rais reportedly has said that for the last few years, he has been studying Hindu Dharma and was very influenced by it. Later, he along with his family decided to convert to Hinduism. When he informed his relatives about his decision, the relatives opposed it and even severed ties with Rais and his family. 

According to a Jagran report, Mohammed Rais was visited in December of last year by a person and two of his acquaintances Rehaan and Raja. They made an effort to dissuade Rais from converting to Hinduism. They also gave Rs.10000 to him.

On January 23, the three of them again came to meet Rais, they pressured him and took him to Noida. The three persons again pressured Rais not to convert to Hinduism and when he refused to change his decision they snatched his mobile phone. However, Rais managed to escape from their captivity and informed Indirapuram police about the incident upon reaching his residence in Ghaziabad. Indirapuram Police has charged the three accused with intimidation. 

Rais is a graduate and works at a garments shop in Delhi’s Connaught Place. Rais while speaking to ETV Bharat said that he is a Muslim by birth and followed Islam for the last 26 years. He even read Quran and understood it. He added that he found several verses objectionable and when he further read to understand better, he found even more “wrong things” in the book. 

According to ACP Swatantra Singh, a complaint was lodged on January 27 at the Indirapuram police station in Ghaziabad, alleging that a Muslim youth is being intimidated as he wants to convert to Hinduism. The identities of three people were also mentioned by the youth in the complaint, and it was on this premise that the police opened an investigation and gave the youth security assurances.

https://www.opindia.com/2023/02/ghaziabad-muslim-family-wants-ghar-wapsi-gets-death-threats-seeks-police-protection/

The Qatargate corruption scandal that has sent shockwaves through Brussels has also revealed that the key suspect, a “socialist” politician, enjoyed the “lifestyle of a movie star,” according to Hungarian newspaper Origo.

Caribbean holidays, glamorous parties in the clubs of Athens with supermodels, and luxury apartments. MEP Eva Kaili, the current star of the Brussels corruption scandal, appeared to have it all. Kaili turned out to not just be a socialist, but also a socialite who enjoyed a level of luxury quite out of place with the working-class principles that were once typically associated with the left.

Kaili bought a 169-square-meter luxury apartment in Psychiko, near Athens, Greece, in 2019 for €260,000, Alpha newspaper reported. Regarding the property, real estate consultant Paris Rigopoulos said that its objective value is estimated at €659,000 euros, while its market value is between €850,000 and €900,000.

As reported by Rena Kouvelioti, a journalist for Alpha, the MP’s apartment is located on the third and fourth floors and its price is estimated at €4,000 per square meter. According to press reports, the fourth floor of the apartment is used as an office and is connected to the floor below by an internal staircase.

According to her statements, Kaili bought the property in question after selling another apartment in the municipality of Anixi. The initial apartment, a 250 square meter property, was reportedly bought in 2009 for €291 000. Nine years later, she sold the property for €340,000. However, the tax office valued the property at only €214,000.

The significant difference of more than €100,000 she received and what the property was actually worth could raise questions in light of the corruption case.

Kaili has also bought three other properties. One is a 44 square meter apartment in Skoufa Street in Kolonaki, which she bought in 2005 for €66,000, where her company, founded on Nov. 30, had its headquarters. The apartment is currently valued at €52 215. Kaili also owns a house of 120 square meters in Thessaloniki, which she bought in 1997. She also owns a 53-square-meter apartment in Belgium, which she bought in 2015 for €175,000.

Coming back to the corruption scandal, the Financial Times mentions Kaili, who tried to represent the interests of Qatar in the European Parliament including visa-free travel for Qataris to Europe, as an insider of the other main suspect, Pier Antonio Panzeri. Her meetings with Qatari officials in Brussels, her visits to the Arab country, and her efforts to sabotage negative votes on Qatar may have been motivated by bribe money.

However, some MEPs argue that the bribes have had no real effect on EU policy.

“I have the impression that the (Panzeri) team tried to show the Qataris that they were working hard on their behalf, that’s why they made these efforts,” said Brando Benifei, head of the Italian Socialist delegation of the Democratic Party (PD), adding that he believed “they did not achieve any real results.”

https://rmx.news/european-union/eu-corruption-scandal-socialist-mep-had-the-lifestyle-of-a-movie-star/