[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.
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.
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.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Friday, 18 December 2015 22:20.
How many times have we heard from liberals that racial profiling is not only the worst thing ever, but also that in the present year we shouldn’t let age-old racial prejudices influence decisions about security and law enforcement?
Apparently that maxim of theirs only applies when it’s time for liberals to defend Arab Muslims.
It certainly doesn’t form any part of their calculus when dealing with East Asians, who they seem to know how to do the grossest and crudest profiling against with the straightest of faces:
A pop group has flown back to South Korea after officials in Los Angeles thought they might be sex workers.
The eight members were travelling to America for an album cover shoot but were detained for 15 hours in customs.
A statement from the group’s record company, WM Entertainment, said authorities held them after going through their costumes and props.
“They seem to have mistaken them as sex workers,” said a spokesman.
Oh My Girl, who formed in March, are thought to be back in South Korean capital Seoul after being released by officials at Los Angeles International Airport.
WM Entertainment says it is taking legal advice in the US to find out whether the band’s detention was legal.
The record company also said there might have been an issue with the type of visa the band members presented.
They had also been booked to perform at a gala event in Los Angeles on Saturday.
It’s unclear if they will try to return to America to complete their album cover shoot.
Oh My Girl (or OMG) brought their debut single Cupid out in April with a second mini-album and title track Closer released in October.
The band members are all aged between 16 and 21.
South Korean pop music, known as K-pop, is dominated by girl and boy bands whose members are often in their teens, although most are older.
In 2012, the South Korean government clamped down on over-sexualised performances by threatening to give higher age ratings to films, music videos and TV shows which exaggerated the sexuality of younger singers and bands.
It’s almost as though the only way to get into western liberal countries these days, is to make sure that you are an Arab Muslim with extremist Islamist beliefs.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 08 December 2015 11:47.
..give ‘who’ hell? For Jewish academics to play both sides of “PC” is nothing new. While the re-normalization and motion to institutionalize social classification is a positive development - via ‘give-em-hell Trump’ in his campaign talk - the most important issue in the end, is not just normalization, but where the lines of institutionalized discrimination are to be drawn.
Trump is saying some things that we might like to hear, with a candor that purports contempt for “political correctness”, a candor that has not been heard from the last 11 Presidents at least, spanning more than 60 years.
With that, he flouts the avoidance of “racial profiling” for having allowed the San Bernadino attack. It is indeed a positive development to assert the validity of “race” as a criteria.
“There were people who knew bad things were going on [with the family], and they didn’t report it because of racial profiling.”
Moreover, he takes the validity of “profiling”, i.e., classifying people, a bit further to say that there should be a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” the most dramatic response yet to the string of terrorist attacks that have Americans increasingly on edge.
Trump released a statement citing polling data he says shows “there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.”
Trump Calls for ‘Complete Shutdown’ of All Muslims Entering U.S.
“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” Trump said.
Yes, it is a candor and a disdain for pseudo-intellectual and polite appearance that we have not heard from a President since “give-em-hell Harry Truman.”
Excellent though it is that race and other social classifications, and borders, are being re-invoked by “give-em-hell Trump” and that he is taking steps to re-normalize and re-institutionalize these criteria as a legitimate basis for discrimination…
one might wonder what, say, Japanese, et al., might think about who-for and how the “no-nonsense” lines are being drawn.
Playing “for/against PC” is nothing new for Jewish academia; i.e., one side playing “vanguard” while the other is “hand of restraint.”
Playing “for and against PC” is nothing new for Jewish academia: In this 1990 essay for the New York Times, Richard J. Bernstein is playing the role of “restraint” -
Central to p.c.-ness, which has roots in 1960’s radicalism, is the view that Western society has for centuries been dominated by what is often called “the white male power structure” or “patriarchal hegemony.” A related belief is that everybody but white heterosexual males has suffered some form of repression and been denied a cultural voice or been prevented from celebrating what is commonly called “otherness.”
But more than an earnest expression of belief, “politically correct” has become a sarcastic jibe used by those, conservatives and classical liberals alike, to describe what they see as a growing intolerance, a closing of debate, a pressure to conform to a radical program or risk being accused of a commonly reiterated trio of thought crimes: sexism, racism and homophobia.
“It’s a manifestation of what some are calling liberal fascism,” said Roger Kimball, the author of “Tenured Radicals,” a critique of what he calls the politicization of the humanities. “Under the name of pluralism and freedom of speech, it is an attempt to enforce a narrow and ideologically motivated view of both the curriculum and what it means to be an educated person, a responsible citizen.”
The restrained activist vs the activist vanguardist
In a generation before, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter* played the role of “restraint,” viz., the role of “activist restraint” opposed to “activist vanguard” - a role that shabbos goy Earl Warren was duped to take the lead in, as Chief Justice of an “activist Court.”
We should be on the watch as well, then, for the shabbos goy being fore-fronted as the “vanguard activist”, as:
Either Trump or Hillary Clinton can be used for - what? - we might not know exactly what for sure yet, other than that it would be another travesty. Hillary Clinton may well fit the role of shabbos goy “vanguardist” for their next demonstration of “chutzpah.”
* Frankfurter, a Jew, presiding as Chief Justice in the Supreme Court prior, fancied his “a restrained activist Court” and referred to his successor, Earl Warren, as “the dumb Swede” - worried that he would take the bait in such a headlong way of “activist vanguardism” that he would create an overly strong reaction.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 05 December 2015 16:44.
Note: This article has been re-posted in MR Central on 19 Dec. 2015. Any further comments are kindly directed there.
Refugee Resettlement Watch’s Ten Reasons For Moratorium On Immigration & Appeal To Congressman Virgil Goode.
Noticing the style of the “moratorium” logo and its coincidence with an appeal to Virgil Goode, I couldn’t help but find it reminiscent of Dietrich’s VoR design..
...and also that Virgil Goode represented a unique experience for me, to actually be talking with a Congressman as I produced the Stark interview with him. Congressman Goode stayed available on my Google chat and otherwise in communique with me for several months afterwards. That was funny for me, in a good way. Though it should be normal, how many Congressmen speak openly with our kind? It speaks well of him. Ann Corcoran has placed her appeal in the right direction.
The need for reduction in immigration both legal and illegal;
National sovereignty, NAFTA, and the North American Union;
Foreign policy and the Iraq war;
Energy independence.
Virgil Goode is the presidential nominee for the Constitution Party. He represented Virginia’s 5th Congressional District as a Republic from 1997-2009. He previously served in the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat.
Now that the mainstream media and the public are waking up to the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program and how it has been operating for the last 35 years, I thought it would be a good idea to re-post this testimony I gave to the US State Department (first in 2012 at its annual scoping meeting and repeated in 2013 and 2014).
I just mentioned it in my previous post on annual reports.
As far as we can tell, the US State Department did not hold a public scoping hearing in 2015 (for FY2016) because we never saw a notice for it this year. In these ‘scoping meetings/hearings’ they ostensibly seek public input on the size of the program for the upcoming year and they want to know what countries should be the focus of protection.
The ‘scoping’ meeting (like a hearing) was usually held in late spring/early summer of the preceding year. Prior to our attendance in 2012, these meetings/hearings were dominated by the resettlement contractors and their groupies.
One more thing, the State Department does not keep and publish a hearing record for this meeting. The only way we could ever learn what others were saying is to obtain the hard copy testimony by attending in person! There ought to be a law!
Here is my testimony in 2012 (repeated in 2013 and 2014):
Ten Reasons there should be no refugees resettled in the US in FY2013—instead a moratorium should be put in place until the program is reformed and the economy completely recovers.
1) There are no jobs. The program was never meant to be simply a way to import impoverished people to the US and place them on an already overtaxed welfare system.
2) The program has become a cash cow for various “religious” organizations and other contractors who very often appear to care more about the next group of refugees coming in (and the cash that comes with each one) than the group they resettled only a few months earlier. Stories of refugees suffering throughout the US are rampant.
3) Terrorist organizations (mostly Islamic) are using the program that still clearly has many failings in the security screening system. Indeed consideration should be given to halting the resettlement of Muslims altogether. Also, the UN should have no role in choosing refugees for the US.
4) The public is not confident that screenings for potential terrorists (#3) or the incidences of other types of fraudulent entry are being properly and thoroughly investigated and stopped. When fraud is uncovered—either fraud to enter the country or illegal activity once the refugee has been resettled—punishment should be immediate deportation.
5) The agencies, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. A moratorium is necessary in order for the ORR to bring its records entirely up-to-date. Additionally, there needs to be an adequate tracking system designed to gather required data—frankly some of the numbers reported for such measures of dependence on welfare as food stamp usage, cash assistance and employment status are nothing more than guesses. (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)
6) The State Department and the ORR have so far failed to adequately determine and report (and track once the refugee has been admitted) the myriad communicable and costly-to-treat diseases entering the country with the refugee population.
7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.
8) Congress needs to investigate and specifically disallow any connection between this program and big businesseslooking for cheap and captive labor. The federal government should not be acting as head-hunter for corporations.
9) The Volag system should be completely abolished and the program should be run by state agencies with accountability to the public through their state legislatures. The system as presently constituted is surely unconstitutional. (One of many benefits of turning the program over to a state agency is to break up the government/contractor revolving door that is being demonstrated now at both the State Department and ORR.) The participating state agency’s job would be to find groups, churches, or individuals who would sponsor a refugee family completely for at least a year and monitor those sponsors. Their job would include making sure refugees are assimilating. A mechanism should be established that would allow a refugee to go home if he or she is unhappy or simply can’t make it in America. Short of a complete halt to resettlement-by-contractor, taxpayers should be protected by legally requiring financial audits of contractors and subcontractors on an annual basis.
10) As part of #9, there needs to be established a process for alerting communities to the impending arrival of refugees that includes reports from the federal government (with local input) about the social and economic impact a certain new group of refugees will have on a city or town. This report would be presented to the public through public hearings and the local government would have an opportunity to say ‘no.’
For these reasons and more, the Refugee admissions program should be placed on hold and a serious effort made by Congress to either scrap the whole thing or reform it during the moratorium. My recommendation for 2013 is to stop the program now. The Office of the President could indeed ask for hearings to review the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980-–three decades is time enough to see its failings and determine if reauthorization is feasible or whether a whole new law needs to be written.
Information on the three hearings we wrote about and attended are archived here, here and here. (Those files include posts in which we referenced the hearings/meetings as well.)
By the way, Richard revolved into the State Department from her contractor job at the International Rescue Committee. She had a previous stint at the State Dept. The revolving door is alive and well between contractor and federal agency involving refugee resettlement.
Did you see that even the NY Times wrote about the female Islamic terrorist, how there was no way to “vet” her or to “screen” her as she came to live among us. Any logical person can see that. There was no d*** data, no biographic or biometric information to tap! And, if asked about any terror connections in personal interviews she certainly didn’t tell the truth.
So, don’t you wonder why only TEN US Senators can see that and that 89 others are so willfully blind. See our post on Senator Paul’s failed attempt at a moratorium on issuing visas to those coming from jihad-producing countries.
And, here see Daniel Greenfield on the killers yesterday. If you read nothing else from Greenfield’s post, this is the line every one must grasp:
It’s a matter of simple math that as the population most likely to commit terrorist acts increases, so do the acts themselves.
I went back to our archives to see when I first heard anyone suggest a MORATORIUM on Muslim immigration and want to give a shout-out to former Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode who saw the San Bernardino slaughter coming 9 years ago! Learn about how the politically correct harpies at the Washington Post treated him then. His position, in support of a moratorium on legal (Muslim) immigration to America cost him his seat. We told you more about him here in 2010.
Political correctness is dead! Everyone of you must start saying the ‘M’ word! MORATORIUM! Moratorium on Muslim migration to America, NOW!
Thank you Mr. Goode! Goode is a Trump supporter in Virginia today!
‘Access to Europe is too easy,’ Tusk said. (Photo: Consillium)
The current influx of migrants is “too big not to stop them,” European Council president Donald Tusk has said. He proposed that irregular migrants are detained for up to 18 months to check their identity.
In an interview with six European newspapers, Tusk said there is “no majority” in Europe for plans to relocate asylum seekers and that the priority should be the protection of Schengen’s external borders.
The scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece has been pushed by Tusk’s EU Commission counterpart, Jean-Claude Juncker, and by Germany’s Angela Merkel. So far, just a few dozen people have been relocated.
“I am convinced there is no majority in the EU for such a system,” Tusk said, adding that “this time, central Europe is not the only problem.”
“Let’s avoid hypocrisy: it is not a question of international solidarity anymore, but a problem of European capacities. Europeans would be less reluctant if the EU’s external border was really under control,” he said.
“Today access to Europe is, simply speaking, too easy,” he added.
Tusk, who chairs the summits of EU leaders, asked them to “change [their] mindset” and covertly took on Merkel.
“Some [leaders] say the wave of migrants is too big to stop them. That is dangerous,” he said.
“This wave of migrants is too big not to stop them,” he said, adding that nobody is ready “to absorb these high numbers, Germany included.”
Effective controls
He noted that debate on migration has slipped out of the hands of “politicians or intellectuals or commentators” and has gone “really public because the fear and uncertainty is so genuine.”
He also reiterated that the key is border control.
“Every country must respect and apply the Schengen Borders Code, including the rule that asylum requests be filed in the country of arrival, for example Greece, and not somewhere else,” Tusk said.
“It is often said that we must be open to Syrian refugees. But these are only 30 percent of the inflow. Seventy percent are economic migrants. Also for this reason we need more effective controls,” Tusk noted.
Controls are not only a matter of stemming the flow, but also a question of security, he said, floating the idea that the EU should be ready to detain illegal migrants as long as it can to check them.
“If you want to screen migrants and refugees, you need more time than only one minute to fingerprint,” he noted, adding that international and European law allow up to 18 months “for the screening we need.”
Will Donald Tusk’s voice be heeded though, I wonder?
EU may take up to 500,000 refugees from Turkey, Orban says
German government official denies that secret deal was made
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch opponent of accepting refugees into the European Union, said Germany struck a “secret pact” with Turkey to take in as many as half a million people.
The initiative, which wasn’t part of a weekend agreement between Turkey and the EU on curbing the flow of refugees, may be announced by Germany within days, Orban told a forum of ethnic Hungarian leaders in Budapest on Wednesday. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans dismissed reports of a covert deal as “nonsense.”
“Beyond what we agreed with Turkey in Brussels there’s something that doesn’t figure in the agreement,” Orban said. “We’ll wake up one day—and I think this will be announced in Berlin as soon as this week—that we have to take in 400,000 to 500,000 refugees directly from Turkey.”
Facing the biggest influx of refugees since World War II and reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, the EU over the weekend agreed to relaunch Turkey’s bid for membership in the bloc and offered a package of 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to help finance refugee camps.
French Reaction
“France and Germany are working together to manage the flow of migrants, which is a challenge to everyone,” French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters in Paris on Wednesday. “Last weekend the union reached an agreement with Turkey,” and Orban should be aware of the details since he was there, Le Foll said.
A German government official, requesting anonymity because EU-Turkey talks are ongoing, said Orban’s claim that Germany made a secret deal is false.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker met with the leaders of eight member states on the sidelines of the EU-Turkey summit in Brussels, spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told reporters on Nov. 30 without disclosing details of the meeting. The EU commission agreed to prepare a framework for a “voluntary scheme” by Dec. 15, she said.
While some leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have insisted Europe must honor its asylum commitments and want EU members to accept refugees according to binding quotas, others such as Orban reject immigration by Muslims and sealed off their borders with fences. Merkel also confirmed after the Brussels summit that she had met with seven other EU leaders to discuss a plan to settle refugees from Turkey.
The plan to take in refugees from Turkey directly was also raised at a summit of EU leaders in Malta last month and was shelved after it became clear that some countries including Hungary were prepared to use their veto power to block it, Orban said.
“There’ll be tremendous pressure on us” and on other central European countries “that if somebody already agreed to this—and to avoid causing a diplomatic tussle by naming the country I’m not going to say where Berlin is—that we shouldn’t just take them in but distribute them according to binding quotas,” Orban said. “This nasty surprise is still waiting for Europeans.”
People have underestimated the Hungarians, but it seems that they are truly acting as Europe’s demographic gendarme at this stage in the game.
Hopefully whatever the people in Berlin are cooking up this time, will be stopped through the valiant efforts of the people on the streets, through mass protests and mass demonstrations.
Today’s shadow cabinet agreed to back Jeremy Corbyn’s recommendation of a free vote on the government’s proposal to authorise UK bombing in Syria.
The shadow cabinet decided to support the call for David Cameron to step back from the rush to war and hold a full two day [public] debate in the House of Commons on such a crucial national decision.
Shadow Cabinet members agreed to call David Cameron to account on the unanswered questions raised by his case for bombing: including how it would accelerate a negotiated settlement of the Syrian civil war; what ground troops would take territory evacuated by ISIS; military co-ordination and strategy; the refugee crisis and the imperative to cut-off of supplies to ISIS.
It’s almost as though the Labour party is staffed by actual retards.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
