Hungary PM Orban’s Party Rejects Ultimatum as Pan-European Conservatives Threaten Expulsion

European Culture should be on Suicide Watch

But it seems Hungary's Prime Minister is the only one watching

One thing I should explain here or this story makes no sense. European conservatives in the EU are not real conservatives, but are conservatives in name only. That's why when a real conservative, Orban, appears, they are completely befuddled. If they are protecting Soros, as they appear to be, he has some influence over them and they cannot possibly be real conservatives. Orban should consider inviting the few other real conservatives in the EU to form a new caucus.

Viktor Orban delivers his annual state of the nation speech in Budapest. ©REUTERS / Bernadett Szabo

The European People's Party is threatening to expunge its Hungarian member, the ruling Fidesz, unless its leader stops harassing Brussels and George Soros. The Hungarians have rejected the ultimatum.

The EPP is a “party for parties” uniting national conservative movements into a single entity, which currently has the largest representation in the European Parliament. Many of its members were offended by a campaign launched by the Hungarian government, which links Brussels’ immigration policies with billionaire George Soros, a known advocate of freedom of migration and a highly vilified figure in Hungary.

The campaign launched ahead of the European Parliament elections in May, prompted many EPP members to call for the expulsion of Fidesz from its ranks or at least suspension of its membership.

Manfred Weber, the German MEP, who leads the EPP faction in the European Parliament, told Bild his party had three demands for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which he must meet if he wants to keep his party part of the “EPP family.”

Orban, Weber said, “must immediately and definitively stop his government’s anti-Brussels campaigns,” apologize to other parties that comprise the EPP, and welcome back the Central European University, the Soros-funded organization that stopped all operations in Hungary and moved to Vienna last year under pressure from Orban’s government.

Weber added that if Fidesz is indeed kicked out of the EPP, which may happen as soon as March 20, that should be taken as “Viktor Orban leaving the EPP, not the other way around.”

Responding to the threat, Tamas Deutsch, a co-founder of Fidesz and a serving MEP from Hungary, said he didn’t expect his prime minister to fold.

“This is not a kiddy party, where you pulled on my pony tail and it hurts. Manfred Weber is a lot more serious than that,” he told private television channel ATV.

Deutsch added Fidesz was open for dialogue and saw itself as part of the EPP. Asked about how it would deal with potentially being expelled, he said “one crosses the bridge when one gets there.”

Hungary is the most adamant of EU countries in attempting to prevent its Christian heritage from being overrun with Islamic migrants. Many pseudo-conservative MEPs don't think that is the right way to go. They, along with the left leaning MEPs want to see relatively high levels of Muslim migrants accepted to all EU countries. Weber's Chancellor, Merkel, opened the doors wide in 2015 and now has a huge backlog of migrants building up in Greece and Turkey, and many more crossing the Sahara from the Sahel. 

They just don't seem to get that Muslims don't integrate into European society, they are vulnerable to radicalization, and they propagate way faster than Europeans meaning European culture is already on suicide watch.

Crypto Crime Mystery: Canadian Exchange Going Bust & Suspicious CEO Death

Corruption is Everywhere - Certainly in Cryptocurrencies, Even in Canada

© Global Look Press / Michael Weber

The case of a major Canadian cryptocurrency exchange, QuadrigaCX, continues to get even stranger after last year’s death of its 30-year-old CEO who effectively froze more than $100 million in customers’ funds.

RT's Boom Bust talks to Christy Ai of CounterPartX as the story took another interesting twist. QuadrigaCX’s court-appointed auditor Ernst & Young, which gained access to CEO Gerald Cotten’s laptop, found that all of the so-called ‘cold’ (not connected to the internet) wallets were empty.

Story runs from about 4:25 - 9:30

It turned out that Cotten who was the only person with the cryptographic keys started transferring funds – between $140 million and $190 million in cryptocurrencies – out of the cold wallets in the year prior to his death.

So, is he really dead? Will he turn up on Blacklist? It certainly sounds like he deserves to be dead. So, now, who's got the money? Or is it all lost and Cotten suicided? Personally, I think cryptocurrencies should be illegal.

United Methodists Vote Against LGBTQ Clergy and Weddings

Fractured after vote against LGBT clergy, weddings,

United Methodists face possible split

By Dakin Andone, CNN

(CNN) After years of debate, hundreds of United Methodists from all over the world gathered in St. Louis last week to settle the denomination's stance on LGBT clergy and same-sex weddings.

In the eyes of many, they failed.  

Certainly in the eyes of CNN they failed. But not, I'm sure, in the eyes of God!

Following several days of dramatic testimony and prayer, delegates of the denomination's General Conference voted 438-384 to reinforce the United Methodist Church's stance against ordaining gay clergy and performing same-sex weddings, in a move that threatens to split the second-largest Protestant denomination in the US, and one that has a growing presence internationally.

United Methodists who spoke to CNN reacted with a mix of devastation and contentment. However, none are celebrating.

'I feel like someone has died'

Jordan Harris, a gay United Methodist pastor in Somerville, Massachusetts, decided to pursue ministry because of a childhood experience with homelessness. It was a church, he said, that helped his family, and it inspired him to become a pastor and help others.

But now, on the cusp of being ordained and marrying his fiancé, Harris is afraid for the career he's spent at least eight years preparing for.

"I feel like someone has died," Harris told CNN.

He is grieving for the 8 years he spent preparing for something that wasn't there to begin with. If your intention in joining a church is to change it into your image, you are in the wrong place.

For years liberal United Methodists like Harris have pushed for the church to adopt more tolerant policies.

The denomination's Book of Discipline says all people have "sacred worth," but it denounces the "practice of homosexuality," and says it is "incompatible with Christian teaching."

But there are openly gay and lesbian clergy members who serve -- in 2016, Karen Phyllis Oliveto became the first married lesbian to become a bishop. While the gay clergy could be removed from ministry, church trials are rare.

Harris was "hopeful" the UMC would continue to take steps towards tolerance this week. He felt some of the proposals up for debate offered a chance for churches with different views to continue to "coexist."

Like many LGBT clergy and United Methodists, Harris hoped delegates would vote for what was known as the Simple Plan -- one of three proposed plans that outlined different tracts for the church's stance on LGBT persons.

Alyss Swanson, a transgender United Methodist deacon from San Jose, California, speaks with Bishop Samuel Quire, from Liberia, during the General Conference of the United Methodist Church on Monday, February 25, 2019.

The Simple Plan would have removed language prohibiting gay marriage and clergy from the United Methodist Book of Discipline. The Traditional Plan, the one that passed, reaffirmed the church's current stance.

There was also the One Church Plan, which would have allowed local churches to decided on the issue for themselves but keep the denomination together.

"It felt like we finally got to a place where we were at least able to have constructive dialogue," he said.

He was ultimately let down. As he watched the conference play out, Harris felt that the traditionalists were unwilling to meet in the middle. And now he's left disappointed and afraid.

"It's hard to be in this place where you feel like things are falling apart all around you."

'Who are we to legislate love of God?'

The One Church Plan was the path favored by Flo Martin. She's the wife of a retired minister, and the mother of a current pastor. She's also been a heavily involved member for most of her life.

But while watching the proceedings online this week, Martin wondered, "Have we really sat down and talked and listened and allowed ourselves to hear each other and each others' stories?"

Martin preferred the One Church Plan because she felt it afforded people the opportunity to find a church that aligned with their beliefs, "but also room for us to still say we could be together."

"There are people sitting in pews together that disagree on lots of issues," she explained. "Not only homosexuality but political issues and other issues. And if there were an emergency they would be there working side-by-side, caring and praying for each other."

"Who are we," she added, "to be legislating the love of God, and putting barriers around people being in ministry?"

That sounds like Pope Francis' amazing statement on homosexuality, "Who am I to judge?" Well, excuse me, but aren't you Christ's vicar on earth? Do you really know God so poorly that you are incapable of knowing what He finds a complete abomination?

LGBT people 'are part of our family'

When the Traditional Plan passed, Keith Mcilwain, a pastor in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, said he was pleased with the outcome.

"I wanted to see my preferred plan pass, just like every pastor did," he said. "But I was keenly aware that no matter which plan passed, people were going to be upset, disappointed and people were going to be in pain."

"So I could not really celebrate," he said.

Mcilwain supported the Traditional Plan because it most closely aligned with the church's theology and its historic stance on homosexuality -- that it is "outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity," he said.

But prior to the conference Mcilwain held meetings with the members of his church to clarify the meeting's purpose and start a dialogue. He wanted them to understand that the church was not deciding whether gay people were allowed to come to church. That much was not up for debate.

He explained in a letter to his congregation that "our Church is debating how to be in ministry with LGBTQ persons -- not whether we will be in ministry with them."

Mcilwain's congregation has a mix of members with different political perspectives and beliefs, he said, including gay people.

"They are loved and they love others. We welcome them, they welcome us and we love them," he said. "They are part of our family."

"Whether or not we will include them isn't an issue," he said. Rather, General Conference's purpose was to decide "to what extent would it be appropriate to include them."

The church faces a possible split

But the debate's not over. The UMC's Judicial Council -- think of it as the church's Supreme Court -- is set to review the Traditional Plan at its meeting in Illinois next month to decide whether it's constitutional.

If the council upholds the plan, many fear a split is imminent, and that liberal members and more progressive churches will leave the denomination.

And while that's no one's preferred route, Mcilwain and Martin are coming to terms with the possibility. Mcilwain made clear he prefers the church stay together, and he's hopeful.

"But if some people feel that they cannot remain," he conceded, "then I love them enough to let them leave."

Delegates join in prayer during the 2019 Special Session of the General Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Martin pointed out she would have been staunchly opposed to a split in years past. But now she wonders if there's a way the UMC could split amicably, illustrating to the world that people who have different beliefs can "agree to disagree agreeably."

But Harris said he's determined to stay, and he doesn't believe he's alone. "The vast majority of the response that I've seen ... has been one of faithful resistance."

"I don't see a whole lot of progressive pastors or LGBTQ people who are adamant about leaving or giving up," he said. "Rather, I think a lot of us are reinvigorated."

But right now he's focused on Sunday, and what he'll say when he steps into the pulpit. All he can do is share "the same truth I preached last Sunday, and the Sunday before and before that," Harris said, "which is, you are loved by God."

Astonishing AntiSemitic Float in Carnaval Parade in Belgium

Belgian carnival float features puppets of grinning Jews,

a rat and money bags

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ  

A parade float at the Aalst Carnaval in Belgium featuring caricatures of Orthodox Jews atop money bags

March 3, 2019. (Courtesy of Brussels Times)

I had to check other sources to see if this hardly believable story was true, and, sure enough, it appears in other publications including the Brussels Times. 1939 is approaching once again in Europe.

(JTA) — Participants in a street celebration in the Belgian city of Aalst paraded giant puppets of Orthodox Jews and a rat atop money bags.

Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs condemned the float Sunday at the annual Aalst Carnaval street celebration as “shocking.” It contains “typical, anti-Semitic caricatures from 1939,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The umbrella groups representing Flemish and French-speaking Jews in Belgium, FJO and CCOJB respectively, complained to the federal UNIA watchdog on racism about the display. “In a democracy like Belgium, there is no room for such things, carnival or not,” they wrote.

The group Vismooil’n created the two puppets as their 2019 theme for the Aalst carnival, the local edition of celebrations that take place throughout parts of Europe and Latin America annually in anticipation of Lent, the 40-day period before Easter. Participants prepare floats and dance routines, parading them through town on Carnaval.

The Vismooil’n group, a veteran participant that specializes in hyper-realistic puppets, created the display to address rising prices, they told a Belgian blogger last month. They titled the work “Shabbat Year.”

The display features two giant puppets with streimels, hats favored by some Orthodox Jews, in pink suits. They both have sidelocks. One of the puppets is grinning while smoking a cigar and extending a hand, presumably to collect money. That puppet has a white rat on his right shoulder. Both puppets are standing on gold coins and have money bags at their feet.

In the background is a round window reminiscent of the architecture of many European synagogues and a small box resembling a mezuzah on its right-hand side.

“Everything has become so expensive [we thought that] if we do 2019, there would be no more money left for next year,” a member of the group was quoted as saying. “So we all went quiet until we smartly decided to go for the Shabbat Year and that was that. So simple.”

In 2013, a different group designed for the Aalst carnival a float resembling a Nazi railway wagon used to transport Jews to death camps.

The people who designed the float, known as the FTP Group, marched near the float dressed as Nazi SS officers and haredi Orthodox Jews. A poster on the wagon showed Flemish Belgian politicians dressed as Nazis and holding canisters labeled as containing Zyklon B, the poison used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews in gas chambers in the Holocaust.

How is this possibly OK in a democratic country? If these people don't end up in jail it will be because antisemitism has become quite acceptable in Belgium, the heart of the EU.

Kurds Rescue Civilians from Last IS Stronghold in Syria But Tragedy Reigns Supreme

Headless bodies found in mass graves in IS Syrian stronghold

thought to be those of sex slaves

ABCNews Australia

The graves were found after SDF fighters closed in on IS militants. (Retuers: Rodi Said)

A mass grave containing the bodies of dozens of people thought to have been Yazidis enslaved by the Islamic State (IS) group has been found in territory recently seized by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Many of the bodies found in the Baghouz area were those of women.

"They were slaughtered," SDF commander Adnan Afrin said.

Most had been decapitated, he added.

The SDF is trying to confirm if the bodies belonged to members of the Yazidi sect.

Thousands of members of the minority sect from Iraq were forced into sexual slavery by the jihadists when they surged across the border in 2014 and seized swathes of territory.

IS members could be seen walking around in Baghouz on February 18. (Reuters: Rodi Said)

More than 3,000 other Yazidis were killed in an onslaught the United Nations later described as genocidal, which prompted the first US air strikes against IS.

Thousands more fled on foot, and many of them remain displaced more than four years later.

Thousands flee as fighting closes in

The SDF, the main Kurdish led-partner of the US-led coalition against IS in Syria, has been trying to evacuate thousands of civilians in Baghouz before storming it, or forcing the surrender of the remaining jihadists, who the SDF has said were mostly foreigners.

Civilians were evacuated in trucks as the SDF forces closed in on IS fighters. (Supplied: Free Burma Rangers)

"Our forces have managed to save a large number of civilians, along with our comrades who have been held hostage by IS," an SDF spokesperson said.

"Rescued civilians were provided with safe passage and transferred to elsewhere."

The SDF said earlier on Thursday that it had freed 24 of its fighters held by militants in Baghouz, but gave no details about how they were recovered.

According to an SDF statement, the fighters were in "good health" but were malnourished "because of intended negligence by the terrorist organization".

Thousands of people of many nationalities — both IS supporters and victims — have streamed out of the area in recent weeks, surpassing initial estimates and delaying an end to the battle.

Residents say hundreds of Arab civilians have been killed in US-led coalition air raids since the campaign began several months ago, with many of their homes in villages and towns east of the Euphrates River levelled to the ground.

The United Nations on Thursday expressed concern about the plight of thousands of people who residents say are tribal Arabs in a camp in al Hol, in northeastern Hasaka province.

Many of those fleeing, nearly all of them women and children, were being taken into custody by the SDF.

Evacuees were screened by SDF forces after being trucked out of the conflict zone. (AP: Felipe Dana)

Those fleeing described a desperate situation for civilians, with widespread reports of civilians killed and injured, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and shortages of food, a UN statement issued in Damascus said.

The United Nations said more than 78 deaths had been reported, two-thirds of them children under one year old who lost their lives either en route or shortly after arriving at the SDF-run camp.

Trudeau Government Denies Secret Plan to Bring Jihadi Jack to Canada

Brad Hunter
Toronto SUN News Canada

According to a British politician, Canada had a secret plan to whisk ISIS suspect Jack Letts out of Syria until the Brits and Americans torpedoed the idea.

The suspected ISIS member known as ‘Jihadi Jack’ was days away from being welcomed into Canada when the U.S. and U.K. torpedoed the move, a British politician claims.

Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle told Channel 4 that Jack Letts — whose father is Canadian — was to be smuggled out of Syria and brought here (Canada).

However, the federal government strongly denies the allegation.

“While we do not comment on national security operational matters, we can confirm that the claim made in the Daily Mail is categorically false,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s office said Friday in a statement to the Toronto Sun.

Sounds a lot like PM Trudeau a couple weeks ago when he said, "The allegations made in the Globe (and Mail) this morning are false." This week, his own attorney-general stated otherwise. Truth doesn't seem to be very important to this Very Liberal Government. 'The end justifies the means' is their motto.

Letts, 23, left his Oxford home to join the Islamic State in 2014. He eventually married an Iraqi woman and the couple had a child.

According to Channel 4, the Canadian government allegedly vowed to “do everything” to get the troubled young man out of harm’s way. The plan involved smuggling Letts into Turkey and then Canada.

But the British Foreign Office allegedly torpedoed the Canadian gambit.

His parents Jane Lane and John Letts have lobbied Ottawa for help. Their son admits he made a terrible mistake. THE CANADIAN PRESS

“My understanding is that hesitant agreement had been reached with them and the Canadians,” Russell-Moyle told Channel 4.

“The words that they used to me — and this was last year now — is that it is a matter of days or weeks in which Jack will be sent to Canada. And then it fell apart at the last minute due to the intervention of another party.”

The British politician blamed “either the British government or the Americans.”

Channel 4 reported that Justin Trudeau’s government wanted to bring Jack Letts to Canada because he was eligible for dual citizenship.

Late last year, diplomats in Ottawa reportedly wrote the ISIS suspect’s devastated parents to say they could not guarantee their son’s release.

ISIS bride Shamima Begum has been stripped of her British citizenship.

John Letts has said that his son realizes he made a stupid mistake and now desperately wants out.

He told ITV last week from the Kurdish jail where he is being held: “I miss my mum. I feel British, I am British. If the UK accepted me I would go back to the UK, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

In recent days, the British government has signalled it has no intention of repatriating terrorists and their brides who traipsed off to join ISIS.

It appears Belgium has just announced the same policy. Not Canada, we want the world's lunatics, as long as they aren't Christians. Liberals hate Christians. In that respect they have much in common with Islam.

While Letts remains a British citizen, notorious ISIS bride Shamima Begum has been stripped of her citizenship.

I'm sure she would be welcome in Canada. Trudeau might even meet her at the airport.

SNC-Lavalin Paid for Gadhafi Son's Prostitutes While He Was in Canada

This story is a dramatic episode in the extraordinary political turmoil

happening in Canada this week.

See: The Other Mind-Blowing Testimony Today - Justin Trudeau is in Deep Trouble for a quick summary of these remarkable events.

Receipts show $30,000 in payments to Saadi Gadhafi

for sexual services in Canada in 2008

Corruption is Everywhere - Even in Canada

In this Tuesday, July 3, 2001 file photo, Saadi Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi,

smiles during a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.

AP Photo/Tsugufumi Matsumoto

Marie-Danielle Smith, National Post

OTTAWA — New details have emerged about Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin’s cozy relationship with the son of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, including the company allegedly hiring prostitutes for him during a visit to Canada a decade ago.

The sordid tale, revealed by Quebec newspaper La Presse Wednesday, comes to light as former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould testifies about whether she was unduly pressured last fall to help SNC-Lavalin avoid federal corruption charges associated with their business dealings in Libya.

Receipts gathered during an investigation of a former SNC-Lavalin executive show $30,000 in payments to Saadi Gadhafi for sexual services in Canada in 2008, La Presse reported. The documentation can now be revealed publicly because the prosecution of Stéphane Roy, former vice-president of SNC-Lavalin, on fraud and bribery charges was dropped last week due to court delays.

In 2008, Gadhafi was ostensibly travelling to Montreal and Toronto to conduct business and improve his English, at the invitation of SNC-Lavalin. He had helped the company secure billions in public contracts in Libya — thanks also to millions in bribes to Libyan officials, the RCMP has alleged — and visited Canada on three previous occasions. But he spent much of his time on other extracurricular pursuits, according to La Presse’s reporting.

For the duration of his stay, SNC-Lavalin hired Garda World, a Montreal-based company, to provide security for the dictator’s son, and they hired four bodyguards as contractors. That focus on security “degenerated,” a spokeswoman for the company, Isabelle Panelli, told the newspaper.

The bodyguards handled Gadhafi’s expenses and provided receipts to SNC-Lavalin, according to court testimony by an RCMP investigator. Transactions they wrote in as “companion services” in their expense reports would cost between $600 and $7,500 each. Close to $10,000 in services went to a single escort service in Vancouver. Other payments went to a Montreal strip club and covered events at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, such as box seats for a Spice Girls concert.

The SNC-Lavalin headquarters is seen in Montreal.

The investigation showed that SNC-Lavalin was writing off the expenses as associated with construction projects in Libya, La Presse reported, with the total bill for Gadhafi’s trip totalling nearly $2 million.

Roy had testified in court that expenses associated with the trip were justified, and that he had the receipts to prove it. The expenses were justified at the time, testified another former executive, Riadh Ben Aissa — who, meanwhile, pled guilty last year to a forgery charge associated with allegations that SNC-Lavalin executives defrauded the McGill University University Health Centre of $22.5 million in a bid-rigging scheme.

Panelli told La Presse that Garda World tried to intervene and stop the practice, but then lost the contract with SNC-Lavalin. She told the newspaper that most employees who were around then are no longer with the company.

Garda World told the National Post it had no comment to offer beyond the La Presse report, and a spokesman for SNC-Lavalin would only say: “We have no comment on this matter.”

The company has argued that its corporate culture is completely different now than it was a decade ago, and that its current senior executives were not involved in the alleged corruption.

SNC-Lavalin remains Canada’s biggest engineering firm, employing thousands of people across the country and particularly in Quebec. There, the provincial premier and much of the commentariat have argued that there would be good economic reasons for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ask an attorney general to help the company avoid criminal prosecution.

Good idea, as long as you don't have any integrity or expectation of corporate Canada actually following the law.

But then we should at least stop telling China that we are a nation of laws and there is no political interference in the judicial system. This is what Trudeau told China when Huawei's CFO was arrested, about the same time he was twisting our Attorney-General's are to intervene for SNC-Lavalin.