[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Norway’s state broadcaster, NRK, has put in place a 5-year plan in order to chip away at its mostly-White Norwegian workforce and talent.
“The aim is to reflect the population to a greater extent than we do today”
Director of Broadcasting
Thor Gjermund Eriksen
Currently about 4% of NRK’s permanent staff are from a “multicultural background.” About 13% of Norway’s total population are immigrants, and about 6% are from non-Western countries. NRK is not very interested in catering to Western immigrants, and instead wants to focus on “children of immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America.”
“NRK’s ambition is to be a generous and diverse public arena” said Eriksen. “If an increasing part of the population does not feel included, as are some of the arguments for having a public broadcaster weakened.” NRK describe this racial quota as “multicultural competence.” It also brags that having employees who speak Urdu, and Vietnamese are “success stories.”
In order to open White countries to mass non-White immigration, anti-Whites say “it’s just skin color” and tell us not to worry about it. But when non-White groups become more numerous, suddenly the entire argument is all about “skin color”. It’s about how evil White people are and how we must forcefully “diversify” (destroy) all the White majority areas.
Trying to make a country minority White is NOT a “progressive” social policy. It is White genocide – this is not a figure of speech; this is a clear breach of the international laws which define genocide.
Norway is predicted to be minority White Norwegian by 2045. This, of course, is because of mass non-White immigration.
If it was just Norway where this was happening, it might be excused as just an accident. However, within this century, White people are predicted to be a minority in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Sweden, Ireland, and Norway.
This is clearly more than a coincidence – this is White genocide.
Refugee mothers and children look through games and books in another initiative by the German education ministry, the reading start for refugee children. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images.
Germany has recruited 8,500 people to teach child refugees German, as the country expects the number of new arrivals to soar past the million mark in 2015, Die Welt daily reported on Sunday.
About 196,000 children fleeing war and poverty will enter the German school system this year, and 8,264 “special classes” have been created to help them catch up with their peers, Die Welt said, citing a survey carried out in 16 German federal states.
Germany’s education authority says 325,000 school-aged children reached the EU country in 2015 during Europe’s worst migration crisis since the second world war.
Germany expects more than a million asylum seekers this year, which is five times more than in 2014. It has put a strain on its ability to provide services to all the newcomers.
“Schools and education administrations have never been confronted with such a challenge,” Brunhild Kurth, who heads the education authority, told Die Welt.
“We must accept that this exceptional situation will become the norm for a long time to come.”
Heinz-Peter Meidinger, head of the DPhV teachers’ union, said Germany would need up to 20,000 additional teachers to cater for the new numbers.
“By next summer, at the latest, we will feel that gap,” he said.
It’s amazing how after all the time that the neoliberal state has spent since the year 2008 cutting public jobs such as teachers, the state now suddenly has the money to fund a massive expansion of the number of teachers on its payroll.
Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 25 December 2015 11:35.
The Swiss are blessed in their model of direct democracy - the fruit of an ancient and interesting history of popular expression. Uniquely in western Europe, modern Swiss politics are not simply the property of a nexus of interest groups, a dominant media, and a manipulative political class.
The electorate can and does impose its will in every walk of Swiss political life. Famous examples include the 1992 referendum decision not to join the European Economic Area, and the February 2014 vote against mass immigration. Now a motion for ending the power of private bank money generation has passed the threshold 100,000 signatures, and a referendum must follow. A date has yet to be set.
It is difficult to believe that any other electorate in Europe would be competent to pass an informed judgement on such a technical issue, or that many Western governments would ever tolerate such an offence against the Money Power.
Switzerland to vote on banning banks from creating money
Referendum on radical proposal to give central banks sole money creation power will be held after petition gains 110,000 signatures
Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.
The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold the plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.
The campaign - led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative - is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.
“Banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks,” said the campaign group.
Under Switzerland’s direct democracy, a referendum can be held if a motion gains 100,000 signatures within 18 months of launching.
If successful, the sovereign money bill would give the Swiss National Bank a monopoly on physical and electronic money creation, “while the decision concerning how new money is introduced into the economy would reside with the government,” says Vollgeld.
The idea of limiting all money creation to central banks was first touted in the 1930s and supported by renowned US economist Irving Fischer as a way of preventing asset bubbles and curbing reckless lending.
In modern market economies, central banks control the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs when a commercial bank offers a line of credit. Central banks aim to influence the money supply with monetary policy and regulatory tools.
The SNB was established in 1891, with exclusive power to mint coins and issue Swiss banknotes.
But over 90pc of money in circulation in Switzerland now exists in the form “electronic” cash created by private banks, rather than the central bank.
“Due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money,” said the Swiss Sovereign Money campaign.
“The decision taken by the people in 1891 has fallen into oblivion.”
Referenda on monetary matters are not new in Switzerland. Last year, the country voted by more than 78pc to reject a law calling for the central bank to increase its gold reserves from 7pc to 20pc.
Unlike the gold vote - which was seen as a precursor to re-introducing the Gold Standard in Switzerland - economists have been more supportive of the idea of “sovereign money” as a way to stabilise the economy and prevent excess credit growth.
Iceland - which saw its bloated banking system collapse in spectacular fashion in 2008 - has also touted an abolition of private money creation and an end to fractional reserve banking.
Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were found brutally murdered in September last year.
From the moment their bodies were discovered on a Thai beach on 15 September last year, the investigation into the deaths of British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller has been a muddled affair.
Information from the police has been hazy, contradictory and sparse.
Miss Witheridge, 23, from Norfolk, and 24-year-old Mr Miller, from Jersey, were found bludgeoned to death on the southern island of Koh Tao.
The first officers on the scene were local police with rudimentary training and apparently no idea how to seal off a crime scene, with tourists wandering through it for days afterwards.
Thailand’s best-known forensic scientist, Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, whose institute was not allowed any involvement in the investigation, testified at the trial that the crime scene had been poorly managed and evidence improperly collected.
Instead of limiting their comments to what they knew about the crime, the Thai police threw out a barrage of speculation about who the culprit might be. It could not have been a Thai, they said at first, and focused their efforts on the Burmese migrant worker community.
The case has brought widespread media attention to Thailand and the island resort.
At one point they highlighted a British friend of Mr Miller as a possible suspect, then just as quickly dropped him. The initial team of investigators hinted they were looking at someone from a powerful family on Koh Tao. Then their commander was abruptly transferred and all official talk of this family’s involvement was dropped.
Other flaws were exposed once the trial started in July, including the police’s failure to test Miss Witheridge’s clothes or the alleged murder weapon, a blood-stained hoe, for DNA.
A year later Dr Pornthip tested the hoe and found the DNA of two people on the handle, but none matched the defendants.
The court heard several CCTV cameras near the crime scene were not working and cameras by the pier were not inspected to see whether anyone had fled by boat after the crime.
Both defendants have also testified they were beaten and threatened into making confessions. No lawyers were present during the sessions and translators were of dubious reliability.
These factors raised serious questions over the integrity of the prosecution case. The most important question though, hung over one piece of evidence which did tie the defendants to the crime: the alleged match between their DNA, and that recovered from semen found on Miss Witheridge’s body.
Less than three days after the crime, police announced they had extracted the DNA profiles of two men from the semen. They also said these matched DNA found on a cigarette butt near the scene.
In court, a police officer testified those samples were received on the morning of 17 September and started DNA extraction at 08:00 local time. This seems unlikely as the pathologist only started his autopsy at 11:00. The successful profiling of two men was announced at around 22:00.
It suggests remarkably rapid analysis, in less than 12 hours, from samples in which at least three people’s DNA - the victim and the two men - were mixed.
The DNA profiles were used to match cheek swabs taken from the two Burmese defendants after they were detained on 2 October.
Jane Taupin, a renowned Australian forensic scientist brought in by the defence team, questioned the plausibility of working this quickly, saying extracting DNA from mixed samples was difficult and time-consuming.
Ms Taupin was not allowed to testify, one of several inexplicable decisions by the defence, but she highlighted several important aspects of DNA testing which neither the defence team, the police, nor the judges appeared to understand.
How DNA testing works
Questions surrounding the alleged guilt of Wai Phyo and Zaw Lin in the murder of the young British couple.
DNA analysis is a complex procedure which requires meticulous care and documentation. Contrary to popular belief, it does not offer “perfect matches”, only statistical probabilities.
Almost all DNA - 99.9% - is likely to be the same between two people. That distinct 0.1% is made up of what are known as “short tandem repeat” sequences. These are isolated and examined for patterns which offer a statistical likelihood of a match to other DNA samples.
Usually a reference sample from a third party is also analysed.
The statistical likelihood of the match must be demonstrated in court, with full documentation showing methodology, proof the samples have not been contaminated and peer review.
In the Koh Tao case, the prosecution provided only a one-page summary of their DNA tests, some of it handwritten, with parts crossed out and corrected, along with four supporting pages.
“The case files of the Thai forensic lab should have been provided to the defence,” Ms Taupin said.
“This is so the scientific data contained within, and used to provide conclusions, could be examined for a scientific review.
“The essence of scientific method is the testing and review of hypotheses. If these are not viewed, or even stated, then this does not inspire confidence in the scientific analysis.
“A one-page table with alterations is not a suitable document to provide to a court. A report should not have alterations, especially handwritten ones, with no explanation as to why they were altered.”
There were other problems too. The date of the original DNA analysis was said to have been 17 September, but the report submitted to court was dated 5 October. This was two days after the police had announced a positive match with the two Burmese defendants. That unexplained discrepancy inevitably raises suspicion that perhaps the result was manipulated.
These weaknesses in the prosecution case should have given the defence a field day in court, but they were not raised until the closing statement.
The two police forensic witnesses were not cross-examined over the doubtful timings nor the scrappy and incomplete DNA documentation.
Had Ms Taupin been called, she could have exposed these flaws. Instead, she had to sit in the lawyers’ room, largely ignored, and then fly home without testifying. Whatever views the three judges formed of the quality of the prosecution’s evidence, it was never properly challenged in court.
I have asked one of the defence lawyers about their bafflingly non-adversarial tactics. He did not offer a convincing explanation.
Perhaps they were nervous of being seen to take too much advice from a foreigner, for fear they would lose sympathy from the judges.
Everyone in that court was aware how much Thailand’s reputation was on the line, and discrediting the police in such a public way might have felt like a dangerous step to take. We just don’t know.
This remains one of a number of frustrating unknowns about this murder case. These can only have added to the suffering of the victims’ families.
How could these kinds of ‘oversights’ actually come to manifest in Thailand? Not only are questions raised regarding the two Burmese migrant worker suspects, but additional questions are raised about the context giving rise to the murder and flawed investigation. A look at the context, where members of wealthy and powerful families on Koh Toh had grounds or had created grounds for the crime, directs inquiry further into how such persons manage to create these grounds, to cover their interests and manipulate the justice system.
The political situation in Thailand since 2014 would have to be taken into consideration. The Shinawatra government had enjoyed popular support from the public because its socioeconomic base was the working class in cities and the rural semi-peasant farmers, also known as the red shirts, who it was responsive to and whose policies it catered to. When the yellow shirts, the royal family, the military and international liberals decided that they want to overthrow the Shinawatra government in a coup, they installed particular military personnel and politicians who were beholden to rich liberal businessmen and bankers in the south of the country, who then proceeded to do whatever they wanted to do.
It doesn’t require much imagination to see how it could be that the justice system, the safety of tourism, priorities and perceptions of international relations would become structurally compromised as a result.
The conflict between the yellow shirts and the red shirts, and the multinational implications of it, as well as the domestic issues it centred around such as the national health service, rice subsidies, forced prostitution and human trafficking, as well as the divergent social basis of the yellow shirts when compared to the red shirts, is something that will be covered in a future article on the subject.
One thing is clear in summary though, and it is that the most degenerate social tendencies and the most retrograde economic forces were able to rise to preponderance after the effective yellow shirt victory during the coup in 2014.
Israel has made an agreement with Turkey to normalize relations, diplomatic sources say. A restoration of ambassadorial representation - on hold after a deadly Israeli naval raid in 2010 - is envisaged.
An Israeli official said on Thursday that a preliminary agreement had been reached that foresees the full restoration of diplomatic links.
As part of the deal, Israel is to establish a compensation fund to address the killing of 10 Turks by Israeli marines who stormed a pro-Palestinian activist ship, the Mavi Marmara, in 2010. The crew aboard the vessel had been seeking to land on the Gaza Strip, breaking an Israeli blockade of the territory.
According to the official, Israel was represented by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Netanyahu’s official in charge of reconciliation with Turkey, Joseph Ciechanover. Turkey’s Feridun Sinirlioglu, an undersecretary with the foreign ministry, represented Anakara.
Two other sources familiar with the negotiations confirmed the details.
A full signing of the agreement is expected “in coming days,” one source told the AFP news agency.
Help from a mutual friend
Relations between the two countries - both key allies for the US in the region - broke down in the wake of the raid, and Washington has been involved in trying to patch up their differences.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday hinted that a warming of ties was in the cards, saying that an improvement in relations between the two countries would benefit the region as a whole.
Erdogan said that for a normalization of relations to be possible it would be necessary to reach a deal on compensation for the storming of the ship in 2010 - as well as to agree a lifting of the Gaza embargo.
“There is so much that we, Israel, Palestine and the region can gain from such a normalization process. The region is in need of this,” Erdogan said.
News of the deal emerged hours after Netanyahu signed a major natural gas deal - with a consortium that includes US firm Noble Energy - aimed at tapping deposits below the Mediterranean.
rc/jm (AFP, AP, Reuters)
The region is not ‘in need of this’ at all. It’s just a case of two deeply treacherous governments—Turkey and Israel—whose objectives never line up with those of NATO, getting together to come up with new ways to be total idiots and liabilities.
Photos posted on Facebook claim to show US troops getting back on their plane shortly after landing.
US forces flown to Libya to support government troops had to leave after landing because of demands from a local militia group, US officials say.
It follows reports that 20 US special forces troops, equipped with advanced weaponry, landed on Monday at an airbase in western Libya.
The troops chose to leave “in an effort to avoid conflict”, a US Africa Command (Africom) spokesman told the BBC.
Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
The US forces had travelled to Libya in order to “foster relationships and enhance communication with their counterparts in the Libyan National Army”, Africom spokesman Anthony Falvo told the BBC.
The soldiers left without incident, he added.
Analysis: Rana Jawad - BBC North Africa correspondent
It is undoubtedly an embarrassing revelation for the Americans.
The timing of the incident, so close to the long-awaited deal signed by Libya’s rival parliaments on Thursday, has fuelled speculation among Libyans over what they see as the ulterior motives of the US and other Western nations.
There has been increasing suspicion that foreign troops are looking to establish their presence on the ground in Libya, especially with the so-called Islamic State grabbing more territory in recent months.
Reactions on social media ranged from accusations that the US was promoting one side of the conflict, to questions over the West’s long-term military aims in Libya.
Western nations have repeatedly spoken of their intent to support Libyan armed forces to help secure the country and combat extremism.
However, if nothing else, the incident chiefly serves as a reminder of the challenges foreign military forces will face trying to operate in a country with no central security structure.
Mr Falvo did not elaborate further on why the troops’ landing at al-Wattiya airbase had seemingly not been cleared with the relevant Libyan groups on the ground.
The airbase is not controlled directly by the Libyan army, but by a militia affiliated to it, which may explain the apparent breakdown in communication.
Unnamed Pentagon officials told national media that US forces had been “in and out of Libya” for some time, operating in an advisory, but not a combat role.
Photos of the secret mission were published on the official Facebook page of the Libyan Air Force, saying the troops had landed “without prior coordination”.
It described the forces arriving “in combat readiness wearing bullet proof jackets” carrying night-vision goggles, GPS devices and assault rifles.
Libya’s rival power bases (as of August 2015)
Libya has two rival governments, one based in the main city, Tripoli, and the other about 1,000km (620 miles) away in the port city of Tobruk.
Representatives of the two groups signed a deal in Morocco on Thursday, agreeing to form a national unity government, however their respective leaders voiced their reservations.
With the collapse of law and order in most of Libya, following the disastrous events of the Arab Spring, and the disastrous choice by some western leaders to utilise NATO as air cover for the reactionary Islamist forces that were unleashed by the process, the situation still remains unmanageable after 2011.
In the Greco-Roman era, the Roman Empire held the coastline of what is now known as modern day Libya, because it was a strategic imperative for them to hold it in order to more adequately manage the traffic on the Mediterranean Sea.
In light of the mass migration crisis, or the ‘immivasion’ as some people have taken to calling it, it may be time to consider that imperative again.
