New Observer, “Violent African Invaders Storm Ceuta”, 2 Jan 2016:

Thousands of violent Africans attempted to storm the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco on New Year’s Day, attacking Moroccan and Spanish police with such ferocity that ten officers were badly wounded and one lost an eye.

A mob estimated to be between one and three thousand strong tried to jump over the double fence which surrounds the enclave—Europe’s only land border with Africa. Thousands of Africans, fleeing their self-created economic disaster nations—regularly congregate around the enclaves in the hope of breaking in.

According to the central government’s representative office in Ceuta, a first group of at least 1,100 sub-Saharan Africans stormed the border fence just after 4 a.m. on New Year’s Day in an “extremely violent and organized” manner.

About 100 of the invaders managed to climb up the external fence and stayed on top for hours.

None however managed to get through, apart from two who were badly injured and taken to the hospital in Ceuta, the office said in a statement. A similar assault on December 9 saw more than 400 invaders smash their way into the tiny territory.

They tried “to force open some of the doors in the external fence, using iron bars, wire cutters, and large stones with which they assaulted Moroccan forces and (Spanish) Guardia Civil (police) agents,” it added.

Reddit, “Yesterday a POLISH man accidentally hit a Kebab takeaway with a firework. THE OWNERS RAN OUT AND STABBED HIM TO DEATH BECAUSE ISLAM. Today BASED POLES are taking a stand and tearing down the takeaway brick by brick. SHOW THEM SOME LOVE!!HIGH ENERGY (youtube.com)

JewishPress, “Riots in Poland after Murder of Polish Man by Arab Immigrants”, 2 Jan 2016:

Riots erupted in Elk, north-eastern Poland, following to the murder of a local resident on New Year’s Eve, PAP reported.

According to PAP, on Saturday night, December 31, between 10 and 11 PM, a 21-year-old local resident named Daniel allegedly threw a firecracker at an Elk café called Kebab Prince. The café is owned by a local entrepreneur, and managed by immigrants from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The café staff ran out at Daniel and, according to reports, stabbed him twice, which resulted in his death. The attackers were later arrested in connection with the stabbing murder.

       
        Kebab Prince

On Sunday, January 1, according to police, the café building was surrounded by between 200 and 300 locals shouting Nazi slogans. They threw firecrackers and stones into the place, knocked down the glass window, destroyed the equipment inside and eventually set fire to the premises.

When police arrived at the location, the rioters began throwing stones at the officers, damaging several police cars. Next, the angry mob moved on to a second café belonging to the same owner, which they also burned down.

By Sunday evening a few dozen people were arrested in connection with the riots.

Elk Mayor Tomas Andrukevich appealed to local residents to remain calm and to honor the memory of the murdered man.

Before World War II, the Elk (then Lyck) and its surroundings were almost 95% Lutheran. After the majority German population was expelled, the majority religion in Elk became Roman Catholicism.

Lyck was the city where the first-ever weekly newspaper in Hebrew, HaMagid was founded in 1856 by Rabbi Eliezer Lipmann Silbermann. The paper eventually moved to Berlin. The local Jewish population was being persecuted even before the Nazis took power in 1933. In 1932, local pharmacist Leo Frankenstein was attacked – a hand grenade was thrown into his home. The wave of anti-Semitic attacks intensified after 1933 and many local merchants and intellectuals of Jewish descent were arrested. During Kristallnacht, Jewish shops and synagogue were plundered and destroyed in Lyck. Many Jews fled Lyck, some getting as far away as Shanghai. Of the Jews who stayed, 80 were murdered in German-Polish death camps.

Clouds Over Europe, “More than 250 rioters SMASH kebab shop after ‘group of Arab men stab young local to death”

At least 25 people were detained in the Polish town of Elk on Sunday after they smashed up a kebab diner and clashed with police, throwing firecrackers and stones. Up to 300 people took part in a rally after a Pole was allegedly killed by men of Arab descent.

Minster Ben Wallace warns Isil planning chemical attack on Britain

DT, 1 Jan 2017:

“Isil wants to carry out mass chemical attack on Britain, minister warns”

Mr Wallace said: “Experts have warned that their ambition is a mass casualty attack and they have no moral barrier to using whatever means possible.”

On Saturday he told the Sunday Times: “The ambition of IS or Daesh is definitely mass casualty attacks. They want to harm as many people as possible and terrorise as many people as possible.

“They have no moral objection to using chemical weapons against populations and if they could, they would in this country.

“The casualty figures which could be involved would be everybody’s worst fear.

“We have certainly seen reports of them using it in Syria and Iraq (and) we have certainly seen aspiration for it in Europe.”

               
                Minster warns Isil are planning a chemical attack on Britain

Mr Wallace also warned about the threat from “the enemy within” as terror groups, Russia and cyber attackers were trying to plant “traitors” in the Government, the military and leading businesses.

“There are traitors. We have to be on our guard for the enemy within,” he said.

“The insider threat, as we would call it, is real and it can be exploited and there are people trying to do that as we speak.”

10NewsDK, “48 stains of semen found after refugee gang rape mother of two”, 31 Dec 2016:

The Swedish mother of two was gang-raped to the sound of laughter and joyful shouts by at least nine refugees at a refugee camp in Småland Mariannelund, Sweden. The woman was almost apathetic after the rape and still feels that she has something stuffed in the genital area. Today, the prosecutor presented the evidence, consisting of semen probes, against nine men, of whom several defends their actions against the woman.

 
Photo of Rafi Bahaduri, translator for the Swedish state and one of the accused gang rapists.

  ‘She is a whore,’ says the Swedish Migration Board interpreter Bahaduri Rafi, 25, who is one of the defendants. …

  Prosecutor Gunnar Brodin disclosed that forensic scientists found 48 semen stains in the refugee apartment where the gang rape took place. Inside the victim’s rectum and farther up the digestive system was recovered sperm from at least four people. In total, nine men are connected to the rape.

  Besides the sadistic gang rape, which was committed by Afghan refugees, the mother of two was close to death because her airways was clogged during the rape, stated courtroom clerk Charlotte Bokelund during the trial. …

  The mother of two, who have chosen to follow the trial, repeatedly felt so bad that she had to leave the courtroom to vomit.

48 semen deposits and at least 4 in her rectum were found. She was near death after incident.

Kevin Crehan, 35, executed in his cell at HMP Bristol

DM, “Man jailed for leaving a bacon sandwich outside a mosque is found dead in prison halfway through his 12-month sentence”, 30 Dec 2016:

• He was serving a one-year sentence for racist attack on a Bristol mosque
   
• Crehan and accomplices left bacon sandwiches outside the building
   
• They also left a St George flag outside with ‘No Mosques’ written on it
   
• Man jailed after leaving bacon sandwiches outside mosque been found dead in his cell.

Kevin Crehan, 35, was halfway through a one-year prison sentence he received in July after admitting the racially-motivated attack on the Jamia Mosque in Bristol earlier this year.

He was accompanied by Alison Bennett, 46, and Mark Bennett, 48, and Angelina Swales, 31, who also pleaded guilty over the incident.

A St George flag with the words ‘no mosques’ was also tied to the fence outside the building in Totterdown, Bristol, and shouted racial abuse at a worshipper.

Bacon was tied to the door handles and sandwiches made of raw meat and sliced white bread were left at the entrance, in what was described in court by the judge as an ‘an attack on England’.

The prison service confirmed Crehan was found dead in his cell at HMP Bristol on Tuesday, December 27.

A spokesman told the Sun: ‘HMP Bristol prisoner Kevin Crehan died in custody on Tuesday 27 December.

       
The incident occurred at Jamia Mosque in Totterdown, Bristol, pictured, and all four of the gang were banned from going near a mosque for 10 years

‘As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.’

Crehan was jailed for a year while Bennett was given a nine-month sentence.

Bennett was given a six-month sentence and Swales was given a four-month sentence - both suspended for two years.

They were all banned from going within 330ft of a mosque anywhere in England or Wales for the next 10 years.

EUObserver, “The rise and shine of Visegrad”, 30 Dec 2016:

The Visegrad leaders have made their voices heard on the EU stage.
         
From left to right, Robert Fico, Beata Szydlo, Bohuslav Sobotka and Viktor Orban. (Photo: Czech government)

The name of a quiet medieval town in Hungary – Visegrad – has in recent times become synonymous with the word “rebellion” in Brussels.

Others, particularly if they are from one of the four countries in the loose association of the Visegrad Group, might argue that it stands for “alternative”.

  V4 countries are trying to weigh in on the EU’s soul-searching process which was launched at a summit in Bratislava in September. (Photo: Kurt Bauschardt)

The group, also known as V4, was formed in Visegrad in 1991 and is comprised of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It has remained relatively obscure for almost 25 years.

Then the migration crisis hit.

The EU’s inability to handle the crisis, combined with a tilt in the power structure within the union after the Brexit vote and increasingly bellicose and eurosceptic leaders in Hungary and Poland, has thrust the group to the fore.

In 2016, V4 leaders have pushed for a change in the EU’s migration policy and has refused to accept asylum seekers under the EU’s quota system. They also called for reform of the EU after the Brexit vote.

“The V4 basically fulfilled the role it was created for in the first place, to be a powerful lobby organisation.” Daniel Bartha, the director of the Budapest-based Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, told Euobserver.

“It now holds on to a significant number of votes in the European Council to offset Germany.”
The original sin

Diplomats refer to a meeting of interior ministers in September 2015, when the four states were out-voted on migrant quotas, as the “original sin” that emboldened the group.

The V4 countries disagreed with the mandatory part of the system - even though in the end Poland, under its previous government, did not vote with the rest of the Visegrad nations - and particularly disliked how the European Commission rammed through its German-inspired proposal.

A year after the migration quotas were introduced, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico declared the idea politically dead. “Quotas today clearly divide the EU, therefore I think they are politically finished,” he told journalists while his country was holding the rotating EU presidency.

Eastern EU states were not the only ones that did not like the quota system, but they were the most vocal about it, with Hungary and Slovakia challenging it in the EU Court of Justice.

Strong anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the Visegrad leaders was initially criticised, but eventually the focus of the EU’s migration policy shifted from taking in asylum seekers and distributing them fairly, to reinforcing border control and shutting down migration routes.

The issue has finally forced the realisation in the corridors of the Berlaymont, the EU commission’s headquarters, that V4 countries could not be ignored.

But as one EU official observed, commission president Jean-Claude Juncker still surrounds himself with a small circle of close aides and is less open to influence from the V4.

The official gave the example of the commission proposal on “posted workers”, which would require companies from the eastern EU to pay as much to their workers sent to Western Europe as their western counterparts.

In principle, the proposal makes sense in a single market, and some Western European states have long objected to easterners undercutting local wages. But 11 national parliaments objected to the commission’s proposal, the bulk of them eastern nations. The commission decided in July to move ahead with the proposal anyway.
After Brexit vote

The Brexit vote was a shock to the EU, but it reinforced the V4’s presence.

It has been interpreted as a vote against the ruling elite and mainstream politics, a public sentiment that Hungarian and Polish leaders have been successfully exploiting. Those two nations took it as a sign that the EU needs to change, and they were ready with an alternative.

“The European Commission hasn’t fully understood what happened in the British referendum,” Polish prime minister Beata Szydlo told reporters in July, when her country took over the V4 rotating presidency.

“The EU needs to return to its roots. We need to care more about the concerns of citizens and less about those of the institutions.”

Similarly, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said in June that democratic legitimacy for the EU can only come from the member states.

“We have to return to the notion that the basis of the EU is not its institutions, but the member states. The democratic feature of the EU can only be reinforced through the member states,” he said after the British referendum.

There is yet a concrete proposal, but in the Slovak capital in September, the 27 member states kicked off a soul-searching “Bratislava process” to explore how the EU could be reformed to win back citizens, and the V4’s ideas are bound to be influential.

“After Brexit, the EU’s political centre of gravity has shifted towards the east,” said analyst Daniel Bartha.

“France has had a declining economy since the early 2010s, so it has been less potent in offsetting Germany’s dominance on the continent. New power centres are destined to emerge in the union.”

But the V4’s rise in EU politics might only be temporary, as many issues divide the four nations and would hamper their ability to influence EU politics.

“The harmony only exists from the outside. Migration is the key issue where the four agreed. On everything else – for instance energy – there is little agreement,” said Bartha.

He cited as an example relations with Russia – a friend to Hungary but still regarded as a threat in Poland.

And Slovakia’s government has largely muted its opposition to EU migration policy during its presidency of the EU Council.

EU officials have suggested engaging with the “more reasonable” elements within the V4 – Slovakia and the Czech Republic – to separate them from Poland and Hungary whenever possible.

“They need our gestures. It is that moment,” argued one EU official.

Iohannis stops accession of Muslim Prime Minister

Visigrad Post, “Romania On The Brink Of A Political Crisis”, 28 Dec 2016:

Romania – President Klaus Iohannis rejected the nomination of the country’s first ever Muslim – and woman – candidate for Prime Minister, Sevil Shhaideh.

After winning the election early December, the PSD – Social Democrats – had to nominate a candidate for the office of Prime Minister. The president of the PSD, Liviu Dragnea is unable to become Prime Minister as he has been preliminarily refused by President Iohannis as he has been convicted for electoral fraud. Hence, he proposed Sevil Shhaideh, and it was likely he’d run the government through her.

Although President Klaus Iohannis asked the Social Democrats to pick someone else to lead the government, but he did not give any reason for this rejection.

Mr Dragnea has previously suggested he will fight any attempt by the president to block his choice of Prime Minister. “If Iohannis rejects our proposal, I’m not going to make a second one. We’ll see each other in some other place,” he said.

                             
          Sevil Shhaideh - rejected nominee for Romania’ first ever Muslim – and woman - Prime Minister

Following the rejection, Mr Dragnea said he could begin the process of seeking to remove Mr Iohannis as president. “It seems the president clearly wants to be suspended,” Mr Dragnea said. “We’ll weigh our options very carefully, because we don’t want to take emotional decisions. We don’t want to trigger a political crisis for nothing, but if we come to the conclusion that the president must be suspended, I won’t hesitate.” As a matter of fact, several political observers claim that the two refusals – the first one, unofficial, of Dragnea, and the second one of Shhaideh – are unconstitutional.

On December 28, Mr Dragnea proposed Sorin Grindeanu as candidate for Prime Minister. President Iohannis is expected to name the Prime Minister on December 29. According to the Romanian constitution, if the candidate is not nominated by the President, the parliament will be dissolved and new elections will be held.

        President Iohannis is indeed going along with the nomination of Grindeanu -

Sofia Globe “Romanian president designates Grindeanu new prime minister”, 30 Dec 2016:
 
President Klaus Iohannis has designated veteran leftist Sorin Grindeanu as the new Romanian head of government. Previously, Iohannis refused to endorse a female, Muslim candidate who was criticized for her inexperience.

The 43-year-old Sorin Grindeanu would have 10 days to unveil his cabinet and seek the parliament’s vote of confidence after being named by Iohannis on Friday.

The process is expected to go smoothly for the former telecommunications minister after the triumph of his moderate left PSD party in the parliamentary election earlier this month. The PSD won 45 percent of the seats and now holds a firm majority with their junior partners, the ALDE.

Grindeanu is a mathematician who has served as deputy mayor of the western city of Timisoara.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: “Migration Watch’s forecasts have always been thoroughly reliable.”

Express, “BREXIT WARNING: 12 MILLION more migrants to arrive in UK in 25 years without hard Brexit”, 29 Dec 2016:

MASS immigration will continue at “unacceptable” levels for at least two decades unless Britain makes a full break with Brussels, a report predicted last night.

               

Figures showed that annual net migration to the UK from EU countries would be unlikely to fall below 155,000 in the “medium term” if the country stays in the EU’s Single Market.

And the Government’s ability to reduce the influx will be “extremely limited” as long as the EU’s free movement rules remain in force.

The disturbing forecast of near-record levels of migration for years ahead was set out in a report from the population think tank Migration Watch. It was being seen last night as a devastating blow to campaigners for a so-called “soft Brexit” that retain the UK’s full Single Market membership.

[...]

“An increase of anything like 12 million in just 25 years is, quite simply, unacceptable to the British public and certainly not what they voted for in the referendum.”

Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: “Migration Watch’s forecasts have always been thoroughly reliable and are the best we are going to get from anyone.

[...]

“The picture they paint is completely unacceptable.

“We simply can’t stay in the Single Market if it means we are going to get that sort of level of immigration.

“Above all, people voted in the referendum for a change in our approach to immigration.”

[...]

“Total net immigration will add 12 million people to the population in just 25 years, more than the equivalent of the entire current populations of Bulgaria and New Zealand.”

He added: “Theresa May needs to set out in no uncertain terms that when the UK leaves the EU it will also cease to be a member of the Single Market.