[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.
Some Polish and other EU companies are adopting the right wing anti-labor strategy that Russia has been notorious for deploying: Forced North Korean labor
EU – The NGO European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK) reported that companies are employing North Korean workers in a semi-legal way – see their report about the Polish case. Their salaries go directly to fuel Kim Jong-un’s regime.
The death of Chŏn Kyŏngsu in 2014, a North Korean who worked on a Polish shipyard, the Crist Shipyards in Gdynia, contributed to start the investigation of the EAHRNK. The man worked 12 hours a day, 6 days per week. His salary was the minimum to survive and the only trip he was authorized to do was to go to work and go back home. Still according to the NGO, these conditions are imposed by Kim Jong-un and are systematic for the North Koreans that work in a foreign country. Chŏn Kyŏngsu was never given an employment contract. Chŏn Kyŏngsu burnt as he was welding pipelines, a Polish colleague helped him and he went to a hospital with 95% of severe burns over his body. The body was sent back to his family in North Korea with 637 EUR.
The work permits that are delivered are totally legal, but the work conditions aren’t. The North Korean embassy in Warsaw said that nobody was taking their salaries. But a worker said anonymously to the EAHRNK that “a manager told us that foreign companies employ us because we cost no money, and that they cut the price for the trip, gas, electricity, from our salaries. They never told us how much we were paid.” Also, the ambassy took their passports, and give them back only for exceptional situations, to go to the hospital for example.
According to another testimony, to work in a foreign country, North Koreans have to be married and their wife and children to stay in North Korea, so the country keeps the control upon them. NGOs estimate that, only in Poland, there are between 500 and 800 North Koreans working, mostly employed at shipyards and constructions sites. Also, in Poland, “there are no distinctions between nationalities and categories of workers, meaning that there are no extra procedures required for North Korean citizens” say Jacqueline Sanchez-Pyrcz, director of the Department of Foreigners at the Masovian Voivodeship in Warsaw. So the system is authorized by Polish law. North Korean workers are employed in many other European countries, such as Malta, Czechia, …
On the 6 July, the United States imposed penalties for serious violations of human rights on North korea. For the first time Kim Jong-un was directly affected by these economic sanctions. According to Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Leiden : “What is going on in Malta and Poland directly contravenes national and EU laws, as well as international treaties, such as that of the ILO. It also defies the sanctions against North Korea set by the UN and the EU, although it is debatable to what extent. All things considered, there should be enough reason for the EU to take an interest in the topic, but so far, this has not happened.”
Last summer, the Migrant Crisis in Europe brought about unexpected change for many native Europeans. Many accepted refugees from Syria with open arms at first, but were dismayed to find in many cases, this altruism was not returned. Reports of rape, violence, theft, and other heinous acts involving these migrants, who are mostly military age males, have made their way across the globe. While many of us are aware of the situation in Europe, there is little we can do to help the native Europeans who now have their towns and cities occupied by people who possess a completely different view of the world, of life itself. In addition to this, the migrants were thought to be refugees from the war in Syria, but as soon as the gates were open- thousands upon thousands of migrants from across North Africa fled into Europe. Before Modernity and the advent of man’s transformation from Homo Sapien to Homo Economicus, civilization was based upon two factors: language and religion. The incompatibility of these factors will lead to cultural clashes, regardless of the “keep calm and carry on” rhetoric of our cosmopolitan elites. Working Europeans who cannot afford to jump on a jet to their summer home in Dubai need a way out. They didn’t ask to be replaced - their governments have done this to them. Let’s take in the refugees of the refugees.
The African state of Ghana’s “right of abode” law—which grants residence and citizenship to any person of black racial descent—is one of the clearest roadmaps to achieving world racial peace, the Project Nova Europa website has said.
The basis of Ghana’s law—that of encouraging races to congregate in areas where they will not be ruled over or interfered with by other races—remains the best solution to racial conflict ever devised.
According to an article on that website, which is devoted to generating support for a European ethnostate, Ghana became the first country in Africa to grant automatic right of abode to any African in what it calls the “diaspora” in 2001, but the law has not achieved much media coverage, despite already having attracting more than 3,000 blacks from the US.
An article in the Atlanta Black Star from June 2015, revealed that the “right to abode” clause is part of the Ghanaian Immigration Act of 2000, which states that the “concept of right of abode is that person having the right of abode ‘shall be free to live and to come and go into and from the country without let or hindrance.’”
The Ghanaian residency program does have some stipulations. Black people looking to resettle in Ghana must be at least 18-years-old, of good character, financially independent, and not been convicted of a criminal offense and sentenced to imprisonment of 12 months or more.
These stipulations would exclude a large percentage of blacks, including those that they would be most happy to dump on us:
A person of African descent in the Diaspora
A person of African descent in the Diaspora to be considered for the status of right of abode if he satisfies the Minister that he
A.) Is of good character as attested to by two Ghanaian who are notaries public, lawyers, senior public officers or other class of person approved of by the Ministers.
B) Has not been convicted of any criminal offence and been sentenced to imprisonment for a term of twelve (12) months or more
C) Is of independent means
D) Is in the opinion of the Minister capable of making a substantial contribution to the development of Ghana and
E) Has attained the age of eighteen (18) years.
However, in pointing out the racial basis of the Ghanan law and the Israeli law, TNO and Nova Europa does well to illustrate an argumentative basis for ethnonationalists:
The existence of Ghana’s right of abode law—which is overtly racial in nature—is of course modelled after Israel’s “right of return” law, which also grants residence and citizenship to anybody who can prove themselves to be racially descended from Jews, no matter where they find themselves in the world.
The racial basis of these laws attracts little controlled media attention because they are implemented by blacks and Jews respectively, but this alone is not a reason to reject them. In fact, a European state—or states—which adopted such a law might very well do so by pointing to the fact that Israel and Ghana already have such laws.
The decision to wage war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was “inextricably tied” up with the “problems” created by Israel, a now-declassified but formerly top secret letter from the UK’s foreign intelligence unit, MI6, stated back in 2001.
The document, sent by the private secretary of MI6 head Richard Dearlove, to Sir David Manning, former UK Ambassador to the United States, was revealed as part of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.
The Chilcot Inquiry—which, to no one’s surprise, found that former UK prime minister Tony Blair had misled the country, parliament, and the world about the true nature of Iraq’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction”—deferred from making any direct reference to the Jewish lobby’s proven role in fomenting the Iraq War, although Israel is mentioned hundreds of times in its supporting documents.
In the memo, dated December 3, 2001, titled “Letter from Richard Dearlove’s Private Secretary to Sir David Manning,” and stamped as “TOP SECRET, Declassified April 2011,” under the section “Attachment 1 to [letter] of 3 December 2001,” the following conclusion appears:
THE STRATEGIC VIEW
Iraq policy is inextricably tied up with the problem of Israel.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 06 July 2016 08:07.
The next time Anglin or his outfit the Daily Stormer need to be criticized, and that shouldn’t be long, we will certainly not refrain.
However, let it not be said that we are petty and unwilling to allow contributing voices where they might, simply because they and their platforms are generally off the mark.
You won’t often see me endorsing an article from over there, but once in a while he posts a decent one, such as this one by Martin Blaine:
An article has been making the rounds recently about Madonna posting pictures of the giant Kenyan slum of Kibera on her Instagram, in the hopes of tugging on the heartstrings of White people.
The Material Girl who never stops reinventing herself, Madonna, a seven-time Grammy Award-winner, actress, pop culture icon, founder of Raising Malawi and a Goodwill Ambassador for Child Welfare is in Kenya.
The 57-year old icon with an estimated net worth of over $800 million spent the day visiting Kibra, also known as Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
In an Instagram post published only a few minutes ago, Madonna shared some of the moments from her visit today to the slum with Shining Hope for Communities, an organization that links free schools for girls to essential services for communities like clean water, and free health care.
The charity that she’s stumping for support for, Shining Hope for Communities, was founded by a Jewess from Denver, Jessica Posner. Posner supposedly fell in love with a Kenyan Negro and then went on to open a school for Kenyan girls and install some toilets and is now out to bring joy and brightness to the underprivileged Africans, et cetera.
All of this, of course, has earned her much praise and adulation from self-righteous liberals and fellow tribe members.
For her efforts, Posner has been named one of the five biggest world-changers under age 25 by the Do Something Awards.
So on July 19 — 10,000 miles and just as many worlds removed from East Africa — she will be hanging at the Hollywood Palladium with the likes of Matt Damon and Natalie Portman for a star-studded awards ceremony to be hosted by Jane Lynch of “Glee” and nationally televised on VH1.
That’s the kind of random polarity in the world that Posner has learned to accept.
Jessica Posner and Kennedy Odede
The entire concept of feeding starving Africans and somehow raising them up to our level is clearly insane, and the long-term implications of such an endeavor are mind-numbingly depressing and terrifying.
The population of Kenya was recorded at just under 7 million in 1955. It’s now 47 million and one of the fastest growing in the world, thanks to our misplaced altruism.
And for what purpose?
Liberals don’t care about the lives of Africans. They think they do, but they really don’t. They care about their own feelings. They want things to be a certain way in the world such that it leaves them room for a life filled with hope and inspiration. They don’t want to be depressed about the world. Unfortunately, the reality of the world at the current point in history is extremely dire, and anyone who appreciates it for what it actually is is inevitably going to suffer bouts of depression. And also unfortunately, most people react to that situation by retreating into a fantasy that reality can be changed by wishful thinking and meaningless activity.
What’s going to happen when you feed and cloth Africans is they’re going to produce more Africans for you to feed and cloth. That’s what they’ve been doing for the past several decades now. There were starving African children on television commercials when I was a child in the 70s, with a White man standing in their midst telling you that for just 35 cents a day you could save one. Undoubtedly many people signed up and adopted an African child via Unicef or whatever it was. And today dozens of descendants of that saved African child are picking around in the garbage dumps of Kibera looking for food. But now celebrities want your money to start schools and get them Internet access. Forget about the 35 cents a day for a bag of rice, we’ve got much larger ambitions today. We’re not just going to feed Africa, we’re going to make Africa fully capable of “realizing its potential.”
Teach a man to fish, and all that.
Feeding starving Africans only creates more starving Africans.
Anyone can see that this is nonsense – anyone who wants to see, anyway. The problem of world poverty cannot be solved in this manner. It has not been, and it will not be.
But Liberals don’t give a crap about that. Liberals want to do something. They want you to help them do something. They’re gonna fix it. They’re gonna change it. They’re not just going to end poverty and hunger and misery, they’re going to make Africa into some kind of beautiful Utopia. The fact that it doesn’t happen doesn’t concern them. The fact that they’re actually compounding the problem doesn’t concern them. They just plain don’t give a crap. They don’t want to make the world a better place, they want to make themselves feel better by pretending they’re making the world a better place.
The situation today is far worse than it was in the 70s if you count the number of people actually experiencing poverty and hunger and misery in the world. And not just in Africa, but all over the Third – or, as it’s now called, the “developing” – World. The problem is it’s not developing. Nor is it going to develop. The First World isn’t developing either. All that’s happening is more and more people are being born into a stagnant world. There are many times as many human beings alive. Most of those human beings are capable of very little in the way of development, of themselves or of a society around themselves. That was not a particularly unfortunate or desperate thing a hundred years ago. It is however calamitous at this point, since there is simply no way it can be sustained.
Jo Cox’s last words as she lay dying were to tell her assistant that she could not get up because “my pain is too much”.
In a dramatic account of the MP’s final moments, Gulham Maniyar described how his daughter Fazila Aswat, who worked as Mrs Cox’s assistant, cradled her in her arms as she lay covered in blood.
That was the scene of the attack, an attack not just on one MP, but on the institution of parliamentary democracy itself. I open with that quote for context, to remind everyone of the gravity of what we are actually talking about here.
The Occidental Observer has an article called ‘The selective compassion of Jo Cox’, by Francis Carr Begbie, in which he, and I assume the editors at Occidental Observer share his view since they didn’t dissent from it, comes out and trashes the reputation of Jo Cox and tries to style as almost the worst thing that ever happened to the United Kingdom.
It’s truly astonishing to see the amount of hatred being directed toward an MP who was tragically assassinated by a crazed gunman, a woman who most of these writers were unaware of the existence of before she was killed, and who stood on the right wing of the Labour Party. She had also only held her seat in Batley and Spen for one year.
Mind reading and time travelling
The range of criticisms directed against the deceased is pretty wide. For example, Begbie accuses Cox of not caring about the white members of her constituency, because she didn’t comment on the Muslim rape epidemic when it had reached her town. Begbie writes, “of all the subjects she enjoyed sounding off on, this world-famous crisis affecting the poorest Whites on her doorstep was not one of them”. What was she supposed to say? How do they know what she was or wasn’t thinking about?
Jo Cox became the MP for Batley and Spen in May 2015, everything that preceded her taking that seat could not possibly be attributed to her, yet somehow ethno-nationalist sites across the internet have transformed her into the symbol of everything that is ‘wrong’ with Batley and Spen. That district became more demographically South Asian in 1950 because British businesses decided that they wanted South Asian workers from Gujarat, Punjab, and Kashmir to migrate to West Yorkshire to desperately protect the already-in-fact doomed textile industry which Britain had been maintaining with the use of protectionist policies since the 1880s.
Jo Cox showing up in 2015, cannot possibly be blamed for making the best of the constituency that the bourgeoisie themselves had given her. This makes no sense. It makes no sense at all.
She only just got there
No article is complete at the Occidental Observer without some kind anti-feminist insinuation, and so Begbie strangely includes this line, “Her constituency seat had been represented by local White men for decades so an all-female shortlist had to be imposed on the local party to ensure an acceptable candidate could be given this plum.” What complete nonsense! No mention at all is made of the fact that the constituency was redrawn multiple times and only came into existence in its present form in 1997. Neither is any mention made of the fact that the ‘local white man’ who held that seat was none other than Mike Wood who held that seat from 1997 to 2015. Mike Wood literally presided over every single development that the Occidental Observer complains about, including the gerrymandering and creation of the constituency called ‘Batley and Spen’, yet no mention is made of this man’s existence! He is merely glossed over as a ‘local white man’, as though that somehow makes everything okay.
Mike Wood presides over Batley and Spen for 18 years, is blamed for nothing. Jo Cox runs it for 13 months, gets shot by some idiot, and suddenly the Occidental Observer has magically discovered that everything is the fault of Jo Cox. Truly breathtaking. Fucking incredible. Maybe Jo Cox is a time traveller, she time travelled to 1997, and to 1950, perhaps?
Middle-Eastern migrant strategy
Begbie also writes of Jo Cox, that “she was also calculating enough to help more dubious causes, as when she lent her name to a government minister who was lobbying for Britain to begin bombing in Syria”.
What is dubious about this? Nothing. Begbie is referring to the letter which Cox wrote in a Guardian article on 11 Oct 2015, co-written with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, in which she places the rescuing of civilians at the centre of the parliamentary debate, and advocates for the creation of safe zones inside Syria so that the migrant influx can be stemmed.
Yes, you read that correctly. I will quote her directly. Here:
Some may think that a military component has no place in an ethical response to Syria. We completely disagree. It is not ethical to wish away the barrel bombs from the Syrian government when you have the capacity to stop them. The deaths and fear generated by these indiscriminate air attacks are the main drivers of the refugee crisis in Europe. Nor is it ethical to watch when villages are overrun by Isis fighters who make sex slaves of children and slaughter their fellow Muslims, when we have the capability to hold them back.
What is critical in advancing any military component is that the protection of civilians must be at the centre of the mission. This objective becomes ever more imperative in the light of Russia’s bombing in recent days. We need a military component that protects civilians as a necessary prerequisite to any future UN or internationally provided safe havens. The creation of safe havens inside Syria would eventually offer sanctuary from both the actions of Assad and Isis, as we cannot focus on Isis without an equal focus on Assad. They would save lives, reduce radicalisation and help to slow down the refugee exodus.
The approach of focusing on civilian protection will also make a political solution more likely. Preventing the regime from killing civilians, and signalling intent to Russia, is far more likely to compel the regime to the negotiating table than anything currently being done or mooted. Of course, a military approach by itself won’t work, nor will any of the other components. Only through an integrated strategy with the protection of civilians at its core can we rescue something from this crisis.
[...]
I invite anyone to tell me what precisely is wrong with that. No one can tell me what is wrong with that, because there’s nothing wrong with it. Some may ask, “But isn’t her mention of Assad a problem?” In actual practice, no. Only actions against ISIL could have had efficiacy since we know Russia’s presence in the theatre had already made it impossible for the west to directly attack the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the first place. The way I’ve highlighted bold text in that quotation is entirely deliberate.
Allowing all of the refugees to be contained within safe zones inside Syria and Iraq, would prevent migrants of all kinds—whether they are fleeing from the SAA or from ISIL—from actually feeling the need to cross to Europe, seriuosly reducing the scale of the crisis and accomplishing an objective that people concerned about migration ought to have been able to agree with.
Obviously the conflict should not even be happening. But it is happening and so selecting a solution that does not involve trying to house all the Arabs inside Europe, made her stance significantly better than the ridiculous mainstream stance of ‘just open the borders and absorb all migrants forever’.
This general pattern is similar to the idea that Anthony Zinni suggested.
There’s only one way to take land, and that’s with well-trained ground forces. That’s why retired Marine general Anthony Zinni thinks the time is right for Obama to acknowledge reality and tell the nation he is sending 10,000 American troops into the fight. Zinni ran the U.S. military in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions as chief of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, and still has business dealings in the region. He’s just back from a trip to Cairo, and he says he’s hearing a growing willingness among regional powers to put troops on the ground to fight ISIS—so long as the U.S. is alongside them.
Rumbles from Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates all suggest those nations are willing to fight on the ground. “I think this is all designed to try to push the United States to put something on the ground,” Zinni said Feb. 23. “If we put a couple of brigades in, I think you’d get five or six regional countries. And I think you could twist the arms of the French, the Belgians and maybe even the Brits.”
Two U.S. brigades, with their supporting personnel, would total about 10,000 troops. Zinni says the nations in the region are not coordinating their efforts in an effort to lure the U.S. into the fight on the ground. “But they’re getting scared, and have gotten angry at ISIS’s atrocious behavior and they’re willing to step up,” he says. “It would have to be a whole set of bilateral relationships, and we would have to pull it together.
The U.S. would have to act as the catalyst to make this happen, says Zinni, who was an early advocate of sending U.S. ground troops into the fight. “There’s an opportunity now to put a small piece in terms of ground forces in there, and get a lot more from these countries, and be the glue that puts it together,” he says. “There is no unifying structure and no single entity out there that can bring this all together—it has to be the United States,” Zinni insists.
But what about Obama’s pledge to keep U.S. combat boots out of the fight? “They have a moment here and it’ll blow by if they’re not careful,” he says. Obama “could always say that the situation on the ground has changed, and the willingness of the Arabs to stand up to this gives us this moment,” says Zinni, showing why he’s a better general than a politician.
What Zinni was describing there, is very close to ‘Seek, Destroy, Clear, Hold’, a strategy currently being employed in Operation Zarb-e-Azb by the Pakistani Army with relative success.
It stems the flow of migrants because by holding the zones that have been cleared and rebuilding infrastructure on the fly, it prevents migrants from making dangerous trips to flee the violence, since obviously they could just stay in the location that they are in and receive assistance and protection around the clock.
The political problem is that selling ‘SDCH’ to whiny white western liberal populations is next to impossible, and that’s where MPs like Jo Cox are incredibly useful. She could provide the political and ‘humanitarian’ argument which constituents needed to hear, that the defence sector was unable to convincingly enunciate. I shouldn’t have to be explaining this, but what Jo Cox’s feelings about entirely hypothetical refugees in the United Kingdom were, didn’t frankly matter, given that the part of her plan that takes precedence in terms of the order of battle is that she supported the creation of safe zones in Syria.
No one would have to worry about whether she is or is not going to cuddle and appease Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United Kingdom, if those migrants had never arrived due to the creation of safe zones in Syria. This is basic logic.
When you’ve been around white liberals and experienced them for long enough, you learn to accept that there are some aspects of their psyche which are biased toward indiscriminate kindness, and this is a bias that is not going to be changed by anyone’s words, but if they are willing to help find common sense solutions to problems then it is fine to link up with them in order to scrape out some limited gains in a bad situation.
What is treason anyway?
Jo Cox was among the best that you could expect from the Labour Party. It would be unreasonable to expect anything greater than what she had offered.
This is why I never had a big problem with Jo Cox, beyond the obvious fact that she’s a liberal. I was deeply saddened the day that she died.
Jo Cox is not ‘a traitor’.
Tom Mair is the real traitor here, and if the death penalty were not unfortunately abolished in the United Kingdom, I would hope that Mair would end up being hung from the gallows until dead. Mair has probably done more to assist our enemies than anyone else in recent years. Perhaps Mair will end up being inexplicably and mysteriously hung from the side of his bedpost using his own clothes knotted into a noose, but I can only hope. Hey, it happens sometimes, at times the CCTV in prisons just suddenly stops working for no apparent reason.
In overview, ethno-nationalists need to get more politically savvy, and stop running to defend every mentally ill white male who makes grief-stricken faces after committing some absurd, stupid, and horrific crime. Tom Mair was not a victim of anything, if he didn’t like the fact that all the South Asian Muslims had been concentrated into one area of that West Yorkshire constituency, he should have exercised some patience and self-control, thanked the stars that self-segregation had occurred and moved to one of the white areas of the constituency instead. He was not being forced to integrate with them, and Jo Cox had only just arrived in the constituency in May 2015 and had literally done nothing to him.
Tom Mair is stupid. This is not even 57-dimensional chess. It’s simple 2-dimensional chess. But he was a fucking idiot consumed by his own sense of entitlement and lack of strategic thinking. He is stupid, he is subhuman trash. And he is condemned.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Israel is to build a “super concrete wall” around the Gaza Strip which will extend dozens of feet over and underground, the Jewish state has announced.
At the same time, all major US Jewish organizations—which fanatically support Israel—have opposed Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall on the US-Mexican border.
According to a report in Israel’s Ynet News, Israel’s defense establishment plans to build a concrete wall “tens of meters underground as well as aboveground along the Gaza Strip border.”
It has previously been estimated that such a project would cost tens of billions of shekels. However, under the new plan the construction costs are estimated to reach NIS 2.2 billion, Ynet News said.
Doubtless this will come from the US$11 million per day that the American government gives in “aid” to the Jewish state.
The wall will stretch along the 60 miles of the southern border around the Gaza Strip, and will in fact be the third defense system of its kind that Israel has built along the border.
A man armed with an assault rifle and pledging loyalty to Islamic State killed 50 people during a gay pride celebration at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early on Sunday in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, a rampage President Barack Obama denounced as an act of terror and hate.
Police killed the gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, a New York-born Florida resident and U.S. citizen who was the son of Afghan immigrants and was twice questioned by FBI agents in recent years, authorities said.
Mateen’s former wife said he was emotionally and mentally disturbed with a violent temper, yet aspired to be a police officer.
Working for the global security firm G4S during the past nine years, Mateen was an armed guard for a gated retirement community in South Florida, and had cleared two company background screenings, the latest in 2013, according to G4S..
Preliminary investigations suggested the attack was inspired by Islamic State militants, though there was no immediate evidence that Mateen had any actual ties to the group, law enforcement officials said.
As the shooting rampage was unfolding, Mateen “made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State,” said Ronald Hopper, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge on the case.
Shots rang out at the crowded Pulse nightclub in the heart of Orlando, about 15 miles northeast of the Walt Disney World Resort, as some 350 patrons were attending a Latin music event in conjunction with gay pride week celebrations. Clubgoers described scenes of carnage and pandemonium, with one man who escaped saying he hid under a car and bandaged a wounded stranger with his shirt.
“Words cannot and will not describe the feeling of that,” Joshua McGill said in a posting on Facebook. “Being covered in blood. Trying to save a guy’s life.”
Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It ranked as the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
“We know enough to say this was an act of terror, an act of hate,” Obama said in a speech from the White House. “As Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people.”
U.S. officials cautioned, however, they had no conclusive evidence of any direct connection with foreign extremists.
“So far as we know at this time, his first direct contact was a pledge of bayat (loyalty) he made during the massacre,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official. “This guy appears to have been pretty screwed up without any help from anybody.”