For two months there has been an absolute silence among the brass musicians – no rehearsals, no club activities and no concerts. The 391 bands with their 19,172 actively registered musicians are slowly but surely becoming impatient. This is confirmed by association president Erich Riegler:”The situation is bleak, there is no solution to this problem. And the Styrian emphasizes: “Especially in the summer months, our music bands are an important figurehead for social, touristic and socio-political tasks”. Therefore Riegler demands: “In the gradual restart of cultural activities, the cultural asset of brass music must also be considered and defined accordingly”. So far there has been no information for those involved. When asked at the Austrian Ministry of Social Affairs, the following answer is given: “According to the Covid-19 lifting regulation, there is an upper limit of ten persons for rehearsals as well as for concerts, the one-meter distance and a mechanical protection device covering the mouth and nose area must be worn”.”A face mask for brass musicians – that’s a joke, isn’t it?”, Werner Gollenz from the music association Grazer Linien is stunned. The bandleader is bothered by further worries: “The musicians’ motivation is decreasing from day to day.

“A face mask for brass musicians – that’s a joke, isn’t it?”, Werner Gollenz from the music association Grazer Linien is stunned. The bandleader is bothered by further worries: “The musicians’ motivation is decreasing from day to day. What should they practice for? We don’t even know if we can play any concerts in autumn.

The face mask regulation is valid until June 30th. Required are permitted group reharsals or rehearsals in large halls.

https://www.krone.at/2151990

By Mario Alexis Portella

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is one of the most controversial national leaders in the Western world.  Just over a month ago, his majority Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) Party pushed through the “unlimited” emergency powers by a two-thirds majority of Parliament on March 30.

Orbán has been harshly criticized by the European Union for his firm stance in keeping (predominantly Muslim) refugees from entering Hungary ever since he closed the borders to them in 2015.  Consequently, Orbán has been accused by the international community of being an Islamophobe, especially after he said: “Islam has never been part of Europe, it came to us.  We in Hungary decide what we want or don’t want. We don’t want that.” 

What Orbán’s critics failed to mention is that Hungary, a country of just under 10 million, was ruled for over a century by the oppressive Islamic Turks and was always on the front line during the many centuries of hostility between Christian Europe and the Muslim Ottoman Empire invaders.  The Hungarian Prime Minster has thus far been able to keep his country safe from Islamic terrorism compared to the United Kingdom, France and Germany, which took in large flows of illegal immigrants.

Yet the focus is Orbán’s emergency powers, now that Hungary is reopening after its lockdown. They entail the suspension of certain Parliamentary Acts, referendums and by-elections, giving Orbán the authority to rule by decree — something France’s Emmanuel Macron is doing unrelated to the coronavirus.  The Act also calls for penal measures to be taken against anyone who “in front of a large audience, [willingly and deliberately] states or disseminates any untrue fact or any misrepresented true fact that is capable of hindering or preventing the efficiency of protection” against the coronavirus.

Naturally, all this has led to Orbán being classified as a dictator, even being compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping.  Opposition figures have suggested that Fidesz will use the prospect of a coronavirus-induced recession to extend Orbán’s power indefinitely.  Outside observers, in fact, equally warn of a dictatorship within the European Union’s borders.

István Kiss, former Hungarian official and member of the Danube Institute, dispels this contention. As he personally explained to me, there are in fact several clauses to the Act.  The constitution that governs the “state of danger” says that when the danger, i.e., the epidemic, ends, government decrees made under the emergency become invalid.  Also, the constitutional court could reject it in whole or in part, either today or after the epidemic has receded.  Lastly, Parliament can vote to end the state of emergency at any time by a simple majority.

So far as the mandate of penalizing those who spread false information or for breaking a quarantine, the former is in full force in other parts of Europe, such asItaly, where I reside.  In fact, the Hungarian Criminal Code introduced during the state of emergency is less harsh than in a lot of other countries, as for example inFrance or in the Philippines where the army and police have orders to shoot violators on site.  Private communications or opinions, however critical they may be of the government, as well as speculations or forecasts, do not fall under the aforementioned sanction.

According to The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, Orbán has been a tireless advocate of Hungarian national sovereignty.  After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Westerners came in and bought up what was left of Hungarian industry at fire sale prices.  A big reason for Orbán’s popularity is that he realized that as long as the country’s economy is controlled, or at least strongly dominated, by foreigners, Hungarians do not control their destiny.  Hence, he pulled the reins on those industries and placed them under Hungarian sovereignty.  Despite Hungarians’ reservations of their Prime Minister’s cronyism, i.e., redistributing controlling interests in those industries to his own supporters, apparently the average citizen sees this, in contrast to foreign ownership, as the lesser of two evils.

This, incidentally, accounts for Orbán’s mistrust and contempt for those who seek to undermine his socio-political vision, such as his co-national George Soros. According to Dreher:

“This is something that Western liberals do not understand — or if they understand it, they don’t accept it.  Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire, has poured a fortune into trying to turn Hungary and the other countries of the former Soviet bloc into Western-style liberal democracies…. The idea in part is to undermine traditional sources of moral authority in that country, to turn it, politically, into a Western-style [moral vacuum that would promote open borders, abortion, same-sex unions and the like].”

The physical manifestations of a pandemic are now nearly non-existent in Hungary — emergency rooms stand empty, entire villages have not reported a single COVID-19 case and almost no one has been hospitalized.  Yet the paradox of Orbán’s purported Caesar-type takeover of government is that he maintains widespread domestic support since he is viewed to represent a politics that blends nationalism and values-traditionalism with economic modernity.

Part of this, especially with the demographic decline in his country before a rising Muslim population in Europe, has been the implementation of the Family Protection Plan, in which

•   every woman under 40 years of age will be eligible to a preferential loan when they first get married;

•   preferential loans for the family home purchase scheme will be extended; families raising two or more children will now also be able to use it for purchasing resale homes;

•   families with two or more children will be repaid 1 million forints (roughly over 3,000 USD) of the mortgage loan;

•   women who have had and raised at least four children will be exempt from personal income tax payment for the rest of their lives;

•   grandparents will also be eligible to receive child-care fees and look after young children instead of the parents, the prime minister added.

I am an American who resides in Italy — where the EU has thus far done nothingfor us here during the coronavirus pandemic — and believe in “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  While Orbán’s emergency powers to rule by decree can be seen as an excessive in United States, I can understand whyhe is supported by most of his fellow Hungarians, as well as many other Westerners, and opposed by both the European Union bureaucrats and the left-wing mainstream media.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/understanding_victor_orbns_purportedly_unlimited_emergency_powers_over_hungary.html

In Cherbourg, the president of the association for aid to migrants was killed at his home on Tuesday, May 12. He had housed an Afghan asylum seeker. The individual was taken into custody for murder.

His name was Jean Dussine and came to the aid of migrants through the Cherbourg association Itinérance, of which he was the president since 2016.

This man was hospitable enough to accommodate in his own house in Bretteville-en-Saire, a migrant of Afghan origin. But Jean Dussine was unfortunately murdered on Tuesday, May 12. Witnesses said the victim “was sleeping when [the alleged assailant], an Afghan migrant barely 20 years old, attacked him with an iron rod. He could not be revived,” reported regional news outlet France 3 Normandy.

Jean Dussine was a retired teacher and former director of the Gonneville school in the Manche. At the same time, he had housed other migrants at his home, witnesses to the scene. They even reportedly raised the alarm which allowed the arrest of the alleged murderer.

The investigators are trying to determine the motive for this murder and the exact circumstances of the drama. Public prosecutor Yves Le Clair confirmed the arrest of the Afghan migrant. The suspect was taken into custody for first degree murder.

freewestmedia.com/2020/05/13/president-of-french-pro-migrant-association-murdered-by-afghan-migrant/

A member of Facebook’s new oversight board, which will have control of the content moderation process for the social media platform, has in the past expressed support for the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and media reports.On Wednesday, Facebook announced the first 20 members of its oversight board, which has been handed the final say on what user-generated content the platform removes. Among the members are Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman, who was awarded the accolade for her role in the Arab Spring.

However, she also appears to have links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been proscribed as a terror organization by several countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Bahrain. The Muslim Brotherhood has stated that its aim is the establishment of a state run under Sharia law. It is also the precursor to Hamas.When Karman won the peace prize in 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official website, Ihkwanweb, put out a statement congratulating her and recognizing her as a member of a Muslim Brotherhood branch.The statement, dated October 9, 2011, read: “Dr. Abdul-Rahman Ba-Fadel, president of the parliamentary bloc of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (YCR), Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood, congratulated the Yemeni political activist Tawakkul Karman, member of the YCR, for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.”Karman herself has also made public statements in support of the Muslim Brotherhood.A report by MEMRI noted that in an interview on BBC Arabic TV on September 15, 2013, Karman said, “The most important achievement of the January [2011] Revolution [in Egypt] was the abolishment of the emergency law. Unfortunately, the July 3 [2013] coup reinstated that law. The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, who oppose the military rule, are engaged in a legendary struggle, which they are waging with their blood, their resolute steadfastness, and their belief that they will restore the revolution to its true path.”

The interviewer asked whether she supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and she replied: “You can hear it from me: Yes, at this stage, I am partial towards the Muslim Brotherhood…”Facebook’s oversight board members have been handed considerable powers regarding what content may be shared on the platform.In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Wednesday, the four co-chairs of the group, who were involved in hand-picking the 16 others members, including Karman, explained that the board has been awarded a $130 million trust fund to carry out its work completely independent of Facebook, and that its decisions cannot be revoked by Facebook unless they are found to violate the law.The board members will contract directly with the board, and will serve fixed terms of three years, up to a maximum of three terms.”We cannot be removed by Facebook,” they wrote. “Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has also personally committed to this arrangement.”Defining the mission of the board, they wrote, “We know that social media can spread speech that is hateful, harmful and deceitful. In recent years, the question of what content should stay up or come down on platforms like Facebook, and who should decide this, has become increasingly urgent.”The oversight board will focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment and protecting people’s safety and privacy,” the statement continued. “It will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram.” Facebook owns Instagram.”The members announced today reflect a wide range of views and experiences,” Facebook said in a statement. “They have lived in over 27 countries, speak at least 29 languages and are all committed to the mission of the Oversight Board. We expect them to make some decisions that we, at Facebook, will not always agree with – but that’s the point: they are truly autonomous in their exercise of independent judgment. We also expect that the board’s membership itself will face criticism. But its long-term success depends on it having members who bring different perspectives and expertise to bear.” 

https://www.jpost.com/international/facebook-content-oversight-member-reportedly-linked-to-muslim-brotherhood-627597

by Giulio Meotti

“I am calm, and during the kidnapping I was always treated well”. Thus began the declaration by Sylvia Romano after her arrival back in Italy. She was kidnapped 18 months ago in a village in Kenya by Al Shebaab while working for an NGO. Sylvia landed in Rome wearing a long Islamic green tunic.

As for her conversion to Islam, Sylvia said that “it happened in mid-captivity, when I asked to be able to read the Koran and I was satisfied,” defining her conversion to Islam as “spontaneous and not forced. In these months I was given a Koran and thanks to my jailers I also learned some Arabic. They explained their rationale and their culture to me.”

The plane that brought her back to her native country landed in Rome, where Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio welcomed her. Italy also paid a ransom for her release.

Sylvia was held captive because she was Italian, Western and Christian. If she had been Muslim, they would not have kidnapped her and would not have forced her to do all this. They wanted both the psychological submission of the captive and the money of her country. They now have both.

And she was not the first Italian hostage released after a ransom paid by the government and who came back talking nicely about their jailers.

I was reminded of Leah Sharibu, the Nigerian girl who has been in the hands of the Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram for two years. They released all the girls except her. As her kidnappers told her parents: “She refused to convert to Islam, she said she will never do it, but until she becomes a Muslim, she will not be release.d” And the same goes for Asia Bibi: if she had accepted the conversion to Islam she could have left death row in Pakistan much earlier.

Italian Catholic magazines and clergy actually called Sylvia “a model”.

Islam imposed its physcal symbols on a girl who radically changed her appeareance after her brutal kidnapping. In Rome, Sylvia asked to be called “Aisha”, the name of the favourite of Prophet Mohammed.

We don’t know what kind of young woman came back from Kenya. But we know that Islamic terrorists now have 4 million euros paid to them by the Italian government and they see their former captive defending Islam while smiling at the cameras.

Such a debacle for the post-Christian West.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280092

A Syrian immigrant took the regional express train from Leipzig to Chemnitz yesterday evening. In Liebertwolkwitz he apparently left the train. Only a short time later, however, the train attendant spotted him again on the train coupling between two compartments. The man had obviously used the stop of the train in Liebertwolkwitz to take up this life-threatening sitting position ( photo ). The train stopped in Belgershain. The Federal Police got the Syrian off the train coupling and determined the man’s personal details. Why the Syrian took this life-threatening sitting position he could not explain to the officers. He was once again urgently instructed about the dangers of his actions. But the man’s understanding did not last long, because only a short time later he was standing on a train coupling again and prevented the train from continuing its journey. The train attendant took the man to his compartment and handed him over to the Federal Police again in Bad Lausick.The Syrian, who is staying in Germany without permission, was taken by the officers to the Centre for Asylum Seekers in Chemnitz in a police car.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/74165/4595079

A 63-year-old Congolese migrant was arrested by Paris police Sunday after allegedly raping a 92-year-old resident in the nursing home where he was employed.

The alleged sex attack took place at the Korian Les Arcades retirement home in the 12th arrondissement of Paris on Sunday evening and was reported to police by the director of the facility after a nursing assistant claimed to have caught the man shortly after the rape took place.

According to the nursing assistant, she noticed the Congolese male in the room of the 92-year-old  and asked him what he was doing there as he was not assigned to that particular area of the retirement home, Actu 17 reports.

She said the man turned around and his genitals were exposed and also noticed the elderly woman had been partly undressed. The nursing assistant screamed and the man fled, only to be discovered later by police in the garden of the facility.

According to newspaper Le Parisien, the elderly victim was in shock and was treated by the emergency services upon their arrival to the scene. The paper added that a spokesperson for the Korian group who run the retirement home refused to give any details about the accused employee but confirmed he had been fired.

The Korian group run 308 retirement homes across France and have been accused by families of residents of not doing enough to protect their loved ones form the Wuhan coronavirus. At least 606 residents are thought to have died from the virus within homes run by the company.

The case comes just days after a nurse in Italy who was fighting the coronavirus in Naples was raped by a Senegalese migrant for around 45 minutes after she had finished her shift and was waiting for a bus.

The French case is not the first to see a migrant man allegedly rape elderly residents in a care home In 2016, a Somali teen was arrested after he managed to sneak into a German elderly home and proceeded to molest and rape several residents and later killed an 87-year-old woman who confronted him.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/12/migrant-arrested-over-rape-of-92-year-old-woman-in-nursing-home/

Last Sunday, around 8:45 p.m., a 25-year-old Afghan attacked several cars stopping at a traffic light intersection on the street Zschokkestraße in Munich. In the process, the 25-year-old damaged three cars waiting there with a kitchen knife ( scratches and dents, a total damage of several thousand euros). No persons were injured. Several police cars of the Munich police department drove to the scene after being called for help. The police arrived within a very short time and were able to arrest the 25-year-old near the crime scene. He was still carrying the knife, a kitchen knife, with him. This was seized as evidence. During the arrest, the suspect made some incoherent statements.

The motivation for the crime is unclear and is the subject of further investigations by the Munich police. He was charged with the initial suspicion of attempted robbery against motorists.
During the course of the day, the 25-year-old was brought before the investigating judge, who in the meantime issued an arrest warrant.

https://www.polizei.bayern.de/muenchen/news/presse/aktuell/index.html/313509

By Mario Alexis Portella

Many in Italy were anxiously awaiting this Sunday for the return of Silvia Romano, a twenty-five-year-old Italian national who was freed after being kidnapped in November 2018 in Chakama, (northern) Kenya by al-Shabaabjihadists.  Romano, a trained medical practitioner, was working as a volunteer for the Italian charity called Africa Milele when she was taken and accused by her captors for proselytizing Christianity in the Kenyan town.

What most were not expecting, as she stepped out of the plane that brought her to Ciampino airport outside of Rome, was her Islamic attire.

In what became a huge pro-left and pro-Islamic propaganda, after being greeted by family members, as well as Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, Romano announced she had become a Muslim, saying: “My name is Aisha now” — the name of Muhammad’s favorite nine-year-old wife.  Romano attested that her submission to Islam was a was spontaneous: “They didn’t force me to do anything. I’ve always been locked in rooms. I read and wrote.”

This dispels a 2019 report by Il Giornale that, according to Italian intelligence, Romano was forced to convert to Islam and to marry one of her captors.  Apparently, the jihadists who kept her prisoner brainwashed her, resorting to psychological maneuvers that severed her emotional and cultural ties from her homeland in order to make her feel assimilated to the environment she was forced to live.  The fact that the young Italian was treated well during her imprisonment, even given a PC to study the Arabic language, makes acceptance of her kidnappers’s faith with a positive and deliberate will questionable.  However, what raises more of an eyebrow is the Italian government’s clandestine efforts to achieve her release.

Al-Shabaab, according to a 2017 report, “has proven that they have the ability to diversify their financial tactics, despite military setbacks and funds from abroad drying up.”  In other words, they are experts at extorting money, and Silvia Romano became another instrument to acquire more funds for their terroristic aims. 

As indicated by the Italian journal La Verità, there was a large payoff to the Islamic jihadists by Italian officials.  The fact that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said: “Nothing is free is cases like this one,” gives credence that notwithstanding the millions of unemployed Italians during the coronavirus lockdown, their taxes were used to facilitate Romano’s freedom.

Two factors to consider. The first is the danger of negotiating with terrorists, especially when they demand large sums of money.

As Peter R. Neumann, Director of the Center for Defense Studies at King’s College, London, once explained:

“The argument against negotiating with terrorists is simple: Democracies must never give in to violence, and terrorists must never be rewarded for using it.  Negotiations give legitimacy to terrorists and their methods and undermine actors who have pursued political change through peaceful means.  Talks can destabilize the negotiating governments’ political systems, undercut international efforts to outlaw terrorism, and set a dangerous precedent.”

Yet governments still do this all the time.  According to reports, the Obama administration secretly paid $400 million to Iran in January 2016 in exchange for four American sailors it had detained. The four Navy personnel had  surrendered in Iranianwaters, causing an international incident and bringing embarrassment on the Navy for the litany of errors that led to their arrest and their violations of regulations while in custody.  The payoff did not help America’s role as leader of the free world in any way, shape, or form.

The second issue to evaluate is that Silvia Romano refused to condemn the Islamic tenets that the al-Shabaab Muslims referred to in order to justify her kidnapping in the first place.

While certain Muslims, progressive-minded officials, and churchmen refer to quotessuch as: “Observe your duty to Allah in respect to the women, and treat them well,” to claim that Islam treats women with honor, the truth of the matter is something else.

As I detail at length in my book Islam: Religion of Peace? — The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up, a woman, whether married or a concubine, is considered a man’s property.  Her role, in the former’s case, is to provide children and satisfy her husband’s sexual desires; the latter is there to exclusively meet her master’s carnal gratifications:

• “Your women are a tilth [field] for you, so go to your tilth as you will” — Sura 2, 223
• “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” — Sura 4, 24
• “Men are in charge of women by what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend from their wealth.  So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in absence what Allah would have them guard.  But those from whom you fear arrogance — advise them; forsake them in bed; and, strike them.  But if they obey you, seek no means against them.” — Sura 4, 34
• A woman came to Muhammad and begged him to stop her husband from beating her.  Her skin was bruised so badly that it is described as being “greener” than the green veil she was wearing.  Muhammad did not admonish her husband, but instead ordered her to return to him and submit to his sexual desires. — Sahih al-Bukhari 72, 715

There is also an irony in Romano choosing Aisha as her new name.  Not only did the Prophet of Islam, when he was fifty-six, consummate his marriage with  nine year old Aisha, (Sahih Muslim, 8, 3309), he also used to physically abuse her: “Muhammad struck his favorite wife, Aisha, in the chest one evening when she left the house without his permission. Aisha narrates, ‘He struck me on the chest which caused me pain.’” — Sahih Muslim 4, 2127

Such hadiths are constantly utilized in the Islamic world to absolve adult males from marrying pre-pubescent girls.  Such was the infamous case of Nujood Ali of Yemen, who in 2008 was married off by her father at the age of nine.  After one sister was kidnapped and another raped, her unemployed father, who had sixteen children and two wives, figured an early marriage would keep his daughter, Nujood, fed and safe.  Instead, she said, she was beaten by in-laws, and nights were a hellish game of tag, with Nujood running from room to room to escape sex with her husband; he raped her anyway.  A year later, she made Yemeni history by taking a taxi downtown to the courts and demanding a divorce, telling her would-be lawyer: “I hate the night.”

The conversion of Silvia Romano to Islam is not so much the issue at stake as much as her decision to gloat about it inadvertently promotes treatment of women and girls as property.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/woman_kidnapped_by_muslims_converts_to_islam.html