Bombs in Turkey, update on defeated mosque in Romania and more: News post 2 on Dec. 23 – 2015

Forty-five-year-old Libyan researcher, Khadgia Shabbi, had been working at the university’s economics department for the last three years while living in the city.

She is said to have been in contact with foreign Isis fighters and to have worked to produce online propaganda for al-Qaeda during that time, Italian daily Gazetta del Sud reports.

Shabbi was not employed directly by the university but received €2,000 a month from the Libyan embassy while carrying out research at the department.

Police chiefs said they had been monitoring the woman for months and had discovered contacts linking her to extremist fighters in Belgium and the UK.

They also found that her contacts included terrorists who planned the 2012 bombing of the US Embassy in Libya.

2. Woman killed in blast at an Istanbul airport

A female cleaner was killed and another wounded early Wednesday after an explosion of unknown origin beside a plane at Istanbul’s second international airport, with Turkey on high alert for possible attacks.

3. Christians flee persecution in the middle east

4. Iraqi Christians celebrate Christmas after fleeing ISIS

5. Hungary: Labeling of settlement goods is counterproductive

Hungary is sticking to its criticism of the European Union’s policy of labeling settlement goods, arguing that it is counterproductive to the body’s bid to become a significant player in the Middle East, and does nothing to advance Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.

“Hungary does not consider that the indication of origin of products from Israeli settlements is effective and timely, as it weakens the position of the EU in the Middle East peace process and does not contribute to the practical solution of the conflict,” the Foreign Ministry in Budapest told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

The statement appears to contradict the stance of the EU foreign policy czar, Federica Mogherini, who last week said that all member states are “united” in support for the measure.

6. A Congressional Overture to Censorship

(And UN resolution 16/18 stealthily moves forward)

Stephen Coughlin alerted me to a House Resolution introduced on December 17th, H.Res.569, “Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.114th Congress (2015-2016).” As of this writing, the country remains clueless about this development.

The resolution was introduced by Virginia Democrat Donald S. Beyer, and sponsored by Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, and endorsed by seventy-one other Representatives, most of them Democrats, and possibly a sprinkling of Republicans. The resolution has gone into committee, but one can predict with confidence that it will emerge virtually unscathed and unaltered. After all, the “victims” are Muslims, and the House wishes to put it in the record that certain of its members are against hurting anyone’s feelings.

Many of the usual suspects have endorsed the resolution: Keith Ellison, a Democrat and Muslim from Minnesota; Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat and chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Charles Rangel, New York Democrat; and Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida. Most of the other endorsers’ names I do not recognize. They are all termites who have made careers of eating away at the rule of law and “transforming” America from a Western nation into a multicultural, welfare-statist, politically correct stewpot of no particular character.

7.  Migrants dump rubbish in the streets in protest over the fact the free Italian villa they have been given does not have a CLEANER and wi-fi

Migrants have dumped rubbish in the streets in protest at not getting a cleaner or wi-fi at the free villa they have been given for shelter.

The 24 refugees are up in arms after demanding someone clean up after them in the Italian duplex where they have been housed since arriving from sub-Saharan Africa last summer.

They are also angry at not being provided free internet, which has prevented them from contacting relatives back home.

The demonstrations, which first took place last week, also blocked main roads in the town of Ceranova, near Milan, sparking heated rows with members of the local community.

Dirty demonstration: Migrants have dumped rubbish in the streets in a protest at not getting a cleaner or wi-fi at the free villa they have been given for shelter in Italy (file picture of migrants not involved in the protest)

The town’s mayor, Alessandro Grieco, was forced to intervene personally with the help of three police officers to calm the situation, it was reported by The Local, which cited La Repubblica.

Mr Grieco has expelled the 24-year-old leader of the protests from the villa.

He said: ‘The migrants have obviously flagged up a few issues for them but this is not the way to draw attention to them.

‘We absolutely won’t tolerate protests like this.’

8. Wiretapping reveals communication between Turkish officers and ISIL

Some Turkish officers on the Syrian border have been revealed to have communicated with terrorists of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, a daily reported on Tuesday.

“It emerged that the telephone communications some officers made with ISIL militants were wiretapped,” the Cumhuriyet daily said, describing the officers’ contact with ISIL members as scandalous.

The wiretapping reportedly took place last year as part of an investigation conducted by the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

The investigation file was handed over on March 15 this year to the military prosecutor’s office of the Gaziantep 5th Armored Brigade Command as the prosecutor’s office deemed the issue outside of its jurisdiction, according to the report.

An investigation was launched by public prosecutor Derda Gökmen into the 27 suspects, some of whom are in Syria, the report said.

Thank you M., Johnny U., Gates of Vienna, and many more who sent in materials. Posting is still a bit light thanks to seriously slow internet and similar issues but the important stuff will get through!

The People’s cube have a worthy post on the Vegas car terror event of the other day.

Also some time ago, this site covered a protest against a mosque in Romania, a land famous for the abuse it suffered under muslim raids, slave raids, forced tribute of children for janissary soldiers etc. etc. I just received an email from a Romanian activist with an update and a video of some of the Christian protestors who went to the land the PM at the time ceded to the turks for a giant mosque and planted crosses on it and sprayed it with holy water it appears. This action was successful and the contents of her email follows.

Well, I’m not very sure that we’re rid of that mosque, because there’s no law passed against it, to my knowledge. However, something changed since then. The [expletive deleted] prime minister Victor Ponta that allowed the land to be used for that purpose has resigned and he’s become a total nobody. Also there were the Jihadi attacks in Paris. And Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has other problems to focus on now. Maybe you know that Turkey was supposed to be paying for the construction. I don’t know if anyone would still dare to move forward with that mosque, but you can never be sure.

And lastly, a great cartoon from somewhere or other