‘They were starting to learn German in Paris before US came along’ – Trump taunts Macron
President Trump continued his verbal spat with French leader Emmanuel Macron, taunting the French leader for his country’s losses to Germany in two world wars, and suggesting that Europe needs the US as a saviour.
After returning from Armistice Day commemorations in Paris over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter on Monday to savage the US’ European allies for failing to meet their defense spending targets and leaving America to foot much of NATO’s bill. On Tuesday, the president vented his frustrations again.
“Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia,” Trump tweeted.
In a radio interview a week before the commemorations in Paris, Macron called for the establishment of an EU army that can defend the continent “without relying only on the United States.”
While Macron once enjoyed a close bond with president Trump, the leaders’ relationship has soured as of late. In a speech on Sunday, Macron emphatically denounced Trump’s brand of nationalism, comparing it to the forces that plunged Europe into conflict in the 20th Century.
“Old demons are resurfacing,” the French president warned. “History sometimes threatens to take its tragic course again and compromise our hope of peace. Let us vow to prioritise peace over everything.”
Macron also stuck close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel – herself a vocal Trump critic – throughout the weekend, with the pair posing in an embrace at the unveiling of a plaque near Compiegne, where Germany officially surrendered 100 years previously.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold hands in Compiegne, France on November 10, 2018. © Reuters / Philippe Wojazer
Whether Trump’s Tuesday tweet was meant as a jibe at Merkel and Macron’s closeness or not is unclear, but the president’s insistence that Europe pays its NATO dues is a call that he has voiced since he hit the campaign trail three years ago.
At present, only five NATO member states – the US, UK, Greece, Estonia, and Poland – allocate two percent of their GDP to defense spending, a requirement for membership. In 2017, the US spent $686 billion on defense, over double the expenditure of all 28 other states combined.
While Macron is now in Trump’s firing line over defense spending, the US president had singled out Germany in the runup to a NATO summit in Brussels in July. As well as savaging Merkel’s government for spending just over 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense, Trump said that Germany is “totally captive to Russia,” referring to its reliance on Russian gas.
While the US underwrites most of Europe’s defense bill, more EU leaders than Macron have expressed discomfort at relying on Trump in recent months. Liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt – a long-time advocate for a federal Europe – echoed Macron’s comments on Saturday, when he tweeted that Europe cannot be “unprepared for the America First Policy.”
The idea of an integrated EU army might make Macron and Merkel excited, but it has been criticized by more people than just Trump. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responded to Macron’s radio interview by warning the French president not to take over NATO’s job.
“Two World Wars and a Cold War taught us the importance of doing things together,” he said at a conference in Berlin on Monday. “The reality is that we need one strong and capable command structure, we can’t divide those resources in two.”
WESTERN EUROPE Migrant who was arrested 107 times by German police never received any punishment
African migrant Bismark B. has already been arrested 107 times by German police, but never received any punishment, tabloid B.Z. Berlin reports.
Due to the police’s inability the 59-year-old Ghanaian was allowed to run free again and again. This changed last year, as he became very violent.
The man stole food numerous times from a supermarket, employee Martina K. says:
“The man was a regular guest… He came three or four times a week for years and stole food.
“He ignored house bans, claimed he owned the business. He could take what he wanted. The choice of the accused always fell on the more expensive brand articles. He then recorded everything in a book he had brought with him.”
Meanwhile criminal proceedings against the criminal failed multiple times due to psychological diagnoses like paranoid schizophrenia.
But last year Bismark B. became violent. “He suddenly kicked me in the chest with his foot. Had not a customer stood behind me, I would have been beaten. He threatened to kill her,” the female supermarket employee says.
Fortunately the woman was helped by her colleague. “I just wanted to kick him out as always. There I saw the knife … He has never been so aggressive,” colleague Andreas H. says.
But after his arrest the migrant was released again. Yet his latest arrest led to a serious case as he threatened to kill a drug store employee with a meat cleaver.
Last Tuesday the case against Bismark B. started and it is to be decided if he belongs in a psychiatric clinic for being a danger to society.
Provisional Ballot Boxes Discovered Inside AVIS Rental Car At Ft. Lauderdale Airport
By Tyler Durden
Provisional ballot boxes from the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office were reportedly discovered in the back of an AVIS rental car at Fort Lauderdale Airport on Sunday night, as first reported by investigative journalist Laura Loomer.
Attorney and Broward GOP State Committeeman Richard DeNapoli says he received a call from an AVIS employee informing him of the found ballot boxes after sheriff’s deputies were initially unwilling to investigate. Approximately 20 minutes after receiving the tip, however, a heavy police presence arrived and blocked off traffic to the airport, and a bomb threat was announced.
Pictures taken at the scene show two boxes. One box is red, and the other is grey. The grey box is labeled “PROVISIONAL BALLOT BOX” with a sign that says “Broward County Supervisor of Elections”, a purple tag that says “ERT region 13”, and a backwards yellow tag with a seven digit numerical and five letter code. –Laura Loomer
DeNapoli says that the car was rented to a man by the name of Noah Holliman.
DeNapoli recaps what happened here:
“Bomb” threat
Sunday evening, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office tweeted “Our deputies and bomb squad are responding to a report of a suspicious package outside @FLLFlyer Terminal 4,” only later to tweet an “all-clear.”
Loomer says that when she attempted to make her way to the airport, she was blocked by an officer. She then told the public that “Broward County Sheriff’s Officers were on the scene filling out a police report and documenting the ballots.”
Florida Politico Lauren Cooley also rushed to the scene, saying (via Laura Loomer):
“The AVIS employee didn’t know what to do. No one wanted to touch the boxes or take responsibility for them. Finally, sheriffs deputies agreed to take the provisional ballot boxes into their custody. It’s an odd situation when supervisor of elections (SOE) employees are so careless with important election materials, but its becoming a trend in Broward County.”
Meanwhile, DeNapoli added the following in an emailed statement to Loomer:
“The way it went down: rental agency guy contacted me because he saw my name on Florida GOP website as contact for Broward County. He said he spoke with some Sheriffs Deputy Personnel at the airport but they seemed disinterested in getting involved. I contacted some friends in law enforcement who got the FDLE involved. After I arrived at the airport, FDLE contacted Broward Sheriff Jeremey Hansen who came to the Avis at the Fort Lauderdale airport. They interviewed me and the AVIS employee and took the boxes into evidence.”
Loomer notes that “while the “media” was in Terminal 4 reporting on a non-existent bomb threat that was literally tweeted from the official Twitter account of the Broward Sheriffs Office. Meanwhile, there was never a bomb.”
“The FBI needs to kick in the door, interview all board of election employees, shutter the Broward County elections offices, seize all the ballots and put a stop to the Democrats disrupting the elections,” said GOP operative Ali Alexander with StopTheSteal – a campaign established to collect intelligence and document alleged election malfeasance amid the Florida ballot controversies.
“This is a bigger story than we could have ever imagined and Floridians and the entire country demand answers.”
Florida Fraud Pushes Midterms Into Madness
In the Florida Senate race between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Incumbent Bill Nelson the margin was close enough to warrant a hand recount.
While the Governor’s race triggered a machine recount between Republican Ron DeSantis who has a roughly 36,000-vote lead over Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum. While Democrat Nikki Fried led Republican Matt Caldwell by a handful of votes in the race for agriculture commissioner. Meanwhile, as trucks continued to pull up well after the deadlines, Brenda Snipes, the woman at the center of the Broward County Election fraud spectacle didn’t have any answers. Snipes wouldn’t even give regular updates to the state every 45 minutes as required by law, and has withheld the number of votes to be counted. It makes the average citizen wonder. Why do we have election laws in the first place?
Medical Experts Fear Congo Ebola Outbreak May Become Worst Ever
By John Hayward
Harried doctors fighting the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) fear it may become the worst outbreak of the deadly disease in the region to date, as an ongoing insurgency slows treatment and accelerates contamination.
“We are absolutely concerned about the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” a senior official with USAID said on Thursday. “It is occurring in an area of active conflict, so physical insecurity is a persistent challenge and complication to the ongoing response efforts.”
On the positive side, the official said the outbreak is “not comparable at this point to the outbreak that occurred in West Africa in 2014,” meaning it does not threaten to spread across an “incredibly large geographic area.”
Ebola cases have been mostly limited to two towns in the North Kivu province of the DRC, but the rate of new cases has accelerated during the past few weeks. USAID and the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) have deployed dozens of experts to work with the DRC Health Ministry since the outbreak began in August.
On Friday, Sky News watched doctors don biohazard suits and struggle to handle the influx of patients to a “ramshackle hospital” made from “wooden huts and temporary tents” in the city of Beni. The hospital only has 60 beds, but Sky News correspondents counted 92 new patients admitted on the day of their visit, among them a pregnant woman and a three-year-old girl.
Doctors reported 308 “confirmed” or “probable” cases of Ebola in the outbreak, approaching the highest total ever seen in the Congo. Thirty of them are children under ten years of age, suggesting the latest strain of Ebola is spreading faster among children than previous strains. So far, 191 patients have died.
International aid workers said local residents are working more smoothly with doctors than some previous populations affected by Ebola, a disease that tends to spread panic and mistrust among its victims. Officials were especially optimistic about the success of “community surveillance” programs designed to track the movements of infected people and quickly identify others who may have been exposed to Ebola. More effective vaccinations were also credited with keeping the death toll down.
The bad news is that CDC Director Robert Redfield warned on Monday the current outbreak may not be containable because it is spreading through an active war zone, making it harder to implement the procedures that have been helpful so far.
The Washington Post augmented Redfield’s warning with some discouraging notes about the difficult situation faced by aid workers:
Dozens of armed militias operate in the area, attacking government outposts and civilians, complicating the work of Ebola response teams and putting their security at risk. Violence has escalated in recent weeks, severely hampering the response. The daily rate of new Ebola cases more than doubled in early October. In addition, there is community resistance and deep mistrust of the government.
Some sick people have refused to go to treatment centers, health-care workers are still being infected, and some people are dying of Ebola or spreading the virus to new areas. An estimated 60 to 80 percent of new confirmed cases have no known epidemiological link to prior cases, making it very difficult for responders to track cases and stop transmission. In late August, the United States withdrew some of the CDC’s most seasoned Ebola experts who had been stationed in Beni, the province’s urban epicenter, because of security risks.
The outbreak is threatening to spread into much less isolated towns, such as the trading port of Butembo, introducing the risk of wider transmission chains that become even more difficult to trace.
Angry rock-throwing mobs have confronted some medical teams when they attempt to secure the bodies of fatal Ebola victims. Experts on the local population explained they are sometimes terrified at the sight of medical teams in hazmat suits, driven by deep distrust of the DRC government, which they blame for keeping them in poverty and allowing armed rebel groups to prey upon them. Some locals apparently believe their government is fabricating Ebola warnings in a bid to frighten them away from their homes.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution on Tuesday demanding safer working conditions for medical teams in the outbreak zone, but concerned analysts said the international community has a poor track record of controlling insurgents in the Congo, even lacking reliable information about how many rebel groups are active in the area. Meanwhile, the DRC government has been criticized for abandoning rural areas and shifting its troops into the cities, where the government fears mass demonstrations could break out.
Prominent Vox editor defends Antifa siege of Tucker Carlson, then deletes ALL tweets
After far-left protesters harassed Fox News host Tucker Carlson‘s family in an incident now being investigated as a potential hate crime, a Vox.com writer defended the intimidation – and then ate his words. All of them.
Matt Yglesias, prominent editor of Vox.com, tweeted in support of Smash Racism DC, an Antifa group whose members swarmed Carlson’s front yard and carried signs with his home address written on them in retaliation for Carlson’s supposed role in “spreading fear.”
Writing as if the only reason anyone could have for opposing the protesters’ actions was that they didn’t understand the intent behind them, Yglesias said scaring the Fox host’s wife into hiding was an OK thing to do – just bad tactics.
The response from social media was swift and vicious, and Yglesias – who has over 414,000 followers – has now deleted all his tweets.
The Antifa group Smash Racism, known for harassing their political opponents in public, encircled Carlson’s house late Wednesday night, chanting “Tucker Carlson, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night.” While Carlson was not home – he was preparing to go on the air – his wife was, and she locked herself in the pantry out of fear of the angry mob outside.
READ MORE: Antifa protest at Tucker Carlson’s home investigated as possible hate crime
While it’s uncertain why he deleted his tweets, and whether it was because of the backlash, or anticipation thereof, Twitter wasted no time in speculating…
TU
…and offering advice.
Leader of Spanish populist party aims to become ‘new Trump’
As we’ve reported earlier, something is happening in Spain, a country with a mostly socialist tradition. The VOX political movement, a populist right-wing party, is gaining momentum and has seen rapid growth in Spain.
“We stand for the same law-and-order and social conservative causes as Trump,” Santiago Abascal, the leader of the movement says in an interview.
To adopt Trump’s success and of the populist parties that are sweeping through Europe, Abascal has even consulted Trump’s former campaign strategist Steve Bannon.
By adopting Trump’s policies and consulting his former strategist, Vox could be aiming to become a Trump style party, with a Trump style leader.
Italy’s Interior Minister and leader of the largest party in the polls, Matteo Salvini, has already showed how that can work out really well.
According to the leader of Vox, Bannon’s advice was used to help setting up connections with related parties. An organisation like the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists was used for that goal.
Spain, which has seen a change of government lately, is one of Europe’s new migrant hotspots. An import factor in that is the country’s socialist government implicitly invites migrants by offering welfare and even voting rights.
Like in most countries, the rise of the right comes with governments that ignore their citizen’s wishes. We will definitely hear more of Vox as it can even gain seats in the European Union’s parliamentary elections next year.
Slovenia Arming Border Amid Migrant Surge
By Dan Lyman
Slovenia is strengthening its southern border, deploying more armed patrols to combat an increasing flow of migrants through the Balkans, according to local media.
The tiny Central European nation, which lies at the frontier of the Schengen Area, is facing a potentially catastrophic situation as Hungarian and Austrian officials have issued warnings that tens of thousands of migrants are working to burst the borderbetween Bosnia and Croatia in an effort to invade the EU via Slovenia or Hungary.
Joint Croatian and Slovenian forces have carried out at least 635 border control missions this year, Il Giornale reports, but some practices have come under fire from left wing media and activists.
Slovenian newspaper Dnevnik recently publicized an internal police memo directing border guards to reject all migrants attempting to enter the country illegally, prompting open borders advocates to slam Ljubljana for violating the human rights of ‘asylum seekers.’
“The right to asylum is cancelled. This is what is happening at this time on the border between Slovenia and Croatia,” La Stampa reported. “The policemen from Ljubljana, who patrol along the anti-migrant barbed wire, were ordered in an internal circular, never made public but discovered by the newspaper Dnevnik, to repel refugees beyond the border, ie Croatia.”
Dnevik also reportedly released video of armed Slovenian border police repelling migrants and directing them to return to Croatia, sparking controversy.
Hungary recently announced the mobilization of 2,300 troops prepared to deploy to their southern border on short notice, warning that some 70,000 migrants have amassed in the Balkans and are preparing to swarm Europe.
Infowars Europe has been reporting extensively on the mounting crisis in the Balkans and will continue to monitor events as they unfold.
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