Month: July 2023

Is the new agreement signed between the EU and Tunisia going to help curb the inflow of illegal immigrants to Italy? After many months of efforts led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding was signed in Tunis on Sunday, July 16, with Tunisian President Kais Saied, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Meloni, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Tunisia has now become the number one country of departures for migrants sailing off to Italy. It now accounts for over 60 percent of migrants heading for Italy while Libya’s share is no more than 30 percent of the total. Another country of departure to Italy is Algeria and some boats loaded with migrants sail directly from Egypt or Turkey, for example.

As far as the Tunisian route is concerned, the use of small boats by people smugglers, without the need for assistance from Europe’s pro-immigration NGOs thanks to the shorter distance separating Tunisia from the Pelagie Islands where Lampedusa lies, makes it much more difficult to stop illegal immigration.

This does not mean, however, that NGOs are not present off the Tunisian shore. While the EU delegation was signing the memorandum in Tunis, Doctors Without Borders’ Geo Barents ship was operating off the coast of Sfax, in Tunisia, with already 329 migrants on board after conducting nine consecutive rescue/recollection missions.

At the same time, the Lampedusa migrant center, which can normally cater for just a few hundred persons, was overloaded with more than 2,000 migrants. This is despite the Italian authorities having greatly sped up the transfer of migrants from Lampedusa to the mainland.

From Jan. 1 to July 17, the Italian interior ministry registered 78,182 arrivals in total compared with 33,187 for the same period last year. These were mostly economic migrants as shown by the most frequent countries of origin, which were, in decreasing order, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Syria, Cameroon, Mali, and others.

Since she took control of Italy’s government at the head of a right-wing coalition, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a supposedly anti-immigration and moderately nationalist party, has presided over a sharp increase in illegal immigration. So far, her government’s policies, including the new law with stricter regulations for NGOs operating in the central Mediterranean that came into force earlier this year, have failed to reverse that trend.

Despite this, the so-called Piantedosi Decree, named after Italy’s interior minister, is contested by several NGOs which have just filed a complaint to the European Commission in that regard.

The European Commission could turn to the Court of Justice of the EU for a ruling on this issue, and the sad fact is that the only policies that could efficiently and quickly stop illegal immigration are blocked by the CJEU’s most recent case law.

These are the policies that are now being put in place by the U.K. after the successful Australian experience with “Operation Sovereign Borders,” which has been in place for ten years now. It would mean sending asylum seekers to a third country where they would be kept in closed centers while waiting for their application to be processed, as well as a life ban on entry for those caught attempting to enter national territory illegally by boat. For the U.K., this means that those who plan to file for asylum in the country will have to file their request outside British territory, for example in France where the majority of small boats embark from.

Ms. Meloni is not allowed to do that, however, as Italy is part of the European Union.

This is very well illustrated by a series of CJEU rulings against Hungary that first deemed contrary to EU law the existence of closed transit centers at Hungary’s borders with Serbia, and then, in June this year, ruled that Hungary broke EU law by enacting legislation (after it had to close those transit centers) that required asylum seekers to travel to Hungarian embassies abroad to file for asylum.

So the desperate Italian leader has been conducting negotiations with North African countries to get them to cooperate in stopping the migration flow. Having got the European Commission and the EU on her side, she is now boasting success with this new memorandum of understanding with Tunisia.

The new agreement is about economic and trade cooperation, a “holistic approach to migration,” and the search “for remedies to the root causes of illegal immigration.” This sounds all too familiar.

Tunisia only committed itself to taking back its own nationals and guarding its own borders. It will not take back nationals of other countries who make their way to Italy or another EU country from the Tunisian coast. The Tunisian authorities will, however, patrol their waters to rescue and turn back those sailing off.

To support this effort, the EU is going to provide financial support to boost Tunisia’s resources dedicated to search and rescue operations, patrolling the sea, and border control. According to EU sources, the EU is going to give Tunisia 25 patrol boats, including 17 refurbished ones and 8 new units.

In total, the EU is to give Tunisia €675 million this year to support those operations but also to support its economy in crisis, as there is fear that the Tunisian economy could collapse, driving hundreds of thousands out of the country, heading north.

On the positive side, if Tunis is serious about taking back its own nationals, although they are only a small part of those sailing off to Europe from Tunisian shores, that would still be a big improvement. Muslim and African countries are the ones that most often refuse to take back illegal migrants from EU countries.

This has had tragic consequences for Europeans in the past, for example when an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia, Anis Ben Amri, killed 13 innocent people and injured 55 in the deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, in December 2016. Another example is when another Tunisian national who had landed in late September 2020 in Lampedusa and had been transferred to mainland Italy on Oct. 9 that year killed three people in the Basilica of Nice, in southeastern France, including a woman he nearly decapitated by slitting her throat the Islamic way while yelling “Allahu Akbar!”

Meanwhile, there is concern in Italy that there could be more potential Islamic terrorists in the current inflow of illegal immigrants coming from Tunisia, and this is an alarm that has also been raised by the Tunisian authorities themselves this year.

In late January, several Tunisian nationals were arrested in Italy as part of the investigation into Anis Ben Amri’s network which has been going on since the 2016 attack in Berlin, with some of the arrested being involved in criminal activities linked to the illegal landings of migrants and the delivery of documentation that allows them to travel across the whole Schengen area.

In early July, Carabinieri general Pasquale Angelosanto told the Italian Senate that these organizations “operate with the approval of the mafias, who give them permission to act.”

“They have their hands on the reception of migrants and there is a real risk, the cases are well known, that jihadists can enter Italy among migrants: over time we have had cases of radicalized people who have arrived precisely by using migrant routes,” he added.

Another cause for concern for those who expected a government led by Giorgia Meloni to be much tougher on immigration is the announcement that Italy is going to raise the number of migrant workers that are allowed to come legally to 452,000 for the 2023–2025 three-year period.

This is to compensate for alleged labor shortages in some sectors of the economy. A criterion for the delivery of visas will be a given country’s degree of cooperation with Italy to stop illegal migration, including by accepting back its nationals. Even if it is efficient, there will still be 452,000 immigrants more in Italy, with all the potential future uncontrollable immigration carried by the obligation to allow for family reunification when you are an EU country.

One can be sure that this is not what most of Meloni’s and Salvini’s sympathizers voted for at the last parliamentary elections in September last year…

https://rmx.news/italy/tu-quoque-giorgia-italian-pms-fight-against-illegal-immigration-has-been-underwhelming-at-best/

Political Prisoners in Brazil “Tortured, Humiliated and Threatened with Death” – Chief Serere Held 220 Days for Crime Carrying 180 Day Penalty https://t.co/x1VL4ixYV3

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) July 19, 2023

The risk of a terror attack in the UK is rising with domestic plotters harder to detect, a persistent threat from Islamist extremists and advances in technology being exploited, a report has found.

The Home Office counter-terrorism strategy Contest has been updated for the first time in five years.

Since it was last updated in 2018, there have been nine declared terrorist attacks in the UK in which six people were killed and 20 injured.

Police and security services have also disrupted 39 plots that aimed to target public figures such as MPs, events including the London Pride march, and popular sites in London.

The strategy said the Government must “ruthlessly prioritise finite resources” to respond effectively to terrorism.

It said: “We now face a domestic terrorist threat which is less predictable, harder to detect and investigate; a persistent and evolving threat from Islamist terrorist groups overseas; and an operating environment where technology continues to provide both opportunity and risk to our counter-terrorism efforts.

“We therefore judge that the risk from terrorism is once again rising.”

The terror threat to the UK is dominated by individuals or small groups which are harder for law enforcement and security services to detect.

The primary threat is from Islamist extremism, which accounts for 67% of attacks since 2018, around 75% of MI5 caseload and 64% of those in custody for terrorism.

Extreme right-wing terrorists have accounted for 22% of attacks since 2018, around 25% of MI5 caseload and 28% of those in custody for terror offences.

The report said: “The threat from extreme right-wing terrorism (ERWT) in Western countries is increasingly a transnational issue in terms of radicalising influence, inspiration and communication, unlike Islamist terrorist groups, extreme right-wing terrorists are not typically organised into formal groups with leadership hierarchies and territorial ambitions, but informal online communities which facilitate international links.”

It went on: “Extreme right-wing terrorist narratives are also exploited by hostile actors such as Russia, which is seeking to promote divisive and polarising narratives in the West, which is likely to increase in the future.”

There is also a risk posed by terrorists after they are released from prison, with some offenders needing monitoring for decades, the strategy said.

As of March 2023 there were 232 people in custody for terror offences in the UK.

The report said: “Those convicted of terrorism or a related offence may continue to pose a threat; four of the nine declared terrorist attacks in the UK since 2018 were perpetrated by serving or recently released prisoners.

“Individuals convicted of non-terrorism offences may also hold a terrorist mindset or develop one during their time in prison.”

It continued: “Despite ongoing efforts to mitigate the terrorist risk posed by individuals in custody, the vast majority will require long-term risk management which may last for decades post-release.”

As well as an attack in Whitemoor prison, atrocities in Reading, Fishmongers Hall in the City of London and Streatham in south-east London were carried out by men with previous convictions.

There are concerns that the second half of this year will be particularly demanding in terms of the number of prisoners deemed to pose a risk in terms of terrorism who are due for release.

The risks posed by the so-called incel movement are also being monitored.

The strategy said: “It is possible that violent adherents to movements and subcultures, such as Involuntary Celibacy (Incels), could meet the threshold of terrorist intent or action.”

Labour said the strategy is “still too narrow and leaves alarming strategic gaps”.

Shadow security minister Holly Lynch said: “The update fails to provide a comprehensive strategy to deal with the steep rise in state-sponsored threats to UK national security, including from Russia, Iran and China.

“The head of MI5 made clear in his annual threat update that ‘Iran is the state actor which most frequently crosses into terrorism’, yet this doesn’t feature at all.
 
“There is also no serious plan to deal with online radicalisation or hateful extremism, despite the long-standing warnings of the former countering extremism commissioner, Sara Khan, and the Government has further failed to recognise the vital link between neighbourhood policing and counter-terrorism work, which successive counter-terror chiefs have highlighted as essential.

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/risk-terror-attack-uk-rising-103443509.html

The mayor of a seaside resort in northern Italy has described as “unacceptable” the Muslim practice of bathing fully clothed on grounds it is creating serious consequences for decorum.
 The beach of Marina Julia in Monfalcone near Gorizia in Friuli Venezia Giulia is a tourist destination and therefore “the behaviour of Muslim foreigners who habitually enter the water with their clothes on is unacceptable,” Mayor Anna Maria Cisint (photo above) told the local Muslim community in an open letter published Wednesday.
“(It is) a practice that is causing bewilderment and that creates intolerable consequences for the preservation of decorum,” she added.
 “People who come from contexts that are different from our own have an obligation to respect the rules and customs,” continued Cisint.
“The practice of entering the beach and the water wearing clothing other than swimwear must end,” she insisted.
 In the letter Cisint, who is serving her second mandate with the right-wing government coalition partner League led by Matteo Salvini, also announced “special measures to protect the general interest of the city and our fellow citizens”.

Mayor says it’s ‘unacceptable’ for Muslims to bathe fully clothed on beaches – English – ANSA.it

Over the weekend, after the international media loudly trumpeted that five German men were arrested for raping an 18-year-old Spanish girl, it was quickly revealed that all of the men have a “migration background.” Although this fact was quickly revealed, the vast majority of news outlets referred to the men as “Germans” and most made no mention of the fact that the men had a migration background, with many outlets even referring to them as a “German pack.”

While Spanish news outlet Ultima Hora reported that the 21- to 23-year-old suspects were of Turkish origin, much of the Spanish press was fixated on the “German” aspect of the crime, which the men allegedly filmed on their smartphones. Even the German press was quick to claim the men were Germans with no context, with Welt, one of the most popular conservative papers in the country, running the headline “Five German vacationers on Mallorca have to be remanded in custody.” At no point in the piece does Welt mention the migration background of the suspects. The same story was told throughout the international press, with Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, and the Daily Mail making no mention of the men’s migration background.

Bild newspaper was perhaps the only major German newspaper to note that the men all had a migration background, but Bild is one of the rare publications in Germany that consistently publishes such information when it is made available by the police.

Why it matters

The issue of migrant men, or those with a migration background, being portrayed simply as “Germans” when it comes to crime has been a theme over recent years, but we should expect this trend to continue and only get worse. The reason why is that the German government is quickly naturalizing hundreds of thousands of migrants, and as Remix News has reported in the past, once these foreigners obtain German citizenship, they are simply referred to as “Germans” in the crime statistics. Germany makes no distinction based on race or ethnicity in its own crime statistics and only divides the data between Germans and foreigners.

That is why when the five German citizens with a migration background allegedly raped the young girl in Spain, the global media and the German domestic media could loudly trumpet that Germans had participated in a gang rape.

For anyone with even a modicum of knowledge about the situation in Germany, there is broad awareness of what is driving the country’s crime problem, and it is not the ethnic German population. If we look at the gang rape statistics in Germany alone, they reveal that a record number of gang rapes were committed in 2022 and half of the suspects in those cases were foreigners. What we don’t know is how many of the Germans in those cases had a “foreign background,” in other words, whether they had parents or grandparents who came from a foreign country. One hint is the fact that the overall number of gang rapes began to skyrocket in tandem with Germany’s growing immigration population starting in 2016.

Stopping the AfD at all costs

Germany’s left-wing parties have a vested interest in making sure that data never becomes available to the German public, as the imperfect data that is already available clearly shows the massively outsized role of foreigners in serious crime statistics, including for rape, assault and murder. At the same time, Germans have increasingly become wary of mass immigration, and up to 22 percent say they are now willing to vote for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, known for its anti-immigration stance.

The AfD is where the threat comes in for the establishment left and the establishment center-left Christian Democrats (CDU), which is why these foreigners need to be turned into citizens as quickly as possible. Not only will their role in crime statistics disappear once they receive citizenship, but the left-wing parties of Germany supporting the country’s demographic transformation will have a new pool of voters backing them in upcoming elections.

For a more detailed look into the ruling government’s immigration plans, it is worth reading previous articles on the topic from Remix News, but in short, the government is looking to drastically reduce the time that migrants need to stay in the country in order to obtain citizenship, which could see up to 2 million foreigners naturalized within the next year.

The AfD has noticed this trend, writing on social media:

“According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, the traffic light (coalition government) naturalizes 170,000 migrants every year, with a strong upward trend. That roughly corresponds to the population of Oldenburg or Heidelberg every year. The established parties not only create new voters, they also dilute all police crime statistics. This can be observed again right now: From a group of suspected Turks who commit a gang rape in Mallorca, the media are describing ‘German vacationers’; the migration background is, in contrast to other European media, not mentioned in the local reporting.

And because that’s not enough naturalization, the traffic light will probably set new naturalization rules in the fall that are even more lax.”

If the AfD ever comes to power, it must make a concerted effort to embrace a Danish-style crime reporting system, which tracks the migration background of suspects even after they obtain Danish citizenship. The statistics are startling in that country, which reveals that second-generation migrants with Danish citizenship have even higher rates of assault, murder and other crimes than first-generation migrants.

https://rmx.news/crime/german-media-self-censors-about-foreign-origins-of-5-germans-arrested-for-rape-of-young-girl-in-mallorca-and-this-trend-will-only-get-worse/

Nigel ‘Mr Brexit’ Farage had his bank account shut down as a result of his ties to former President Donald Trump, tennis star Novak Djokovic, seemingly spurious accusations of ties to Russia, and his positions on Brexit, vaccines, LGBT issues, and others which were deemed by Coutts bank to “not align with our values”.

Contrary to reports in the BBC and the Financial Times, in which an unnamed Coutts bank source claimed that Nigel Farage had fallen below a financial threshold to maintain his account, a subject access request filed by the Brexit leader shows that the main motivation was actually political in nature.

A 40-page document produced by the bank and provided to Mr Farage and The Daily Telegraph showed that the bank acknowledged multiple times that he fulfilled the “economic contribution criteria for commercial retention”, meaning that it was not for lack of funds that his account was shut down.

In the document, the bank was shown to have decided in November of last year that it did not believe that continuing to bank with Mr Farage was “compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”. In an apparent attempt to cover their tracks, the bank claimed that it was not a “political decision but one centred around inclusivity and purpose.”

One such infringement of the bank’s stance on “inclusivity” was apparently his longstanding friendship with former President Donald Trump, who is mentioned 39 times in the bank’s dossier on Mr Farage. “The fact that I support Donald Trump is part of this charge sheet,” Farage said.

Coutts also cited his friendship with Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic as evidence of him not being “inclusive”, presumably over the 23-time Grand Slam winner’s refusal to take the coronavirus vaccine.

I now have evidence Coutts LIED to me.. 
 
In an explosive 40 page memo, “Brexit” is mentioned 86 times, “Russia” 144 & “PEP” 10. 
 
Support for Trump + views on immigration, net zero & the vaccine are listed as reasons to exit me.
 
They say my account is commercially viable! pic.twitter.com/QjPCuUetu3

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) July 18, 2023

Mr Farage was also accused by the bankers of being “xenophobic and racist”, and of espousing views which they claim are “distasteful and appear increasingly out of touch with wider society”. Other positions that the bank decided did “align” with its values included comments on LGBT issues and even Brexit, which appeared 86 times in the document.

Despite expressing concerns over alleged ties to Russia 144 times, Coutts even admitted within the document that there was no evidence to support assertions that Mr Farage was paid by Moscow. Yet, the bank still included seemingly false accusations from Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant that the Brexiteer had received £548,573 “from the Russian state” in one year. Bryant made the allegations in the House of Commons, meaning he is protected by parliamentary privilege and therefore not subject to normal libel laws.

“I have always said that after Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in America in 2016, the globalist elite worked hard to undermine those at the forefront of anything that threatened the status quo. In this, it was spurred on by the mainstream media in Britain and America,” Mr Farage wrote, adding: “Vladimir Putin’s Russia was the obvious choice for their smear campaign.”

The document also made reference to the Brexit leader being a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) despite claims that this was not the reason for his being de-banked.

The PEP classification was first introduced by the G7 in 1989 to counter money laundering and bribery of politicians and was later adopted by the European Union. Despite the UK leaving the EU, the law is still on the books in Britain, with successive Conservative governments refusing to abolish all remaining EU holdover laws.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/07/19/nigel-farage-debanked-over-ties-to-donald-trump-and-for-expressing-conservative-views-bank-docs-show/

While shouting Allahu-akbar! At the main railway station in Nuremberg, Germany, a Syrian (28) attacked several police officers with a broken glass bottle. One policeman (23) is so badly injured that he will probably be unfit for duty for some time.

The Syrian injured three police officers during his attack. The act was apparently so brutal that the homicide squad is investigating attempted manslaughter. An Islamist background is also not ruled out: The perpetrator shouted “Allahu akbar” several times during his attack. The attacker is to be brought before a magistrate on Wednesday, who will decide whether he should be held in custody.

According to the newspaper Bild, a witness first alerted the police because a man was accosting passers-by on the tram platform in front of the main railway station and threatening them with a broken bottle. When the officers arrived, the Syrian immediately attacked them. With the help of other police officers, the man was finally stopped and handcuffed.

https://exxpress.at/taeter-rief-allahu-akbar-syrer-verletzt-am-nuernberger-bahnhof-polizisten-schwer/

Bloomberg Film Critic of ‘Sound of Freedom’ Movie Is Leftist Spokesman for Minor Attracted Person Advocacy Group https://t.co/d299UbQ3tw

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) July 18, 2023

Woke literature. When it’s not shoving graphic pornography in front of 10-year-olds, it’s just destroying their interest in reading.

Amid a cascade of devastating reports showing classroom test scores plummeting nationwide, U.S. students have also hit a record low in their leisure time: Casual reading has collapsed.

Only 14 percent of students say they read for fun every day, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report released recently, down 3 percentage points from 2020 and 13 since 2012. The report indicates 31 percent of students never or hardly ever read for fun.

Shocking that Gender Queer and the 500 LGBTQ memoirs and ‘everything white is racist’ books being pushed by the educracy and the publishing monopolies haven’t inspired a lifelong love of reading in children.

The first thing that pops up on the Simon and Schuster teen reading list is “LGBTQIA+ Books You Need to Read ASAP”.

Penguin Random House’s first offering is ‘How To Be a Young Antiracist’ by Ibram X. Kendi.

Can you blame kids if they view all of this are not just ugly and hateful, but tediously didactic propaganda that feels like homework?

This garbage is about as much fun as reading Marxist propaganda on the weekend.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/woke-lit-also-destroyed-teen-interest-in-reading/