[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[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.
Occidental Dissent, “Chuck Schumer Caught On Hot Mic Discussing Budding Partnership With President Cuck”, 15 Sept 2017:
Hey, MAGApedes, I know you guys have gotten as slippery as water snakes in your defense of President Trump, but I would very much like to see y’all defend what you’re about to hear courtesy of C-SPAN and a nice steaming hot mic.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor Thursday morning to discuss Equifax’s massive security breach; the physical limitations of a border wall; and his supposed agreement with President Trump, struck alongside his House counterpart Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to work to preserve protections for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
But before he officially took to the floor, Schumer bounded into the Senate chamber just after a speech by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and took a minute to converse with a colleague. “Sorry, just got here. Anything new?” Schumer can be heard saying on C-SPAN2’s live feed of the Senate, though he’s not seen on video. Then: “He likes us! He likes me, anyway,” Schumer says with a chuckle.
Schumer is presumably referring to himself and Pelosi, and Trump’s apparent affection for them — or one of them, anyway. He continues telling his unseen colleague that the statement he and Pelosi put out about Trump’s DACA promise was “exactly accurate.” “Here’s what I told him,” Schumer continues. “I said: ‘Mr. President, you’re much better off if you can sometimes step right and sometimes step left. If you have to step just in one direction, you’re boxed.’ He gets that.”
Let’s just be real here, Brothers, it’s pretty damned bad.
Like, it’s so bad that there really isn’t much room for maneuver whatsoever.
You can’t even make the argument that there is some sort of negotiating ploy alive here – most folks would say that we’re either seeing Trump operating on a Sub-Saharan IQ level, or we’re merely watching Jewry pulling a move honed by both time and use among peoples ranging from the Pagan Romans to the Catholic Poles.
Honestly, I see neither situation at play here – instead I see a man who because of blackmail (increasingly unlikely), through ignorance gifted by being a member of the 1% (possible), or by infection with the same egalitarian corruption that permeates both political parties (most possible) cares little about the White Man in the United States.
He would rather break bread with liberal Jews (and marry his daughter off to one), than sit with the working man whose ancestors built up this country from swamp, woods, and hostile wilderness.
But hey, if you’re just an average Trump supporter, don’t think I’m mocking you or gloating in the downfall of the President – the biggest fanbois are just in it for the money, their brand, or are trapped into a personality cult due to weird daddy issues that may never be cured.
Like you, I too was caught up in the frenzy during 2015 and 2016, and at points I truly hoped that Donald would at the very least buy us time by enacting policies that really aren’t too radical when you break everything down.
I went to rallies, pushed The Don on normies sitting on the fence, and literally wrote 2,000 or so articles covering the most exciting political race in living memory.
I have no regrets, and I feel no remorse, but I would like you to take a long look at what the Alt-Right is offering – we’ll actually fullfil our promises, and we’ll actually work to make America (or at least a chunk of the country) great again.
Indeed, people should take a long hard look at what the Alt-Right is offering, doing, who they are collaborating with and not follow them into the Jewish bum steers that they take without regrets, remorse - without learning. People should also avoid following the Alt-Right’s self defeating reactions thereof.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 13 September 2017 09:11.
Gatestone Inst., “Germany Heading for Four More Years of Pro-EU, Open-Door Migration Policies”, 8 Sept 2017:
The policy positions of Merkel and Schulz on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
Merkel and Schulz both agree that there should be no upper limit on the number of migrants entering Germany.
Merkel’s grand coalition backed a law that would penalize social media giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, with fines of €50 million ($60 million) if they fail to remove offending content from their platforms within 24 hours. Observers say the law is aimed at silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is on track win a fourth term in office after polls confirmed she won the first and only televised debate with her main election opponent, Martin Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Union Party (SDP).
A survey for the public broadcaster ARD showed that 55% of viewers thought Merkel was the “more convincing” candidate during the debate, which took place on September 3; only 35% said Schulz came out ahead.
Many observers agreed that Schulz failed to leverage the debate to revive his flagging campaign, while others noted that Schulz’s positions on many issues are virtually indistinguishable from those held by Merkel.
Rainald Becker, an ARD commentator, described the debate as, “More a duet than a duel.”
“Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch,” wrote Heribert Prantl, a commentator at Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The candidate is an honorable man. But being honorable alone will not make him chancellor.”
Christian Lindner, leader of the classical liberal Free Democrats, compared the debate to “scenes from a long marriage, where there is the occasional quarrel, but both sides know that they have to stick together in the future, too.”
Television presenter Günther Jauch, writing in Bild, said he had hoped to “at least understand what differentiates Merkel and Schulz in political terms. Instead, it was just a conversation between two political professionals who you suspect could both work pretty seamlessly in the same government.”
Radio and television host Thomas Gottschalk said that the two candidates agreed with each other too often: “They were both always nodding their heads when the other was speaking.”
Germany’s general election is scheduled for September 24. If voters went to the polls now, Merkel’s CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), would win 39%, according to a September 4 Politbarometer survey conducted for the public broadcaster ZDF.
Coming in second, Schulz’s SDP would win 22%; the classical liberal Free Democrats (FDP) 10%; the far-left Linke 9%; the Greens 8% and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) 8%.
The poll also found that 57% of respondents said they preferred that Merkel serve another term; only 28% favored Schulz to become the next chancellor. Nevertheless, half of Germany’s 60 million voters are said to be undecided, and some pollsters believe that the country’s huge non-voting population may determine the outcome.
As Merkel’s CDU/CSU is unlikely to emerge from the election with an absolute majority, the 2017 vote effectively revolves around the issue of coalition-building. If current polling holds, Merkel, who has vowed to serve a full four years if re-elected, will have two main options.
Merkel could form another so-called grand coalition, an alliance of Germany’s two biggest parties, namely the CDU/CSU and the SPD.
Merkel currently governs with a grand coalition and has done so during two of her three terms in office.
Both the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have said they hope to end the grand coalition and lead the government with smaller partners after the September election. After the debate, however, many observers believe a grand coalition between Merkel and Schulz is more probable than not.
Merkel’s second option would be to form a three-way coalition with the Greens and the FDP, which served as junior coalition partner to the CDU/CSU for almost half of Germany’s post-war history. Merkel has already ruled out forming a coalition with either the Linke or the AfD.
In any event, the policy positions of Merkel and Schulz on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) and her main election opponent, Martin Schulz (left), whose policy positions on key issues are virtually identical. (Image source: European Parliament/Flickr)
Merkel and Schulz are ardent Europhiles and both are committed to more European federalism. During an August 12 campaign speech in Dortmund, for example, Merkel described the European Union as the “greatest peace project” in history and vowed that she would never turn her back on this “wonderful project.”
Previously, Merkel said:
“We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy. And we need most of all a political union — that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control.”
Merkel has also endorsed the idea of a European Monetary Fund to deal with sovereign defaults by eurozone countries:
“It could make us even more stable and allow us to show the world that we have all the mechanisms in our own portfolio of the euro zone to be able to react well to unexpected situations.”
Schulz has argued that the EU must be preserved at any cost:
“We are at a historical juncture: A growing number of people are declaring what has been achieved over the past decades in Europe to be wrong. They want to return to the nation-state. Sometimes there is even a blood and soil rhetoric that for me is starkly reminiscent of the interwar years of the past century, whose demons we are still all too familiar with. We brought these demons under control through European structures, but if we destroy those structures, the demons will return. We cannot allow this to happen.”
Schulz has opposed the idea of holding national referendums on leaving the EU:
“Referendums have always posed a threat when it comes to EU policy, because EU policy is complicated. They are an opportunity for those from all political camps who like to oversimplify things.”
Schulz has also voiced optimism that the British decision to leave the European Union would facilitate the creation of a European Army:
“In the fields of security and defense policy, although the EU loses a key member state, paradoxically such a separation could give the necessary impulse for a closer integration of the remaining member states.”
During the September 3 debate, Schulz declared that he would end Turkey’s accession talks to join the European Union because of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarianism. Merkel initially said she opposed such a move but then suddenly changed her mind. Unexpectedly, Merkel said: “The fact is clear that Turkey should not become an EU member.”
On the issue of migration, Schulz and Merkel differ on procedure, not principle. During the debate, for example, Schulz accused Merkel of failing to involve the European Union in her 2015 decision to open German borders to more than a million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Merkel said that although some mistakes had been made, she would take the same decision again.
In fact, Merkel and Schulz both agree that there should be no upper limit on the number of migrants entering Germany: “On the issue of an upper limit, my position is clear,” Merkel told ARD television. “I won’t accept one.”
Schulz has said:
“A numerical cap is not a response to the refugee issue, even if it is agreed upon in a European context. What do we do with the first refugee who comes to the European frontier and has no quota available? Do we send him back to perhaps a sure death? As long as this question is not resolved, such a discussion makes no sense.”
Schulz believes the European Union should have a greater role in migration policymaking:
“What we need is a European right of immigration and asylum. The refugee crisis shows us clearly that we cannot give a national response to a global phenomenon such as the refugee movements. This is only possible in a European context.”
Merkel has criticized Hungary for failing to show “solidarity” in aiding refugees. She has also vowed to punish Poland for its refusal to take in more migrants from the Muslim world:
“As much as I wish for good relations with Poland — they are our neighbor and I will always strive for this given the importance of our ties — we can’t simply keep our mouth shut in order to keep the peace. This goes to the very foundations of our cooperation within the European Union.”
Schulz vowed that, if elected chancellor, he would push for the EU to cut subsidies to countries that do not take in refugees: “With me as chancellor, we won’t accept that solidarity as a principle is questioned.”
Meanwhile, Merkel’s grand coalition backed a law that would penalize social media giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, with fines of €50 million ($60 million) if they fail to remove offending content from their platforms within 24 hours. Observers say the law is aimed at silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy.
Like Merkel, Schulz has reserved his worst vitriol for the anti-immigration AfD, whose leaders he has described as “rat catchers” (Rattenfänger) who are “trying to profit from the plight of refugees.” He has also called them “shameful and repulsive.”
In an August 22 interview with Bild, Merkel answered critics of her desire to continue in power by saying that the longer she rules, the better she gets: “I’ve decided to run for another four years and believe that the mix of experience and curiosity and joy that I have could make the next four years good ones.”
Note that according to EU rules, when migrants are granted permission to stay in Germany they are free to move anywhere within the EU after three years.
My personal position with regard to so-called “Hispanics” is that we should first of all differentiate among them. “Hispanic” is an egregious term, auguring to do the very worst thing which we seek to stave-off, i.e., to blend away racial distinctions, as the term covers and then tends to politically coerce the blending of Amerindians, Whites, Jews and blacks.
We need to distinguish them hence. We need to distinguish Marrano “huWhites”. We need to distinguish those who are black and have anything beyond a small amount of black - they should be looked upon as an out group - not our friends: e.g., Puerto Ricans typically have a significant amount of sub-Saharan African, 25%. Whereas Mexicans on average have only small amount, 4% as evaluated by National Geographic Human Genome Project, Gen 2.0. These kinds, Amerindians and Indios (mixed Indian and White) should be looked upon as people to cultivate as allies.
Certain Caribbean mixes should be shown some compassion in an effort to reconstruct as much as possible the now non-existent pure Indian strains which were forcibly bred-away with African slaves by Spanish conquistadors. Similarly, Indos should be allowed protection from furthering of the mongrelization that was visited upon them by the Spanish conquests.
As these historical errors are corrected, “a new dream” act should be enunciated in which the riches and opportunities of the Americas are shared between Whites, Asians and Amerindios in exchange for friendly terms and alliance with Whites against black, Jewish and Muslim imposition.
This must be arranged in accordance with human ecological and resource management - especially population carrying capacity: which tends to be the elephant in the room that liberals overlook in their anti-racist fervor. Make the said kinds friends and hold them accountable to our alliance in pervasive ecology and human ecology of our distinct kinds. We do this deliberately, or we are without a vast alliance, in fact it is arrayed against us as distinct peoples (nationals) and our habitats all…
Opinion // Save DACA: We U.S. Jews Won’t Let Trump End the American Dream
On DACA, the president appears unmoved by arguments of compassion, humanity, national interest or common sense. Now is the time to take a stand and take action.
“Dreamers” originally from Ecuador watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ remarks on ending the DACA program on a smartphone in Manhattan, September 5, 2017. Credit: Drew Angerer/AFP
The Trump administration moved on Tuesday to terminate the legal status of 800,000 immigrant children and young adults. These young people are currently protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA is only available to people who have been in the United States continuously since June 2007, so this decision will exclusively impact kids and young adults who have been in the country for at least 10 years and have impeccably clean records. About three quarters of the so-called “dreamers” have U.S. citizen family members, and one quarter have U.S. citizen children.
DACA is an executive action taken by President Barack Obama in 2012 after decades of failure in Congress to enact any kind of immigration reform. There is broad agreement across party lines that people who were brought to the United States as children by their parents did not make a choice to come here, and therefore should be allowed to stay in the country that they call home. Leaders of both parties, as well as business leaders, faith leaders, and the majority of Americans polled about it, support DACA and have urged President Donald Trump to keep it in place.
Like generations of immigrants before, including millions of Jewish parents and grandparents, the parents of these kids have made enormous sacrifices, not for themselves, but in the hope that their children would have a chance at a real future.
These kids are American in all but paperwork, and they are now living in fear. In just a few months, they may not be able to legally work, and will face arrest, jail and deportation. These are kids who have gone to school, made friends, joined teams, grew up, enlisted in the military, went to college, went to work, volunteered and lived normal, American lives. This moment should feel scary, disturbing and eerily familiar to all Jewish Americans.
Ending DACA serves no legitimate policy purpose and in fact, will hurt the U.S. economy. Particularly as we work to recover from Hurricane Harvey, where many DACA recipients are actively taking part in rescue and rebuilding efforts, the cruelty of this decision is in plain view.
Ending DACA will also make us less safe. As losing legal status causes people to recede into the shadows, they will be afraid to call and cooperate with the police. More parents will be afraid to take their kids to school and to church, to the park and to the doctor. More kids will live in fear of the knock on the door that will take their parents away.
HIAS is the global Jewish organization that protects refugees. We stand for a world in which refugees find welcome, safety and freedom. Guided by our Jewish values and history, we bring more than 135 years of expertise to our work with refugees. But our work is just one piece of the larger culture of equality and welcome we strive to create together with our supporters in the American Jewish community. Threats to the DACA program are not only threats to immigrants, but to justice, fairness and the longstanding values of our country.
This country’s history of accepting refugees and immigrants has offered generations of Jewish Americans the opportunity to recognize our full human potential and become part of the fabric of America. While there are disturbing elements that would deny this, and their voices are louder now, it is still true. It would be a stunning reversal and betrayal of our history to deny this opportunity to others who have already contributed so much.
The president appears unmoved by arguments of compassion, humanity, national interest or common sense. Now is the time for American Jews to take a stand and take action through elected officials in Congress. We can call Congress and insist that our representatives immediately pass a law that will allow these kids and young adults to stay here legally and permanently. This law must include no conditions or trade-offs, or in any way punish other immigrants.
We must restore basic fairness and morality to the way we treat immigrants in this country, and there is no better place to start than with these young Americans.
Melanie Nezer, Haaretz Contributor, is senior vice president of public affairs for HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 10 September 2017 06:51.
It is a playbook prescribing Islamic conquest that translates directly to that or your rape, brutalization and death. Ultimately it is kill or be killed unless they back-off of their religion for real.
Newscom.au, “Myanmar: Whole villages destroyed as satellite spots devastation from above”, 4 Sept 2017
GRAPHIC details are filtering through of violent massacres in towns that have been cut off from the modern day world. WARNING: Graphic.
A SATELLITE map has unearthed the charred remains of entire communities as terrified residents claim they are the targets of a new-world genocide.
“Some people were beheaded, and many were cut. We were in the house hiding when [armed residents from a neighbouring village] were beheading people. When we saw that, we just ran out the back of the house,” said Sultan Ahmed, a 27-year-old man from the former Chut Pyin village in Myanmar.
Sultan is among a group of 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims that are often described as “the world’s most persecuted minority”.
Rohingya people have lived for centuries in the western state of Rakhine, in Myanmar, but for decades have been persecuted by the Myanmar government. They are not considered among the country’s 135 official ethnic groups. The country has even denied them citizenship since 1982 and the state is one of the poorest in the country.
On August 27, it is alleged Myanmar state security forces and local armed-residents committed mass killings of Rohingya Muslim men, women and children. The military unleashed what it called “clearance operations”. Myanmar’s army chief justified the slaughter as “unfinished business”.
“We haven’t eaten in 4 days,” says Rohingya Muslim woman refugee.
“The killing spree lasted for approximately 5 hours - from 2 to 7pm” reported Fortify Rights.
More than 2600 villages were burned down throughout the state. It is becoming one of the “deadliest bouts of violence involving the Muslim minority in decades”, according to Reuters.
The violence — and ensuing exodus — saw survivors bringing with them harrowing tales of rape and murder at the hands of the military and Buddhist mobs.
“Some are gaunt and spent, already starving and carrying listless and dehydrated babies, with many miles to go,” read the New York Times on the new crisis facing the modern world.
It’s a result not helped by the silence of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by Western critics of failing to support the Muslim minority that has long complained of persecution.
“The military came with 200 people to the village and started fires ... All the houses in my village are already destroyed. If we go back there and the army sees us, they will shoot,” Jalal Ahmed, 60, who arrived in Bangladesh last week with a group of about 3,000 after walking for almost a week, told Reuters.
Liberty GB applies some sensible advice on the matter of compassion and moderate Islam:
LibertyGB, “Tooth-to-Tail Ratio, or the Illusion of the Moderate Muslim Majority”, by Frank Phillips, 9 Sep 2017:
I would like to add my thoughts on the “majority of Muslims are peaceful” claim, and explain why it is pure fantasy.
1. TINY TEAM WINS, LARGE CROWD LOSES
All of us have heard, although in a different context, that it is not size that matters, but technique. Snicker as much as you like, but that is actually true. A lioness cannot match a buffalo in one-on-one combat, and a pride of lionesses is certainly outnumbered and ‘outhorned’ (outgunned) by a herd of buffalos. So how can they win despite these odds; how can 5-6 lionesses disrupt 50-60 buffalos to hunt down the one buffalo they want to seize?
Because the buffalos are just a crowd, but the lionesses are a team. Victory is achieved not by a large but otherwise loitering and incoherent crowd, but by a core-sized, action-oriented and coherent team.
2. THE TOOTH-TO-TAIL RATIO
This expression refers to the number of warriors who do the fighting, and the number of caretakers who sustain warriors so they can do the fighting. Hence, they are called combat troops and combat service support troops, respectively.
If you have no military experience, don’t panic, just pay attention!
A warrior needs ammunition, water, food, clothing, shelter and medicine. Fail to provide him the aforementioned items, and he will stand there empty-handed, dehydrated, hungry, shivering, exposed and sick, and ultimately he will die or surrender. Succeed in providing him these items, and he will sustain his function: fighting.
Or think of a football player. While it is true that the player does the ‘fighting’, he is supported by doctors, nutrition experts, fitness trainers, contract lawyers, financial advisors etc. to ensure his top-notch performance.
Or think of a novelist. While he does the ‘fighting’ for sure, there are typists, editors, travel agents, accountants etc. who keep him on the roll.
The football player and novelist are combat troops: the tooth. The others are the combat service support troops: the tail.
As you can see, the tooth is always significantly smaller than the tail. And while it is the tooth that bites into you, his bite would not be a reality without the tail sustaining the sharp and pointy status of the tooth.
3. WARRIORS IN THE COMMUNITY, OR THE INSURMOUNTABLE 15%
The tooth-to-tail ratio is understood not just within the armed forces, but also in any human community, let it be a village, a region or a country.
By 1944, German forces had been pushed back to their country, and the Allies on the Western Front and the Soviets on the Eastern Front were on the verge to enter Germany. It was essential for the Third Empire to mobilize as many able-bodied men as they could to fight for survival.
At that time, Germany had about 70 million residents, and the German forces had about 10 million men in arms. That is about 14% of the population, so a minority compared to the rest 86%. Why did they not set up an army of 20 or 30 million, considering the huge manpower of the Allies and the Soviet Union? 20 or 30 million are more likely to repel an invasion than 10 million. The answer is easy – they simply could not afford it.
Or think of North Korea. This country has the highest number of soldiers per capita, meaning 24 million residents and 1.2 million servicemen. That is just a 5% minority, compared to the remaining 95% of the population. Even in this case, the country is staggering on the verge of economic collapse, is kept alive only by Chinese investments, and was plagued by famine in the 1990s having caused death-by-starvation to about 2 million people.
Or think of the United States of America. This country has about 318 million residents and armed forces of about 1.3 million servicemen, thus the latter forms only about 0.4% of the population. With its involvement in as many as 160 countries (there are 200 countries on Earth), the upkeep of this tiny 0.4%, compared to the 99.6% of the population, has pushed the U.S. into sky-high debt.
This is what everybody has to understand: you can mobilize all the men you want, but who will provide weapons and food and fuel and medicine for those men if there are no workers and farmers and engineers and doctors? Nobody. Thus, your gigantic army soon will start to crumble and fall apart.
Military history and experience indicate that at any given time, a community can field and maintain no more than 10-15% of the population – they are the ‘extremists’ who do the fighting. Thus, you will always have at least 85% of ‘moderates’, i.e. average people who do not engage in extreme activities like fighting, but who, in reality, are likely to work hard to maintain the fighting capability of the 5-10-15%.
This is the reason you will never see the majority of Muslims becoming extremists and fighting the infidel – it is a physical impossibility. However, this truth also warns us that the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims are not necessarily moderate because they have chosen that lifestyle, but because they cannot surmount the barrier forced upon them by mathematics and logistics (war material supply).
This was repeated by Muslim scholar Abul Ala Maududi who explained that jihad was not only combat for Allah but all efforts that helped those waging combat (qitaal):
“In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort.”
4. POSITION IN POWER REVEALS YOUR TRUE FACE
“A man’s character is most evident by how he treats those not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate.” Paul Eldridge.
It is easy to claim to be a moderate when you have no chance to win an open-out conflict. However, we must take a look at dozens of countries where Muslims have supreme power: there are 57 Muslim states, plus many city districts in Europe, America and Australia where they form the majority, or where they are numerous. What do we see in those places: the fair treatment of people of different religions, of the fairer sex, of dissenting opinion, or a ruthless knockdown on them?
Exactly – it is the latter attitude that prevails, without any exception. Where are those so-called moderates calling for the abolishment of Sharia (the law of Islam)? Nowhere.
This must be no surprise as survey after survey indicates that both Muslims in Muslim countries and Muslims in the West favour, either as a majority opinion or in significant numbers, the execution of apostates, honour murders, the corporal punishment of women, and other rules set by Sharia.
5. A MUSLIM LIKES THE QURAN AND THE PROPHET MOHAMMED. DUH!
“Show me the man you honour, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.” – Thomas Carlyle
The so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim is still a Muslim – he believes what the Quran teaches and takes the Prophet Mohammed as his role model. He would not be a Muslim if he did not believe in those things. Duh!
Therefore, the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim is not a peaceful person – if he were peaceful, he would contradict the teachings of the Quran and the actions of the Prophet Mohammed, which would be blasphemy.
So just because he does not wave a sword, roar “Allahu Akbar!” and demand the jizya, it does not mean that he is peaceful – maybe he prefers that his comrades do the dirty work for him and for the cause of Islam.
6. WE MUST WIN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF MODERATE MUSLIMS TO BEAT RADICAL ISLAMISTS. *FACEPALM*
Did we win the hearts and minds of moderate Nazis to beat radical Nazis? Did we win the hearts and minds of moderate Communists to beat radical Communismists?
Instead of creating and using non-existing words to pussyfoot around the problem, let’s face reality: A Nazi is a Nazi. Period. A Commie is a Commie. Period. A Muzzie is a Muzzie. Period.
If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas. Anything else is just lazy excuse.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 07 September 2017 08:56.
WSJ,“Hungary and Slovakia Must Admit Refugees as Part of European Union Relocation Program, Court Rules”, 6 Sept 2017:
Ruling comes amid rising tensions between the EU’s Western and Eastern members over whether the bloc has the authority to resettle refugees.
The EUs top court on Wednesday ruled that Hungary and Slovakia must admit migrants as part of a refugee relocation program, a significant victory for Brussels that resurfaces deep disagreements over immigration policy within the bloc.
The ruling comes amid rising tensions between the EU’s Western and Eastern members over whether the bloc has the authority to resettle refugees in countries whose politicians have called for refugee bans, an issue which has roiled politics across the region since a major influx of people two summers ago.
In Hungary, a senior official said the government wouldn’t accept the ruling. The prime minister and his cabinet were in a meeting immediately after the news broke to discuss legal and political options to oppose it.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has consistently rejected the idea of refugee quotas and instead asked the EU to contribute to a border fence his government erected to prevent migrants from entering the country. European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker in an interview with the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday rejected that request and said Hungary must show solidarity with other nations in dealing with the refugee burden.
“ECJ confirms relocation scheme valid. Time to work in unity and implement solidarity in full,” tweeted EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos.
Officials in Slovakia said they would soon issue a more detailed response but initially appeared to accept the ruling. “Of course we respect the decision made by the court,” said Slovak Foreign Ministry spokesman Peter Susko.
In its judgment, the European Court of Justice rejected legal arguments brought by the two countries and said that the EU was right to set up an emergency relocation program in 2015, at the height of the migration crisis that swept the continent. The program was aimed at redistributing more evenly across the bloc up to 120,000 asylum seekers who had arrived in Greece and Italy. Only 28,000 people were moved under that program, which was supposed to be completed this autumn.
In 2015 the program was adopted by a majority vote with Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania opposing. Poland at the time agreed to the program, but a new government in Warsaw subsequently changed course and refused to take in any refugees. Poland also backed Slovakia and Hungary in the proceedings before court.
The case is a likely to fuel ongoing spats that Poland and Hungary are engaged in with the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch. The fights center on what Brussels considers democracy-eroding measures being put in place in the two countries. The commission has separately started legal proceedings against Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic for refusing to accept any asylum seekers under the relocation plan. If they don’t change course by the time a ruling is made, the countries could face financial penalties.
The Wednesday ruling follows a legal opinion by the court’s top lawyer, who said in late July that the two countries’ case should be dismissed.
...if there was ever a doubt that the European Union is evil, that removes it.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 05 September 2017 08:30.
Free Thought Project, “Rothschild Just Dumped Massive Amounts of US Assets, Sending an Ominous Signal”, 30 Aug 2017:
In an ominous move, Lord Jacob Rothschild has aggressively moved to limit his exposure to “risky” U.S. capital markets.
In what is a sure signal to oligarchs across the globe, Lord Jacob Rothschild, founder and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, has substantially minimized his exposure to what he views as a risky and unstable U.S. capital market. In the half-yearly financial report for RIT Capital Partners, Rothschild explained the company’s aggressive moves to significantly reduce exposure to U.S. assets.
“We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured,” Rothschild said in his semi-annual report.
Additionally, Rothschild stated that he believes quantitative easing (QE) programs employed by central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. will “come to an end.”
Rothschild was quoted in the report as saying, “The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end.”
Signaling a potential disaster in the making in the United States financial markets, Rothschild reduced the investments RIT Capital Partners has in the U.S. dollar by nearly fifty percent. On December 31, 2016, RIT Capital Partners reported a 62 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars. In the latest report released by RIT Capital Partners on June 30, 2017, the company has a 37 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars.
Over that same period of time, Rothschild increased RIT’s investment in Sterling and the Euro.
Just last year, the bond manager of what was once the world’s largest bond fund had a dire prediction about how “all of this” will all end. And by “all of this,” he means the propping up of financial markets by central banks.
Janus Henderson U.S. @JHIAdvisorsUS
Gross: Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of neg. rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one
When the U.S. stock market is trading at all-time highs, but Lord Rothschild is divesting RIT from those same markets, the central bank manipulation of market valuations becomes apparent.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that Rothschild’s RIT investment portfolio has returned roughly 2,000% since its formation – so he obviously understands how to position his assets to get big returns on investments, thus these recent moves should be a red flag to every American.
In explaining his recent investment moves, Rothschild, the RIT chairman stated:
“We have a particular interest in investments which will benefit from the impact of new technologies, and Far Eastern markets, influenced by the growing demand from Asian consumers.”
The report also noted that RIT had invested in Social Capital, a tech investment firm based in Silicon Valley, and that Francesco Goedhuis, Chief Executive of J. Rothschild Capital Management, will serve on the company’s advisory board. Social Capital provides seed funding for companies in the education, finance, and health care business sectors.
Rothschild also mentioned the advent of a fourth industrial revolution in the RIT Capital Partners report, noting, “As the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ develops, it becomes increasingly important for your Company to be able to assess investment opportunities in the innovation driven changes which are affecting almost every business sector.”
The fourth industrial revolution will be driven by new technologies that work to integrate the digital, biological, and physical worlds. Rothschild indicated in the report that the fourth industrial revolution was a driving factor in his investment in Social Capital.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 04 September 2017 06:00.
Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.
Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.
They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.
Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.
Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…
One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.
People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.
They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.
Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:
New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:
By Johathan Taplin
In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.
They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.
We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.
While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.
Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?
Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.
In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.
The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.
AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.
In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.
True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.
We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.
It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.
It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”
There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.
The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.
The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.
Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.
I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.
Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 03 September 2017 07:39.
Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:
The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.
Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.
Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.
Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”
Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP
In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.
Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.
Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”
In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.
And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017
Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.
And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017
The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.
Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin.
Just Rich @JustMeRich
Replying to @splcenter
Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.
Follow
Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81
And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017
Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.
On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.
Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.
Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.
Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.
“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.
In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.
In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.
“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.
“Dreamers” originally from Ecuador watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ remarks on ending the DACA program on a smartphone in Manhattan, September 5, 2017. Credit: Drew Angerer/AFP
“We haven’t eaten in 4 days,” says Rohingya Muslim woman refugee.
