Visigrad Post, “The world’s first flying car may come from Slovakia”, 19 July 2016:

 

Slovakia – The AeroMobil company has been able to create a car with retractable wings, of which the third generation model spent seven-and-a-half hours in the air during test flights. It is now displayed in the entrance lobby of the European Commission building in Brussels, to highlight Slovakia’s will to focus on new technologies. The company AeroMobil is currently working on the next model.

Slovakia is already an automotive hub. With the fall of communism, many left the country to pursue education in Western Europe. They are now coming back and bring foreign expertise with them, putting down four decades of state-planned economy. With its flying car, the AeroMobil company is on a “technological journey”, said Doug MacAndrew, the company’s chief technical officer. They are in competition with entrepreneurs such as Google’s billionaire co-founder Larry Page. The model of the Slovak company could be sold in 2018.

“There is a start-up hype in Slovakia,” Mr Hessel, the country’s entrepreneur of the year, says from his factory in the town of Dunajska Streda. “The situation is very different from 10 or even five years ago.” Slovakia seeks to show off her technological potential in the same time she assumes the EU’s rotating presidency. Prime Minister Robert Fico’s cabinet will host an innovation conference with the European Commission in late October that will highlight nano-, bio- and other advanced technologies.

        The BBC is reporting, as of 12 minutes ago:

More than 20 people in Germany have been injured after a man with an axe went on the rampage on a train, German media report.

A police operation including a helicopter is under way in Heidingsfeld, a part of the city of Wurzburg in southern Germany.

Local media (in German) wrote that 21 people had been injured and a suspect appeared to have been shot.

The train line between Wurzburg-Heidingsfeld and Ochsenfurt is closed.

The German news agency DPA reported that the police said some of the victims’ injuries were life-threatening.

No further details yet.  We wait to learn if there were shouts of “Allahu Akbar”.  Assuming that turns out to be the case, the next question will be: “Was he one of Merkel’s new guests?”

BBC update: reports local police confirm the axe-man has been shot dead.

Some Polish and other EU companies are adopting the right wing anti-labor strategy that Russia has been notorious for deploying: Forced North Korean labor

(((ViceNews))) Cash for Kim: How North Koreans Are Working Themselves to Death in Europe, 23 May 2016:

..“North Korea is the world’s largest illegal jobs agency.”

VisigradPost, “EU companies employ North-Korean slaves,” 14 July 2016:

EU – The NGO European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK) reported that companies are employing North Korean workers in a semi-legal way – see their report about the Polish case. Their salaries go directly to fuel Kim Jong-un’s regime.

The death of Chŏn Kyŏngsu in 2014, a North Korean who worked on a Polish shipyard, the Crist Shipyards in Gdynia, contributed to start the investigation of the EAHRNK. The man worked 12 hours a day, 6 days per week. His salary was the minimum to survive and the only trip he was authorized to do was to go to work and go back home. Still according to the NGO, these conditions are imposed by Kim Jong-un and are systematic for the North Koreans that work in a foreign country. Chŏn Kyŏngsu was never given an employment contract. Chŏn Kyŏngsu burnt as he was welding pipelines, a Polish colleague helped him and he went to a hospital with 95% of severe burns over his body. The body was sent back to his family in North Korea with 637 EUR.

The work permits that are delivered are totally legal, but the work conditions aren’t. The North Korean embassy in Warsaw said that nobody was taking their salaries. But a worker said anonymously to the EAHRNK that “a manager told us that foreign companies employ us because we cost no money, and that they cut the price for the trip, gas, electricity, from our salaries. They never told us how much we were paid.” Also, the ambassy took their passports, and give them back only for exceptional situations, to go to the hospital for example.

According to another testimony, to work in a foreign country, North Koreans have to be married and their wife and children to stay in North Korea, so the country keeps the control upon them. NGOs estimate that, only in Poland, there are between 500 and 800 North Koreans working, mostly employed at shipyards and constructions sites. Also, in Poland, “there are no distinctions between nationalities and categories of workers, meaning that there are no extra procedures required for North Korean citizens” say Jacqueline Sanchez-Pyrcz, director of the Department of Foreigners at the Masovian Voivodeship in Warsaw. So the system is authorized by Polish law. North Korean workers are employed in many other European countries, such as Malta, Czechia, …

On the 6 July, the United States imposed penalties for serious violations of human rights on North korea. For the first time Kim Jong-un was directly affected by these economic sanctions. According to Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Leiden : “What is going on in Malta and Poland directly contravenes national and EU laws, as well as international treaties, such as that of the ILO. It also defies the sanctions against North Korea set by the UN and the EU, although it is debatable to what extent. All things considered, there should be enough reason for the EU to take an interest in the topic, but so far, this has not happened.”

VisegradPost, “Poland sends new contingent to protect Hungary’s border”, 14 July 2014:

   

Poland, Warsaw – “Poland will be sending another contingent to support Hungary’s border protection system”, Polish Minister of Interior Mariusz Błaszczak announced following a meeting of Visegrád Group (V4) Interior Ministers in Warsaw.

In addition to the hosting Polish Minister, the meeting was also attended by Hungarian Interior Minister Sándor Pintér, Slovakian Minister of Interior Robert Kalinák and Czech Deputy Interior Minister Jiri Novácek.

At the press conference following the meeting, Mr. Pintér said: Hungary turned to its Visegrád partners for assistance “in the interests of the implementation and international enforcement” of its new border protection system, which came into force in the beginning of July. Hungary will not only be receiving support from the V4; it is hoped that Thursday’s visits by the Austrian Minister of Defence and Minister of Interior will also have a similar result, he pointed out. Thanking his Visegrád colleagues for the assistance they have provided to Hungary so far to protect its Schengen borders, Mr. Pintér said “This has helped us allow significantly fewer illegal immigrants to reach the Schengen Area”.

VisigradPost, “For Poland, the NATO summit of July 8 and 9 has been highly positive,” 13 July 2016:

Poland, satisfied with the decisions taken regarding the eastern flank of the Alliance, announced a few weeks before the summit in Warsaw her intention to participate to the defense of the southern flank and in particular the fight against the Islamic Stateby sending in Iraq and in Kuwait 200 men and four F-16 aircraft for observation missions and training of Iraqi units. Warsaw also wants to intensify its military effort to not have to rely on its allies by setting a target to get its investment in the defense from currently less than 2% of GDP to 2% in the short term and to 3 % in the long term. For comparison, Russia, which has an economy worth about four times that of Poland, spends nearly 4.5% of its GDP on its military machine

VisigradPost, “Slovakia will direct NATO efforts in demining in Ukraine” 14 July 2016:

The summit held in Warsaw early July brings the first results: Slovakia will be in charge of a NATO trust fund to be used for the removal of explosives, ammunition and for demining.

According to the Slovak President, over 600 people were killed and 2,000 were wounded in Ukraine since the current conflict erupted as a result of explosions of various obsolete explosives. Slovakia has provided training to dozens of Ukrainian specialists between 2014 and 2015.

DT, “Turkey coup: military attempt to seize power from Erdogan as low flying jets and gunfire heard in Ankara and bridges across Bosphorus in Istanbul closed”, 15 July 2016:

Coup attempt by parts of Turkish military against Erdogan
PM Yildirim: Nothing will harm Turkish democracy
Low flying jets and gunfire heard in Turkish capital
Both of Istanbul’s bridges across the Bosphorus closed

        There is a chance the good guys are at work for a change. We’ll keep you posted.

News is breaking of yet another mass terrorist attack in France, this time involving a truck driven at speed into a crowd which had been watching a Bastille Day fireworks display on Promenade des Anglais in Nice.  The driver apparently also fired shots into the crowd before being shot dead himself by police, though this is as yet unconfirmed.  But there also unconfirmed reports of other gunmen roaming the city, focusing on hotels.  There may be hostage situations in two hotels (though ISIL/AQ terrorists do not generaly take hostages).  One accomplice to the truck attack is definitely being sought by police.  The death toll for the truck attack is said to be 30, perhaps as many as 60, with 100 to 150 injured.

The Daily Express reports:

An eye witness who works in the Nice judiciary said armed terrorists were “flooding” the streets of the city, adding that the situation is “absolute chaos”.

They said: “There are reports of dozens of people killed, and many more injured. Bodies are lying everywhere.

“Police are flooding the streets, including anti-terrorism officers. Nobody knows what to do, except to hide away. Gunmen are meant to be targeting hotels.”

Latest:  The Express is also now reporting:

French TV channel iTele tonight reported that a gunman “holed up in a nice restaurant downtown” had been “neutralized” by police.

The death toll from the lorry attack is now said to be “at least 60”.

Make that 73.

  Some people know what time it is in Czech. Others do not.

Daily Caller, “A 2,500-member citizen militia has formed in the Czech Republic in response to the ‘massive influx of Muslim immigrants,” 12 July 2016:

Czech daily newspaper Lidove Noviny claims the militia, called the National Home Guard (NHG), grew rapidly in recent months. The vigilante group now has around 90 branches throughout the country, and arms its members with guns and sharp weapons.

On its website, the group says the “colored world” should go to Asia and Africa, and stay away from the Czech Republic.

“Opponents of migration also want to have a colorful world, but not here” the group explains. “This is the Czech Republic, and it must stay that way.”

 

        Sanctuary of European Refugees Fleeing the Violence of Economic Migrants - a Petition

        European Life Commission

       

Last summer, the Migrant Crisis in Europe brought about unexpected change for many native Europeans. Many accepted refugees from Syria with open arms at first, but were dismayed to find in many cases, this altruism was not returned. Reports of rape, violence, theft, and other heinous acts involving these migrants, who are mostly military age males, have made their way across the globe. While many of us are aware of the situation in Europe, there is little we can do to help the native Europeans who now have their towns and cities occupied by people who possess a completely different view of the world, of life itself. In addition to this, the migrants were thought to be refugees from the war in Syria, but as soon as the gates were open- thousands upon thousands of migrants from across North Africa fled into Europe. Before Modernity and the advent of man’s transformation from Homo Sapien to Homo Economicus, civilization was based upon two factors: language and religion. The incompatibility of these factors will lead to cultural clashes, regardless of the “keep calm and carry on” rhetoric of our cosmopolitan elites. Working Europeans who cannot afford to jump on a jet to their summer home in Dubai need a way out. They didn’t ask to be replaced -  their governments have done this to them. Let’s take in the refugees of the refugees.

This petition will be delivered to:

          Robert Stark