[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 Saturday, 18 August 2018 06:27.
New Observer, ““Refugee Ex-Sex Slave Kurd Flees Germany, Spots Former ISIL Captor as Fellow ‘Refugee”, 18 Aug 2018:
A Kurdish girl who was kept as a sex slave by ISIL in Syria—and who then fled to Germany where she was given asylum—has fled back to Syria after spotting one of her ISIS captors in Germany where he was living as a “refugee” on European taxpayer largesse.
According to an AFP report in the France 24 news service, Ashwaq Haji, 19, was a Yazidi “ex-sex slave” in northern Iraq before fleeing to claim asylum in Germany.
Now however, she says that she has “fled” back to Iraq after running into one of her former captors in a supermarket in Germany where he was also living as a “refugee.”
Haji says she was kidnapped by ISIL when they seized swathes of Iraq in the summer of 2014. She says she was held from August 3 until October 22 of 2014, when she managed to escape from the home of an Iraqi jihadist using the name Abu Humam who had bought her for $100, she told AFP in the Yazidi shrine of Lalish, north of Mosul.
Under a German government program for Iraqi refugees, Ashwaq, her mother and a younger brother were resettled in 2015 in Schwaebisch Gmuend, a town near Stuttgart.
Her refuge in Germany, where she took language lessons, was cut short on February 21 when a man called out her name in a supermarket and started talking to her in German.
“He told me he was Abu Humam. I told him I didn’t know him, and then he started talking to me in Arabic,” she said.
“He told me: ‘Don’t lie, I know very well that you’re Ashwaq’,” she said, adding that he gave her home address and other details of her life in Germany.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 12 August 2018 00:00.
New Observer, “Italy: Support for Salvini Rockets as African Invasion Drops over 95%—and Trickling to Complete Halt”, 11 August 2018:
Italy’s Lega leader Matteo Salvini is now that country’s most popular politician as news emerged that his anti-invasion policies have brought the African invasion down by more than 95 percent—and seems set to halt completely within a short while.
News of Salvini’s boost in popularity—to over 30 percent of the electorate—and the success of his anti-invasion policies have been deliberately suppressed by the controlled English-speaking media, but the Italian press has reported extensively on the developments.
The Libero Quotidiano newspaper, for example, reported that when Salvini started his role in the government, his priorities were twofold: firstly to show that his work as minister of the Interior would have immediate effect, and secondly, to curb the growth of his coalition partner party, the Five Star Movement.
“In both these things, Salvini has been successful,” the Libero Quotidiano said.
To prove this, the paper continued, all that needs to be done is to compare the official data on the African invasion landings between 2017 under the previous government’s Interior Minister Marco Minniti , and those of the 70 days which Salvini has held that post.
According to these figures, 23,526 Africans invaded Italy in June 2017. A year later, the first month with Salvini at the helm, the numbers had already dropped to 3,147.
In July 2017, the figures show, 11,461 Africans invaded Italy, and a year later, the second month of Salvini’s rule, just 1,969 made it ashore.
As of the first week of August, the paper continued, to “complete the first 70 days of Minister Salvini,” there have been just 344 Africans brought ashore in Italy, as opposed to the 3,920 who invaded Italy during the same period the previous year.
“With the declining landing, support for the Lega has grown at exponential levels,” the Libero Quotidiano continued.
“In 70 days, Salvini has raised his support levels from 17.6 percent to over 31 percent, taking away half of Forza Italia’s and a quarter of Brothers of Italy party support.”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 11 August 2018 08:20.
Lew Rockwell.com, “Punishing Iran Will Cost A Fortune”, 11 August 2018:
President Trump keeps vowing to create more jobs in America. But his actions often speak differently. The most egregious example was Trump’s cancellation of the multi-national Iran nuclear treaty that had been welcomed by the world as a major step to Mideast denuclearization.
In abrogating the international treaty signed by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the US humiliated its allies and rivals who were strongly in favor of the accord. Iran had already handed 97% of its enriched uranium to Russia, shut down reactors and centrifuges, and allowed UN inspectors to run all over its nuclear facilities when Trump tore up the deal that had been under negotiation since 2015.
Iran has been under a harsh US-led trade embargo since its 1979 revolution that was designed to cripple its economy and military and drive the people to rebel against their government. Washington used the same tactics – without success – against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
So intense is the Trump administration’s hatred for Islamic Iran that it decided to scrap the multinational nuclear deal that would have meant opening Iran to western commerce and a bonanza for US and European companies. The key element of the deal was to have been the sale of some 210 commercial jet airliners to Iran by the US and the European Union, a deal worth some $40-50 billion, not counting future sales of spare parts.
The US embargo of Iran since 1979 has made it unable to modernize its commercial airline fleet. Iran was denied modern aircraft, spare parts, engines and instruments, leaving it with decaying aircraft from the 1970’s.
The grim result of the US-imposed embargo has been 17 crashes of Iranian civilian aircraft with 1500 deaths.
Most of Iran’s commercial aircraft – a grab bag of old, mostly 25-year old Boeing, Airbus, Chinese and Soviet aircraft – are flying coffins. Iran’s maintenance, training and air traffic control are substandard. Flying over and around Iran’s lofty mountains is a challenge for the best of pilots, even for a handful of newer ATR turboprop aircraft.
Washington’s denial to Iran of Boeing Aircraft (and Airbus planes because they contain US-made parts), means the loss of tens of thousands of highly-paid jobs in the US and Europe. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims he talked Trump into canceling the Iran nuclear deal and the Boeing orders.
It’s hard to validate Netanyahu’s claim but it is clear that America’s ever more powerful Israel lobby and its ally fundamentalist Christian Zionists played a key role in thwarting the Iran nuclear deal and sale of commercial aircraft.
We don’t yet know the full cost of lost American jobs and business to help keep Iran isolated. But one could argue that part of the $20 billion lost should be counted as part of annual US aid to Israel.
Russia and China’s aircraft industries will soon be able to deliver modern passenger aircraft to Iran and accept payment in oil. China’s C919 and ARJ21 are now nearing service. Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 will be ready soon. Trump could be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Trump and his allies are trying to push Iran into a corner and provoke it to lash out at US forces that are poised around it. A navel clash in the Gulf is the obvious pretext for war.
While the US goes after Iran, it has opened a new anti-Muslim front against old ally Turkey by imposing heavy duties on Ankara’s exports to the US and attacking the always vulnerable Turkish lira. This, in turn, has set off a financial crisis across Europe, notably among EU banks that have large, soft loans made to Turkey.
Trump & Co. are trying to force Turkey to bend the knee and support US-Israeli-Saudi policy goals. Turkey and Iran remain the last significant supporters in the region of the Palestinians. Trump and the New York City real estate developers, and the money men who surround him, are determined to show the independent-minded Iranians and Turks who is the big boss.
Tommy Robinson, the far-right leader, was bankrolled until recently by a US tech billionaire whose company’s British clients include the supermarket giant Asda.
Robert Shillman, founder and chairman of the Nasdaq-listed multinational Cognex, helped to pay Robinson’s high-five-figure salary, in the latest example of American cash flowing into the British hard right. The disclosure comes as Robinson’s former assistant, also paid by a Shillman-funded group, told The Sunday Times that the anti-Islam activist practised a form of “panto journalism” that was “leading people down a dark path”.
In the first interview by any insider, Lucy Brown, who worked closely alongside Robinson until three months ago, said: “I thought genuinely that I was joining the side that told the truth and I’ve come to realise that it’s not. It’s just about getting [YouTube] views and retweets. This is a business and your outrage, valid as it is, will be monetised as such.”
Brown, who was fired after an argument about a Muslim booked to speak at one of Robinson’s rallies, was part of an often warring inner circle that included a middle-class gay couple, international leaders of the far right, a former underwear model and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, and rougher-hewn figures from Robinson’s time as leader of the English Defence League (EDL).
She said Robinson “used to be kind of fun, but he got a bit of a diva attitude after a while and was letting more EDL figures cloud his judgment. I’ve just reread Peter Pan and there’s so many similarities. You can be around as long as you still worship him, but when you grow up, then you’re out.” Brown added that she was taking legal action over unpaid wages that she says she is owed.
Life with “Team Tommy” was chaotic, Brown said: “It was like being like a firefighter — always waiting for the next Facebook message and we’d be off to Manchester or Poland straight away, sometimes before a real plan had been drawn up. We’d be sleeping in the car and eating in service stations.”
Several of the supposed scandals that Robinson sought to expose fall down on closer examination. “I used to think, foolishly, that when he went home he was doing his research and putting case files together,” Brown said. “He doesn’t, he just goes home and eats crisps and looks himself up on Twitter.”
Emotive YouTube and social media content bring in donations. In one recent video Robinson suggested that the deaths of three teenage boys hit by a drunk driver in Hayes, w. London, in January was a terror attack “covered up” by the police and media — apparently based on the fact that the driver, who has a Hindu name, was Asian.
In a video recorded in a Muslim area of Manchester after last year’s bombing, Robinson said: “In these houses are enemy combatants who want to kill you, maim you and destroy you.”
He was freed on appeal last week after being jailed for filming people at a trial of alleged sex offenders and broadcasting the footage on a Facebook live stream. His supporters claim he was a “political prisoner” silenced by the authorities for trying to reveal the truth about Muslim sex offending.
Brown said this narrative was “whipping people up into a frenzy and I worry that some are on the cusp of acting out their frustrations against Muslims as a result. I’ve never seen this before, not in the way it’s playing out now. People are at breaking point — we must not push them further for the sake of money or fame.”
She was one of a handful of people closest to Robinson, name-checked in his videos and who saw him most days along with two other paid British staff, Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John. Robertson and Llewelyn-John, who are open about their gay relationship, shared a flat in an expensive block in Chelsea, west London, before moving to Bedfordshire to be closer to Robinson.
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website, extensively funded by Shillman, which has employed a number of Britons, including the writer and former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, who once described migrants as “cockroaches”.
Robinson was “Shillman fellow” which the Rebel’s chief executive, Ezra Levant, said meant the tech billionaire provided “support” for Robinson’s salary. Robinson was initially paid between £5,000 and £6,000 by The Rebel, rising to £8,000 a month, equivalent to nearly £100,000 a year, Brown said.
The three assistants were paid up to £2,500 a month each. Levant refused to confirm or deny the figures last night, saying it would not be “appropriate for me to disclose what we paid former employees”.
Shillman, 72, uses his salary and shareholding in Cognex, which he founded in 1981, to finance right-wing causes. He is on the board of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, based in California, a “school for political warfare” against the “fifth column” and “enemy within”.
The organisation, described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, based in Alabama, also employs Robert Spencer, an anti-Muslim polemicist banned from the UK. Cognex, which makes advanced scanners and sensors, has a substantial operation in Britain. UK users of its technology include Asda, Nissan and the drug giant AstraZeneca.
Shillman and Cognex did not respond to requests for comment.
Robinson and the others left The Rebel last year amid a row over money, with Robertson accusing Levant of profiteering by getting contributors to raise “money [The Rebel] didn’t need”.
Levant in turn accused Robertson and Llewelyn-John of “blackmail”. Both sides deny each other’s claims. Robinson’s departure from The Rebel did not much affect his income, according to Brown, with huge sums flooding in from his own crowdfunding website and the three staff employed directly by Robinson from the proceeds.
“George and Caolan would off- handedly say, oh, we’ve got £100,000 in donations now,” Brown said. “I think he’s doing OK.”
Raheem Kassam, a Robinson ally, also confirmed the figure. Joe Mulhall, of the anti-racist group Hope not Hate, believes that even £100,000 may be a substantial underestimate.
Such material has brought Robinson an affluent lifestyle, living with his wife, Jenna, and their three young children in a £500,000 house in a Bedfordshire village. The family is currently on a two-week holiday in Tenerife, the second holiday they have spent on the Canary island in the past four months.
After the publication of this article, Brown did a radio interview with Mike Graham. It was billed as a big exposé, but in fact she said almost nothing of consequence. Still, if you want to listen to it, here it is.
There were some interesting details about Robinson’s spell in prison in this Paul Weston video. Apparently, because Muslims were preparing the prison meals, he had to avoid them for fear of being poisoned. This meant he could only eat one tin of tuna a day.
Fifty years after Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, immigrants are still coming to the UK. The latest ONS figures show that last year there were 101,000 migrants from the EU and 227,000 from outside the EU.
Enoch Powell was opposed to the EU and immigration but he was not anti-European and he refused an invitation to stand for the National Front in 1974. At a speech which he delivered in French in Lyon in 1971 he stated:
“From boyhood, I have been devoted to the study of that Greek and Roman inheritance, which in varying measure is common to all that is Europe, and not only ‘Europe’ of the six or eight or ten but Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals – and beyond. I also claim that reverent enthusiasm for the history of my own country which commands an equal reverence for the past that has formed everything else which is European. The truest European, in my opinion, is the man who is most humbly conscious of the vast demands which comprehension of, even a little part of this Europe imposes upon those who seek it; for the deeper we penetrate, the more the marvellous differentiation of human society within this single continent evokes our wonder. The very use of the word ‘Europe’ in expressions like ‘European unity’, ‘going into Europe’, ‘Europe’s role in the world’ is a solecism which grates upon the ear of all true Europeans: only Americans can be excused for using it.”
Uber-nationalist parties are wrong to claim Enoch Powell as one of their own. They want to spend more on defence and the National Health Service but he resigned from Harold Macmillan’s government in 1958 over plans to increase public spending. They are nostalgic about the British Empire but he was in favour of Indian independence and critical of our mistreatment of Kenyan detainees during the Mau Mau Emergency. They despise foreigners but he was a classical scholar who spoke several languages.
The working men who marched in support of Enoch Powell lost interest when ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ turned against him. But the influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East is finally challenging the liberal consensus. Populist parties are now in government in Italy, Austria and Hungary, and powerful in France, Germany, Sweden and Poland.
At present, there is no solidarity on the issue. There’s no point in Germany sending Africans back to Italy or Greece because they landed there, or sharing them out amongst the nations of Europe. We need a common European migration and asylum policy and a combined Naval force to patrol the Mediterranean. Not long ago such a policy would have been unthinkable but since Angela Merkel took in a million refugees attitudes have hardened and deportation is firmly on the agenda.
The supporters of multi-culturalism got away with their mischief because global capitalism made most of us richer. We were too busy earning a living to worry about immigration, but its social consequences have had a profound effect on public opinion. Rising crime and terrorism are forcing Europe to get its act together; just as the UK is preparing to leave.
Plutocracy
Our system of government dates back to the days of stage coaches, three-cornered hats, and universal ignorance. Only the upper classes had the vote and bribery was the norm. Today, everybody can vote and they have all got smartphones in their pockets to inform them on any topic. It shouldn’t be so easy for charlatans to get elected but they still manage it.
We now have the technology to consult the electorate without calling a general election. Online referendums could be used to inform the government. This would make Parliament obsolete together with 650 MPs and over 800 members of The House of Lords. Those parliamentarians over retiring age could be pensioned off and the younger ones redeployed as traffic wardens.
Of course, no such reforms will be introduced. We will keep our ancient institutions with their obsolete rituals and carry on wasting millions of pounds. Our MPs will continue to shuffle into lobbies to be counted like sheep and our noble Lords will still frustrate their knavish tricks.
The big businessmen who really run this country are not impressed by public opinion and they see no reason to interfere with tradition. Somebody said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But that’s exactly what we do at every general election when we chose a government from the same assortment of nonentities as before.
The alternative to this madness is not a dictatorship but representative government. We should replace Parliament with a secure computerised system that couldn’t be got at by plutocrats.
The top ten British companies are amongst the most powerful in the world. They are; Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC Holdings, British American Tobacco, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Diageo, Astra Zeneca, Vodaphone, Unilever, and Glencoe. British businesses paid £43 billion in corporation tax in 2014-15 and contributed an unknown amount in ‘donations’ to political parties. We are not governed by elected MPs but by the appointed executives of major corporations who put profits before people.
It’s the duty of big business to make money for their shareholders but it’s the duty of government to protect workers’ rights and provide decent health care and social security. There are some excellent firms that look after their workers but most of them are only interested in making money. Karl Marx predicted that global capitalism would eventually turn into socialism but we haven’t got there yet.
Fashions in Thinking
Without even realising it we all follow fashion to some extent. Short hair is currently in fashion for men but not so long ago long hair was the norm. We may not keep up with the latest styles but we find ourselves slowly adapting to them. Have a look at some old photographs of your friends and family and you will notice collar-length hairstyles, flared trousers, and floral shirts that you would not wear today.
Conformity starts in the playground and continues into old age. Women of a certain age try to be fashionable by wearing short skirts that would look better on a teenager. And it’s the same with social attitudes. Years ago black dogs and cats were often called ‘Nigger’, and black people usually appeared in films as servants. The original housekeeper in the Tom & Jerry cartoons was a black mammy but she eventually became Irish.
When John Tyndall launched ‘Spearhead’ magazine n 1964 he used his front page to described Africans as ‘sub-human’, but a year later the Race Relations Act was passed and AK Chesterton warned:
“The man who thinks that this war can be won by mouthing slogans about ‘dirty Jews and filthy niggers’ is a maniac whose place should not be in the National Front but in a mental hospital.”
Whatever our thoughts were in the Sixties, it’s likely that we have changed our minds. Not many people want to go back to the days when the glamorous model Ruth Ellis (pictured) was hanged for shooting dead her brutal lover, or when the brilliant codebreaker Alan Turing was hounded to his death by the authorities. Times have changed and most of us have changed with them.
This is often blamed on the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist scholars who set out to change public attitudes. But most of these reforms can be traced to the French Revolution, or even further back to the Sermon on The Mount. The Marxists did not invent social justice they just adopted it as a strategy.
Of course, people are influenced by propaganda. Smoking and drinking and driving are two positive examples of ‘social engineering’. The latest campaign pairs black and white couples in almost every TV commercial. This is not a government initiative but the latest fashion in thinking. Keen young account executives are persuading their clients that diversity sells products. The message to women seems to be, if you want a comfortable bed or a new kitchen, marry a black man.
