[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.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 19 September 2017 07:42.
The YKW and right wing collude with Islam.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is the comprador of compradors.
In what is going on a decade of the got-up (((paleoconservatism)) of the (((“alt-right”))), one of the key reasons its Jewish conception has fashioned “the left” as the grand-enemy is because left nationalism, its syndicalism, is a grand adversary of Abrahamism - especially the Islamic variant, a universalizing credo which prohibits ethnonational unionizations. Islam, as instituted by comprador imams, functions thereby as feudalist thuggery on behalf of Jewry and complicit right wingers - who make deals with the Islamic comprador (a middleman slave driver/enforcer upon the local population, killing them where they interfere) to exploit the labor and resources of would-be sovereign ethnostates.
Reuters, “Trump, Malaysia’s Najib skirt round U.S. probe into 1MDB scandal”, 12 Sept 2017:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to the White House on Tuesday, praising his country for investing in the United States while steering clear of an American investigation into a Malaysian corruption scandal.
The visit is important for Najib, who faces elections next year and wants to signal he is still welcome at the White House despite a criminal probe by the U.S. Justice Department into a state fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
Flanked by top advisers in the Cabinet Room, Najib told Trump that Malaysia Airlines would buy 25 Boeing 737 jets and eight 787 Dreamliners, and would probably add another 25 737s in the near future - a deal he said would be worth more than $10 billion within five years.
Najib said Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund, a major pension fund, wanted to spend $3 billion to $4 billion on U.S. infrastructure development.
Najib enjoyed close ties with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, playing golf in Hawaii in 2014, but relations cooled over human rights issues as well as the 1MDB scandal.
Najib founded the fund, which is facing money laundering probes in at least six countries including the United States, Switzerland and Singapore. He denies wrongdoing.
The U.S. Justice Department has said more than $4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB by high-level officials of the fund and their associates, according to dozens of civil lawsuits it filed last year.
The Justice Department sued to seize some $1.7 billion in assets it said were bought with misappropriated 1MDB funds, but asked for a stay on its civil lawsuits in August because it was conducting a related criminal probe.
The White House had said it would not comment on the Justice Department investigation but a senior U.S. official acknowledged it was unusual to meet with Najib while 1MDB was under regulatory scrutiny.
“It’s a weird situation, no doubt,” the official said, explaining that the administration has prioritized developing relations with Southeast Asia to counter “huge gains” China has made in the region.
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.
Newsweek, “Tillerson, Mattis and McMaster Present Trump With Plan to Stop Iranian Aggression”, 12 Sept 2017:
A Kurdish-Arab coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces has been battling ISIS in eastern Syria but has encountered hostile fire from Iranian-backed forces, as well as Syrian rebels backed by Turkey.
Ibid: Trump has railed against the landmark nuclear deal signed in July 2015 between the Islamic Republic and six world powers, threatening on the presidential campaign trail to rip up the agreement that lifted sanctions in return for reining in the country’s uranium enrichment program.
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 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 Saturday, 02 September 2017 08:36.
Sun “KIM’S COMING FOR EUROPE Japan’s PM warns North Korea will soon target EUROPE with nuke missiles as he hails Theresa May’s ‘smooth Brexit”, 31 Aug 2017:
Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.
Japan and the UK pledged to work together to face down Kim Jong Un.
JAPAN’S prime minister today warned that North Korea could soon send nuclear missiles to Europe as he hailed Theresa May’s plan for a “smooth Brexit”.
Shinzo Abe called for the UK and other European countries must play a part in the fight against Kim Jong Un, saying the danger would not be confined to Asia.
Speaking ahead of a state banquet in honour of the PM, the leaders of Britain and Japan said they had discussed the threat from North Korea, which this week launched a missile over Japan in a new show of strength.
They agreed the threat is “unprecedented” and pledged to hold joint military exercises in a bid to show dictator Kim Jong Un that his crimes cannot go unpunished.
Mr Abe said: “That threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.
“North Korea will launch an ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.”
Mrs May demanded Kim’s ally China do more to restrain him, saying: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken.”
The YKW and right wing collude with Islam.
Trump gained the White house through a pledge to un-do the Iran deal and a claim that was his inspiration to run for President.
“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.
Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.
