Taxpayers Billed $800,000 A Year For Prayers In Congress

American taxpayers are being charged more than $66,000 an hour for prayers said in the US House and Senate. The total cost per prayer, which lasts an average of 90 seconds, is a whopping $1,659.

According to Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who did the math to determine what taxpayers are being charged for prayers in Washington, the total annual bill comes to more than $800,000.

Both the U.S. House and Senate employ a chaplain whose singular duty is to administer prayer. The budget for the House Chaplain’s office is $345,000, while the Senate Chaplain’s office receives $436,886.

Seidel reports that both the House and Senate chaplains earn executive level salaries which are equal to those of high-ranking government officials, (..)

Seidel reports: And even with those fat salaries, the official chaplains let “guest chaplains” deliver many of the prayers—about 40% in the House. (..)

As Seidel explains here, in 2011 the House Chaplain delivered just 104 prayers, lasting an average of 90 seconds each. That’s about 2.6 hours of work. For that he was paid $172,500, or $66,346 an hour.

Over the 15-year period between 2000 and 2015, US taxpayers spent $10 million on prayers in Washington. In the meantime, elected officials slashed spending on essential programs like WIC and SNAP as well as other assistance for the vulnerable.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2016/04/27/taxpayers-billed-800000-a-year-for-prayers-in-congress/

Many black migrants, including those who are not Muslim, are deploying symbols of Islam to appeal to Algerians’ sense of charity. Why? Because poverty helps decode culture better than reflection does, and migrants, lacking shelter and food, are quick to realize that in Algeria there often is no empathy between human beings, only empathy between people of the same religion.

In Europe, migrants can try to play on the humanitarianism and guilty consciences of their hosts, but in Algeria these days, the Other is visible only through the prism of faith. In the West, racism sees skin color; in Arab countries, it sees religion.

Yet these two forms of racism are related: Westerners deny (or accuse) Arabs, and Arabs in turn deny (or accuse) black Africans.

Although many Algerian Muslims are neither sectarian nor racist, they don’t have much influence among the elites or over public debate. Extremist positions crowd out more moderate religious views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/opinion/kamel-daoud-black-in-algeria-then-youd-better-be-muslim.html

Muslim prison chaplains have routinely distributed Islamist literature, according to a leaked report.

A review which started in September, commissioned by Justice Secretary Michael Gove, found extremist pamphlets and CDs in more than 10 jails in November.

The material included homophobic and misogynistic sentiments and encouraged the murder of apostates - Muslims who leave or reject the religion, according to the Times.

The report on what was found has not yet been cleared for publication.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/muslim-prison-chaplains-encouraging-murder-of-non-believers-a6990441.html

Riot police were called in to break up a violent clash between hundreds of migrants and a 'vigilante group' near a Paris metro station.
Footage from Stalingrad metro, where more than a thousand migrants have been living rough, showed hundreds of men brawling with metal poles and planks of wood.

Almost 1,000 migrants have arrived in the area in just over a month, many travelling from Calais having crossed the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve had earlier announced the removal of the camp in a joint statement with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, but the migrants returned with makeshift mattresses two weeks later.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3543237/Video-Stalingrad-Metro-Paris-shows-violent-clashes-erupt-migrant-camp.html#ixzz468IlaL5W

In its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom.

That’s quite an understatement.

Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

http://nypost.com/2016/04/17/how-us-covered-up-saudi-role-in-911/

Half of all British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal, poll finds
Survey for Channel 4

British Muslims are more likely to feel a stronger connection to Britain than the population at large, according to polling, which also found that more than half think that homosexuality should be illegal.

Extensive polling conducted by ICM suggests that in most cases attitudes held by the British Muslim population do not broadly differ from those held by the population at large, but there are significant differences when it comes to some issues such as homosexuality and women’s rights (..)

However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.

In a series of questions on the terror threat in Britain, 4% said they sympathised with people who took part in suicide bombings (1% said they completely sympathised and 3% said they sympathised to some extent), and 4% said they sympathised with people who committed terrorist actions as a form of political protest generally.

Nearly a quarter (23%) supported the introduction of sharia law in some areas of Britain, and 39% agreed that “wives should always obey their husbands”, compared with 5% of the country as a whole. Two-thirds (66%) said they completely condemned people who took part in stoning adulterers, and a further 13% condemned them to some extent. Nearly a third (31%) thought it was acceptable for a British Muslim man to have more than one wife, compared with 8% of the wider population.

France: Exodus of 10,000 millionaires amid rising Muslim tensions

Rising tensions in France, especially in Paris following a series of Islamist terrorist attacks in 2015, have spurred an exodus of its super-wealthy citizens, a new report on migration trends of millionaires and high-net worth individuals across the world reveals. The report warns that other European countries, including the UK, Belgium, Germany and Sweden "where religious tensions are starting to emerge", will also see similar trends.

According to the report, Millionaire migration in 2015, France topped the list of countries with maximum millionaire outflows as it lost 10,000 millionaires, or 3% of its millionaire population. Among the cities that saw maximum millionaire outflow, Paris, was at the top – losing about 6% of its millionaire population or 7,000 millionaires in 2015 to the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Israel.

"The large outflow of millionaires from France is notable – France is being heavily impacted by rising religious tensions between Christians and Muslims, especially in urban areas. We expect that millionaire migration away from France will accelerate over the next decade as these tensions escalate," the report warns.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/france-sees-millionaire-exodus-religious-tensions-rise-1552423

Terror Network’s Web Sprawls Beyond Brussels and Paris
Multiple recent arrests suggest a wider Islamic State presence in Europe than previously thought

A pan-European effort to crack the Islamic State network behind the Paris and Brussels attacks is yielding an unsettling discovery—a web of interlocking terror cells whose dimensions authorities say they are still trying to grasp.

The string of arrests, which come on top of multiple other detentions in recent months, suggests the terror networks being pursued by European authorities spread beyond Paris and Brussels.

A senior U.S. official said arrests showed terror network had become “very sophisticated.”
Other officials said the arrests also have revealed its sheer scale.
“There is a large number [of members], all across Europe,” the official said.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/terror-networks-web-sprawls-beyond-brussels-and-paris-1459124085