tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10025580645495400852024-03-13T04:23:25.203+02:00Hercolano66. NEWS - INTERNATIONALΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.comBlogger964125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-10002606867281693662017-06-04T18:28:00.000+03:002017-06-04T18:28:08.493+03:00Alan M. Dershowitz : The British Election: Will Voters Opt for Intolerance and Xenophobia?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f6b26b;">The British Election: Will Voters Opt for Intolerance and Xenophobia?</span></h1>
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by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Alan+M.+Dershowitz"><span itemprop="author">Alan M. Dershowitz</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-06-03T03:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">June 3, 2017 at 3:00 am</time></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10472/the-british-election-will-voters-opt-for">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10472/the-british-election-will-voters-opt-for</a></b></div>
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On June 8, British voters will head to the polls, three years early.
When Prime Minister Theresa May called last month for a snap election,
the assumption was that she would win easily and increase her
parliamentary majority. Recent numbers, however, show the gap closing
between May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.<br />
<br />
Corbyn – who was given 200:1 odds of when he ran for the party
leadership in 2015 – is doing surprisingly well again. This is despite
the fact that Labour has been under fire for anti-Semitism in its ranks,
and Corbyn himself has been accused of anti-Jewish bigotry. Corbyn
denies having a problem with Jews, claiming that he is merely
anti-Israel. Even if it were possible to hate Israel without being
anti-Semitic – and I am not sure that it is – Corbyn's words and deeds
demonstrate that he often uses virulent anti-Zionism as a cover for his
soft anti-Semitism.<br />
<br />
For example, in a speech last year, he said that Jews are "no more
responsible" for the actions of Israel than Muslims are for those of
ISIS. In 2009, he announced: "It will be my pleasure and my honour to
host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be
speaking. I also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well."<br />
<br />
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Labour
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. When British voters go to the polls on June
8, will they opt to keep Prime Minister Theresa May in power, or reject
rationality in favor of intolerance? (Photo by Christopher
Furlong/Getty Images)</div>
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<br />
The company that Corbyn keeps, too, suggests that at best he gives a
free pass to bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism within the ranks of his
own party, and at worst, he espouses them. He has shared speaking
platforms and led rallies with some of the most infamous Jew-haters. He
has attended meetings hosted by 9/11 conspiracy theorist Paul Eisen,
author of a blog titled: "My Life as a Holocaust Denier." He has been
associated with Sheikh Raed Salah – leader of the outlawed northern
branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a blood libel perpetuator
convicted for incitement to violence and racism – whom he referred to as
a "very honoured citizen" whose "voice must be heard." Corbyn was also a
paid contributor for Press TV, Iran's tightly controlled media
apparatus, whose production is directly overseen by anti-Semitic Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei.<br />
<br />
One of the biggest criticisms of the "Corbynization" of British
politics has been the mainstreaming of traditional anti-Semitism. The
country's chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has called the problem within the
Labour party "severe."<br />
<br />
Consider the late Gerald Kaufman, a Labour veteran and close
political associate of Corbyn's who touted conspiracy theories about
Jews throughout his political career. When speaking at a pro-Palestinian
event, Kaufman said: "Jewish money, Jewish donations to the
Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from
the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives."
While Corbyn condemned this remark, he refused to yield to widespread
demands for disciplinary action against Kaufman. This is in keeping with
what a key former adviser to Corbyn, Harry Fletcher, wrote: "I'd
suggest to him [Jeremy] about how he might build bridges with the Jewish
community and none of it ever happened."<br />
<br />
Let's be clear: I do not believe that Corbyn's rise in the polls is
due to his hatred of Jews and Israel, but rather in spite of it. May
called for elections and then refused to debate her opponents. She is
running a lacklustre campaign somewhat reminiscent of U.S. Democratic
Party candidate Hillary Clinton's last year. For his part, Corbyn is a
populist, like U.S. President Donald Trump. Although politically polar
opposites, they have much in common, such as a penchant for shooting
from the hip and unpredictability.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, many British voters are unaware of Corbyn's anti-Semitic
associations. Others know, but don't care. Those on the hard-Left, such
as union activists and academics, include knee-jerk opponents of the
nation state of the Jewish people and supporters of academic and
cultural boycotts of Israel. Many of these favor trade and engagement
with such egregious human-rights violators as Iran, Cuba, China, Russia,
Belarus and Venezuela. Singling out Israel – the Middle East's only
democracy, with one of the world's best human-rights records, rule of
law and concern for enemy civilians — for boycotts itself is a form of
anti-Semitism.<br />
<br />
Corbyn himself has called for boycotts of the Jewish state. He has
advocated for an arms embargo, citing Israel's supposed "breach" of the
human-rights clause of the EU-Israel trade agreement. He also led the
call to boycott Israel's national soccer team in the European
Championship in Wales. (Ironically, Israel only plays in this league
because it was expelled from the Asian Football Confederation due to the
Arab League's boycott.)<br />
<br />
Corbyn, as well, has been a vocal supporter of the so-called
Palestinian "right of return," something that would lead to an Arab
majority and Jewish minority within Israel, and render the two-state
solution completely obsolete.<br />
<br />
Whether anti-Semitism is the cause or effect of the Labour party's
problem is not important. What is relevant is that Corbyn not only has
not stemmed the tide, but has played a big part in perpetuating it.<br />
<br />
British voters now have the opportunity to choose where they will go
as a nation. Will they opt to move away from stability, rationality and
tolerance toward simple mindedness and xenophobia? I sincerely hope not.<br />
<br />
Bernie Sanders has already made his choice. He is campaigning for
Corbyn despite his record on anti-Semitism. Sanders will have to explain
why a Jew is helping to elect a bigot with the views Corbyn holds about
the Jewish people and their nation state.<br />
</div>
<span class="no_print"><ul style="font-style: italic;">
<li>Follow Alan M. Dershowitz on <a href="https://twitter.com/AlanDersh">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
</span></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-38032045022075435972017-06-03T09:42:00.003+03:002017-06-03T09:42:31.380+03:00The Bilderberg 2017 Agenda: "The Trump Administration - A Progress Report"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-01/bilderberg-2017-agenda-trump-administration-progress-report">The Bilderberg 2017 Agenda: "The Trump Administration - A Progress Report"</a></h1>
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by <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" title="View user profile.">Tyler Durden</a> </div>
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<span title="Jun 1, 2017 9:55 PM">Jun 1, 2017 9:55 PM</span> </div>
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Every year, the world's richest and
most powerful business executives, bankers, media heads and politicians
sit down in some luxurious and heavily guarded venue, and discuss how to
shape the world in a way that maximizes profits for all involved, while
perpetuating a status quo that has been highly beneficial for a select
few, even if it means the ongoing destruction of the middle class. We
are talking, of course, about the annual, and always secretive,
Bilderberg meeting.<br />
And just like last year's <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-08/bilderberg-2016-agenda-trump-brexit-migrants-riots">meeting in Dresden</a>, the primary topic on the agenda of this year's 65th Bilderberg Meeting which starts today and ends on Sunday, is one: <b>Donald Trump</b>.<br />
Ironically, this year "the storm around Donald Trump" as <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2096540/bilderberg-2017-secretive-global-group-gathers-us?utm_content=buffer1209d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">the SCMP puts it, </a>is
not half way around the world, but just a few miles west of the White
House, in a conference centre in Chantilly, Virginia, where the
embattled president will be getting his end-of-term grades from the
people whose opinion actually matters: some <a href="http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html">130 participating </a>"Bilderbergs".<br />
The secretive three-day summit of the political and economic
elite kicks off Thursday in heavily guarded seclusion at the Westfields
Marriot, a luxury hotel a short distance from the Oval Office.<br />
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As
of Wednesday, the hotel was already on lockdown and an army of
landscapers have been busy planting fir trees around the perimeter, to
try protect "coy billionaires and bashful bank bosses" from prying
lenses and/or projectiles. Perched ominously at the top of the
conference agenda this year are these words: “<b>The Trump Administration: A progress report”</b>.<br />
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So is the president going to be put in detention for
tweeting in class? Held back a year? Or told to empty his locker and
leave? If ever there’s a place where a president could hear the words
“you’re fired!”, it’s Bilderberg. </div>
</blockquote>
Sarcasm aside, the White House was taking no chances,
sending along some big hitters from Team Trump to defend their boss:
national security adviser, HR McMaster; the commerce secretary, Wilbur
Ross; and Trump’s new strategist, Chris Liddell (curiously, neither Gary
Cohn nor Steven Mnuchin will be there although the controversial new
Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Jose Barroso will be present).
Could Trump himself show up to receive his report card in person: we are
confident he will tweet all about it... which is probably why he will
never be invited.<br />
Stil, none other than Henry Kissinger, the gravel-throated
kingpin of Bilderberg, visited the White House a few weeks ago to
discuss “Russia and other things”, and certainly, the Bilderberg
conference would be the perfect opportunity for the most powerful man in
the world to discuss important global issues with Trump. <br />
Sarcasm aside, what are among the "Trump agenda" items to be discussed? The <a href="http://bilderbergmeetings.org/press-release.html">publicly list is as follows</a>:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Trump Administration: A progress report </b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Trans-Atlantic relations: options and scenarios</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>The Trans-Atlantic defence alliance: bullets, bytes and bucks</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>The direction of the EU</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Can globalisation be slowed down?</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Jobs, income and unrealised expectations</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>The war on information</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Why is populism growing?</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Russia in the international order</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>The Near East</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Nuclear proliferation</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>China</b></li>
<b>
</b>
<li><b>Current events</b></li>
</ul>
The US president’s extraordinary chiding of NATO leaders in
Brussels is sure to be first and foremost on the Bilderberg discussing
panel. <b>The Bilderbergers have summoned the head of Nato, Jens
Stoltenberg,</b> to give feedback. Stoltenberg will be leading the snappily
titled session on <b>“The Transatlantic defence alliance: bullets, bytes
and bucks”.</b> He’ll be joined by the Dutch minister of defence and a
clutch of senior European politicians and party leaders, all hoping to
reset the traumatised transatlantic relationship after Trump’s
galumphing visit.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">As the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/01/bilderberg-trump-administration-secret-meeting">Guardian puts it</a>, the <b><a href="http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html">guest list </a>for this year’s conference is a veritable “covfefe” of big-hitters from geopolitics</b>,
from the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, to the king of Holland,
but perhaps the most significant name on the list is Cui Tiankai,
China’s ambassador to the US.</span><br />
<br />
According to the <a href="http://bilderbergmeetings.org/press-release.html">meeting’s agenda</a>,
<b>“China”</b> will also be discussed at a summit attended by Cui, the US
commerce secretary, the US national security adviser, two US senators,
the governor of Virginia, two former CIA chiefs and any number of giant
US investors in China, including the heads of the financial services
firms the Carlyle Group and KKR. And for good reason: as last night's
PMI numbers showed, the Chinese economy - the global growth dynamo - is
finally contracting. If China goes, the rest of the world will follow. <br />
<br />
Additionally, the boss of Google Eric Schmidt, who warned in
January that Trump’s administration will do “evil things”, is expected
to attend, too. The executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s holding
company, has just come back from a trip to Beijing, where he was
overseeing Google AI’s latest game of Go against humans. He declared it
“a pleasure to be back in China, a country that I admire a great deal”.
It’s possible three days spent chatting to the Chinese ambassador could
even be good for business.<br />
<br />
Several journalists are participating in this year’s forum,
including London Evening Standard editor George Osborne and Cansu
Camlibel, the Washington bureau chief for Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper.
But per convention, news outlets are not invited to cover the event.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>“There is no desired outcome, no minutes are taken and no
report is written,” the group stated. “Furthermore, no resolutions are
proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”</b></span><br />
<br />
Ex-deputy secretary of state William Burns and former deputy
assistant secretary of defence Elaine Bunn, both Obama-era officials,
will also attend. Burns, the current president of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, has warned that Trump “risks hollowing out the
ideas, initiative and institutions on which US leadership and
international order rest.”<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;">With one of the agenda items titled simply enough "c</span><span style="font-size: small;">an globalisation be slowed down?<span style="font-size: 13.008px;">" it is no surprise that anti-globalisation protesters have already descended on the location of the meeting.</span></span></b><br />
<br />
* * * <br />
<br />
Below is a <a href="http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html">full list of this year's participants</a>:<br />
<br />
<b>CHAIRMAN</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Castries, Henri de (FRA), Former Chairman and CEO, AXA; President of Institut Montaigne</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>PARTICIPANTS</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG</li>
<li>Adonis, Andrew (GBR), Chair, National Infrastructure Commission</li>
<li>Agius, Marcus (GBR), Chairman, PA Consulting Group</li>
<li>Akyol, Mustafa (TUR), Senior Visiting Fellow, Freedom Project at Wellesley College</li>
<li>Alstadheim, Kjetil B. (NOR), Political Editor, Dagens Næringsliv</li>
<li>Altman, Roger C. (USA), Founder and Senior Chairman, Evercore</li>
<li>Arnaut, José Luis (PRT), Managing Partner, CMS Rui Pena & Arnaut</li>
<li>Barroso, José M. Durão (PRT), Chairman, Goldman Sachs International</li>
<li>Bäte, Oliver (DEU), CEO, Allianz SE</li>
<li>Baumann, Werner (DEU), Chairman, Bayer AG</li>
<li>Baverez, Nicolas (FRA), Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher</li>
<li>Benko, René (AUT), Founder and Chairman of the Advisory Board, SIGNA Holding GmbH</li>
<li>Berner, Anne-Catherine (FIN), Minister of Transport and Communications</li>
<li>Botín, Ana P. (ESP), Executive Chairman, Banco Santander</li>
<li>Brandtzæg, Svein Richard (NOR), President and CEO, Norsk Hydro ASA</li>
<li>Brennan, John O. (USA), Senior Advisor, Kissinger Associates Inc.</li>
<li>Bsirske, Frank (DEU), Chairman, United Services Union</li>
<li>Buberl, Thomas (FRA), CEO, AXA</li>
<li>Bunn, M. Elaine (USA), Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense</li>
<li>Burns, William J. (USA), President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</li>
<li>Çakiroglu, Levent (TUR), CEO, Koç Holding A.S.</li>
<li>Çamlibel, Cansu (TUR), Washington DC Bureau Chief, Hürriyet Newspaper</li>
<li>Cebrián, Juan Luis (ESP), Executive Chairman, PRISA and El País</li>
<li>Clemet, Kristin (NOR), CEO, Civita</li>
<li>Cohen, David S. (USA), Former Deputy Director, CIA</li>
<li>Collison, Patrick (USA), CEO, Stripe</li>
<li>Cotton, Tom (USA), Senator</li>
<li>Cui, Tiankai (CHN), Ambassador to the United States</li>
<li>Döpfner, Mathias (DEU), CEO, Axel Springer SE</li>
<li>Elkann, John (ITA), Chairman, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles</li>
<li>Enders, Thomas (DEU), CEO, Airbus SE</li>
<li>Federspiel, Ulrik (DNK), Group Executive, Haldor Topsøe Holding A/S</li>
<li>Ferguson, Jr., Roger W. (USA), President and CEO, TIAA</li>
<li>Ferguson, Niall (USA), Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University</li>
<li>Gianotti, Fabiola (ITA), Director General, CERN</li>
<li>Gozi, Sandro (ITA), State Secretary for European Affairs</li>
<li>Graham, Lindsey (USA), Senator</li>
<li>Greenberg, Evan G. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Chubb Group</li>
<li>Griffin, Kenneth (USA), Founder and CEO, Citadel Investment Group, LLC</li>
<li>Gruber, Lilli (ITA), Editor-in-Chief and Anchor "Otto e mezzo", La7 TV</li>
<li>Guindos, Luis de (ESP), Minister of Economy, Industry and Competiveness</li>
<li>Haines, Avril D. (USA), Former Deputy National Security Advisor</li>
<li>Halberstadt, Victor (NLD), Professor of Economics, Leiden University</li>
<li>Hamers, Ralph (NLD), Chairman, ING Group</li>
<li>Hedegaard, Connie (DNK), Chair, KR Foundation</li>
<li>Hennis-Plasschaert, Jeanine (NLD), Minister of Defence, The Netherlands</li>
<li>Hobson, Mellody (USA), President, Ariel Investments LLC</li>
<li>Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, LinkedIn and Partner, Greylock</li>
<li>Houghton, Nicholas (GBR), Former Chief of Defence</li>
<li>Ischinger, Wolfgang (INT), Chairman, Munich Security Conference</li>
<li>Jacobs, Kenneth M. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Lazard</li>
<li>Johnson, James A. (USA), Chairman, Johnson Capital Partners</li>
<li>Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. (USA), Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC</li>
<li>Karp, Alex (USA), CEO, Palantir Technologies</li>
<li>Kengeter, Carsten (DEU), CEO, Deutsche Börse AG</li>
<li>Kissinger, Henry A. (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.</li>
<li>Klatten, Susanne (DEU), Managing Director, SKion GmbH</li>
<li>Kleinfeld, Klaus (USA), Former Chairman and CEO, Arconic</li>
<li>Knot, Klaas H.W. (NLD), President, De Nederlandsche Bank</li>
<li>Koç, Ömer M. (TUR), Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.</li>
<li>Kotkin, Stephen (USA), Professor in History and International Affairs, Princeton University</li>
<li>Kravis, Henry R. (USA), Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, KKR</li>
<li>Kravis, Marie-Josée (USA), Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute</li>
<li>Kudelski, André (CHE), Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group</li>
<li>Lagarde, Christine (INT), Managing Director, International Monetary Fund</li>
<li>Lenglet, François (FRA), Chief Economics Commentator, France 2</li>
<li>Leysen, Thomas (BEL), Chairman, KBC Group</li>
<li>Liddell, Christopher (USA), Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives</li>
<li>Lööf, Annie (SWE), Party Leader, Centre Party</li>
<li>Mathews, Jessica T. (USA), Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</li>
<li>McAuliffe, Terence (USA), Governor of Virginia</li>
<li>McKay, David I. (CAN), President and CEO, Royal Bank of Canada</li>
<li>McMaster, H.R. (USA), National Security Advisor</li>
<li>Micklethwait, John (INT), Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg LP</li>
<li>Minton Beddoes, Zanny (INT), Editor-in-Chief, The Economist</li>
<li>Molinari, Maurizio (ITA), Editor-in-Chief, La Stampa</li>
<li>Monaco, Lisa (USA), Former Homeland Security Officer</li>
<li>Morneau, Bill (CAN), Minister of Finance</li>
<li>Mundie, Craig J. (USA), President, Mundie & Associates</li>
<li>Murtagh, Gene M. (IRL), CEO, Kingspan Group plc</li>
<li>Netherlands, H.M. the King of the (NLD)</li>
<li>Noonan, Peggy (USA), Author and Columnist, The Wall Street Journal</li>
<li>O'Leary, Michael (IRL), CEO, Ryanair D.A.C.</li>
<li>Osborne, George (GBR), Editor, London Evening Standard</li>
<li>Papahelas, Alexis (GRC), Executive Editor, Kathimerini Newspaper</li>
<li>Papalexopoulos, Dimitri (GRC), CEO, Titan Cement Co.</li>
<li>Petraeus, David H. (USA), Chairman, KKR Global Institute</li>
<li>Pind, Søren (DNK), Minister for Higher Education and Science</li>
<li>Puga, Benoît (FRA), Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor and Chancellor of the National Order of Merit</li>
<li>Rachman, Gideon (GBR), Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, The Financial Times</li>
<li>Reisman, Heather M. (CAN), Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.</li>
<li>Rivera Díaz, Albert (ESP), President, Ciudadanos Party</li>
<li>Rosén, Johanna (SWE), Professor in Materials Physics, Linköping University</li>
<li>Ross, Wilbur L. (USA), Secretary of Commerce</li>
<li>Rubenstein, David M. (USA), Co-Founder and Co-CEO, The Carlyle Group</li>
<li>Rubin, Robert E. (USA), Co-Chair, Council on Foreign Relations and Former Treasury Secretary</li>
<li>Ruoff, Susanne (CHE), CEO, Swiss Post</li>
<li>Rutten, Gwendolyn (BEL), Chair, Open VLD</li>
<li>Sabia, Michael (CAN), CEO, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec</li>
<li>Sawers, John (GBR), Chairman and Partner, Macro Advisory Partners</li>
<li>Schadlow, Nadia (USA), Deputy Assistant to the President, National Security Council</li>
<li>Schmidt, Eric E. (USA), Executive Chairman, Alphabet Inc.</li>
<li>Schneider-Ammann, Johann N. (CHE), Federal Councillor, Swiss Confederation</li>
<li>Scholten, Rudolf (AUT), President, Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue</li>
<li>Severgnini, Beppe (ITA), Editor-in-Chief, 7-Corriere della Sera</li>
<li>Sikorski, Radoslaw (POL), Senior Fellow, Harvard University</li>
<li>Slat, Boyan (NLD), CEO and Founder, The Ocean Cleanup</li>
<li>Spahn, Jens (DEU), Parliamentary State Secretary and Federal Ministry of Finance</li>
<li>Stephenson, Randall L. (USA), Chairman and CEO, AT&T</li>
<li>Stern, Andrew (USA), President Emeritus, SEIU and Senior Fellow, Economic Security Project</li>
<li>Stoltenberg, Jens (INT), Secretary General, NATO</li>
<li>Summers, Lawrence H. (USA), Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University</li>
<li>Tertrais, Bruno (FRA), Deputy Director, Fondation pour la recherche stratégique</li>
<li>Thiel, Peter (USA), President, Thiel Capital</li>
<li>Topsøe, Jakob Haldor (DNK), Chairman, Haldor Topsøe Holding A/S</li>
<li>Ülgen, Sinan (TUR), Founding and Partner, Istanbul Economics</li>
<li>Vance, J.D. (USA), Author and Partner, Mithril</li>
<li>Wahlroos, Björn (FIN), Chairman, Sampo Group, Nordea Bank, UPM-Kymmene Corporation</li>
<li>Wallenberg, Marcus (SWE), Chairman, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB</li>
<li>Walter, Amy (USA), Editor, The Cook Political Report</li>
<li>Weston, Galen G. (CAN), CEO and Executive Chairman, Loblaw Companies Ltd and George Weston Companies</li>
<li>White, Sharon (GBR), Chief Executive, Ofcom</li>
<li>Wieseltier, Leon (USA), Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy, The Brookings Institution</li>
<li>Wolf, Martin H. (INT), Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times</li>
<li>Wolfensohn, James D. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Wolfensohn & Company</li>
<li>Wunsch, Pierre (BEL), Vice-Governor, National Bank of Belgium</li>
<li>Zeiler, Gerhard (AUT), President, Turner International</li>
<li>Zients, Jeffrey D. (USA), Former Director, National Economic Council</li>
<li>Zoellick, Robert B. (USA), Non-Executive Chairman, AllianceBernstein L.P.</li>
</ul>
Natrually, the secretive nature of the group has given birth
to conspiracy theories. Some have claimed that the Bilderberg is a
group of rich and powerful kingmakers seeking to impose a one world
government. Whether that is true remains in the eye of the beholder,
however one thing is clear: as the graph below shows, the members are
connected to virtually every important and relevant organization, media
outlet, company and political entity in the world.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYlCeKri2TdGlnmirHXs58DFeGfwJQFV2Tmj3cPXnXFFW3pmG963n_QGt3u8zIXc8moXwzYpQF8xOeX_6DzP6nioUKAeg7iP_WAlzGIP-yveTl2zmxHk7kgxIqSI6dvRlev95m0V7GuY/s1600/bilderberg+group.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="1600" height="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYlCeKri2TdGlnmirHXs58DFeGfwJQFV2Tmj3cPXnXFFW3pmG963n_QGt3u8zIXc8moXwzYpQF8xOeX_6DzP6nioUKAeg7iP_WAlzGIP-yveTl2zmxHk7kgxIqSI6dvRlev95m0V7GuY/s640/bilderberg+group.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"> CLICK TO ENLARGE</span></div>
</div>
</div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-63298719214927394662017-05-31T07:31:00.001+03:002017-05-31T07:31:29.353+03:00Majority of Swedes Think Media Lies About the Impact of Mass Migration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 itemprop="headline">
<span style="color: #f6b26b;">Majority of Swedes Think Media Lies About the Impact of Mass Migration</span></h1>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGujybAA7gY_XpFFsNc7dXozXCvwsvq-RybDnmQUA4ZHNBrFDCfiu4bXYetfVaMmBwA561-eFZT_4aSsXjJh34ALzNiYbl5acS_zc4LwNKZNfWk4J7KHyItdYEk6ceob9cgLDGNmii3_I/s1600/BREIT.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="87" data-original-width="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGujybAA7gY_XpFFsNc7dXozXCvwsvq-RybDnmQUA4ZHNBrFDCfiu4bXYetfVaMmBwA561-eFZT_4aSsXjJh34ALzNiYbl5acS_zc4LwNKZNfWk4J7KHyItdYEk6ceob9cgLDGNmii3_I/s1600/BREIT.tiff" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h2>
<span style="color: red;">The majority of people in Sweden believe the media is dishonest
about problems in society associated with mass migration, according to
research presented by the nation’s Institute of Media Studies.</span></h2>
The institute’s new book <i>Mistrust of the Media</i>, <a class=" x5l" href="http://mediestudier.se/publikationer/misstron-mot-medier/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">presented</a>
at a seminar on Monday, details that whilst confidence in the media is
relatively high, Swedes are sceptical of reports on issues connected
with immigration.<br />
<br /><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Fifty-four per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “The
Swedish media doesn’t tell the truth about social problems associated
with immigration,” whilst only 27 per cent said they disagreed.</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<b>Confidence was also low with regards to the media’s handling of
crime, and reporting on healthcare issues garnered the greatest amount
of trust.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><b>Politics play a part in regards to public confidence in the media,
with the institute reporting that “almost all” respondents who vote for
the populist Sweden Democrats (SD) party believe the media is not giving
the full picture on migration.</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><b>
</b></span><span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><b>By contrast, people who support Sweden’s ruling Red-Green coalition
have the most trust in the nation’s media. Confidence is lower amongst
supporters of the liberal conservative Moderate party.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Writing in <em>Dagens Nyheter</em>, the Institute of Media Studies director Lars Truedson <a class=" x5l" href="http://www.dn.se/debatt/lasarna-misstror-mediernas-rapportering-om-invandring/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">argues</a> “a serious discussion is needed about the attitude of journalists and the media on immigration reporting”.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Warning the profession’s credibility is in tatters on the issue, the
veteran journalist urged writers and editors to give a more honest
picture of how mass migration has affected Sweden.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Amongst concerns expressed by Truedson is that journalists are
“excessive” in paying attention to press ethics guidelines not to
emphasise a subject’s “ethnic origin, nationality, occupation, political
affiliation, religious beliefs or sexual orientation” if it is
irrelevant to a story.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">The mainstream media in Sweden has been accused of <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/09/bus-driver-suspended-for-sharing-immigration-critical-news-articles-on-social-media/">habitual censorship</a>: photographs
of migrant criminal suspects are routinely pixelated, with even their
skin tones changed, in order to hide the extent of migrant crime.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/30/majority-swedes-media-lies-mass-migration/">http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/30/majority-swedes-media-lies-mass-migration/</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-59482500900087711222017-05-25T11:17:00.001+03:002017-05-25T11:17:26.796+03:00Vincent Cooper : Muslim Immigration and the Future of Europe: Where’s the Democracy?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<header class="site-header" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/WPHeader"><div class="wrap">
<div class="title-area">
<div class="site-title" itemprop="headline">
<a href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/">Jihad Watch</a></div>
<div class="site-description" itemprop="description">
Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts</div>
</div>
</div>
</header><header class="entry-header"><h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">
<span style="color: #e06666;"><span style="background-color: white;">Muslim Immigration and the Future of Europe: Where’s the Democracy?</span></span></h1>
<div class="entry-meta">
<time class="entry-time" datetime="2017-05-24T20:28:45+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">May 24, 2017</time> <time class="entry-time" datetime="2017-05-24T20:28:45+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">8:28 pm</time> </div>
<div class="entry-meta">
<br /></div>
<div class="entry-meta">
By <span class="entry-author" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a class="entry-author-link" href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/author/vincent-cooper" itemprop="url" rel="author"><span class="entry-author-name" itemprop="name">Vincent Cooper</span></a></span></div>
<div class="entry-meta">
<br /></div>
<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="entry-author" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><span class="entry-author-name" itemprop="name"> </span></span> </div>
</header><div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://cdn.jihadwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/manchester-attack.jpeg"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118524" height="231" src="https://cdn.jihadwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/manchester-attack.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">MANCHESTER</span></div>
<br />
<b>The Canadian writer and broadcaster Mark Steyn asks a simple but
fundamentally searching question about the problem of Islamic terrorism
in Western society today, a question that few mainstream liberal
politicians want even to acknowledge, let alone attempt to answer.</b><br />
<b>The simple question Steyn asks is: </b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>What’s the happy ending here</i>?</b></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>In other words, Steyn is asking if Islamic terror in the West, and
Europe in particular, is ever going to end and allow us to get back to
normal living,</b> to get back to those days when Islam didn’t dominate our
news screens, back to those days when we weren’t threatened on our
living-room TV screens with beheading if we did not show “respect”, or
has Islamic terrorism now become a major and integral part of our
Western way of life, just as it is in the Middle East and much of the
Muslim world?<br />
<br />
Throughout the Western world today, <b>largely because of the post
Second World War liberal consensus on Muslim immigration</b> and growing
Islamic terrorism on our streets, the West’s ruling liberal clerisy is
under unprecedented pressure from an enraged public.<br />
<br />
Witness the growing electoral strength of the anti Muslim-immigration AfD party in Germany; the growing strength of the <i>Front</i> <i>National</i>
in France which, although losing to Mr Macron in the recent general
election, has established Muslim immigration as an issue of serious
voter concern, with the <i>FN</i> now a major force in French
politics. Witness the growing strength of Geert Wilders in the
Netherlands, whose electoral support for a ban on Muslim immigration
frightened the pro-immigration prime minister Mark Rutte into telling
Muslims who don’t like “our values” to leave Holland. And, of course,
the election of Donald Trump, whose victory over the <i>bien</i> <i>pensant</i>
clerisy of America’s East and West coasts had much to do with ordinary
voter concerns about security and Muslim immigration. And of Brexit,
where the British people were deeply concerned about Angela Merkel’s
almost unilateral open invitation to the world’s Muslims to come and
settle in Europe.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Western, but particularly the European political landscape is
changing. It’s no longer simply the traditional Left/Right questions of
economics that divide people, but something much more fundamental: the
question of a Muslim threat to Europe’s historical identity as a
Christian/secular culture. Islamic immigration is now a major defining
feature of European politics.</b><br />
<br />
Everyone can now see the literally bloody disastrous results of
jihadist terrorism on their streets, results that far outstrip even the
dire predictions of the clichéd British bogyman Enoch Powell (Powell
predicted irrational inter-racial violence on Britain’s streets, not
targeted and deliberate civilizational destruction).<br />
<br />
European, American, Canadian and Australian peoples now see their
towns, their cities, their airports, even their Christian churches and
private homes turned into slaughtering dens by jihadi killers, many of
them second and third generation “Westernised” Muslims who, according to
that same Western liberal consensus, should today be fully-functioning
secular Muslims enjoying the benefits of mini-skirted Muslim women and
same-sex Muslim marriage.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, that great liberal dream of a secularised “Western Islam”
hasn’t worked out as the liberals hoped, and anyone who understood Islam
always knew it never would.</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><b>Although much of the European Union political class simply will not
admit it, a real inconvenient truth today is that Muslim immigration and
Islamic terrorism are showing clear signs of fracturing Europe’s
cultural identity. </b></span><br />
<br />
Conservative anti-immigration movements throughout
Western Europe today blame not simply Muslim immigration, but Western
liberalism itself for what they see as Western Europe’s political and
cultural decay. Liberalism, many believe, has given Europe in particular
a catastrophic and perhaps in the long term an unsolvable security
problem, with jihadism now deeply embedded in Western European society.<br />
<br />
France, for example, is still in security lockdown since the Paris
2015 gunning down of innocent teenagers and the Nice 2016 jihadi truck
slaughter. Germany is in a similar state after the Munich jihadi truck
attack. And now Stockholm, perhaps the most generous country to
immigrants, has experienced its own truck jihad slaughter. As I write,
the Louvre in Paris is under siege from an Islamic jihad attack, with
much of the city’s transport closed down.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">All of these jihadist outrages have in common a cowardly assault on
innocent men, women and children in public areas going about their
normal business. These innocents were targeted <b><i>precisely</i></b> <i>because</i>
they were innocent, freedom-loving Western people, many of them so
innocent in fact that they had supported the right of Muslim immigrants,
including their killers, to come and live among them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The truth is that we in the West today, but again particularly in
Europe, have imported an existential threat to every basic value we hold
dear.</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<b>The extraordinary truth is that today much of Continental Europe’s
famed public culture of easy-going street life is now done only under
armed police protection. </b>Because of militant Islam, many people in
Europe are now fearful of doing things that were once considered
perfectly safe and normal, such as strolling carefree in their towns and
cities, or women walking or travelling alone. In one report, a German
train company, Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn, has introduced women-only
carriages, apparently in response to the widely-reported Cologne
sex-attacks by Muslim gangs.<br />
<br />
These are enormous changes to our way of life in Europe today,
brought about in many cases by jihadi killers in the Muslim immigrant
community. In many parts of Europe, public street life is now so tense
and threatening that it is dangerous to go out at night, as I personally
experienced in the northern French towns of Amiens and Verdun on a
First World War commemoration tour in 2015.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">This, of course,<b> is not</b> what Muslim immigration was supposed to have
been about. This was not how immigration was sold to us all those years
ago, back in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, to a sceptical public
that never wanted and never voted for large-scale immigration in the
first place.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Europe’s public were always told, and still are told, in spite of
evidence to the contrary, that Muslim immigration would enrich and
enhance our Western way of life. Muslims, we were told, came to Europe
because they valued our secular pluralist society. Be tolerant, said our
European liberal class, and you will see that we are all one big happy
multicultural family.</span><br />
<br />
<b>As is now patently obvious, that’s not how things have worked out,
not by a long shot. Much of Western Europe’s public life today is
effectively under armed guard, and all because of mass immigration and
jihadist terror.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>But it’s not simply, or even mainly, the past or present that is of
most concern to Europeans now. It’s Europe’s future with continuing
Muslim immigration and a growing Muslim population that is of most
serious concern. What is Europe’s Muslim immigrant future to be like?
Will there ever be an end to this Islamic violence in our European
homeland?</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>This brings up Steyn’s simple question again: <i>what’s</i> <i>the</i> <i>happy</i> <i>ending</i> <i>here</i>?</b>
When is this terror threat going to end? The truck jihads, the
machine-gunning of innocents, the knife attacks on police in their own
homes and clergy saying Mass, the security lockdowns, the women only
carriages and street police protection for what was once spontaneous
free behaviour, is all this a temporary nightmare, or is this what
Muslim immigration intrinsically means for Europe, a permanent terror
threat that will intensify long into Europe’s future?<br />
<br />
These are perfectly reasonable and important questions for any
European to ask, and nobody should feel intimidated for asking them. Nor
should anyone feel intimidated by truthful answers.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f4cccc;"><b>But that’s not what is happening. Western liberal political culture
has effectively erected a language barrier that can criminalise honest
criticism of Islam in the West today. The liberal class have
appropriated the language of social justice, and any criticism of the
West’s pro-Muslim immigration policies, any expressed concern about
Muslim immigration and the future of Western culture is labelled
“racist”, and has to break through the language barrier of liberal
prejudice before even beginning to make a case.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">For example, it is <i>de</i> <i>rigueur</i> for most mainstream
politicians today to preface all debates about Islamic terrorism in
Europe with the mantra <b>“it has nothing to do with Islam”.</b> Someone who
may want to question that claim, or question its universality has first
to prove he is not Islamophobic, something that is almost impossible to
do in our liberal culture because, by definition, anyone who disagrees
with the liberal claim <i>is</i> Islamophobic.</span><br />
<br />
<b>The fact is that the intellectually dishonest liberal/Left language
barrier, where “Islamophobia” is plastered all over any reasonable
criticism of Islam and Muslim immigration, makes it impossible to get an
honest debate on the most urgent issues of our day: Muslim immigration,
Muslim demographics and the future of Europe.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>How has this intellectual dishonesty in debate come about?</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">
</span><span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>The problem was always Western liberalism.</b> Since the end of the
Second World War, liberal Europe has experienced, largely because
liberal Europe greatly encouraged, an immigration programme from the
Muslim world the scale of which no other society in history has ever
even contemplated.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Not coincidently, <b>such an immigration programme fitted very well the
new consensus among left-wing intellectuals that it was the non-white
Third World native, </b>not the now affluent and embourgeoised white
industrial working class, <b>that needed liberation from exploitative
Western capitalists.</b> Third World immigration to the welfare West was,
and still is, <b>seen as a moral crusade to “expropriate” the ill-gotten
gains of the affluent West, a form of punishment and payback for years
of supposed colonial exploitation.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Western Enlightenment teleological liberalism (a secular outgrowth of
Christianity) has always had at its heart the assumption that the
world’s civilizations are moving towards one goal: <b>a universal Western
secular culture.</b> Third World Muslim immigration to the West was seen as
part of the process that would bring about this universal goal.</span><br />
<br />
<b>Liberals simply assumed that Muslim immigrants to Europe would grasp
at the chance to become freedom-loving secular liberals. They assumed
that the sheer power of Europe’s traditional homogeneous secular culture
would unify Muslim, Christian and secularist and eventually create a
religion-free <i>modus</i> <i>vivendi</i>, turning Europe into a secular heaven on Earth, with eventually the whole world becoming an Enlightenment secular civilisation.</b><br />
<br />
Alas, this liberal globalist dream, as Europe very much to its cost
now knows, is over. Many of Europe’s Muslims, perhaps the vast majority
of them, reject most, if not all of the West’s secular liberal
programme. And who can blame them?<br />
<br />
So too do many Westerners. The election of Donald Trump and the
Brexit result are, to some degree, a rejection of what many see as a
long-running Western liberal drift into anarchic, nihilistic secularism.
In America and Britain, the blue-collar proletariat and much of the
middle class have revolted, not just out of economic self-interest, but
out of perfectly reasonable concerns about Islamic terror and the threat
to Western values from relentless mass immigration.<br />
<br />
But liberal Europe’s problems go way beyond the election of Donald
Trump and Brexit. Europe now has a legacy of over fifty years of heavy
Muslim immigration, and whether or not it is culturally or politically
acceptable to say it, Europe now has a problem, not just with individual
acts of Islamic terror, but, many would argue, with Islam itself, as
even the former socialist President Hollande of France finally, after
many years of denying it, admitted.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The fact is that the supposed unifying power of Europe’s traditional
homogeneous culture has failed in its liberal-inspired historic task of
creating a homogenised, secular <i>modus</i> <i>vivendi</i> out of
Europe’s fractured mass-migrant culture. <span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">Europe today is dividing, not
so much racially, but along cultural, or rather civilizational fault
lines,</span> and to any reasonable person the policy of unquestioned,
never-ending large-scale Muslim immigration must now, surely, be
questioned.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Yet amazingly, Europe’s liberal political class, and much of the
media, are effectively in denial about the impact that Muslim
immigration has had, and continues to have, on Europe’s culture and
political stability.</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Political correctness, misplaced sensitivity, but particularly fear,
fear that speaking the truth might offend or could cause social unrest,
have all combined to create throughout Europe an almost schizophrenic
public mentality on anything to do with Islam. Many simply do not feel
free to speak their mind on the dangers they see ahead for their
continent.</b><br />
<br />
The politicians say one thing, yet the ordinary people know it’s not
true. <b>There are two worlds in Europe today when it comes to Islam: one a
fabrication of the liberal politicians and media, and one actually
inhabited by ordinary people. </b><br />
<br />
The people want the truth, they want an
honest debate about Islam and immigration, but suspect that the
political class and the media are running scared of that debate.<br />
<br />
In Britain, everyone knows that<b> the press buckled</b> under the threat of
Islamic violence by refusing to publish the Muhammad cartoons. Whatever
the security concerns may have been, the public can see that the press
surrendered to threats, and now have little respect, particularly for
the mainstream media.<br />
Currently, many in the British media are furious at the British
Government’s proposed press legislation, particularly section 40 of the
Crime and Courts Act 2013. The Act will curtail the freedom of the
press, they say. But of what use is this much-vaunted press freedom if
the media do not have the courage to use and defend that freedom?<br />
<br />
<b>The fact is that much of the political class and the mainstream media
simply do not speak freely and honestly about Islam,</b> particularly about
the religious and ideological source of jihadist terror and its threat
to Europe’s future. As the political philosopher, John Gray — very much a
traditional liberal — put it:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: yellow;">Britain is a country “where a minority of
fundamentalist Muslims that is estranged from whatever remains of a
common culture, and which rejects the tacit norms of toleration that
allow a civil society to reproduce itself peacefully, has effectively
curbed freedom of expression about Islam in Britain today”. (<i>Post</i>–<i>liberalism</i>: <i>studies</i> <i>in</i> <i>political</i> <i>thought</i>)</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
Even after 9/11, when one might have expected a change of tack on
Muslim immigration, liberals reiterated their absolutely unquestionable
mantra: “Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam” (therefore we
can continue with relentless Muslim immigration). <b>Incredibly, instead of
perhaps even a moratorium on further immigration after 9/11, many
Western countries actually <i>increased</i> Muslim immigration.</b><br />
<br />
Such a denial of common-sense public concerns about Islam and
immigration — many would say a denial of reality — is surely perverse.
“Islam is not the problem”, insists the West’s ruling liberal political
class. “We will defeat the terrorists”, says Merkel and the other EU
leaders.<b> Jihadi terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, they insist,
without even considering the possibility that they might be wrong, or
that they may not understand the theology of Islam, </b>and that the
concerns of the ordinary man on the street might just have a point.<br />
<br />
“It’s just a few bad men”, liberals insist after every jihadi act of
terror, and we will “take them out”, they say. And when the bad men are
“taken out”, we can all go back to peaceful living, go back to
secularised Muslims and secularised Christians living together in a
secular pluralist state where we can all walk the streets again without
fear of a lorry being driven at us, without our children being knifed
because they are wearing swimwear, or being blown to bits while
innocently standing in an airport queue.<br />
<br />
<b>Such hopes about Europe’s multicultural, multi ethnic future are
surely nothing more than that — hope.</b> It’s a refusal even to consider
the historical and contemporary facts about at least certain
interpretations of Islam.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">While the majority of Muslims are peaceable and law-abiding, what
liberals refuse to acknowledge is what more and more ordinary people in
the West now understand and see as militant Islam’s historical
propensity to violent cultural assertiveness, <b>Islam’s difficulty sharing
space with non-Muslims, </b>and the fact that Islam has bloody borders
right around the world, even in countries that have nothing to do with
the Middle East. Peaceable, law-abiding Muslims seem to have made little
difference.</span><br />
<br />
Of course, Islam is not the only religion to have a bloody history. However, as Samuel Huntington wrote in his prescient book <i>The Clash of Civilizations</i>:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>“Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have
problems living peaceably with their neighbours. The question naturally
rises as to whether this pattern of late-twentieth-century conflict
between Muslim and non-Muslim groups is equally true of relations
between groups from other civilizations. In fact, it is not. Muslims
make up about one-fifth of the world’s population but in the 1990s they
have been far more involved in inter-group violence than the people of
any other civilization. The evidence is overwhelming.” (<i>The</i> <i>Clash</i> <i>of</i> <i>Civilizations</i> page 256)</li>
</ul>
<br />
The evidence is indeed overwhelming, and there is no reason
whatsoever to believe that Europe, with its large and growing Muslim
population, will escape this bloody clash of civilizations. At the very
least, on any rational assessment of Europe’s immigrant-based future,
Huntington’s findings would surely be a consideration in all honest and
serious political debate.<br />
<br />
The London Underground bombings, the Madrid train bombings, the
Brussels airport bombing, the Paris and Nice jihad slaughter, the Berlin
truck rampage, the Stockholm truck rampage, German, Swedish and Danish
knife and gun attacks, all pose a disturbing question, particularly for
Europeans: is Europe, after over half a century of heavy Muslim
immigration, now a new Islamic jihadi front? <b>Is Europe now a permanent
part of Islam’s violent perimeter?</b><br />
<br />
These are disturbing but absolutely essential questions that people
in a free society must feel free to ask. That Europe might now be facing
a long-term terrorist future seems to have been confirmed by the former
socialist French Prime Minister Manuel Valls who, ominously, told the
French people after the Nice jihadi truck outrage to <b>“learn to live with
terrorism”.</b><br />
<br />
Equally, London’s socialist Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan has said terrorist acts are <b>“part and parcel”</b> of city life today.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #d9ead3;">What Mr Valls and Mayor Khan failed to point out is that such
despicable acts of terror did not happen before large-scale Muslim
immigration.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">Given the level of public concern about immigration, and given the
possibility that the French Prime Minister was right and that Islamic
terrorism will continue to be an integral part of European life, surely
all debate about Europe’s future must now address the question of
whether continued Muslim immigration is compatible with the survival of
European culture and Europe’s long-term security. On any reasonable
assessment of Europe’s predicament, Europe <b>must now debate whether
Western European states are now, in Samuel Huntington’s phrase, an
integral part of Islam’s bloody borders.</b></span><br />
<br />
Not everyone, of course, will be so pessimistic. For those of a more
positive outlook, it could be argued that Europe’s security forces will
manage to contain Islamic violence <b>within certain “acceptable levels”,</b>
in Reginald Maudling’s phrase about IRA violence.<br />
<br />
To that end, <b>“learning to live with terrorism”</b> might well be the only
rational, long-term strategy our liberal political elite have to offer
us. Under the protection of what might be some form of martial law,
“normal” life could continue and Europe’s cultural values maintained.<br />
<br />
But such a prospect, even if one were prepared to accept it, is
surely wishful thinking. It is a common belief that sharia law, for
example, is a product of Islamic fundamentalism. Defeat the
fundamentalists, Western liberal governments say, and you nullify or
defeat sharia. If you nullify sharia in Europe, then multicultural
secular Europe will be at peace. A non-sharia Islam, or an Islam that
dissolves on contact with Europe’s hedonistic and consumerist culture,
seems to be the Western liberal’s idea of an ideal Westernised Islam.<br />
<br />
The idea of a non-sharia Islam was, and still is, a common hope in
Western liberal thought; but it is almost certainly a mistake. Sharia
law is not a product of fundamentalism, but in fact is a product of
ordinary mainstream Islam. The Irish writer, Conor Cruise O’Brien
(another traditional liberal) has this to say on the attempt to
distinguish fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist Islam:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: yellow;">“Fundamentalist Islam is a misnomer which dulls our perceptions in a
dangerous way. It does so by implying that there is some other kind of
Islam, which is well disposed to those who reject the Koran. There
isn’t. Islam is a universalist, triumphalist and political religion. It
claims <i>de</i> <i>jure</i> dominion over all humanity.” (<i>Independent</i>, Jan 5, 1995)</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="background-color: #d9ead3;">This was written in 1995, before large-scale Islamic terrorism in the West.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #d9ead3;">
</span><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"><b>The fact is that Western consumerist materialist culture has not, as
hoped, weaved its magic on Europe’s successive generations of Muslims.
</b>Today’s younger generation of European Muslims is even more committed to
sharia than were earlier generations, an intriguing example of <b>Islamic
indigenization</b> taking root, not in a Muslim country but right in the
heart of secular/Christian Europe.</span><br />
<br />
<b>So, on any reasonable assessment, there will be no sharia-free Islam
in Europe. </b>Several opinion polls of Europe’s Muslims have shown large
numbers to be strongly supportive of sharia law, and not just for
Muslims, but for everyone. Many Muslims believe sharia should be the
main legal source in their new European homeland.<br />
A German government-funded study (WZB Berlin Social Science Centre)
of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in Europe found that 65 percent
believed that sharia law is more important to them than the laws of the
country in which they live.<br />
In the Irish Republic, where Islam is now the fastest growing
religion, 57% of Muslims, according to one poll, want the country ruled
by sharia law. In Britain, according to some polls, 40% of Muslims
support sharia law for the whole of the UK.<br />
On that basis, it is perfectly reasonable to claim that, with an
ever-growing Muslim population in Europe, <b>by sheer demographic weight
sharia law will gradually begin to elbow-out and replace traditional
Western values over large areas of the Continent.</b><br />
It’s already happening. Today in many European countries, the
deliberate self-segregation of Muslims is gradually creating <b>
semi-Balkanised communities</b> in many of Europe’s cities, where secular
pluralist values are explicitly rejected and where deeply conservative,
even illegal Muslim traditions are reinforced.<br />
There are now in Britain’s heavily Muslim areas well-established
sharia courts or “councils”, dispensing “justice” according to Islamic
law, mainly in matters of marriage, inheritance and divorce. According
to lawyer Aina Khan as reported in the <i>Daily</i> <i>Telegraph</i> of 2015, <b>there are up to 100,000 sharia “marriages” in Britain, many of them polygamous.</b><br />
These marriages are not recognised under UK law but, either out of
indifference or liberal accommodation, or even out of a craven deference
to Muslim demands, the authorities condone and encourage these
polygamous relationships <b>by tailoring welfare entitlements to the many
vulnerable wives and children. </b>The British taxpayer is effectively
reinforcing the consolidation and spread of fundamentalist Muslim
culture in Britain.<br />
<br />
<b>Germany</b> has similar concerns, with the German courts regularly
incorporating sharia principles into mainstream law, where polygamous
marriages are recognised for all welfare entitlements, provided the
“marriages” were legally performed in a Muslim country.<br />
<br />
<b>In France, </b>Muslim demographics and violence are creating hardened separate cultural identities. Almost routine Muslim <i>banlieue</i>
riots have turned large tracts of French cities into no-go areas,
except for the riot police and fire-fighters to douse the torched cars.<br />
And such rioting has little to do with the by now boring liberal
excuse of social injustice or “Islamophobia”. As the writer, Andrew
Hussey put it in his disturbing book <i>The French Intifada</i>, the Muslim banlieue gangs who rioted and torched cars in 2007 were shouting <b><i>Na’al</i> <i>abouk</i> <i>La</i> <i>France </i>—
Fuck France: “the rioters, the wreckers, even the killers of the
banlieues are not looking for reform — They are looking for revenge.”</b><i><b> </b> </i><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Clearly, many French Muslims do not want to live in French secular
culture; they want to live as Muslims under sharia law, but in welfare
France.</b></span> </span></span><br />
And of course, such hardened separate identities are reinforced
by continuing large-scale Muslim immigration from poor and traditional
Muslim societies, with <span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>welfarism</b> locking them into a state of permanent
dependence and permanent grievance, with rioting as a way of extracting
more money out of the state.</span><br />
<br />
<b>The ruling liberal establishment in the EU are in denial about the
true significance of what is happening in many of Europe’s cities. </b><br />
They
acknowledge there’s a problem, but with the usual platitudes deny it has
anything to do with Muslim immigration and the self-segregation and
cultural separateness favoured by many Muslims.<br />
Again and again it’s the
same old “social injustice” and “Islamophobia” story.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Invest more
taxpayers’ money in Muslim communities and end Islamophobia, they say.
</b>Europeans must change their ways and pay more tax, then we will have an
integrated, happy pluralist society.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>For most ordinary people in Europe today this liberal explanatory
model is little more than an insult to their intelligence.</b></span> It simply
does not account for what people see and experience in their own towns
and cities across the European Continent.<br />
It is now an observable fact that the appearance and atmosphere of
many of Europe’s public spaces and city landscapes are becoming more and
more Islamic, as anyone who has travelled round Western Europe in
recent years will confirm, as will those who remember Paris and Lyon,
and many German towns and cities from the 1960s. These enormous
demographic and cultural changes to Europe’s cities have, for many
Europeans, resulted in a strong sense of alienation from their own
traditional European roots, an alienation they never wanted and never
voted for. Hence the rise of anti-immigration right-wing and far-right
parties.<br />
<br />
And with growing Muslim immigration to Europe, such cultural changes
are set to continue and deepen. Very likely, at some point in the future
the adhan, or call to prayer, will almost certainly become a prominent
feature of many European cities, and sharia dress code enforced (or
advisable) in autonomous or semi-autonomous Muslim areas. <b>In time, more
and more areas of many of Europe’s cities will look and sound Islamic.</b><br />
<br />
Europe’s central and local governments will also, very likely, begin
to reflect the changing demographics. <b>Separate Muslim education (there
will almost certainly, eventually, be a separate Muslim educational
system, no matter what Europe’s governments say today) would very likely
have a school curriculum catering exclusively for Muslim beliefs and
values.</b> How would such a Muslim curriculum teach World War Two and the
Holocaust, for example? Or evolutionary science? With a growing Muslim
demographic, Europe may well find it impossible to maintain the common
assumptions that for centuries have underpinned the norms of Western
education.<br />
<br />
The Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha would also very
likely become official holidays, street names may even change (as was
actually recommended for France in a report commissioned by former Prime
Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault), and foreign policy, particularly on
Israel, would almost certainly begin to reflect the new European Muslim
dispensation.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><b>Whether one welcomes these changes as part of an unstoppable
evolution towards some ideal happy multicultural world of the future, or
sees them as an extremely ominous development for Western culture and
values, the fact surely needs to be publicly acknowledged, certainly as
part of mainstream public debate, that Muslim immigration is radically
changing Europe.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: large;">It has to be acknowledged that large-scale Muslim
immigration does not <b><i>add</i></b> to what Europe already has, it <b><i>changes</i></b>
what Europe has always been. More Muslim immigration means less Europe.
That’s an empirical fact, and it’s a fact that the political class and
the media need to be frank and honest about.</span></span><br />
<br />
With continuing Muslim immigration, higher than average Muslim birth
rates and below-replacement native European birth rates, by the sheer
weight of demographic numbers a determined, hyper-identity political
Islam is surely on course to turn many European cities semi-Islamic.<b> Why
would this <i>not</i> happen, if the demographics are there to support it?</b> The burden of proof is surely now on those who would disagree.<br />
<br />
To point all of this out is not necessarily to criticise Islam, and
certainly not to pass judgment on all Muslims. But it is to say that
Europe is experiencing by far the greatest change in its history, and
that if Europe is democratic, then the European peoples should be
consulted on these historic changes, and their views respected.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Yet amazingly, one of the most extraordinary facts about post-Second
World War Western European democracies is that this democratic
consultation on Muslim immigration did not happen. The European peoples
have been systematically ignored and denied a democratic say on who, and
how many, should be allowed to settle in Europe.</span></b><br />
<br />
This extraordinary lack of democracy in the EU, including Britain, is
captured by the American journalist Christopher Caldwell in his book: <i>Reflections on the Revolution in Europe</i>,
where he quotes a European cabinet minister on the subject of
immigration to the EU:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li> “We live in a borderless world in which our new
mission is defending the border not of our countries but (of) civility
and human rights” (page 270).</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>New mission? Who sanctioned this “new mission”? Does this anonymous
EU cabinet minister have a mandate to create a borderless Europe? Have
the European peoples given him and his EU colleagues a mandate to
globalise European culture?</b><br />
<br />
Very unlikely, when you consider that, as Caldwell points out: “Only
19 percent of Europeans think immigration has been good for their
countries” and “73 percent of French people think their country has too
many immigrants, as do 69 percent of the British.”<br />
<br />
Those statistics represent opinion in 2009. Today, with Europe
experiencing perhaps the heaviest Muslim immigration in its history, a
wide-ranging Chatham House survey of European opinion shows that eight
out of ten European countries want an end specifically to Muslim
immigration.<br />
<br />
<b>And yet European countries and the European Union continue to ignore
public opinion on the issue.</b> <span style="background-color: yellow;">The EU’s ruling liberal class, from both
Left and centre Right of the party-political spectrum, appear to believe
that Third World immigration to the EU <b><i>must</i></b> happen,
irrespective of the democratic will of the voters.</span> <b>It’s as if there were
some historically determined imperative for Islam to come and settle in
Europe.</b><span style="background-color: cyan;"> And to ensure that this moral imperative is carried through, to
ensure that Islam comes to Europe, Muslim immigration is to be decided,
not by the European voters, but only by the high priests of the <b><i>bien</i> <i>pensant</i></b> liberal class.</span><br />
<br />
It was this high priest <b><i>bien</i> <i>pensant</i></b> class in the
US and throughout much of the West that exploded in rage when Donald
Trump, during his election campaign, first suggested that the American
people — meaning the voters — should have a say in Muslim immigration to
the United States. It wasn’t that liberal opinion simply disagreed with
<i>what</i> Trump had said; it was that there should be no place,
democratic or otherwise, for such an opinion. <span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>To question Muslim
immigration to the West was to question the very direction of history
itself.</b></span><br />
<br />
The late Robert Bork, an American judge and conservative jurist,
captured well the contempt that modern liberals have for popular
democratic opinion:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>“Modern liberalism is fundamentally at odds with democratic
government because it demands results that ordinary people would not
freely choose. Liberals must govern, therefore, through institutions
that are largely insulated from the popular will. The most important
institutions for liberals’ purposes are the judiciary and the
bureaucracies. The judiciary and the bureaucracies are staffed with
(liberal) intellectuals—–and thus tend to share the views and accept the
agendas of modern liberalism.” (Robert H, Bork <i>Slouching</i> <i>Towards</i> <i>Gomorrah </i>1996 page 318)<i> </i></li>
</ul>
<i> </i><br />
<b>Many in the European Union power structure believe they should be
insulated from public opinion on a large range of issues, particularly
on globalisation and Third World Muslim immigration.</b><br />
<span style="background-color: lime;">The West’s liberal
class today believe that a normative liberal agenda of open borders and
unlimited Third World immigration to the West should be the default,
unquestionable position of the whole of Western society.</span><br />
We saw this
default position in operation when Angela Merkel, unilaterally, welcomed
to Germany unlimited numbers of unassessed, mainly male Muslim
migrants, and then sought to spread them around EU countries whose
peoples had had no say in the matter.<br />
<br />
By contrast, the American primaries and caucuses offer a much
stronger sense of democratic accountability. At the recent US elections,
the people of the United States were finally offered a voice on Muslim
and Third World immigration, and they gave Donald Trump a democratic
mandate to act. The vote for Trump was a vote to change direction and to
at least begin to preserve what remains of America’s traditional
Judeo-Christian core identity.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Because of Donald Trump, debating Muslim immigration is no longer a
taboo subject in the US. Thanks to Donald Trump, Muslim immigration is
now a central part of the national political debate.</span></b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>No such debate has yet taken place among the ruling liberal class in
Europe. Muslim immigration, in spite of widespread public concern and
the rise of anti-immigration movements throughout the continent, is
still a taboo subject among the mainstream political class and media.
The majority of Europeans want an end to large-scale Third World
immigration, yet the European Union continues to ignore this democratic
voice.</b><br />
<br />
The truth is that in Europe today, Third World and Muslim immigration
are not subjects to be decided by democracy, therefore immigration
policy continues as if 9/11 never happened, as if the London Underground
bombings never happened, as if the Paris slaughter of well over 100
people never happened. The Nice truck attack that killed 87, the Madrid
train bombings that killed almost 200 and injured 2,000, relentless
Muslim immigration continues as if they had never happened.<br />
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Europe today desperately needs its Donald Trump.</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/muslim-immigration-and-the-future-of-europe-wheres-the-democracy">https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/muslim-immigration-and-the-future-of-europe-wheres-the-democracy</a><br />
=================== </div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-57321664034010591332017-05-23T20:42:00.002+03:002017-05-23T20:42:26.155+03:00Manchester attack: Salman Abedi named as bomber by police<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 class="story-body__h1">
<span style="color: red;">Manchester attack: Salman Abedi named as bomber by police</span></h1>
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<li class="mini-info-list__item"> <div class="date date--v2 relative-time" data-datetime="23 May 2017" data-seconds="1495560083" data-timestamp-inserted="true">
Less than a minute ago</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGt7h2ib_4E5cFm7_9PSIqVEu5_A3TPDDa4FVgDMYKMFt_LCXfz_HSDWLZLA43pnyun0DDEpAIju-3CYqYShNzRUbf8zfOrjsG9KFoeL0KXXF-2bANXO3K6Dct-eEWZN8V1q3HY9utQx4/s1600/victims-manchester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGt7h2ib_4E5cFm7_9PSIqVEu5_A3TPDDa4FVgDMYKMFt_LCXfz_HSDWLZLA43pnyun0DDEpAIju-3CYqYShNzRUbf8zfOrjsG9KFoeL0KXXF-2bANXO3K6Dct-eEWZN8V1q3HY9utQx4/s400/victims-manchester.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<figcaption class="media-caption"><span class="media-caption__text"></span></figcaption><figcaption class="media-caption"><span style="color: red;"><span class="media-caption__text">Eight-year-old Saffie Roussos and Georgina Callander are among the dead
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<b>Salman Abedi</b> has
been named by police as the suspected suicide bomber who killed 22
people and injured 59 at Manchester Arena on Monday night.</div>
<b>The 22-year-old was Manchester born and from a family of Libyan origin, the BBC understands.</b><br />
<b>Abedi, who had at least three siblings, had lived at several
addresses in Manchester, including a property at Elsmore Road,
Fallowfield, which was earlier raided by police.</b><br />
<br />
So far three victims have been named - Saffie Rose Roussos, eight, Georgina Callander and John Atkinson, 28.<br />
<br />
Greater Manchester Police said the priority was to establish whether Abedi had worked alone or not.<br />
<br />
A vigil is being held in front of the town hall in Manchester's Albert Square.<br />
<a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-40019546">'Vigil for peace' at Manchester's Albert Square</a><br />
<br />
<b>Abedi
is thought to have blown himself up in the arena's foyer shortly after
22:30 BST on Monday, as fans were beginning to leave a concert by US
singer Ariana Grande.</b><br />
<br />
Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable
Ian Hopkins passed on "heartfelt sympathies to all the innocent people
caught up in last night's despicable act", adding that specially-trained
family liaison officers were supporting families. <br />
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</span></figure>Eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos was a pupil at Tarleton Primary School, in Lancashire.<br />
Her
head teacher, Chris Upton, said she had been "simply a beautiful little
girl in every aspect of the word" and was "loved by everyone". <br />
John Atkinson was from Bury in Greater Manchester.<br />
Student Georgina Callander, believed to have been 18, has also been <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40012738">named as among the dead.</a><br />
She had been studying health and social care at Runshaw College in Leyland, Lancashire.<br />
<br />
<b>The wounded are being treated at eight hospitals around the city, with 12 children under the age of 16 among them.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Several
people are still missing, including teenagers Laura MacIntyre and
Eilidh MacLeod, from Barra in the Outer Hebrides, 15-year-old Olivia
Campbell, Chloe Rutherford, 17, and Liam Curry, 19.</b><br />
<br />
Scotland's
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said police were in contact with Laura
and Eilidh's families, adding: "It is hard for any of us to imagine the
anguish that their families are going through right now.<br />
"They are in our thoughts."<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Theresa May says the Manchester attack was an act of 'sickening cowardice'
</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</figure><b>In a statement in Downing Street on Tuesday, the prime
minister said the bombing had been a "callous terrorist attack" that
targeted "defenceless young people". </b><br />
<b>Number 10 later said Mrs May
- who is now in Manchester - had been updated "through [Monday] night"
and had phoned Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at 04:00 BST to brief him. </b><br />
<figure class="media-with-caption">
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</div>
</figure><b>It is the worst terrorist attack in the UK since the 7 July
bombings in 2005, in which 52 people were killed by four suicide
bombers. </b><br />
<br />
So-called Islamic State has said - via IS channels on
the messaging app Telegram - it was behind the Manchester attack, but
this has not been verified.<br />
In other developments: <br />
<ul class="story-body__unordered-list">
<li class="story-body__list-item">Relatives are using social media to hunt for missing loved ones, and an emergency number - <strong>0800 096 0095 </strong>- has been set up</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Flags are flying at half mast outside Number 10 and <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/40009526">political parties have suspended general election campaigning until further notice</a>
</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Theresa May chaired a meeting of the
government's emergency Cobra committee and is now in Manchester where
she has visited the children's hospital and signed the book of
condolence at the Town Hall</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Extra armed officers will be deployed
to Wembley and Twickenham on Saturday, while security at all upcoming
events and venues in England <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/40012848">are under review.</a> The Met Police has also increased the numbers of officers on duty across the capital</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">World leaders have expressed solidarity with the UK, including <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40010706">US President Donald Trump, who called those behind the attack "evil losers" </a>
</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Exam boards are telling schools directly affected by the attack that <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40013078">they can re-arrange GCSE and A-level exams</a> in the wake of the attack</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Police have established a help centre
at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, access Gate 11, for anyone who
needs assistance in tracing loved ones</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">The Queen extended her "deepest
sympathy" to all those affected and other senior royals have said they
are "shocked and saddened"; Pope Francis offered "heartfelt solidarity"
with the victims and their families</li>
<li class="story-body__list-item">Take That <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/40011696/here-are-the-gigs-that-are-cancelled-after-the-manchester-attack">are among a number a performers </a>who have cancelled concerts "out of respect", including for the rest of the week at Manchester Arena</li>
</ul>
<b><a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40008026">Witnesses at the arena described seeing metal nuts and bolts</a> among the debris of Monday's bomb, and spoke about the fear and confusion that gripped concert-goers. </b><br />
<br />
Andy
Holey, who had gone to pick up his wife and daughter, said: "An
explosion went off and it threw me about 30ft from one set of doors to
the other set of doors."<br />
Emma Johnson, who went to pick up her
children, aged 15 and 17, said: "The whole building shook. There was a
blast and then a flash of fire afterwards. There were bodies
everywhere." <br />
Teenager Abigail Walker, who was at the concert,
told the BBC: "I had to make sure I had my sister. I grabbed hold of her
and pulled hard. Everyone was running and crying.<br />
<b>"It was absolutely terrifying." </b><br />
<br />
The explosion happened shortly after US singer <a class="story-body__link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40008230">Ariana Grande</a>
had left the stage and the 23-year-old actress-turned-singer, tweeted:
"broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have
words".<br />
<h2 class="story-body__crosshead">
Controlled explosion</h2>
Armed police have also arrested a 23-year-old man in Chorlton, south Manchester, in connection with the attack. <br />
Mr
Hopkins said searches at two addresses had been carried out, including
the one in Fallowfield, where a controlled explosion had been used to
gain "safe" access.<br />
He said Abedi had not been formally identified and so would not comment further.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40020168">http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40020168</a><br />
========================= </div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-6818905884107177612017-05-23T09:46:00.001+03:002017-05-23T09:46:21.972+03:00At least 22 dead, 50 injured, in suicide bomb attack at Manchester Arena<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red;">At least 22 dead, 50 injured, in suicide bomb attack at Manchester Arena</span>
</h1>
Greater Manchester police have confirmed children among the victims of the attack carried out by a man with an explosive device<br />
<br />
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<a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/vikramdodd" itemprop="sameAs" rel="author"><span itemprop="name">Vikram Dodd</span></a></span>, <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/helenpidd" itemprop="sameAs" rel="author"><span itemprop="name">Helen Pidd</span></a></span> and <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kevin-rawlinson" itemprop="sameAs" rel="author"><span itemprop="name">Kevin Rawlinson</span></a></span></div>
<time class="content__dateline-wpd js-wpd content__dateline-wpd--modified" data-timestamp="1495520900000" datetime="2017-05-23T07:28:20+0100" itemprop="datePublished">
Tuesday 23 May 2017 <span class="content__dateline-time">07.28 BST</span>
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<span style="color: red;">Armed police at Manchester Arena after reports of an explosion at the venue during an Ariana Grande gig.</span></div>
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At least 22 people, including children, have been killed and 59 injured in a suicide bombing at a crowded pop concert in <a class="u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/manchester">Manchester</a>, the most deadly attack in Britain in a decade. </div>
</div>
</div>
The horror unfolded at about 10.30pm on Monday at the end of a
concert by the American singer Ariana Grande, whose music is popular
with children and teenagers.<br />
<br />
The attack, which took place in the foyer area of the arena, left
hundreds of people fleeing in terror, with young people at the concert
separated from their parents in the chaos. It left carnage inside the
concert venue, with medics describing treating wounds consistent with
shrapnel injury.<br />
<br />
<b>One witness said he could see nuts and bolts strewn on the floor of the
foyer after the attack, which could suggest a nail bomb was involved.</b><br />
<br />
Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, said: “We are working to
establish the full details of what is being treated by the police as an
appalling terrorist attack. All our thoughts are with the victims and
the families of those who have been affected.”<br />
The attack came less than three weeks before Britain’s general election on 8 June and <a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" draggable="true" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/23/general-election-campaigning-suspended-after-manchester-attack">May has suspended her campaign</a>, as have the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party. Labour is expected to follow suit.<br />
<br />
The PM will chair an emergency meeting of the government’s crisis committee, Cobra, at 9am on Tuesday.<br />
<br />
The home secretary, Amber Rudd, paid tribute to emergency services,
saying: “This was a barbaric attack, deliberately targeting some of the
most vulnerable in our society – young people and children out at a pop
concert. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and victims who
have been affected.”<br />
<br />
<b>Greater Manchester police have confirmed that they believe the
bombing was the responsibility of one man armed with an improvised
explosive device. The man is among the dead.</b><br />
<br />
Chief constable Ian Hopkins said: “We have been treating this as a
terrorist incident and we believe that while the attack last night was
conducted by one man, the priority is to establish whether he was acting
alone or as part of a network.”<br />
“The attacker, I can confirm, died at the arena. We believe the
attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device, which he
detonated, causing this atrocity.”<br />
<br />
The investigation into the attack involves the police counter-terrorism network and Britain’s domestic security service, MI5.<br />
<br />
The death toll would make it the worst event of its kind in Britain
since the 7/7 bombing in 2005, which hit London’s transport network,
killing 52 people.<br />
<br />
Witnesses in Manchester described how, after the concert had
finished, the house lights came up and then a loud bang was heard. Majid
Khan, 22, said:<br />
<b>“A huge bomb-like bang went off that hugely panicked
everyone and we were all trying to flee the arena.</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>“It was one bang and essentially everyone from the other side of the
arena where the bang was heard from suddenly came running towards us as
they were trying to exit.”</b><br />
<br />
Oliver Jones, 17, who attended with his 19-year-old sister, said:<br />
“The bang echoed around the foyer of the arena and people started to
run.”<br />
<br />
<b>People outside the concert were visibly upset, as a cacophony of
sirens were heard and police and ambulance vehicles arrived at the
scene.</b><br />
<br />
Erin McDougle, 20, from Newcastle said:<br />
“There was a loud bang at the
end of the concert. The lights were already on so we knew it wasn’t
part of the show. At first we thought it was a bomb. There was a lot of
smoke. People started running out. When we got outside the arena there
were dozens of police vans and quite a few ambulances.”<br />
<br />
A group of young men from Sheffield said they had seen at least five
people covered in blood and others being carried out by bouncers.<br />
“Ariana Grande had just gone behind the curtain and the lights came up
when there was this massive bang and a big cloud of smoke. I saw five
people with blood all down them,” said one.<br />
<br />
Sophie Tedd, 25, from Darlington, said, “Everyone started screaming and we nearly got trampled on. There was a burning smell.”<br />
<br />
A woman with her husband and three young children said there was a
loud bang as the concert ended. She said: “I just freaked. Everyone
started screaming. We did not see any explosion but it smelled bad, like
burning.”<br />
<br />
The attack happened despite years of warnings and tightening of
security, especially around crowded paces. Investigators will want to
find out who carried out the attack and for what reason. They will also
investigate where the material for the suspected device was bought and
how it was designed.<br />
<br />
Since the attack on London in 2005, measures have been put in place
to restrict the purchase of materials that can be used to make homemade
explosives.<br />
<br />
The Manchester attack came after weeks of heightened activity and
disrupted plots by police and MI5. In March, four people and the
attacker died after an attack on Westminster, central London, which
targeted the Houses of Parliament.<br />
<br />
The terrorist threat level for Britain is at severe, meaning an
attack is highly likely. Security is expected to be reviewed for major
venues in Britain and elsewhere.<br />
In the US, the Department of Homeland Security warned of extra
security measures: <b>“The public may experience increased security in and
around public places and events as officials take additional
precautions.”</b><br />
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In a statement just before 3am, Ian Hopkins, the chief constable of
Greater Manchester police, said the police had received reports of an
explosion at 10.33pm at the conclusion of the Ariana Grande concert.<br />
He said: “We are currently treating this as a terrorist incident
until we have further information, we are working closely with national
counter-terrorism policing network and UK intelligence partners. This is
clearly a very concerning time for everyone. We are doing all that we
can, working with local and national agencies to support those affected
as we gather information about what happened last night.”<br />
Hopkins urged people to remain vigilant and to stay away from the
area of the attack so emergency services could continue their work.<br />
<br />
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted his sympathy for the
victims: “Terrible incident in Manchester. My thoughts are with all
those affected and our brilliant emergency services.”<br />
<br />
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, said: “This is a shocking
and horrific attack targeting children and young people who were simply
enjoying a concert,” and paid tribute to the emergency services.<br />
<br />
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester city council, said the incident was “horrifying”. <br />
“If it is confirmed this was a terrorist attack it is a monstrous act
but also a deeply futile one. Manchester is a proud and strong city and
we will not allow those who seek to sow fear and division to achieve
their aims,” he said.<br />
“We give heartfelt thanks to our emergency services for their response and council staff are doing all they can to support.” <br />
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The metro mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: “My heart
goes out to families who have lost loved ones, my admiration to our
brave emergency services. “A terrible night for our great city.”<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>The Manchester Arena has a 21,000 capacity and is one of the largest music venues in Europe.</b></span><br />
<br />
The ambulance service covering Manchester, which is dealing with a
significant toll of wounded people, asked people to contact them only if
they are in a life-threatening situation because of the “large number
of resources” at the incident.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-50063863814035864442017-05-23T09:28:00.000+03:002017-05-23T09:28:06.709+03:00 The Death Toll in Venezuela's Unrest Has Hit 51 as Divisions Emerge Among the Ruling Socialists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Death Toll in Venezuela's Unrest Has Hit 51 as Divisions Emerge Among the Ruling Socialists<br />
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<a class="text font-accent color-brand size-1x-small _1HynphR0" data-reactid="213" href="http://time.com/author/reuters/">Alexandra Ulmer and Maria Ramirez / Reuters</a></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><span class="text font-accent size-2x-small line-height-small" data-reactid="189">Opposition
activists clash with riot policemen during a protest against the
government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas on May 22,
2017</span></span></div>
<br />
(CARACAS/PUERTO
ORDAZ, Venezuela) —<br />
<b>Venezuela's state prosecutor has panned unpopular
President Nicolas Maduro's plan to create a grassroots congress,
deepening a rare public split among the ruling Socialists as the death
toll from two months of <a data-reactid="233" href="http://time.com/4766643/venezuela-nears-a-tipping-point-and-a-violent-endgame/?iid=sr-link4" rel="">unrest</a> hit 51.</b><br />
<br />
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="236">
<b>Chief
State Prosecutor</b> Luisa Ortega stunned the crisis-hit country in March
when she lambasted the Supreme Court for annulling the powers of the
opposition-led National Assembly.</div>
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Since
then, she has been a wild card within the publicly homogenous
Venezuelan government, whose foes accuse it of seeking to dodge
elections by creating a parallel assembly with powers to rewrite the
constitution.</div>
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Socialist
Party official Elias Jaua, in charge of the "constituent assembly"
project, confirmed on Monday that Ortega had written him to express her
discontent in a letter that was previously leaked on social media.</div>
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<br /></div>
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"It
is my imperative to explain the reasons for which I have decided not to
participate in this activity," Ortega's two-page missive reads.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="245">
"Instead
of bringing stability or generating a climate of peace, I think this
will accelerate the crisis," she said, mentioning it would heighten
uncertainty and alter the "unbeatable" constitution launched under late
leader Hugo Chavez.</div>
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Jaua
acknowledged receipt of Ortega's letter, but quickly said she was
merely expressing a "political opinion," without any power to change the
situation.</div>
"We
consider that the only organ the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela's
constitution empowers to interpret the constitution is the Supreme
Court's constitutional chamber," he said at a news conference, in
reference to the pro-government top court.<br />
<br />
Venezuelans
are scrutinizing Maduro's government and the armed forces for any
cracks as protesters take to the streets daily to demand early
elections, humanitarian aid to alleviate food and medicine shortages,
and freedom for jailed activists.While
there are no outward signs of major fissures that would destabilize
18-years of 'Chavista' rule, demonstrators have been cheered by Ortega's
public dissent and by some public denunciations of officials by their
relatives.<br />
<h4 class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-2x-large bold OmZJ8NL1" data-reactid="281">
Rising death toll</h4>
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<b>While
anti-government protests have brought hundreds of thousands to the
streets, Venezuelans are increasingly concerned about spates of
nighttime looting and barricades popping up in many neighborhoods.</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="285">
Masked youths man roadblocks, turning back traffic or asking motorists for a monetary "collaboration" to be allowed through.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="285">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="287">
The
worst nighttime unrest has largely been concentrated outside the
capital, however, with the jungle and savannah state of <b>Bolivar</b> hard-hit
overnight.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="289">
Some
51 buses were burned after a group attacked a transport company in the
city of <b>Puerto Ordaz,</b> the prosecutor's office said on Monday. Barricades
and clashes with the National Guard were also rippling through the city
on Monday, according to a Reuters witness.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="289">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="291">
There
also was trouble on Monday in <b>Barinas,</b> the rural state where Chavez was
born and which is regarded by his supporters as the "cradle of the
revolution."</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="293">
Mobs
burned the headquarters of the Socialist Party in the state capital,
and clashes and looting raged throughout the day, witnesses and
authorities said.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="295">
Several
opposition leaders have condemned the violence, but the episodes
highlight the risks of protests spinning out of their control amid
widespread anger at Maduro, hunger, and easy access to weapons in one of
the world's most violence countries.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="295">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="297">
<b>Maduro accuses his opponents of an "armed insurrection," backed by the United States, his ideological foe.</b></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="299">
<b>His government blames "fascist" protesters for looting and deaths in the unrest since early April.</b></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="299">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="301">
The
death toll increased to at least 51 people after a policeman, Jorge
Escandon, died after being injured in Carabobo state and three people
died in protests in Barinas, the prosecutor's office said on Monday.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="301">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="303">
Hundreds
of people also have been injured and more than 2,600 arrested, with
about 1,000 still jailed, according to rights groups.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="303">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="305">
On
Monday, opposition supporters and doctors in white robes tried to march
to the Health Ministry in Caracas to demand access to proper treatment
amid major shortages of medicines ranging from painkillers to
chemotherapy drugs.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="305">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="307">
"Today,
I'm not here as a lawmaker, I'm here marching for my sister who has a
cerebral tumor, a tumor that is growing again and producing paralysis, a
tumor for which Venezuela used to receive medicine and the injections
for this not to happen," said opposition lawmaker Miguel Pizarro.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="307">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="309">
"Today
I walk for my brother, who is diabetic, and who, like my mom, can't
find medicine," added Pizarro, part of a new generation of opposition
leaders who have been at the forefront of protests and often been
tear-gassed.</div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="309">
<br /></div>
<div class="column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4" data-reactid="311">
<b>In
a scene repeated over and over in recent weeks, security forces fired
tear gas at demonstrators and clashes erupted with hooded youths who
threw rocks.</b></div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://time.com/4789822/venezuela-unrest-maduro-congress/">http://time.com/4789822/venezuela-unrest-maduro-congress/</a><br />
=================</div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-69689873509453063752017-05-23T09:13:00.002+03:002017-05-23T09:13:30.465+03:00Venezuela's irreconcilable visions for the future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 class="story-body__h1">
Venezuela's irreconcilable visions for the future</h1>
<div class="byline">
<span class="byline__name">By Vanessa Buschschlüter</span>
<span class="byline__title">BBC News, Caracas</span>
</div>
<ul class="mini-info-list">
<li class="mini-info-list__item"> <div class="date date--v2" data-datetime="22 May 2017" data-seconds="1495412114" data-timestamp-inserted="true">
22 May 2017</div>
</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuDhgbtpl1F89BuLRucw_EfKwUwKAMlHzZkvdfPemnm636Ofqq1xaMj2HWeKAvYgQXdKldduC_nHAPm8OyCaM1SfYRm4fnXtOaHFpYyXqIXxJdMndIyuXhu4mhjbQk9jSG6m7dpYOojsY/s1600/_96150731_9378f5c1-4c78-4339-8523-a63e21e78a72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuDhgbtpl1F89BuLRucw_EfKwUwKAMlHzZkvdfPemnm636Ofqq1xaMj2HWeKAvYgQXdKldduC_nHAPm8OyCaM1SfYRm4fnXtOaHFpYyXqIXxJdMndIyuXhu4mhjbQk9jSG6m7dpYOojsY/s320/_96150731_9378f5c1-4c78-4339-8523-a63e21e78a72.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span class="image-and-copyright-container"> </span><span style="color: red;"><span class="media-caption__text">Signs reading "No more dictatorship" are a common sight at anti-government protests</span></span><br />
<span class="media-caption__text"> </span>
<br />
<div class="story-body__introduction">
"Venezuela is now a
dictatorship," says Luis Ugalde, a Spanish-born Jesuit priest who
during his 60 years living in Venezuela has become one of the South
American nation's most well-known political scientists.</div>
A former rector of the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, Mr Ugalde does not mince his words.<br />
He compares Venezuela to an ailing patient who is on the brink of being killed off by well-meaning but incompetent doctors.<br />
Venezuela's problems are not new, he says. At their heart is the mistaken belief that it is a rich country.<br />
He
argues that while it may have the world's largest proven oil reserves,
Venezuela should be considered overwhelmingly poor because it hardly
produces anything except oil.<br />
<h2 class="story-body__crosshead">
The curse of oil</h2>
A
lack of investment in anything but the booming oil industry in the 20th
Century meant that its human talent was never really fostered and its
economy never diversified, resulting in an absolute reliance on imports.<br />
Venezuela's
late leader, Hugo Chávez, further compounded the illusion of
Venezuela's wealth to the detriment of the country, Mr Ugalde argues.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmEB-u94JHMH3vQfmckimdpz1AJ2k21TmcKHXVjs2lyQw8Vtrpbk-_sdso9A4YaBmcbJ2cWfNKHx6S9Ysn41wNlJ21VnSU9EX3-NXXL_eCI9AinDUgzPeHG6yAO9mDkYdrsHiTv1lguto/s1600/_96150733_gettyimages-98070103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmEB-u94JHMH3vQfmckimdpz1AJ2k21TmcKHXVjs2lyQw8Vtrpbk-_sdso9A4YaBmcbJ2cWfNKHx6S9Ysn41wNlJ21VnSU9EX3-NXXL_eCI9AinDUgzPeHG6yAO9mDkYdrsHiTv1lguto/s320/_96150733_gettyimages-98070103.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<figure class="media-landscape has-caption full-width"><span class="image-and-copyright-container"></span><span class="image-and-copyright-container"><span class="story-image-copyright"></span></span><figcaption class="media-caption"> <span class="media-caption__text">
<span style="color: red;">While oil prices were high, Hugo Chavez could afford to fund social programmes
</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>"He told the Venezuelan people that there were three
things standing between them and prosperity: the US empire, the rich
and the entrenched political elite, and that he would deal with all
three so that the people could enjoy Venezuela's wealth."<br />
Investing
Venezuela's oil revenue in generous social programmes, building homes
and health care centres, expanding educational opportunities and
providing the poorest with benefits they did not previously have, gave
the government of President Chavez a wide support base. <br />
But with falling global oil prices, government coffers soon emptied and investment in social programmes dwindled.<br />
The death from cancer of President Chávez in 2013 further hit the governing socialist PSUV party hard. <br />
His
successor in office, Nicolas Maduro, lacked not only the charisma of
President Chávez but also his unifying presence at the top of the party
and the country.<br />
Mr Ugalde does not doubt that President Maduro came to power democratically in 2013.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-5RIppWNkHcDG2QfBUh9ryLDWxxShPdLDW-cqIjQ1_TfOGzkAlfijrR43fYD7Yfelf52BAsLymgzJC6ofQzdkHOTwp2jKimvCBLEShjmLNvFZUe_Mf1-U7V4kdm5PLUrSK09s1JFzdI/s1600/_96150735_ugalde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-5RIppWNkHcDG2QfBUh9ryLDWxxShPdLDW-cqIjQ1_TfOGzkAlfijrR43fYD7Yfelf52BAsLymgzJC6ofQzdkHOTwp2jKimvCBLEShjmLNvFZUe_Mf1-U7V4kdm5PLUrSK09s1JFzdI/s320/_96150735_ugalde.jpg" width="320" /></a> </div>
<figure class="media-landscape has-caption full-width"><span class="image-and-copyright-container"></span><figcaption class="media-caption"><span class="media-caption__text"><span style="color: red;">Luis Ugalde says that Venezuela has become a dictatorship</span>
</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>But he argues that what he has done since - such as
undermining Venezuela's separation of powers - has turned him into a
dictator.<br />
The Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition won
a landslide in the December 2015 election and yet it has seen almost
all of its decisions overturned by the Supreme Court, a body which
opposition politicians say is stacked with government loyalists. <br />
An
attempt by opposition politicians to organise a recall referendum to
oust President Maduro from power was thwarted at every step by
Venezuela's electoral council, another body opposition politicians say
is dominated by supporters of Mr Maduro. <br />
<h2 class="story-body__crosshead">
'Final straw'</h2>
But
for many the final straw came on 29 March 2017, when Supreme Court
judges issued a ruling stripping the National Assembly of its powers and
transferring those powers to the court.<br />
While the Supreme Court suspended the most
controversial paragraphs just three days later, the ruling managed to
unite the hitherto divided opposition and spur them into action.<br />
There have been almost daily protests and more than 45 people have been killed in protest-related violence.<br />
While many of those protesting against the government share Mr
Ugalde's view, the government is adamant it is defending democracy in
Venezuela.<br />
It argues that the National Assembly was in contempt
when it swore in three lawmakers suspected of having been elected
fraudulently and that all of the decisions made by the legislative body
since then are therefore invalid.<br />
<h2 class="story-body__crosshead">
New constitution call</h2>
The government has responded to the most recent wave of protests by calling for a constituent assembly. <br />
Drawing
up a new constitution will bring together the people of Venezuela and
create peace where there is now unrest, President Maduro argues. <br />
He also says he wants to enshrine some of the social programmes created by the socialist government in the new constitution.<br />
<br />
At
a pro-government rally, a sergeant in the National Bolivarian Militia, a
body created by the late President Hugo Chavez, says he whole-heartedly
backs the idea.<br />
"We're against terrorism, those people protesting
violently who're burning buses, we support the constituent assembly,"
Gerardo Barahonde says. <br />
Marta Elena Flores, 60, says the opposition is "out to wreck everything" achieved under the socialist government. <br />
"We need to protect all the benefits the government has given to the people," she says. <br />
"We need to enshrine them in the constitution so that the opposition doesn't even have the chance to rob us of them."<br />
"I personally have been able to have two operations
thanks to the government's medical programmes. The opposition begrudges
us those benefits."<br />
<br />
Opposition politicians have been dismissive
of the president's call for a constituent assembly, saying it is a ruse
to delay overdue regional elections and further strengthen the power of
President Maduro.<br />
Representatives of the major opposition parties
declined a government invitation to discuss the creation of the assembly
and, three weeks after the idea was first mooted by President Maduro,
little progress has been made.<br />
Previous attempts at dialogue backed by former international leaders and even the Vatican have failed.<br />
<br />
Anti-government
marches meanwhile have been spreading throughout the country and
clashes between protesters and the security forces have become more
frequent and the number of dead has been on the rise.<br />
Those
opposed to the government say they are determined to keep the protests
going until fresh general elections are called and the government is
ousted. <br />
Some
analysts have said that what it will take for the government to fall is
for the protests to spread to the "barrios", the poor neighbourhoods
which have been the support base of the governing socialist party.<br />
<br />
Miguel
Pizarro, an opposition lawmaker who represents the barrio of Petare,
one of the poorest in Caracas, dismisses that argument. <br />
"The only contact people who make that argument have with the barrio is through their cleaning lady," he says. <br />
"There has been resistance to the government in the barrios for a long time, that is how I got elected!"<br />
Others think that it will take the military to switch sides for the government to be ousted. <br />
But with Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino <a class="story-body__link-external" href="https://twitter.com/vladimirpadrino/status/865989968501641216">taking to Twitter on 20 May</a>
to accuse protesters of fomenting anarchy and international
organisations of being "immoral accomplices who don't denounce the
violence" there is little sign of that happening any time soon, at least
within the highest ranks. <br />
In the short term at least, there
seems little chance of the current deadlock in Venezuela being broken
and every likelihood that the crisis will worsen. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39980403">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39980403</a><br />
==================<br />
<br /></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-1671900972369757092017-05-23T08:42:00.002+03:002017-05-23T08:42:50.779+03:00Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-paradox-people-are-hungry-but-farmers-cant-feed-them/2017/05/21/ce460726-3987-11e7-a59b-26e0451a96fd_story.html?utm_term=.ec5032e09a10"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-paradox-people-are-hungry-but-farmers-cant-feed-them/2017/05/21/ce460726-3987-11e7-a59b-26e0451a96fd_story.html?utm_term=.ec5032e09a10</span></a><br />
<div>
<div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-12 col-lg-12" id="topper-headline-wrapper">
<h1 data-pb-field="customFields.web_headline" itemprop="headline">
Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them</h1>
</div>
</div>
<div class="pb-container">
</div>
<div class="moat-trackable pb-f-theme-normal pb-f-dehydrate-false full pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-article-article-deck" data-chain-name="no-name" data-feature-id="article/article-deck" data-feature-name="no-name" data-pb-fingerprint="0fwATXB0JpE" id="f0pG1bj7ID8Ijq">
<div class="article-deck" id="article-deck">
</div>
</div>
<div class="inline-content inline-photo inline-photo-normal modal-0 horizontal-photo">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="65666aa989db591d77a6d028174e9cee62efd54d"></a> <img class="courtesy-of-the-resizer zoom-in" data-hi-res-src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/05/22/Foreign/Images/Venezuelafood-003.JPG?uuid=8mSNmDpuEeelmybgRRqW_Q" data-low-res-src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_480w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/05/22/Foreign/Images/Venezuelafood-003.JPG?uuid=8mSNmDpuEeelmybgRRqW_Q" data-raw-src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/05/22/Foreign/Images/Venezuelafood-003.JPG?uuid=8mSNmDpuEeelmybgRRqW_Q" height="266" src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/05/22/Foreign/Images/Venezuelafood-003.JPG?uuid=8mSNmDpuEeelmybgRRqW_Q" width="400" /><br /> <span style="color: red;"><span class="pb-caption">A
once-packed henhouse stands empty on Saulo Escobar’s farm in Aragua
state, Venezuela, earlier this month. (Mariana Zuñiga for The Washington
Post)</span></span> </div>
<div class="pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column">
<span class="pb-byline" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> </span></div>
<div class="pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column">
<span class="pb-byline" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> </span></div>
<div class="pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column">
<span class="pb-byline" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <span itemprop="name">Mariana Zuñiga</span> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/nick-miroff/"><span itemprop="name">Nick Miroff</span></a></span> <span class="pb-timestamp" content="2017-05-22T02:47-500" itemprop="datePublished">May 22 at 2:47 PM</span> <span class="pb-tool email"><a href="mailto:nick.miroff@washpost.com?subject=Reader%20feedback%20for%20%27Venezuela%E2%80%99s%20paradox:%20People%20are%20hungry,%20but%20farmers%20can%E2%80%99t%20feed%20them%27"><span class="fa fa-envelope"></span></a></span> </div>
<span class="dateline"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="dateline">YUMA, Venezuela —</span>
With cash running low and debts piling up, Venezuela’s socialist
government has cut back sharply on food imports. And for farmers in most
countries, that would present an opportunity.<br />
<br />
But this is
Venezuela, whose economy operates on its own special plane of
dysfunction. At a time of empty supermarkets and spreading hunger, the
country’s farms are producing less and less, not more, making the
caloric deficit even worse.<br />
Drive around the countryside outside
the capital, Caracas, and there’s everything a farmer needs: fertile
land, water, sunshine and gasoline at 4 cents a gallon, cheapest in the
world. Yet somehow families here are just as scrawny-looking as the
city-dwelling Venezuelans waiting in bread lines or picking through <a href="http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/cnnee-pkg-osmary-venezolanos-comen-de-la-basura-crisis-escasez-2/" target="_self">garbage</a> for scraps.<br />
<br />
Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic.<br />
<br />
“Last
year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and
hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I
have 70,000.” <br />
Several of his cavernous henhouses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or<b> </b>feed.
Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and
armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing
his eggs.<br />
<br />
Venezuela’s latest public health indicators confirm that the country
is facing a dietary calamity. With medicines scarce and malnutrition
cases soaring, more than 11,000 babies died last year, sending the
infant mortality rate up 30 percent, according to Venezuela’s Health
Ministry. The head of the ministry was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-health-idUSKBN18821Z" target="_self">fired</a> by President Nicolás Maduro two days after she released those statistics.<br />
<br />
Child hunger in parts of Venezuela is a “humanitarian crisis,” <a href="http://www.caritas.org/2017/05/children-face-hunger-crisis-in-venezuela-as-malnutrition-soars/" shape="rect" title="www.caritas.org">according to a new report</a>
by the Catholic relief organization Caritas, which found 11.4 percent
of children under age 5 suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition,
and 48 percent “at risk” of going hungry.<br />
<br />
<div class="subhead">
<b>‘The Maduro diet’</b></div>
<div class="subhead">
</div>
The
protesters who have been marching in the streets against Maduro for the
past seven weeks scream, “We’re hungry!” as riot police blast them with
water cannons and tear gas.<br />
<br />
In a recent <a href="http://www.fundacionbengoa.org/noticias/2017/encovi-2016.asp" target="_self">survey</a>
of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities,
three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of
19 pounds. This collective emaciation is referred to dryly here as “the
Maduro diet,” but it’s a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war
zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague. <br />
<br />
Venezuela’s disaster is man-made, economists point out — the result
of farm nationalizations, currency distortions and a government takeover
of food distribution. While millions of Venezuelans can’t get enough to
eat, officials have refused to allow international aid groups to
deliver food, accustomed to viewing their oil-rich country as the
benefactor of poorer nations, not a charity case. <br />
“It’s not
only the nationalization of land,” said Carlos Machado, an expert on
Venezuelan agriculture. “The government has made the decision to be the
producer, processor and distributor, so the entire chain of food
production suffers from an inefficient agricultural bureaucracy.”<br />
<br />
With Venezuela’s industrial output crashing, farmers are forced to
import feed, fertilizer and spare parts, but they can’t do so without
hard currency. And the government has been hoarding the dollars it earns
from oil exports to pay back high-interest loans from Wall Street and
other foreign creditors.<br />
<br />
Escobar said he needs 400 tons of
high-protein imported animal feed every three months to keep his
operation running, but he’s able to get only 100 tons. So, like many
others, he’s turned to the black market. But he can only afford a
cheaper, less nutritious feed, meaning that his hens are smaller than
they used to be — and so are their eggs.<br />
<br />
“My quality went down, so my production went down, too,” he said.<br />
<br />
Escobar’s
hogs also are skinnier. An average full-size pig weighed 242 pounds two
years ago, he said. “Now they weigh 176.” Last year, he lost 2,000 hogs
in three months when the animals got sick and he couldn’t find
vaccines.<br />
The piglets born since then are undersized. Many have
bloody wounds at the tips of their ears. “When an animal has a poor
diet, it looks for nourishment elsewhere,” explained Maria Arias, a
veterinarian at the farm. “So they end up chewing off the ears of other
pigs.”<br />
<br />
<div class="subhead">
<b>‘There are no profits’</b></div>
<div class="subhead">
</div>
Venezuela
has long relied on imports of certain foodstuffs, such as wheat, that
can’t be grown on a large scale in the country’s tropical climate. But
trade statistics show that the land policies of the late Hugo Chávez,
Maduro’s predecessor, made Venezuela more dependent on imported food
than ever.<br />
<br />
When oil prices were high, that wasn’t a big problem.
Now Venezuela’s blend of heavy crude is worth barely $40 a barrel and
the country’s petroleum output is at a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-tankers-insight-idUSKBN17K0CE" target="_self">23-year low</a>, in part because refineries and pipelines are breaking down and investment in new infrastructure isn’t keeping pace.<br />
<br />
The government hasn’t published farming data in years. But Machado,
the agriculture expert, said annual food imports averaged about $75 per
person until 2004, then soared after Chávez accelerated the <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/land-reform?page=2" target="_self">nationalization</a>
of farms, eventually seizing more than 10 million acres. The government
expropriated factories, too, and Venezuela’s domestic food production
plummeted.<br />
<br />
By 2012, annual per capita food imports had increased to $370, but since then, oil prices have slumped and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-idUSKBN14T221" target="_self">imports have dropped</a> 73 percent.<br />
<br />
Instead
of spurring growth in domestic agriculture, the government has
strangled it, farmers say. Domestic production of rice, corn and coffee
has declined by 60 percent or more in the past decade, according to
Venezuela’s Confederation of Farmer Associations (Fedeagro), a trade
group. Nearly all of the <a href="https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Sugar%20Annual_Caracas_Venezuela_4-15-2016.pdf" target="_self">sugar mills</a> nationalized by the government since 2005 are paralyzed or producing below capacity.<br />
<br />
Only
a small, well-off minority of Venezuelans can afford to buy much food
on the black market, where a pound of rice imported from Brazil or
Colombia sells for about 6,000 bolivares. That’s roughly $1 at the
black-market exchange rate, but for an ordinary Venezuelan worker it’s
an entire day’s wage, because the bolivar has lost 99 percent of its
value in the past five years.<br />
<br />
Venezuelans who don’t have access
to hard currency depend on government-subsidized groceries doled out by
pro-Maduro neighborhood groups, or wait in supermarket lines for
rationed, price-capped items. Those who join anti-government protests
have been <a href="http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/economia/amenazan-con-quitar-bolsas-clap-por-acudir-toma-caracas_12446" target="_self">threatened</a> with losing their food supplies.<br />
The price controls have become a powerful disincentive in rural
Venezuela. “There are no profits, so we produce at a loss,” said one
dairy farmer in the state of Guarico, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because he feared retaliation from authorities. To get a new
tractor, he said, he would have to spend all the money he earns in a
year. “It’s a miracle that the industry is still alive,” he said.<br />
Four of his cows were stolen this month, probably by hungry families in the nearby village, he said.<br />
<br />
According
to Vicente Carrillo, the former president of Venezuela’s cattle
ranchers’ association, the overall size of the country’s herd has
dropped in the past five years from 13 million head to about 8 million.<br />
<br />
Carrillo
sold his ranch more than a decade ago, tired of threats from squatters
and rural activists who accused him of being an exploitative rural
capitalist. His family had owned the land for more than a century. “I
dedicated more than 30 years of my life to this business, but I had to
leave everything behind,” he said.<br />
Escobar, the chicken and hog farmer, said the only way for farmers to
remain in business today is to break the law and sell at market prices,
hoping authorities look the other way.<br />
<br />
“If I sold at regulated prices, I wouldn’t even be able to afford a single kilogram of chicken feed,” he said.<br />
<br />
If
it’s not a fear of the government that keeps Escobar awake at night,
it’s criminal gangs. Since one of his delivery trucks was robbed in
December, he has been forced to make “protection” payments to a mafia
boss operating out of the local prison. Every Friday, three motorcycles
stop by the farm to pick up an envelope of cash, he said. Calling the
police would only escalate the danger.<br />
“I know how to deal with chickens and pigs,” Escobar said, “but not criminals.”<br />
<br /></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-91954300239565104992017-05-20T20:39:00.003+03:002017-05-20T20:39:35.772+03:00Paul Craig Roberts : The Assault on Trump<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="single_page_entry_meta">
<div class="">
<a href="http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/18/" rel="nofollow">May 18, 2017</a><br />
</div>
</div>
The Assault on Trump<br />
<br />
Paul Craig Roberts<br />
<br />
<b>We are witnessing an assault by the national security state and its
liberal media on a President of the United States that is unprecedented.</b><br />
<br />
Wild and unsupported accusations of treasonous or illegal Russian
connections have been the mainstay of the news since Trump’s campaign
for president. These accusations have reached the point that there is an
impeachment movement driven by the national security state and its
liberal media and endorsed by Democrats, the American leftwing which has
turned against the working class as “Trump deplorables,” and luminaries
such as Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe. The Washington Post, which
was not present at the meeting of President Trump with Russian Foreign
Minister Lavrov, purports to know that Trump gave Lavrov US national
security information.<br />
<br />
The Russian government has offered the presstitute media a transcript
of the meeting, but, of course, the pressitutes are not interested.<br />
<br />
The latest story is that Trump tried to bribe FBI Director Comey,
before he fired him, not to investigate Trump as part of the “Russian
investigation.” Clearly there is no intelligence left in the American
media. The President doesn’t need to bribe someone he can fire.<br />
<br />
What we are witnessing is the determination of the national security
state to keep their prized “Russian Threat” in its assigned role as the
Number One Threat to the US. The liberal media, owned by the CIA since
the 1950s is in accord with this goal.<br />
The American media is so accustomed to its enslavement by the
national security state that it does not think of the consequences. But
Professor Stephen Cohen does. I agree with him that the greatest threat
to national security “is this assault on President Trump.” <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47076.htm" target="_blank">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47076.htm </a><br />
Cohen said that there is a 4th branch of government, the intelligence
community, which obstruts the management of American foreign affairs by
the executive branch and Congress.<br />
<br />
As an example, he reminded us that “In 2016, President Obama worked
out a deal with Russian President Putin for military cooperation in
Syria. He said he was going to share intelligence with Russia, just like
Trump and the Russians were supposed to do the other day. Our
department of defense said it wouldn’t share intelligence. And a few
days later, they killed Syrian soldiers, violating the agreement, and
that was the end of that. So, we can ask, who is making our foreign
policy in Washington today?”<br />
<br />
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy thought he was in charge, and
he was assassinated for his belief. JFK blocked an invasion of Cuba,
the Northwoods project, a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union,
and spoke of ending the Cold War.<br />
<br />
In the 1970s President Nixon was driven from office, because he
thought he was in charge of foreign policy. Like Kennedy, Nixon was a
threat to the national security state. Nixon pushed through SALT 1 and
the anti-ABM Treaty, and he opened to China, defusing those tensions as
well. The military/security complex saw its budget dwindling as the
threat dwindled. Nixon also determined to withdraw from Vietnam, but
was constrained by the national security state. Nixon, the most
knowledgeable president about foreign affairs, was forced from office,
because his efforts in behalf of peace constituted a threat to the power
and profit of the military/security complex.<br />
<br />
It is important to understand that there is no evidence whatsoever
against Nixon in the Washington Post “investigation.” The Post’s
reporters simply put together a collection of inuendoes that cast
aspersion on Nixon, whose “crime” was to say that he learned of the
Watergate buglary at a later date than he actually did. Nixon kept the
burglary quiet until after his reelection, because he knew that the
CIA’s Washington Post would use it in an effort to prevent his
reelection.<br />
The “crime” for which Nixon was really removed was his success in
establishing more peaceful and stable relations with Russia and China.<br />
<br />
Trump, being in real estate and entertainment, was unaware of the
landmines on which he was stepping when he said it was time to normalize
relations with Russia and to rethink the purpose of NATO.<br />
<br />
The US military/security complex sits on a budget extracted from very
hard-pressed American taxpayers of $1,000 billion dollars annually. By
threatening to normalize relations with the enemy which was created in
order to justify this vast budget, Trump presented as the major threat
to the American National Security State’s power and profit.<br />
<br />
This is why Trump will be broken and/or removed as President of the United States.<br />
Once again democracy in American is proving to be powerless. There is
no one in Washington who can help Trump. Those who could help him,
such as myself, cannot be confirmed by the US Senate, <b>which is owned
lock, stock, and barrel by the military/security complex, Wall Street,
and the Israel Lobby.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>Trump tried to connect the suffering American people to their
government, an act of treason against the oligarchy, who are making an
example of Trump that will dissuade politicians in the future from
making populist appeals to the people.</b></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/18/the-assault-on-trump/">http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/18/the-assault-on-trump/</a><br />
==================== <br />
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-72742505138161675122017-05-12T21:10:00.000+03:002017-05-12T21:10:01.218+03:00Bruce Thornton : The Globalist Empire Strikes Back in France<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 class="title" id="page-title">
The Globalist Empire Strikes Back in France</h1>
<h3 class="field-subhead">
The progressive elite breathes a sigh of relief. </h3>
<div class="field-post-date">
May 12, 2017 </div>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/bruce-thornton">Bruce Thornton</a> </div>
<br />
<em>Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Center.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
The progressive global elite is breathing a sigh of relief after
“centrist” newcomer to electoral politics, Emmanuel Macron, defeated
Marine Le Pen to become the next president of France. After the shocks
of last year’s Brexit and the election of populist Donald Trump as
president, the rejection of populist, nationalist, and anti-EU parties
in Austria, the Netherlands, and now the second most important EU
country suggests the tide has turned.<br />
<br />
But the Eurocrats and Europhiles
shouldn’t start popping champagne corks yet. Like all of Europe,
France’s problems run deep<br />
.<br />
<b>Macron is the consummate
establishment insider, with the youth, pleasing personality, and “hope
and change” rhetoric of Barack Obama, who endorsed him because he
represents, as Obama said, “the values that we care so much about.” He
is the opposite of the fiery, true political outsider Le Pen, who is
nearing 50 and focuses on the gloomy problems of immigration and
terrorism, and has hard things to say about the EU and the Euro.</b><br />
<br />
Macron also got lucky when his first-round opponent in the voting,
center-conservative François Fillon, was weakened by a nepotism scandal.
Macron’s other opponent, radical socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is too
unhinged even for a basically socialist electorate. And the long
demonization of Le Pen as an anti-Semitic Petainist throwback and an
Islamophobic, racist fascist has made her a political pariah despite her
basically socialist and redistributionist policies, and her promise to
do something about the immigration and terrorism that so many French
people find threatening.<br />
<br />
<b>Macron had another advantage: he put
forth a seemingly reasonable program for curing France’s economic ills,
which are critical: government spending at 57% of GDP, the highest in
Europe; a retirement age of 62 and a 35-hour workweek; 3,500 pages of
employment regulations; an unemployment rate of nearly 10% (double that
for those under 25); a GDP growth rate barely over 1%; public debt at
nearly 90% of GDP; an income tax rate topping out at 45%; nine million
people living below the poverty line; and welfare spending at nearly 32%
of GDP.</b><br />
Macron promises to tackle the job and growth-killing policies
that have created these dismal numbers, but he’s unlikely to have a
parliamentary coalition big enough to get such reforms through. Don’t
forget, about a third of the French voters cast a “pox on both your
houses” vote, either abstaining or casting a blank or spoiled “white
ballot.” This suggests a fragile foundation for Macron’s future
government.<br />
<br />
And if he tries to follow through on his campaign
promises, he will likely meet stiff resistance from critics of
“neoliberalism,” the epithet in Europe for free-market capitalism. In
March 2006, 2.7 million mostly young French people protested against a
minor reform of employment law that would allow entry-level workers to
be more easily let go. And that was when the president was Jacques
Chirac, a socialist who decried “Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism,”
Euro-speak for laissez-faire capitalism.<br />
Ten years later, socialist
prime minister Manuel Valls faced nationwide riots and protests, some
broken up with tear gas, over other employment reforms, which he had to
get passed by invoking special powers and bypassing parliament.<br />
President Macron and his “neoliberal” reforms are unlikely to be any
more successful, given the strength of Mélanchon’s support, the
disaffection with Macron of a third of French voters, and the French
people’s enduring love for their short work-week and generous subsidies.<br />
<br />
And one can question whether Macron’s heart will really be in getting
France out of its dirigiste doldrums and fulfill his promise to cut
government workers, lower the corporate tax rate, and reform employment
laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers.<br />
A one-time investment
banker and graduate of the two most elite universities in France,
the Paris Institute of Political Studies (<em>Sciences Po</em>) and the <em>École nationale d’administration</em>
(ENA), he spent two years as Socialist François Hollande’s economic
advisor.<br />
In addition, he’s a big fan of the centralized, top-down rule
of the EU and it chronic democracy deficit, demanding sanctions on
Hungary and Poland for violating EU “values” on immigration when the two
countries defended their borders from the hordes of mostly male
economic migrants and jihadists invited in by Angela Merkel. <b>In short,
an elite member of the establishment unlikely to be a champion of the
free-market, regulatory reforms France desperately needs.</b><br />
<br />
Worse yet, Macron’s position on Muslim immigration and home-grown
terrorism is delusional. There has been a string of lethal terrorist
attacks in France in the last few years. Three Jewish children
slaughtered in Toulouse (2012), 12 dead in the Charlie Hebdo attack,
four Jews killed in a Kosher grocery store, 130 killed in the Bataclan
theater (2015), 86 people run-down by a truck in Nice, followed by the
beheading of a priest (2016), and on the eve of the election the murder
of one police officer and the serious wounding of two others.<br />
These are
just the most spectacular attacks. For years now gangs of Muslim
immigrants, many segregated in Muslim “mini-states,” routinely burn
thousands of cars, riot and destroy property, and take over public
spaces as the police mostly watch. <b>No wonder that almost half of French <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/07/11/europeans-fear-wave-of-refugees-will-mean-more-terrorism-fewer-jobs/">polled</a> believe more refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism, and in another <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-europeans-think-about-muslim-immigration">poll</a> 61% support a ban on Muslim immigration.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet Macron’s comments on Muslim immigrants and terrorism reflect the
globalist elite’s chronic refusal to talk honestly about Islam and
terror. </span><br />
Dr. Guy Millière of the University of Paris, writing for the <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10299/macron-france-disaster">Gatestone Institute</a>,
has collected a catalogue of Macron’s myopic pronouncements:<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>he claimed
the French presence in Algeria was a “crime against humanity,” promised
that France would be “open and welcoming” to immigration from the Arab
world and North Africa, pledged to facilitate the construction of
mosques in France, and said “French culture does not exist.” And during
the debate with Le Pen, he spoke of “social issues” as the key to
understanding home-grown jihadist terror. In short, the same EU
suicidal, we-are-the-world multiculturalist dogma that has covered the
streets of France in blood, and that is undermining the national
identities and liberal political orders of countries across Europe.</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>Macron’s embrace of the EU elite’s same transnational stateless
idealism, suicidal multiculturalism, and technocratic arrogance is
likely to feed rather than defang the populist parties, and continue to
undermine the civilizational foundations of Europe and the national
identities of its countries.</b><br />
<br />
<b>And they will worsen France’s problems. <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9964/france-muslim-future">Demography</a>
is not on France’s side, as the number of immigrants is increasing
faster than the native-born French. Immigrants are also on average
younger.</b><br />
<b>Like other governments across Europe, the French continue to
nurse the fantasy that young immigrants will replace the lost workers
necessary for paying the taxes that support old-age entitlements. Muslim
immigrants, however, are overrepresented in prisons, unemployment
statistics, and welfare rolls.</b> They form a large recruiting pool for
terrorist organizations like ISIS and al Qaeda, promising more attacks
like those in Paris and Nice.<br />
<br />
Finally, the French economy is
on track for further dislocations caused by slow growth and high levels
of unemployment. The expensive and extensive social welfare benefits
will grow costlier, leading to more increases in the national debt and
higher growth-killing taxes. Most important, the decline of faith and
patriotism leaves many French without the will to defend their way of
life against a jihadist foe that knows exactly what he believes is worth
killing and dying for.<br />
All these trends point to a coming
social cataclysm that will either make the populist and nationalist
parties more attractive, or lead to further Islamization that destroys
French culture, as imagined in Michele Houellebecq’s dystopian novel <em>Submission</em>, a dark but plausible scenario outlining how France could end up a Muslim nation.<br />
<br />
<b>The transnational Western elites celebrating the defeat of the
“fascist” and “racist” Marine Le Pen are whistling past the graveyard as
they stroll to their rich, white enclaves where the costs of their
idealism are never paid.</b> Macron is unlikely to save the French economy,
and certainly shows no evidence of understanding the threat of jihadist
terror and creeping Islamization. A <em>Wall Street Journal</em>
columnist called Le Pen’s welfare-state, anti-globalist economic
proscriptions an “illusion,” and praised the “reformist” Macron and
supporters because they “don’t peddle dangerous illusions.” But
illusions about Islam and unassimilated Muslim immigrants of the sort
Macron peddles are much more dangerous and deadly.<br />
Macron is
not “turning a new page” in French history, as he claimed in his victory
speech. The failed statism and bankrupt internationalist idealism will
remain unchanged and unreformed until events, the teacher of fools,
forces a change.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266675/globalist-empire-strikes-back-france-bruce-thornton#.WRXrVX0CEf8.facebook">http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266675/globalist-empire-strikes-back-france-bruce-thornton#.WRXrVX0CEf8.facebook</a></span></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-27505903530250285762017-05-12T08:37:00.000+03:002017-05-12T08:38:54.359+03:00Bruce Bawer : What Happened in France? How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="title">
<h3 class="ab-testable" data-ab-testing-options="">
What Happened in France?</h3>
<h3 class="ab-testable" data-ab-testing-options="">
How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide? </h3>
</div>
<div class="byline">
<img class="author-picture" src="https://static.pjmedia.com/static-content/images/author-photos/brucebawer-537333653.sized-50x50xf.jpg" />
<br />
<div class="author">
By
<a href="https://pjmedia.com/columnist/bruce-bawer/">Bruce Bawer</a>
<span class="date date-formatted">May 7, 2017</span>
</div>
<div class="comment-link">
<a href="https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/05/07/what-happened-in-france/#comments">
</a>
</div>
<div class="comment-link">
<a href="https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/05/07/what-happened-in-france/#comments">
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Why, after the Brits chose Brexit, and Americans chose Trump, did the Dutch fail Wilders, and the French fail Le Pen?</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
How
could a country that has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in
recent years, and that has undergone a more profound social
transformation owing to Islamic immigration, vote for business as usual?</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Wilders,
buoyed by the Brexit and Trump victories, said that 2017 would be a
“Year of the Populist.” So far, alas, it's not turning out that way.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Yes, there are positive signs. The Sweden Democrats are on the upswing. And Wilders <i>did </i>gain seats in the Dutch Parliament.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>But
if you've witnessed the reality of Islamization in cities like
Rotterdam and Paris and Stockholm, you may well wonder: what, in
heaven's name, will it take for these people to save their own
societies, their own freedoms, for their own children and grandchildren?</b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="inline-ad-wrapper">
<div class="inline-ad-label">
I'm not the only one who's been obsessing for years over this question. I've yet to see a totally convincing answer to it.</div>
</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
One
way of trying to answer it is to look at countries one by one. For
example, the Brits and French feel guilty about their imperial
histories, and hence find it difficult to rein in the descendants of
subject peoples. The Germans feel guilty about their Nazi past – and the
Swedes feel guilty about cozying up to Nazis – and thus feel compelled
to lay out the welcome mat for, well, just about anybody. The Dutch,
similarly, are intensely aware that during the Nazi occupation they
helped ship off a larger percentage of their Jews to the death camps
than any other Western European country, and feel a deep need to atone.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Postmodernism,
of course, is a factor. According to postmodern thinking, no culture is
better than any other – and it's racist to say otherwise. No, scratch
that – other cultures are, in fact, <i>better </i>than Western
culture. Whites, by definition, are oppressors, imperialists, and
colonialists, while “people of color” are victims.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>And Muslims are the biggest victims of all.</b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Not
that that makes any sense. Over the centuries since the religion was
founded, Muslim armies have gained control over much of north Africa,
the Middle East, and large parts of Europe. Islam itself, by definition,
is imperialistic. And whenever Islam has conquered non-Islamic
territories, it has proven itself to be profoundly oppressive, offering
infidels exactly three options: death, subordination, or conversion. <b>But
to say these things has become <i>verboten.</i></b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Living
in a Muslim neighborhood of Amsterdam in early 1999, I read up on Islam
and realized very quickly what Europe was up against. Two and a half
years later, when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred, I assumed
pretty much everyone else would get it, too.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
But
it didn't work that way. Yes, some people did get it almost
instantaneously, in both America and Europe. They caught up on a lot of
reading, did a great deal of soul-searching, and underwent a major
philosophical metamorphosis.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>But
even after other horrific attacks occurred – in Madrid, London, and
elsewhere – a lot of people refused to accept the plain truth. The
plainer the truth got, in fact, the more fiercely they resisted it. And
as skilled propagandists began to represent Muslims as the mother of all
victim groups, many Westerners were quick to buy into it all.</b></span></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>How, again, to make sense of this?</b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>Yes,
the mainstream media have played a role, routinely whitewashing Islam,
soft-pedaling the Islamic roots of jihadist terror, and staying silent
about the dire reality of everyday Islamization. But no one who actually
lives in western Europe has any excuse for ignorance about these
matters. The truth is all around them. Even in the remotest places,
however dishonest the mainstream media, the truth can be found on the
Internet.</b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
But – and this is a
fact that some of us are thoroughly incapable of identifying with, and
thus almost thoroughly incapable of grasping – some people <i>don't want to know the truth</i>. And if they do know the truth, they want to un-know it.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Orwell
understood. He called it doublethink. You can know something and yet
can will yourself not to know it. And thereby give free rein to
totalitarianism.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
For those
of us to whom the truth matters, and who wouldn't be able to live with
ourselves if we didn't face the truth, however difficult, and try to act
responsibly on it, it can be hard to conceive that not everything
thinks about these things in the same way that we do.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
And
I'm not talking about people who are just plain obviously rotten
through and through. I'm taking about people who, in everyday life, come
across as thoroughly good and decent – but who, when push comes to
shove, just don't want to rock the boat. That's a lot of people. Maybe
most. People who are nice so long as it's easy to be nice. The sort of
people who – if they'd been, say, Christians living in the pre-war
Netherlands – would've been the best of friends to their Jewish
neighbors next door; but who, when those neighbors came to them and
begged to be hidden from the Gestapo, would've refused.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
No,
come to think of it, you don't even have to take it to the point where
the Gestapo is on your tail. There are kind people who, the minute
there's any hint of trouble – which means, way before the death-camp
round-up begins – prefer to lie low. Their highest value isn't truth or
virtue or beauty or even long-term security for them and their families
but the ability to buy another day without major trouble.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
You'd
think they'd be able to look forward at least some distance into the
future and dwell on that grim prospect. Able to see their children,
their grandchildren, and so forth, living under sharia law. If, indeed,
lucky to be living at all.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
But
I think it needs to be recognized that for some people, seeing that far
into the future is just beyond their intellectual grasp. Or beyond what
they dare to envision.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>Yes,
they see Islam taking over. Bit by bit, here and there. Everything in
their lives, everything familiar to them, is being transformed, in some
cases at a terrifying pace.</b> Perhaps their own lives haven't been turned
upside down – yet. But they know people who <i>have </i>suffered greatly because of these changes.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Yet
they're terrified to speak up about it, let alone do anything about it.
Viewed through American eyes, it may seem a European thing (although
it's not as uncommon in America, alas, as it used to be).</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Part
of what I'm saying is that these people don't have much of a sense of
ownership in their own countries, their own communities. They're used to
being ruled over. They're used to the idea that there are people above
them in the hierarchy whose job it is to think about, and take care of,
the big things while they – the citizens, the mice – take care of their
own little lives.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
Over and over again, they've been given the message, explicitly or implicitly, that their countries <i>don't </i>belong
to them – the whole thing about democracy to the contrary – and that to
assert any sense of ownership in any way would be a manifestation of
the worst kind of bigotry.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
You
might think that, once in the voting booth, these people would be able –
and not just able but eager, desperate even – to stand up against the
powers above them that have turned their countries upside down and
assert their power as citizens. But everything around them has conspired
all their lives to render them incapable of <i>feeling</i> that power
– or, perhaps, has rendered them incapable of feeling that they have
the moral right to exercise that power in the way that their gut is
begging them to.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
That still,
quiet voice in their heads, which I would describe as a voice of plain
reason and common sense, is up against the resounding voices of all the
higher-ups shouting in unison – the leading voices of politics,
business, the academia, the media, and so on – that they've been bred
from infancy to respect and take seriously. To, indeed, obey.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
In
America we're taught (or, at least, used to be taught) that our leaders
work for us; we learn (or used to) that it's not only our right but our
duty as individuals to stand up to those leaders when we think they're
wrong – especially when we think they're exceeding their powers and
infringing on our rights. But Europeans aren't brought up that way. Not
really. Yes, there's lip service to the idea of freedom. But when it
comes right down to it, they're raised to bow down to the state – to
prioritize not themselves, not the individual, but the society, the
commonweal, that abstract ideal known as “solidarity.”</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="pagebuilder-page" id="pagebuilder-page-3" style="display: block;">
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<b>So
it is that even in a secret ballot, it takes European voters a
remarkable amount of nerve to resist the thunderous chorus of voices
from above urging them to vote against their own interests; it feels
like nothing less than an act of treason to heed the meek little voices
in their own heads begging them to do the opposite – to do what's
actually best for themselves and their loved ones. They've been
psychologically manipulated to the point where they truly believe, on
some level, at least in some Orwellian doublethink kind of way, that
acting in clear defense of their own existence, their own culture, their
own values, and their own posterity, is an act of ugly prejudice.</b></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
These,
for what it's worth, are the places my mind has wandered since the vote
from France came in. At this point I've lived in Europe for just short
of twenty years, and have spent every day of that time observing
Europeans and trying to understand what makes them tick when it comes to
such matters. It helps to be an outsider, even after you've been an
outsider so long that you're not really an outsider any more. Frankly,
Le Pen's devastating loss doesn't really surprise me. But I still can't
say that I get it.</div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="newLineContentFilterParagraph">
<a href="https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/05/07/what-happened-in-france/">https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/05/07/what-happened-in-france/</a> </div>
</div>
</div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-26670493825261978812017-05-04T09:06:00.003+03:002017-05-04T09:06:42.273+03:00Guy Millière : French Elections: Emmanuel Macron, a Disaster<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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French Elections: Emmanuel Macron, a Disaster</h1>
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<b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Guy+Milli%C3%A8re"><span itemprop="author">Guy Millière</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-05-01T04:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">May 1, 2017 at 4:00 am</time></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10299/macron-france-disaster">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10299/macron-france-disaster</a></b></div>
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<ul class="content_preface_bullets">
<li>Anti-West, anti-Israeli and
anti-Jewish diatribes were delivered to enthusiastic crowds of bearded
men and veiled women. One hundred and fifty thousand people attended.</li>
<li>Emmanuel Macron promised to facilitate the construction of
mosques in France. He declared that "French culture does not exist" and
that he has "never seen" French art. The risk is high that Macron will
disappoint the French even faster than Hollande did.</li>
<li>On the evening of the second round of elections, people will
party in the chic neighborhoods of Paris and in ministries. In districts
where poor people live, cars will be set on fire. For more than a
decade, whenever there is a festive evening in France, cars are set on
fire in districts where poor people live. Unassimilated migrants have
their own traditions.</li>
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Paris, Champs Elysees, April 20, 8:50 pm. An Islamic terrorist <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2017/04/21/01016-20170421ARTFIG00078-des-2001-l-explosion-de-violence-de-karim-c-l-auteur-presume-de-l-attaque-sur-les-champs-elysees.php" target="_blank">shoots at a police van</a>. One policeman is killed, another is seriously wounded.<br />
The terrorist tries to escape and shoots again. The policemen kill
him. One hour later, the French Ministry of Interior reveals his name
and his past. His name is Karim Cheurfi. He is a French Muslim born in
an Islamized suburb of France. In 2003, he was sentenced to twenty years
in prison for the attempted murder of two policemen. He was released
before the end of his sentence. In 2014, he targeted a policeman and was
sentenced again. And released again. In March, the police were informed
that he was trying to buy military-grade weapons and that he contacted a
member of the Islamic State in Syria. An inspector discovered that he
had posted messages on jihadist social media networks expressing his
willingness to murder policemen. The police searched his home and found
several weapons and a GoPro video camera similar to the one terrorists
use to film their crimes. The police and members of the French justice
system <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4435250/Champs-lys-es-gunman-Karim-Cheurfi-dodged-jail-recall.html" target="_blank">did not think they had sufficient evidence</a> place him under surveillance.<br />
The Champs Elysées attack clearly shows that the French justice
system is lax regarding dangerous people and that the French police pay
only limited attention to suspects who are communicate with terrorist
organizations and who seem to be hatching terrorist projects.<br />
This terrorist attack summarizes everything that is broken in terms of security in France today.<br />
Men with a profile similar to that of Karim Cheurfi have, in recent
years, been responsible for most of the terrorist attacks in France and
Belgium: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/world/europe/toulouse-killers-path-a-bitter-puzzle.html" target="_blank">Mohamed Merah</a>, who killed three Jewish children and the father of two of them in Toulouse in 2012; <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2014/09/08/mehdi-nemmouche-ce-que-l-on-sait-de-son-parcours_4483458_3224.html" target="_blank">Mehdi Nemmouche</a>, who attacked the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014 ; the <a href="http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/enquete/charlie-hebdo-qui-sont-les-deux-freres-recherches-par-la-police_1638537.html" target="_blank">Kouachi brothers</a>, who committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015; <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/who-amedy-coulibaly-paris-kosher-deli-gunman-once-worked-coca-cola-was-close-kouachi-1779242" target="_blank">Amedy Coulibaly</a>, who murdered four Jews in the Saint Mandé grocery Kosher store Hypercacher; <a href="http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/attentats-terroristes-a-paris/20151120.OBS9941/samy-amimour-de-la-ratp-a-daech-itineraire-d-un-kamikaze.html" target="_blank">Samy Amimour</a> and others who maimed and murdered 130 innocent people in the Bataclan theater in November 2015; <a href="http://www.atlantico.fr/pepites/attentat-nice-que-on-sait-tueur-14-juillet-2765127.html" target="_blank">Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel</a>,
who drove a truck into the crowd in Nice in July 2016, killed 86 people
and wounded many others, and, among others, those who beheaded a priest
in Normandy a few weeks after the attack in Nice.<br />
The successive French governments under the presidency of François
Hollande showed themselves to be appallingly weak and impotent.<br />
A climate of fear has overtaken the country. Attendance at theaters
has declined. The particularly targeted Jewish community -- two-thirds
of the attacks in France in the last five years targeted Jews -- feels
abandoned. When a Jewish cemetery was <a href="http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/grand-est/moselle/tombes-israelites-vandalisees-waldwisse-1224537.html" target="_blank">vandalized on March 30</a> in Waldwisse, eastern France, neither the media nor the political leaders reacted. A week later, in Paris, a Jewish woman, <a href="http://www.lemondejuif.info/2017/04/colere-depute-meyer-habib-meurtre-de-sarah-halimi-quasi-silence-medias/" target="_blank">Sarah Halimi</a>,
was tortured and then thrown out of a window by a non-radicalized
Muslim, simply because she was Jewish: the French media and political
leaders, with the exception of the courageous MP Meyer Habib, also did
not react. A silent gathering below the window was organized by some
leaders of the Jewish community. Only Jews came; they were <a href="http://www.dreuz.info/2017/04/09/paris-la-marche-blanche-pour-sarah-halimi-entre-des-insultes-de-sales-juifs-et-des-jets-de-bouteille/comment-page-1/" target="_blank">greeted by anti-Semitic insults</a> by Arab Muslims in the neighborhood. The implantation of radical Islam in the country is intensifying. The annual <a href="http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/la-rencontre-annuelle-des-musulmans-de-france-s-ouvre-au-bourget-14-04-2017-2119909_23.php" target="_blank">meeting of "Muslims of France"</a>
(the new name of the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), took
place on April 14-17 in Le Bourget, ten miles north of Paris. Anti-West,
anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish diatribes were delivered to enthusiastic
crowds of bearded men and veiled women. One hundred and fifty thousand
people attended.<br />
Economically, France is in <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/26/news/economy/france-economy-terrorism-strikes-euro2016/" target="_blank">terrible shape</a>.
The unemployment rate remains above 10%. Nine million people are living
below the poverty line --14% of the population. Economic growth is
stagnant. Government spending accounts for 57% of GDP -- 13% more than
in Germany, France's main economic competitor in Europe.<br />
Month after month, <a href="http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/rue89/rue89-nos-vies-connectees/20150802.RUE0080/le-pessimisme-des-francais-en-un-chiffre-record-mondial.html" target="_blank">polls shows</a>
that the French population is anxious, angry, immensely disappointed
with current French policies. François Hollande ends his term with a
popularity rating close to zero. He was so rejected and discredited that
he decided not to run again for the presidency.<br />
The first round of the French presidential election took place in
this context, and one could expect that the French population would
reject everything that looks like François Hollande's policies and
choose a new direction for the country.<br />
That is not what happened; quite the opposite.<br />
Benoit Hamon, the Socialist Party's candidate, suffered a disastrous blow and received a mere 6% of the vote. <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/04/11/35003-20170411ARTFIG00264-melenchon-l-apotre-des-dictateurs-revolutionnaires-sud-americains.php" target="_blank">Jean-Luc Mélenchon</a>,
a far-left candidate who left the Socialist Party a few years ago and
who supported Hollande in 2012, received a much higher score: 19% of the
vote. He is an admirer of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and the late
Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Immediately after the anti-Semitic
Islamic attack in Saint Mandé, <a href="http://jssnews.com/2017/04/19/melenchon-les-juifs-et-le-peuple-superieur/" target="_blank">he claimed</a> that "Jewish extremism is more dangerous than Islamic extremism". That statement did not hurt him.<br />
Above all, Emmanuel Macron, a candidate close to Hollande won the
race and will be elected President on May 7. He was Hollande's senior
economic advisor for more than two years, and the <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2014/08/27/emmanuel-macron-de-mozart-de-l-elysee-a-ministre-de-l-economie_4477318_823448.html" target="_blank">main architect</a>
of Hollande's failed economic policies. He then became Minister of the
Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, and held that post until he
entered the presidential race.<br />
<br />
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<td style="border: 1px solid black; max-width: 600px;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2467.jpg" width="400" /><div style="font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;">
Emmanuel
Macron, then Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs of
France, at the Annual Meeting 2016 of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, January 22, 2016. (image source: World Economic
Forum/Michele Limina)</div>
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</tr>
</tbody></table>
Most of Macron's speeches <a href="http://www.lci.fr/elections/discours-de-marseille-macron-a-t-il-copie-hollande-mot-pour-mot-comparez-dans-cette-video-2035042.html" target="_blank">are copies</a>
of the speeches Hollande made during his 2012 presidential campaign.
What is known of Macron's positions on most subjects show that they are
the same position Hollande had during the last months of his mandate.<br />
Throughout the campaign, Macron virtually never spoke about the
danger of Islamic terror; when he did, he used words even weaker than
those used by Hollande. After the Champs Elysees attack on April 20, <a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/elections/presidentielle/presidentielle-le-dernier-round-televise-marque-par-l-attaque-sur-les-champs-elysees-20-04-2017-6872112.php" target="_blank">he said</a>:
"imponderable" events had occured, and they "will be part of the daily
life of the French in the years to come". The next day, when asked what
he would do to prevent other killings, he said that he could not "devise
a plan to fight terrorism overnight".<br />
When he speaks about the economy, he sounds like Hollande: he uses <a href="https://start.lesechos.fr/actu-entreprises/societe/les-5-points-a-retenir-du-programme-economique-d-emmanuel-macron-7481.php" target="_blank">vague terms</a>,
such as the need for more "social mobility" and "success for all". He
insists that he will maintain all the sclerosis dear to so many, such as
the compulsory 35-hour workweek or the legal age for retirement: 62. He
said that he would leave the almost-bankrupt retirement system the way
it is. He promised additional regulations aimed at "saving the planet"
and, in a classically socialist way, tens of billions of euros of
government "investments" supposed to finance "<a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2017/03/14/oui-la-transition-ecologique-est-en-marche_1555650" target="_blank">ecological transition</a>" and "public services".<br />
Sometimes, he makes remarks so dismaying that even Hollande would not
have said them. In Algeria, in the presence of the National Liberation
Front representatives, an organization that came to power by terrorism
and massacring hundreds of thousands of "harkis" (Algerians who had
chosen France), he said that the French presence in Algeria was a "<a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/article/2017/02/15/macron-qualifie-la-colonisation-de-crime-contre-l-humanite-tolle-a-droite-et-au-front-national_5080331_4854003.html" target="_blank">crime against humanity</a>",
and later promised to facilitate immigration from the Arab world and
from Africa to France by preserving an "open and welcoming" France. He <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/article/2017/03/02/laicite-et-islam-emmanuel-macron-laisse-des-questions-en-suspens_5088444_4854003.html" target="_blank">promised</a> to facilitate the construction of mosques in France. <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2017/02/06/31001-20170206ARTFIG00209-emmanuel-macron-et-le-reniement-de-la-culture-francaise.php" target="_blank">He declared</a> that "French culture does not exist " and that he has "never seen" French art.<br />
He quite often has shown that he is a political novice and that it is
his first election campaign. He stumbled upon the words of his speeches
and admitted to those listening to him that he did not understand the
meaning of the sentences he had just read, which showed that he had <a href="http://www.ouest-france.fr/politique/emmanuel-macron/quand-macron-ne-comprend-pas-son-discours-sur-l-enseignement-4934992" target="_blank">not read what was written for him</a> before reading it to the public.<br />
How to explain his success in these conditions?<br />
The first explanation lies in the moderate right candidate's
elimination. François Fillon had a credible and coherent program for the
country's recovery, but he could hardly speak about it. His campaign
was quickly engulfed in a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/europe/francois-fillon-investigation/" target="_blank">fake jobs scandal</a>.
He presented himself as an impeccable candidate: he appeared not so
impeccable. A book recently published revealed that the scandal was
meticulously orchestrated from a "<a href="http://www.bfmtv.com/politique/cabinet-noir-a-l-elysee-que-dit-le-livre-mentionne-par-fillon-1128387.html" target="_blank">shadow Cabinet</a>"
in the Elysee Palace. Fillon was never able to recover from it. His
excuses were weak and contradictory. He confirmed his weakness by <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/04/23/35003-20170423ARTFIG00209-francois-fillon-appelle-a-voter-pour-emmanuel-macron.php" target="_blank">announcing his unconditional support</a>
for Macron immediately after the first round results were published.
For the first time in more than fifty years, the moderate right will not
have a candidate in the second round of a French presidential election.
Showing their own weakness, most of the moderate right leaders followed
Fillon example and decided to <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/04/23/35003-20170423ARTFIG00198-les-tenors-de-la-droite-se-divisent-sur-la-strategie-a-adopter-au-second-tour.php" target="_blank">support Macron</a>.<br />
The second explanation for Emmanuel Macron success lies in a very elaborate communication strategy.<br />
Emmanuel Macron continuously benefited from François Hollande support
and most of the last five years socialist ministers, but an allegedly
neutral and apolitical political structure was created for him. It was
called <a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/politique/macron-annonce-la-creation-de-en-marche-un-mouvement-politique-transpartisan-06-04-2016-5691869.php" target="_blank"><i>En marche!</i></a> ("On the Move!"). The socialist ministers who joined him rallied On the Move!, and remained silent. Francois Hollande only <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/elections-presidentielle-legislatives-2017/2017/04/24/pour-hollande-c-est-enfin-officiellement-macron_1565018" target="_blank">announced his full support</a> very late in the race. The communication strategy could work because Emmanuel Macron received the <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2017/03/29/emmanuel-macron-son-amie-la-finance_1559175" target="_blank">support of left-wing billionaires</a>
whom he helped when he was Minister of Economy, and who have close
relations with the powers that be: Pierre Bergé, Xavier Niel and Patrick
Drahi. These people also own most France's mainstream media and were
able to carry out strong media campaigns in support of Macron. No
candidate in the French presidential election history has been on the
cover of so many magazines and newspapers. Emmanuel Macron also enjoys
main French investment banks support: he is a graduate of the Ecole
Nationale d'Administration, which trains all senior civil servants and
almost all French politicians since it was established in 1945 and,
before joining Francois Hollande, he had a <a href="http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/rue89/20160830.RUE5451/au-fait-il-faisait-quoi-chez-rothschild-emmanuel-macron.html" target="_blank">career in a financial institution</a>.<br />
The third explanation for Emmanuel Macron's success is that the
communication campaign in his favor has been largely devoid of any
political content, just like On the Move. He was presented as a young
man, embodying the "future", a "renewal", a "hope", a "change". For most
of the campaign, Emmanuel Macron had no program. His <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/03/02/35003-20170302ARTFIG00051-emmanuel-macron-precise-son-programme.php" target="_blank">program</a>
was only published on the internet six weeks before the election. The
text is often meaningless. Fear is defined as a "daily anguish". It says
that France must offer "opportunities" and Europe must be a "chance".
Emmanuel Macron told socialists he is a socialist, then <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2017/01/24/emmanuel-macron-est-il-socialiste-ca-depend-des-jours/" target="_blank">said that he is not a socialist</a>
at all when he addressed other audiences. Opinion polls have shown that
many of those who voted for him in the first round were unaware of his
proposals on any topic.<br />
Those who designed Emmanuel Macron's campaign took a lot of
inspiration from Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and the
result shows that they were right.<br />
The result is also very distressing, because it shows that a massive
communication campaign can be effective, even if it is full of empty
words and seems to considers voters as idiots. Emmanuel Macron's
campaign effectiveness is also due to the fact that in France, virtually
no media is likely to contradict what is said in the mainstream media:
the French economy is a very state-based economy in which creating and
sustaining <a href="https://blogs.mediapart.fr/eloi-linquette/blog/110413/les-medias-sont-ils-libres-en-france" target="_blank">media independence</a> from the government and from government subsidies is almost impossible.<br />
The second round of the French presidential election will take place
on May 7. Emmanuel Macron will face the only remaining candidate,
populist Marine Le Pen.<br />
During the entire campaign, she was almost the only one to <a href="http://www.medias-presse.info/marine-le-pen-il-faut-attaquer-le-fondamentalisme-islamiste-ideologie-qui-arme-ces-terroristes/72821/" target="_blank">speak clearly about the Islamic terrorist threat</a>
(François Fillon did, too, but more discreetly) and to offer credible
solutions to fight it. She was the only one to speak of the rise of
radical Islam in France and to <a href="http://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/religion/rencontre-annuelle-des-musulmans-de-france-marine-le-pen-met-de-l-huile-sur-le-feu-en-reclamant-la-dissolution-de-l-uoif_2145446.html" target="_blank">denounce</a>
the Muslim Brotherhood gathering at Le Bourget. She was the only one to
stress the increasing perils resulting from uncontrolled immigration,
and the <a href="http://www.europe1.fr/politique/pour-le-pen-limmigration-a-engendre-une-perspective-de-guerre-civile-3002081" target="_blank">risk of French culture disappearing</a>.
She was also the only one to mention the demographic change that occurs
in France and in Europe because of the new migrants. She was the only
one to <a href="http://www.europe-israel.org/2014/12/video-marine-le-pen-il-est-clair-que-lantisemitisme-en-france-est-directement-lie-a-lislam-2/" target="_blank">denounce the Islamic anti-Semitism</a> that relentlessly kills Jews in France. Unfortunately, she has a <a href="http://www.capital.fr/a-la-une/politique-economique/jean-luc-melenchon-et-marine-le-pen-l-etonnante-ressemblance-de-leurs-programmes-economiques-1204870" target="_blank">nearly Marxist economic program</a>,
close to that of Jean Luc Melenchon. She is the leader of the National
Front, a party founded by her father, an anti-Semite, Jean-Marie Le Pen;
although she has <a href="http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/fn/jean-marie-le-pen-suspendu-du-fn_1677175.html" target="_blank">excluded her father</a>
and virtually all her father's anti-Semitic friends from the National
Front, she is nonetheless the party leader and is regarded as her
father's daughter.<br />
Marine Le Pen and the National Front will be used as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2017/04/24/resultat-de-lelection-presidentielle-2017-marine-le-pen-denonc_a_22052936/" target="_blank">scarecrows</a>
to urge voters to rally massively behind Macron, in the name of a
"Republican front" against "fascism." The strategy was developed thirty
years ago by the French left, under President Francois Mitterrand. It
has always worked, and in a few days, it will work again.<br />
Macron now has the support of the entire Socialist party, and the
support of virtually all other politicians. He also has the support of
all French Muslim organizations. The rector of the Great Mosque of Paris
<a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2017/04/24/97001-20170424FILWWW00147-la-grande-mosquee-de-paris-appelle-a-voter-massivement-macron.php" target="_blank">said</a> that Muslims must "massively vote" for him. The Jewish community leaders also <a href="http://fr.timesofisrael.com/mobilisation-des-responsables-de-la-communaute-juive-derriere-macron/" target="_blank">rallied on behalf of Macron</a>. On May 7, he will likely get more than 60% of the vote.<br />
Most will not be based on the support for a project; the risk is high
that Macron will disappoint the French even faster than Hollande did.
The French may quickly discover that he is just a man chosen by the
French left to preserve an unsustainable status quo a little longer, and
a member of the self-appointed élites who do not care about ordinary
people's problems, who consider that terrorist acts are "imponderable
events", and who believe that national identities can melt in a
no-border globalized world. When the French discover who Macron is,
there will be nothing they can do to change what they voted in.<br />
The risk to France in the next five years will probably be painful for the French. <a href="http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/fiche-s-les-services-de-renseignement-ont-recense-12-000-personnes-693258.html" target="_blank">According</a>
to the Police, more than 12,000 radicalized Muslims live in the country
and most of them are not under surveillance. The Police do not have the
means to do more than they currently are doing, and Macron does not
seem to care. The justice system is in the hands of judges who appear <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/07/27/isis-teen-who-killed-priest-convinced-judge-to-let-him-out-of-jail/" target="_blank">lenient to terrorists</a>,
and Macron seems to accept it. The flow of migrants will not stop, and
Macron apparently does not intend to do anything about that. More and
more, Muslims segregate themselves from French society in expanding <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/7/french-islamist-mini-states-grow-into-problem-out-/" target="_blank">Islamist mini-states</a>.<br />
Nothing Macron proposes can reverse the decline of the French economy
and French society. Terror attacks will undoubtedly occur. Jews and
others will undoubtedly be killed. Riots and discontent will undoubtedly
take place.<br />
On the evening of the first round of the election, there were <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/article/2017/04/24/des-manifestations-tres-sporadiques-et-quelques-echauffourees-apres-la-qualification-du-fn_5116293_4854003.html" target="_blank">riots in Paris and Nantes</a>.
On the evening of the second round of elections, people will party in
the chic neighborhoods of Paris and in ministries. In districts where
poor people live, cars will be set on fire. For more than a decade,
whenever there is a festive evening in France, cars are set on fire in
districts where poor people live. Unassimilated migrants have their own
traditions.<br />
In the next election, in 2022, Catholic France may well see a Muslim candidate run -- and win.<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.</i><br />
</blockquote>
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-28276416653673978762017-05-04T09:02:00.000+03:002017-05-04T09:02:12.868+03:00Soeren Kern : A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: March 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: March 2017</h1>
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by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Soeren+Kern"><span itemprop="author">Soeren Kern</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-04-28T05:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">April 28, 2017 at 5:00 am</time></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10290/germany-islam-multiculturalism-march">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10290/germany-islam-multiculturalism-march</a></b></div>
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<li>Police knew as early as March
2016 that Anis Amri, the 31-year-old Tunisian who carried out the
December 19 jihadist attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, was
planning an attack, but he was not deported because he did not have a
passport.</li>
<li>Humboldt University will become the sixth university in Germany
to teach Islamic theology. Berlin Mayor Michael Müller revealed that the
institute is being paid for by German taxpayers. Humboldt University
President Sabine Kunst rejected calls for a joint "Faculty for Theology"
for Christians, Muslims and Jews.</li>
<li>"What is clear is that the financing of mosques by foreign actors
must stop." — Jens Spahn, a member of the executive committee of
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).</li>
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March 1. More than 4,000 millionaires emigrated from Germany in 2016,
compared to 1,000 millionaires who left the country in 2015, <a href="http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/4209581/the-europe-2017-wealth-report" target="_blank">according</a>
to the 2017 Global Wealth Migration Review. Before the migration crisis
erupted in 2015, millionaires were leaving Germany at the rate of only a
few hundred per year. Most of Germany's millionaires, citing
deteriorating security, left for Australia, Canada, the United States,
Dubai and Israel. The mass exodus of wealth is hollowing out Germany's
tax base at a time when the German government is spending tens of
billions of euros for the upkeep of millions of refugees and migrants
from the Muslim world. The report's editor, Andrew Amoils, <a href="http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/geld/millionaere-fliehen-aus-deutschland---die-nerze-verlassen-das-sinkende-schiff-7354096.html" target="_blank">warned</a>
that the wealthy are a kind of early warning system for society. Due to
their financial status, education and international contacts, they can
emigrate more easily than others. Over the longer term, however, their
exodus portends increased emigration from among the middle class,
according to the report.<br />
March 2. A 36-year-old Syrian migrant identified only as Abdalfatah H. A. was <a href="http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/toetete-er-fuer-die-al-nusra-front-mutmasslicher-kriegsverbrecher-mann-soll-2400-euro-hartz-iv-bezogen-haben_id_6743751.html" target="_blank">arrested</a>
in Düsseldorf on charges of murdering 36 people in March 2013 in Syria
in the name of the Al-Nusra jihadist group. He arrived in Germany with
his pregnant wife and three children, aged three, five and seven, in
October 2015. He had been collecting €2,400 ($2,600) a month in social
welfare benefits since April 2016.<br />
March 2. Administrators of the Johannes Rau Gymnasium, a secondary school in Wuppertal, <a href="https://www.derwesten.de/region/muslimische-schueler-fallen-durch-provozierendes-beten-auf-wirbel-an-wuppertaler-gymnasium-id209791697.html" target="_blank">asked</a>
teachers to prohibit Muslim pupils from engaging in "provocative
praying" in public. An internal memo stated: "In recent weeks, it has
been increasingly observed that Muslim pupils in the school building are
praying, clearly visible to others, signaled by ritual washings in the
toilets, the rolling out of prayer mats, and taking up certain postures.
This is not permitted."<br />
March 3. An 18-year-old asylum seeker from Somalia was <a href="http://www.staatsanwaltschaften.niedersachsen.de/startseite/staatsanwaltschaften/osnabrueck/presseinformationen/staatsanwaltschaft-osnabrueck-erhebt-anklage-wegen-mordes-im-altenheim-in-neuenhaus-151690.html" target="_blank">charged</a>
with murdering an 87-year-old woman at a retirement home in Neuenhaus.
Police said the accused entered the facility through an unlocked back
door with the aim of having sexual intercourse with elderly residents.
He sexually assaulted a 59-year-old paralytic, entered an adjacent room
and sexually assaulted an 87-year-old man. He then beat the man's wife,
who was sleeping in the same room. The woman died from her injuries. The
accused is being housed in a psychiatric hospital.<br />
March 4. Spiegel Online <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/verfassungsschutz-zahl-der-deutschen-dschihadisten-weiter-gestiegen-a-1137203.html" target="_blank">reported</a>
that more than 900 people, including many women, have left Germany to
join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Roughly one-third have
returned to Germany, while another 145 are believed to have been killed
in battle. A state prosecutor warned that the returnees are especially
dangerous: "They often have had extreme experiences of violence, are
strongly radicalized and have few prospects in Germany."<br />
March 7. The German-language version of the ISIS magazine <i>Rumiyah</i> <a href="https://www.memri.org/jttm/issue-7-isiss-german-language-magazine-rumiyah-instructs-lone-wolves-kill-german-and-austrian" target="_blank">called</a>
on lone wolf jihadists to kill "apostate" imams in Germany and Austria.
An article entitled, "Kill the Infidel Imams in Germany and Austria,"
specifically mentioned the following "apostate" imams: Aiman Mazyek,
Secretary-General of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany; Abdul
Adhim Kamouss, an imam in Berlin of Moroccan origin; Hesham Shashaa, an
imam at the Darul Quran mosque in Munich; and Omar Al-Rawi, a Vienna
city councilman.<br />
March 9. A 37-year-old migrant from Kosovo, identified only as Fatmir H., was <a href="http://www.bild.de/regional/duesseldorf/amoklauf/der-amoklauefer-von-gleis-13-50796416.bild.html" target="_blank">arrested</a> after he injured nine people, including two police officers, with an axe at the central train station in Düsseldorf. Police <a href="http://www.bild.de/regional/duesseldorf/axt/axt-angreifer-leidet-an-schizophrenie-50789998.bild.html" target="_blank">said</a> Fatmir H. suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was in an "exceptional mental state" at the time of the attack.<br />
March 10. An unidentified man brandishing a machete <a href="https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article162735923/Rentner-in-Duesseldorf-angegriffen-und-verletzt-Taeter-fluechtig.html" target="_blank">attacked</a>
an 80-year-old man in the Kalkum district of Düsseldorf. The
perpetrator remains at large. In Hamburg, six people were injured when
two youths with tear gas <a href="http://www.bild.de/regional/hamburg/traenengas/reizgas-attacke-in-s-bahn-50796482.bild.html" target="_blank">attacked</a> a train carrying 50 people. The perpetrators remain at large.<br />
March 10. Germany spent more than €23 billion ($25 billion) on the
reception, accommodation and care of migrants and refugees in 2016, <a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article162720105/Fluechtlingskosten-uebersteigen-Marke-von-20-000-000-000-Euro.html" target="_blank">according</a> to Bundestag Vice President Johannes Singhammer. The average annual <a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article159357833/So-viel-kostet-die-Versorgung-eines-Fluechtlings-in-Deutschland.html" target="_blank">cost per migrant</a>
was approximately €11,800 ($13,000). In Berlin alone, the actual amount
of money spent on migrants was twice as much as initially budgeted:
€1.27 billion rather than €685 million.<br />
March 10. The Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the German parliament, <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/german-bundesrat-says-maghreb-states-not-safe-for-refugees/a-37882572" target="_blank">rejected</a>
a law that would have fast-tracked deportations to Algeria, Morocco and
Tunisia by classifying those states as "safe countries of origin." The
German Constitution <a href="http://www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/germany/asylum-procedure/safe-country-concepts/safe-country-origin" target="_blank">defines</a>
safe countries as countries "in which, on the basis of their laws,
enforcement practices and general political conditions, it can be safely
concluded that neither political persecution nor inhuman or degrading
punishment or treatment exists." The decision, led by federal states
with left-leaning governing coalitions, means that criminal migrants
from the Maghreb will indefinitely remain in Germany.<br />
March 11. Police in Essen <a href="http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/essen-einkaufszentrum-100.html" target="_blank">foiled</a>
a jihadist attack on a shopping center at the Limbecker Platz. Essen
Police Chief Frank Richter said he had received "very concrete
indications" on the plot to attack the facility, which has more than 200
stores and an average of 60,000 visitors on any given Saturday. Police
arrested two Salafists from Oberhausen, including one who had fought for
the Islamic State in Syria.<br />
March 12. The number of crimes committed by asylum seekers and
refugees in Baden-Württemberg increased significantly in 2016.
Statistics <a href="http://www.swr.de/swraktuell/bw/zahl-der-straftaten-von-fluechtlingen-gestiegen/-/id=1622/did=19171092/nid=1622/1k8ny90/index.html" target="_blank">showed</a>
a total of 251,000 criminal suspects, of whom 107,417 were non-Germans,
mostly from Turkey, Romania and Italy. Of the non-German criminals,
25,379 were asylum seekers and refugees (up from 18,695 in 2015). They
committed 64,329 crimes in 2016, an increase of nearly 20% over 2015.
Syrians were the most frequent offenders 4,053 (2015: 1,253), followed
by Gambians 2,346 (2015: 1,592) and Afghans 1,934 (2015: 638). The
number of suspects from Kosovo fell from 1,531 to 1,094 and Serbs from
1,488 to 1,224. Criminals from those two countries were increasingly
being deported in 2016. Police noted a 95.5% increase in the number of
physical assaults involving at least one migrant, to 7,670 cases in
2016.<br />
March 13. The number of crimes committed by asylum seekers and refugees in Bavaria increased significantly in 2016. Statistics <a href="http://www.stmi.bayern.de/med/aktuell/archiv/2017/170313pks2016/" target="_blank">showed</a>
a total of 274,633 criminal suspects of whom 180,023 were Germans
(+0.3%) and 94,610 were non-Germans (+14.9%). Of the non-German
criminals, 26,332 were asylum seekers and refugees, an increase of 57.8%
compared to the previous year. The proportion of migrant suspects to
all suspects was 9.6%, an increase of 3.2% (in 2012 the share was 1.8%).
Among the migrant suspects, Syrians were the most frequent offenders at
16.1% (2015: 11.1%), followed by Afghans with 14.3% (2015: 10.1%),
Iraqis with 8.8% (2015: 4.6%) and Nigerians with 6.8% (2015: 5.4%). "The
increase in crime in Bavaria in 2016 is mainly due to foreign suspects,
especially immigrants," said Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim
Herrmann.<br />
March 14. A migrant from Kosovo who has lived in Germany for 28 years
and is an active member of the hardline Islamic Salafist movement <a href="http://www.lz.de/ueberregional/owl/21719546_Erneuter-Streit-um-Freitagsgebete-eines-Herforder-Schuelers.html" target="_blank">demanded</a>
that the Meierfeld secondary school in Herford provide his ninth-grade
son with a prayer room "so that he can perform the Friday prayer on time
and without disturbance." The man also prohibited his son from
attending music lessons, which he said are banned by Islam. Previously,
the man <a href="http://www.lz.de/ueberregional/owl/21697382_Streit-um-Freitagsgebet-eines-muslimischen-Oberstufenschuelers.html" target="_blank">demanded</a> that the Friedenstal secondary school, also in Herford, provide a prayer room for another of his sons.<br />
March 14. More than 400 police and counter-terrorism officers <a href="http://www.bild.de/regional/hannover/hildesheim/islamisten-razzia-dik-hildesheim-50834336.bild.html" target="_blank">raided</a>
a mosque in Hildesheim. The Interior Minister of Lower Saxony, Boris
Pistorius, said the Deutschsprachigen Islamkreis Hildesheim (DIK) was a
"hotspot of the radical Salafist scene" and ordered it closed because it
was "indoctrinating Muslims to go to Iraq and Syria."<br />
March 14. A 17-year-old Somali migrant <a href="http://www.wochenblatt.de/nachrichten/welt/Haftbfehl-17-Jaehriger-soll-43-Jaehrige-vergewaltigt-haben;art5580,430288" target="_blank">raped</a> a 43-year-old woman at a train station in Bamberg. A "southerner" (<i>südländischer Typ</i>) <a href="https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/doebeln-14-jaehrige-gebuesch-gezerrt-missbraucht-polizei-zeugen-228083" target="_blank">raped</a> a 14-year-old girl at a playground in Döbeln.<br />
March 15. A 40-year-old German man of Turkish descent <a href="https://www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/article162863081/Mann-toetet-in-Kiel-seine-Frau-auf-der-Strasse.html" target="_blank">stabbed to death</a>
his 34-year-old wife in front of a child daycare center in Kiel.
Neighbors said the couple, who were separated, had quarreled about
moving their children to Turkey.<br />
March 16. Prosecutors in Gelsenkirchen <a href="http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/anklage-anil-o-100.html" target="_blank">charged</a>
a 23-year-old German man of Turkish origin, identified only as Anil O.,
with membership in a terrorist organization for joining the Islamic
State in Syria. He traveled to Syria in August 2015 to work as a medic
but, according to prosecutors, he became disillusioned with the Islamic
State. Upon his return to Germany, he was arrested.<br />
March 17. A ten-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan <a href="http://www.krone.at/oesterreich/junger-afghane-belaestigt-mehrere-frauen-in-tirol-erst-zehn-jahre-alt-story-559804" target="_blank">sexually assaulted</a>
a 75-year-old woman in Tyrol (Austria). Police said they believe he has
committed at least five other offenses of the same kind.<br />
March 17. German immigration authorities are <a href="https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article162926845/Software-soll-Dialekt-von-Asylbewerbern-untersuchen.html" target="_blank">testing</a>
software that will be able to recognize the dialect of migrants to
determine whether they are legitimate asylum seekers. Some 60% of
migrants who have arrived in Germany since 2015 do not have
identification documents. "The idea is to record speech samples from
asylum seekers and carry out an automatic dialect analysis," said Julian
Detzel of the Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).<br />
March 18. Five Arab migrants were <a href="http://www.bild.de/regional/hamburg/sexueller-missbrauch/wurde-eine-siebenjaehrige-von-fuenf-maennern-vergewaltigt-44989806.bild.html" target="_blank">accused</a> of gang raping a seven-year-old girl at a refugee reception shelter in the Bahrenfeld district of Hamburg.<br />
March 19. Two Syrian asylum seekers, aged 17 and 23, <a href="http://www.mdr.de/sachsen-anhalt/dessau/polizei-sucht-nach-messerattacke-zeugen-100.html" target="_blank">stabbed</a> two female passersby in broad daylight in the pedestrian zone of Dessau-Roßlau.<br />
March 21. Two North African asylum seekers were charged with
attempted manslaughter after they pushed a 40-year-old man onto the
tracks of an oncoming train at the station in Dresden-Zschachwitz. The
conductor brought the train to a halt a few meters from the man, who was
prevented from getting back onto the platform by the perpetrators, a
23-year-old Moroccan and a 27-year-old Libyan. Chief Prosecutor Lorenz
Haase initially dropped charges against the men, <a href="https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/maenner-schubsen-mann-vor-zug-sbahn-fast-gestorben-tot-wieder-frei-polizei-staatsanwaltschaft-ermittelt-229186" target="_blank">concluding</a> that there was "no evidence" of murderous intent. Haase <a href="https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/dresden-zschachwitz-sbahn-schubser-verhaftet-haftbefehl-versuchter-totschlag-229601" target="_blank">reversed</a> his decision on day later after a nationwide outpouring of anger.<br />
March 21. Three Muslim teenagers were <a href="http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/anschlag-auf-sikh-tempel-in-essen-drei-taeter-zu-jahrelangen-haftstrafen-verurteilt_id_6813664.html" target="_blank">handed sentences</a>
of between six and seven years in prison for the April 16, 2016 bombing
of a Sikh temple in Essen. The judge ruled that the motive for the
attack, in which three people were injured, was hatred of other
religions. The three were members of the hardline Islamic Salafist
movement.<br />
March 22. The German Press Council (<i>Presserat</i>) <a href="http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/presserat-erneuert-richtlinie-zur-berichterstattung-ueber-straftate-14937809.html" target="_blank">loosened</a> its guidelines (<i>Pressekodex</i>)
for reporting crimes. Journalists are now allowed to provide
information about the ethnic or religious background of suspects or
perpetrators of crimes if there is a "justified public interest" to do
so. Previously, journalists were only allowed to provide such details if
it was absolutely necessary (<i>begründeter Sachbezug</i>) to
understand the reported event. The change followed complaints from
German media outlets that the old guidelines were difficult to
interpret.<br />
March 23. The Mannheim Labor Court <a href="http://www.focus.de/finanzen/recht/mannheim-muslimin-waescht-keine-maenner-gericht-weist-klage-gegen-kuendigung-ab_id_6826546.html" target="_blank">rejected</a>
a lawsuit filed by a 40-year-old Muslim nurse who claimed that she was
unfairly terminated after only one week by a nursing home because she
refused to wash male patients. The woman, who has been living in Germany
for three years, told the court that she wants to integrate into German
society but does not understand why her former employer could not
accept that her religion forbids her to wash men. The court ruled that
the employer was entitled to dismiss employees during the six-month
period of probation.<br />
March 23. The Interior Minister of Hesse <a href="https://www.lokalo24.de/lokales/kassel/vereinsverbot-schwerbewaffnete-polizisten-durchsuchen-moschee-kassel-7992891.html" target="_blank">ordered</a>
a "permanent ban" the Al-Madina Mosque in Kassel for promoting
Salafi-jihadism and for "exchanging and inviting hatred and violence
against other religious groups, states and peoples, as well as generally
differently thinking people."<br />
March 23. The number of prisoners in the state of Baden-Württemberg has <a href="http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.doch-kein-abriss-in-stammheim-raf-knast-soll-bleiben.48aad90a-a4d0-4bb9-901a-85f65cc2dafd.html" target="_blank">increased</a>
by 615 to 7,400 since 2015, and all 17 of the state's prisons are
overcrowded. The reason for the increase in the number of inmates is the
influx of migrants: The proportion of foreigners among the prison
population increased from 39% to 46% in the last two years alone,
according to the <i>Stuttgarter Nachrichten</i>.<br />
March 24. The Berlin Police Department <a href="http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article210045775/Polizei-stellt-Ermittlungsgruppe-zu-Saeure-Attacken-auf.html" target="_blank">announced</a>
the creation of a special task force to investigate acid attacks. At
least six women in the city have been attacked with acid since the
beginning of 2017. The latest attack occurred on March 14, when a
41-year-old pedestrian was attacked by an unknown cyclist in Prenzlauer
Berg district of the capital.<br />
March 24. A 31-year-old Afghan migrant brandishing a hammer <a href="http://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/polizeimeldungen/article210042805/Mann-attackiert-59-jaehrigen-Radfahrer-mit-Hammer.html" target="_blank">attacked</a>
a 59-year-old man riding a bicycle in the Bergedorf district of
Hamburg. Police said the attacker, who was found soaked in his victim's
blood, was "psychologically ill."<br />
March 24. A 30-year-old man <a href="http://www.br.de/nachrichten/oberfranken/inhalt/raeumung-bamberg-busbahnhof-100.html" target="_blank">shouting</a>
"Allahu Akhbar" and "you are all going to die" forced the temporary
closure of the central bus station in Bamberg. Police said the man
showed "clear signs of mental illness." They added that an arrest
warrant was not issued due to his illness.<br />
March 24. A 36-year-old Tunisian jihadist <a href="http://hessenschau.de/panorama/abschiebung-von-terrorverdaechtigem-endet-auf-rollfeld,abschiebung-abbruch-100.html" target="_blank">evaded deportation</a>
by requesting asylum in Germany. Haykel S., who was arrested during a
counter-terrorism raid in Frankfurt on February 1, was already on the
commercial airplane that was to fly him to Tunis when the Frankfurt
administrative court ordered that he be allowed to remain in Germany.
Haykel S. first arrived in Germany in 2003 on a student visa. Due to his
subsequent marriage to a German, he was granted residency. He later
returned to Tunisia and then returned to Germany in August 2015. Since
then, he has repeatedly been arrested for criminal activity.<br />
March 25. A North Rhine-Westphalia police report leaked to <i>Bild am Sonntag</i> <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/germany/der-tagesspiegel/20170327/281560880624545" target="_blank">revealed</a>
that police knew as early as March 2016 that Anis Amri, the 31-year-old
Tunisian who carried out the December 19 jihadist attack on the
Christmas market in Berlin, was planning an attack, but he was not
deported because he did not have a passport. The report stated: "Amri
presents a threat in the form of a suicide attack. The commission of a
terrorist attack by Amri is expected."<br />
March 27. The <i>Süddeutsche Zeitung</i> <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/exklusiv-tuerken-in-deutschland-werden-ausspioniert-1.3438995" target="_blank">reported</a>
that Turkey's National Intelligence Agency had provided Germany's BND
intelligence service with a list of names of hundreds of alleged
followers of the Islamic Gülen movement in Germany. The movement is led
by Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, who has lived in the United States
since 1999. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Gülen for
the failed military coup in July 2016. The list, which includes
addresses, telephone numbers and photographs of those concerned, proved
that the Turkish government has been secretly spying on persons,
associations, schools and other institutions linked to Gülen in Germany.<br />
<br />
March 28. Humboldt University of Berlin <a href="http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article210068275/Humboldt-Universitaet-bildet-islamische-Theologen-aus.html" target="_blank">announced</a>
it will open an Islamic theology institute. The objective of the
program is "to impart academic foundations in Islamic theology for
training imams and to qualify students for a school teaching post."
Humboldt University will become the sixth university in Germany to teach
Islamic theology. Berlin Mayor Michael Müller <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/berlins-humboldt-university-plans-to-open-islamic-theology-institute/a-38149225" target="_blank">revealed</a>
that the institute is being paid for by German taxpayers: €13.5 million
($14.5 million) of government funding will secure the institute's
finances through 2022. Humboldt University President Sabine Kunst <a href="https://www.hu-berlin.de/en/press-portal/nachrichten-en/pm1703/nr_170307_00" target="_blank">rejected</a>
calls for a joint "Faculty for Theology" for Christians, Muslims and
Jews: "The first step is to set up the Institute for Islamic Theology at
the HU. We want this to be a success. It is important that this key
project is not overloaded by a much broader idea."<br />
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;">
<tbody>
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<td style="border: 1px solid black; max-width: 600px;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2460.jpg" width="600" /><div style="font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;">
Humboldt
University of Berlin has announced that it will open an Islamic
theology institute. It will be the sixth university in Germany to teach
Islamic theology. (Image source: Friedrich Petersdorff/Wikimedia
Commons)</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
March 30. Jens Spahn, a member of the executive committee of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/german-politician-wants-islam-law-and-mosque-registry/a-38200982" target="_blank">called</a>
for an Islam Law to regulate the practice of Islam in Germany. He
demanded German language tests for imams, saying that many of the
preachers who delivered sermons in German mosques come from abroad,
cannot speak German and are paid by other countries. Spahn also said
that mosques should be registered, saying that authorities "did not know
how many mosques there are in Germany, where they are or who finances
them." In addition, Spahn, called for the training of imams, teachers of
religion and counselors to be paid for with tax money. "What is clear,"
he said, "is that the financing of mosques by foreign actors must
stop."<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.soerenkern.com/" target="_blank"><i>Soeren Kern</i></a><i> is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based</i> <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/" target="_blank"><i>Gatestone Institute</i></a><i>. Follow him on</i> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Soeren.Kern" target="_blank"><i>Facebook</i></a><i> and on</i> <a href="http://twitter.com/SoerenKern" target="_blank"><i>Twitter</i></a><i>.</i><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
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<li>Follow Soeren Kern on <a href="https://twitter.com/SoerenKern">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Soeren.Kern">Facebook</a></li>
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-52256236635994978152017-05-04T08:40:00.002+03:002017-05-04T08:40:20.260+03:00Vijeta Uniyal : Germany Hit by Merkel's Imported Crime Wave<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Germany Hit by Merkel's Imported Crime Wave</h1>
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by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Vijeta+Uniyal"><span itemprop="author">Vijeta Uniyal</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-05-02T04:30:00" itemprop="datePublished">May 2, 2017 at 4:30 am</time></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10284/germany-crime-wave">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10284/germany-crime-wave</a></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXpiLbhCPVT4H3qmTOxTuPjQEUXYkgbuKpTX8BIb7g1LujsbHkL1TILPgp7Mcbx5LYKiXQJ8U0GnBKdpIRfVD2HnmXAg3uCagaOe5oQwJnzZkjws4WC5Gk8Nv_Nf-hx2Fsv6_HIRfWZ0/s1600/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXpiLbhCPVT4H3qmTOxTuPjQEUXYkgbuKpTX8BIb7g1LujsbHkL1TILPgp7Mcbx5LYKiXQJ8U0GnBKdpIRfVD2HnmXAg3uCagaOe5oQwJnzZkjws4WC5Gk8Nv_Nf-hx2Fsv6_HIRfWZ0/s320/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<li>According to the Germany's
annual crime report, compiled by the Federal Crime Bureau (BKA), there
has been a more than 50% rise in migrant crime in the country compared
to the year before.</li>
<li>They not only indulge in petty crime but have come to dominate serious and violent crime in Germany.</li>
<li>European mainstream media may keep on putting a positive spin on
Merkel's "courageous" and "selfless" stance, but her policy continues to
incur heavy economic, social and human cost, not only on Germany, but
on the cultural future of European civilisation.</li>
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At the height of the European migrant crisis in early 2016, when
masses of migrants were pouring into Europe, the German Green Party
Chairwoman Katrin Göring-Eckardt could not control her joy. "We have
just received an unexpected gift in the form of people," she <a href="https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/debatte/article153336774/Was-die-Fluechtlinge-wollen.html" target="_blank">told</a>
her fellow Germans, reminding them to be grateful. This gift, she said,
was going to make the country "more religious, more colourful, more
diverse and younger." It was gift, it turns out, that keeps on giving.<br />
According to the country's annual <a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article163918666/Zahl-der-tatverdaechtigen-Zuwanderer-steigt-um-52-7-Prozent.html" target="_blank">crime report</a>,
compiled by the Federal Crime Bureau (BKA), there has been a more than
50% rise in migrant crime in the country compared to the year before.<br />
The German newspaper <i>Die Welt</i>, which received an advance copy of the annual crime report, wrote:<br />
<blockquote>
"The number of immigrants suspected of criminal acts in
2016 has risen by 52.7 percent, to the figure of 174,438, compared to
the previous year. To ensure a fair comparison with the rest of the
population, crimes that only immigrants can commit, such as illegal
entry to the country, have been taken out from the statistics. The
annual police report (PKS) shows that there were total of 616,230 crime
suspects of foreign origin last year. The migrant share [of total crime
figures] was disproportionately large, namely 174,438 -- more than a
quarter."<br />
</blockquote>
These staggering crime statistics are even more alarming if one looks
through the narrow definition German government uses to denote a
"criminal migrant". As <i>Die Welt</i> explains, these crime figures do
not take into account "foreigners who have been living and working in
Germany for some time, but only a specific group of protection-seekers
[refugees]."<br />
In a sane world, the government would take steps to protect its own
citizens from such "protection-seekers". Not in Merkel's Germany.<br />
What is relevant is not only what these official crime statistics
reveal, but what they conceal. The actual crime share of these
"protection-seekers" is much higher if one considers the fact that more
than 30% of them are serial offenders and 5% of them have been booked on
criminal charges at least 6 times -- a mind-boggling number given their
relatively recent arrival in the country.<br />
These new entrants make up less than 2% of the German population, but
constitute 9% of Germany's criminal population. They not only indulge
in petty crime but have come to dominate serious and violent crime in
Germany. Nearly 15% of all suspects charged with serious bodily harm,
rapes and sexual assaults come from this group, the police crime report
reveals.<br />
The German government's denial of surging migrant crime wave has led
to the systemic under-reporting and suppression of information about
migrant crimes. Take, for example, Berlin, where a left-wing state
government keeps police <a href="http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article208250599/Berliner-Polizei-kauft-alte-Pistolen-in-Schleswig-Holstein.html" target="_blank">chronically disarmed</a>, even of <a href="https://www.rbb-online.de/politik/beitrag/2017/04/ausruestung-polizei-berlin-schutzwesten.html" target="_blank">defensive gear</a> such as bulletproof vests, let alone firearms. The Berlin government <a href="http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article210072459/Volksbegehren-zur-Videoueberwachung-koennte-kommen.html" target="_blank">prohibits</a> law enforcement agencies from using video surveillance in the German capital, on the grounds of "civil rights".<br />
To highlight the rampant lawlessness in Berlin, a TV crew from the
German cable network SAT1 installed its own surveillance cameras around
Berlin's well-known Kottbusser Tor no-go zone. Last year, the Berlin
police registered 1,600 crimes around Kottbusser Tor. An ordinary
television crew, however, managed to record hundreds of crimes in just
48 hours. <a href="http://www.sat1.de/tv/fruehstuecksfernsehen/video/1-kottbusser-tor-hunderte-straftaten-in-einer-nacht-clip" target="_blank">According to</a> journalist and moderator Claus Strunz:<br />
<blockquote>
"Our 9 cameras monitored the area [Kottbusser Tor] for 48
hours. And on the video feed -- we can't say the exact number -- but
there are hundreds of crimes that would have otherwise gone
undiscovered... And the parents [living in the area] say that in the
year and a half since [uncontrolled migration began], they don't let
their daughters walk alone on the street... either day or night."<br />
</blockquote>
As no act of journalistic insubordination against Merkel's "Refugees Welcome" directive goes unpunished, Claus Strunz was <a href="https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article162622979/Wie-Claus-Strunz-die-Akte-polititisiert.html" target="_blank">attacked</a>
by a journalist colleague for "politicising" his current affairs show.
He was called a "populist" -- dog-whistle-talk for a far-right
sympathiser -- a potentially suicidal career move for any journalist
wishing to work in Germany.<br />
Strunz was also one of the few German journalists who cared to
highlight the plight of the families of the victims of the last year's
Christmas market attack, in which a Tunisian Islamist migrant drove a
truck loaded with 20 tons of steel beams into a busy Christmas market in
Berlin. He murdered 12 people and injured 48 others.<br />
The German mainstream media evidently decided not to personalize the
stories of the Berlin terror victims. In a telling move, Merkel
government <a href="http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/terrorberlin/berlin-anschlag-opfer-familie-bricht-ihr-schweigen-50641004.bild.html" target="_blank">categorized</a>
the victims of that attack as victims of regular "traffic accident".
For Merkel and Germany's ruling establishment, apparently, the victims
of migrant crimes and terror are nothing more than unfortunate roadkill
on the way towards a multicultural paradise.<br />
Rather than tackling the migrant crime wave, the Merkel government has chosen to spin the facts and bury the truth.<br />
"Refugees aren't more criminal than Germans," a senior official from Germany's Ministry of the Interior <a href="http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2016-06/bundeskriminalamt-statistik-straftaten-asylbewerber" target="_blank">claimed</a>
last summer. He further maintained that, according to the Ministry's
calculations, "migrants hardly committed any sexual assaults and
murders." That statement was made barely six months after mass sexual
assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne.<br />
When Chancellor Merkel began her re-election bid five months ago, she <a href="https://www.thelocal.de/20161207/merkel-urges-germans-to-stick-to-facts-on-refugee-crime" target="_blank">described</a> migrant crimes as "terrible isolated incidents" for which she wanted to see "tough sentencing."<br />
So how does "tough sentencing" look like under Merkel's watch? For
those New Year's Eve assaults in Cologne, where some two thousand Muslim
men raped, assaulted and robbed more than 1200 women, almost all of the
attackers managed to walk free. They did not even see a judge, let
alone face punishment. Despite hundreds of testimonies by victims,
countless reliable eyewitnesses and endless surveillance footage, the
Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, where Cologne is
located, <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9608/merkel-germany-denial" target="_blank">admitted</a> that "most of the cases will remain unsolved."<br />
With five months to go until the German elections, Merkel's
government has decided to address the problem by instituting an €18
million <a href="http://mobil.n-tv.de/politik/Wanka-will-weniger-Migranten-pro-Klasse-article19804703.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=ntvde" target="_blank">study</a> to probe the issues of "migration and integration."<br />
That is just peanuts compared to what Merkel is willing to pay for
her "refugee" policy. Her decision to offer asylum to more than one
million migrants will cost country's taxpayers up to €1.5 trillion,
according to the prominent German economist Bernd Raffelhüschen. In the
best-case scenario, Raffelhüschen estimates, the cost of Germany's
migrant policy will be around €878 billion. "If the second generation
[of the migrants] cannot be integrated into the workforce at par with
the native population, these costs will go up to €1.5 trillion,"
Raffelhüschen <a href="https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article157171883/Auf-unsere-Kinder-wartet-die-7-7-Billionen-Euro-Luecke.html" target="_blank">told</a> <i>Die Welt</i>.
Raffelhüschen's calculations, published last year, only take into
account the migrant intake of 2015; they do not include any present or
future migrant waves.<br />
Germany's Federal Integration Commissioner and Merkel-confidant Aydan
Özoguz is pushing for migrants to be granted voting rights similar to
German citizens in any national referendum -- regardless of their legal
status. According to an advisory report recently co-authored by Özoguz,
"people who permanently live in a country should be able to participate
in democratic decision making."<br />
Özoguz, who helped shape Merkel's refugee policy of opening up Europe
to millions of migrants from Arab and Muslim countries, with her
proposal to grant <a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article162070856/Oezoguz-fordert-Wahlrecht-fuer-Migranten-ohne-deutschen-Pass.html" target="_blank">voting rights to migrants</a>, is creating a roadmap for a radical transform of Germany -- and by default that of the continental Europe<br />
<br />
<b>To offset the recent rise of right-wing political party, Alterative
für Deutschland (AfD), the German political establishment sees the
empowerment of such a vast new wave of migrants as a political
counterweight.</b><br />
<br />
Ever since Merkel opened Europe's borders in the spring of 2015 by
arbitrarily suspending the existing EU-wide border regulations (Dublin
II), Europe has been dragging itself ever deeper into a self-inflicted
migrant crisis. European mainstream media may keep on putting a positive
spin on Merkel's "courageous" and "selfless" stance, but her policy
continues to incur heavy economic, social and human cost, not only on
Germany, but on the cultural future of European civilization.<br />
<br />
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<img border="0" height="228" src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2156.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<blockquote>
<i>Vijeta Uniyal, a journalist and news analyst, is based in Germany.</i><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
<span class="no_print"><ul style="font-style: italic;">
<li>Follow Vijeta Uniyal on <a href="https://twitter.com/iUniyal">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
</span></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-28403484328688547182017-05-04T08:35:00.002+03:002017-05-04T08:35:59.724+03:00Soeren Kern : Germany: Migrant Crime Spiked in 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Germany: Migrant Crime Spiked in 2016</h1>
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<b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Soeren+Kern"><span itemprop="author">Soeren Kern</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-05-02T05:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">May 2, 2017 at 5:00 am</time></b></div>
<div class="nocontent" style="margin: 0 0 10px 0;">
<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10304/germany-migrants-crime">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10304/germany-migrants-crime</a></b></div>
</div>
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<ul class="content_preface_bullets">
<li>Although non-Germans make up
approximately 10% of the overall German population, they accounted for
30.5% of all crime suspects in the country in 2016.</li>
<li>Nearly 250,000 migrants entered the country illegally in 2016, up
61.4% from 154,188 in 2015. More than 225,000 migrants were found
living in the country illegally (<i>Unerlaubter Aufenthalt</i>) in 2016.</li>
<li>The Berlin Senate launched an inquiry into why migrants
disproportionally appear as criminals in the city-state compared to
Germans.</li>
</ul>
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<div class="itemprop_articlebody" itemprop="articleBody">
An official annual report about crime in Germany has revealed a
rapidly deteriorating security situation in the country marked by a
dramatic increase in violent crime, including murder, rape and sexual
assault.<br />
The report also shows a direct link between the growing lawlessness
in Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow in more than
one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.<br />
The <a href="https://www.bka.de/SharedDocs/Kurzmeldungen/DE/Kurzmeldungen/170424_VeroeffentlichungPKS2017.html" target="_blank">report</a> — Police Crime Statistics 2016 (<i>Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik, PKS</i>) — was compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office (<i>Bundeskriminalamt, BKA</i>) and presented by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière in Berlin on April 24.<br />
The number of non-German crime suspects (<i>nichtdeutsche Tatverdächtige</i>)
legally residing in Germany jumped to 616,230 in 2016, up from 555,820
in 2015 — an increase of 11% — according to the report. Although
non-Germans make up approximately 10% of the overall German population,
they accounted for 30.5% of all crime suspects in the country in 2016,
up from 27.6% in 2015.<br />
In this year's report, the BKA created a separate subcategory called "migrants" (<i>Zuwanderer</i>) which encompasses a combination of refugees, pending asylum seekers, failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.<br />
According to the BKA, the number of migrant crime suspects (<i>tatverdächtiger Zuwanderer</i>)
in Germany in 2016 jumped to 174,438 from 114,238 in 2015 — up 52.7%.
Although "migrants" made up less than 2% of the German population in
2016, they accounted for 8.6% of all crime suspects in the country — up
from 5.7% in 2015.<br />
In terms of non-German crime suspects residing legally in Germany,
Turks were the primary offenders in 2016, with 69,918 suspects, followed
by Romanians, Poles, Syrians, Serbs, Italians, Afghans, Bulgarians,
Iraqis, Albanians, Kosovars, Moroccans, Iranians and Algerians.<br />
In terms of migrant crime suspects, Syrians were the primary
offenders, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Albanians, Algerians, Moroccans,
Serbs, Iranians, Kosovars and Somalis.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;">
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Police in Bremen, Germany frisk a North African youth who is suspected of theft. (Image source: ZDF video screenshot)</div>
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The report's other findings include:<br />
<ul>
<li>Violent crime surged in Germany in 2016. These include a
14.3% increase in murder and manslaughter, a 12.7% increase in rape and
sexual assault and a 9.9% increase in aggravated assault. The BKA also
recorded a 14.8% increase in weapons offenses and a 7.1% increase in
drug offenses.<br />
</li>
<li>Non-German crime suspects committed 2,512 rapes and sexual
assaults in Germany in 2016 — an average of seven a day. Syrians were
the primary offenders, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis,
Iranians, Algerians, Moroccans, Eritreans, Nigerians and Albanians.
German authorities have repeatedly been accused of underreporting the
true scale of the migrant rape problem for political reasons. For
example, up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not
appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the head
of the Association of Criminal Police (<i>Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, BDK</i>).<br />
</li>
<li>Non-German crime suspects committed 11,525 robberies in Germany
in 2016 — an average of 32 a day. Moroccans were the primary offenders,
followed by Algerians, Syrians, Georgians, Tunisians, Albanians,
Afghans, Serbs, Iraqis and Iranians.<br />
</li>
<li>Non-German crime suspects committed 56,252 aggravated assaults in
2016 — an average of 154 a day. Syrians were the primary offenders,
followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Moroccans, Algerians, Somalis,
Albanians, Eritreans and Pakistanis.<br />
</li>
<li>Bavaria was the German state most affected by non-German
criminality, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg,
Hesse, Berlin, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Hamburg,
Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Saarland, Bremen and Thüringen.<br />
</li>
<li>Berlin was the German city most affected by non-German
criminality, followed by Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne,
Düsseldorf, Hanover, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Bremen, Leipzig, Nürnberg,
Essen, Duisburg, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Dresden, Freiburg im Breisgau,
Chemnitz, Aachen, Bielefeld, Wuppertal, Augsburg, Bonn, Bochum,
Gelsenkirchen, Wiesbaden, Münster, Kiel, Halle, Krefeld, Braunschweig,
Mainz, Lübeck, Mönchengladbach, Erfurt, Oberhausen, Magdeburg and
Rostock.<br />
</li>
<li>The BKA also recorded 487,711 violations of German immigration laws (<i>ausländerrechtliche Verstöße</i>),
up 21.1% from 402,741 violations in 2015. Nearly 250,000 migrants
entered the country illegally in 2016, up 61.4% from 154,188 in 2015.
More than 225,000 migrants were found living in the country illegally (<i>Unerlaubter Aufenthalt</i>) in 2016.<br />
</li>
</ul>
The new data contradicts <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fluechtlinge-bka-bericht-fluechtlinge-begehen-weniger-straftaten-1.3315641" target="_blank">claims</a>
made by the BKA in December 2016 — just four months before the current
report — that migrant criminality was actually decreasing.<br />
During a press conference in Berlin on April 24, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière admitted:<br />
<blockquote>
"The proportion of foreign suspects, and migrants in
particular, is higher than the average for the general population. This
cannot be sugarcoated. There is an overall rise in disrespect, violence
and hate. Those who commit serious offenses here forfeit their right to
stay here."<br />
</blockquote>
Separately, officials in Bavaria <a href="http://www.stmi.bayern.de/med/aktuell/archiv/2017/170313pks2016/" target="_blank">revealed</a>
that the number of crimes committed by asylum seekers and refugees
there increased by 58% in 2016. They accounted for 9.6% of all crimes
committed in the state, up from 3.2% in 2015 and 1.8% in 2012. Syrians
were the primary offenders, followed by Afghans, Iraqis and Nigerians.<br />
"The increase in crime in Bavaria in 2016 is mainly due to foreign
suspects, especially immigrants," said Bavarian Interior Minister
Joachim Herrmann.<br />
At the same time, officials in Baden-Württemberg <a href="http://www.swr.de/swraktuell/bw/zahl-der-straftaten-von-fluechtlingen-gestiegen/-/id=1622/did=19171092/nid=1622/1k8ny90/index.html" target="_blank">noted</a> a 95.5% increase in the number of physical assaults involving at least one migrant in 2016.<br />
Meanwhile, the Berlin Senate <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/05/berlin-senate-investigate-migrant-crime-stats-high/" target="_blank">launched</a>
an inquiry into why migrants disproportionally appear as criminals in
the city-state compared to Germans. In 2016, 40% of all crime suspects
in the German capital were non-Germans.<br />
None of this seems to be having an impact on the German elections set for September 24, 2017. Polls <a href="http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/politbarometer.htm" target="_blank">show</a>
that if the election for German chancellor were held today, Angela
Merkel, who is largely responsible for the migration crisis, would be
re-elected with 37% of the vote. Martin Schulz, the Social Democrat
candidate who has pledged to increase migration to Germany even further,
would win 29% of the vote and the anti-immigration Alternative for
Germany would win 8%. For now, German voters appear to believe that the
alternatives to Merkel are all worse.<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.soerenkern.com/" target="_blank"><i>Soeren Kern</i></a><i> is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based</i> <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/" target="_blank"><i>Gatestone Institute</i></a><i>. Follow him on</i> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Soeren.Kern" target="_blank"><i>Facebook</i></a><i> and on</i> <a href="http://twitter.com/SoerenKern" target="_blank"><i>Twitter</i></a><i>.</i><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
<span class="no_print"><ul style="font-style: italic;">
<li>Follow Soeren Kern on <a href="https://twitter.com/SoerenKern">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Soeren.Kern">Facebook</a></li>
</ul>
</span></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-9001243066907664852017-05-04T08:31:00.004+03:002017-05-04T08:37:11.879+03:00Yves Mamou : France: What is the Presidential Campaign Really About?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<h1 itemprop="name headline" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; padding-top: 0;">
France: What is the Presidential Campaign Really About?</h1>
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<b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Yves+Mamou"><span itemprop="author">Yves Mamou</span></a></b></div>
<div class="sans-serif" style="margin: 10px 0 0 0;">
<b><span itemprop="author"> </span><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-05-03T04:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">May 3, 2017 at 4:00 am</time></b></div>
<div class="nocontent" style="margin: 0 0 10px 0;">
<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10303/france-presidential-campaign">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10303/france-presidential-campaign</a></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTws11l1xJ8Up_zSHhxvX-qEkmQKPI9zpHu4c8PxDg3qOU5bOOBoxYScML426budnyreMCDRDnV4AEUuOMFXYtRTNePelvyMGTX3t_6c5z-OWvtnIZlcgaTgTmLHM2KdFbyIHXsr9aBiY/s1600/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTws11l1xJ8Up_zSHhxvX-qEkmQKPI9zpHu4c8PxDg3qOU5bOOBoxYScML426budnyreMCDRDnV4AEUuOMFXYtRTNePelvyMGTX3t_6c5z-OWvtnIZlcgaTgTmLHM2KdFbyIHXsr9aBiY/s320/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div itemprop="description">
<ul class="content_preface_bullets">
<li>The result of this mess is that France as one country no longer exists.</li>
<li>People who voted for Le Pen seem to feel not only that they lost
their jobs, but that they are becoming foreigners in their own country.</li>
<li>Macron, for many analysts, is the candidate of the status quo:
Islamists are not a problem and reforming the job market will supposedly
solve all France's problems.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="itemprop_articlebody" itemprop="articleBody">
The French presidential race is the latest election to shake up establishment politics. The <i>Parti Socialiste</i> and <i>Les Républicains</i>,
who have been calling the shots for the past forty years, were voted
out of the race. The "remainers" are Emmanuel Macron, a clone of
Canada's Prime Minster Justin Trudeau; and Marine Le Pen, whom many
believe will not win.<br />
France is a fractured country. As in the US and the UK, the rift is
not between the traditional left and right. Instead, it reflects
divisions -- cultural, social, and economic -- that came with
globalization and mass migration. A map released by the Ministry of the
Interior after the first round of the presidential campaign illustrates
the new political scenery.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Blue represents the parts of France where Le Pen heads the list;
pink, the areas supporting Macron. The blue areas coincide with old
industrial areas, deeply damaged by globalization and industrial
relocation. Many blue-collar workers are on welfare; and the antagonism
between Muslims and non-Muslims is high. People who voted for Le Pen
seem to feel not only that they lost their jobs, but that they are
becoming foreigners in their own country.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">
</span><span style="background-color: yellow;">The areas in pink (Macron), represent the big cities and places where
the better jobs are. It also represents the areas where the "upper
classes can afford to raise invisible barriers between themselves and
the 'other', immigrants or minorities," <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/23/populism-france-left-right-elections" target="_blank">explains</a> Christophe Guilluy, geographer, and author of <i>Le crépuscule de la France d'en haut</i> (The Twilight of Elite France).</span><br />
<br />
The result of this mess is that France as one country no longer
exists. One half the population (in blue-collar areas, small towns and
rural areas) is shut out by the other half of the population
(white-collar workers) who live in the big cities.<br />
Guilluy adds:<br />
<blockquote>
"The job market has become deeply polarized and mainly
concentrated in big cities, squeezing out the middle classes. For the
first time in history, working people no longer live in the places where
jobs and wealth are created."<br />
...<br />
"But social issues are not the only determinant of the populist vote.
Identity is also essential, linked as it is to the emergence of a
multicultural society, which feeds anxiety in working-class
environments. At a time of fluctuating majorities and minorities, amid
demographic instability, the fear of tipping into a minority is creating
considerable cultural insecurity in developed countries. Unlike the
upper classes, who can afford to raise invisible barriers between
themselves and the 'other' (immigrants or minorities), the working
classes want a powerful state apparatus to protect them, socially and
culturally. So, the populist surge is re-activating a real class vote."</blockquote>
<b>The question is if frustration and anger against globalization and immigration will succeed in electing Le Pen.</b><br />
<br />
This frustration was not made lighter by the abysmal level of the
debate. During the presidential campaign, the media focused only on
political scandals: the presumed "fake job" offenses committed by
François Fillon. Week after week, other presumed "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/07/francois-fillon-alleged-to-have-taken-50000-loan-from-billionaire" target="_blank">political scandals</a>" were continually released against him by a satirical weekly,<i> Le Canard Enchaîné</i>.<br />
Organized or not, these allegations overtook any discussion about the
real problems in France:<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b> the extraordinary proportion of people on
welfare, for instance. France's <a href="http://www.la-croix.com/Economie/Monde/La-France-mauvaise-eleve-chomage-dans-monde-2017-04-26-1200842691" target="_blank">unemployment</a> rate stands at 9.9% (compared to 3.9% Germany and 4.7% in Great Britain); French GDP growth is one of the <a href="http://www.capital.fr/a-la-une/politique-economique/croissance-chomage-dette-la-france-boulet-de-l-europe-1204084" target="_blank">weakest</a> of eurozone (1.1% vs 1.7% for eurozone, and 1.9% for EU); and France's <a href="https://www.google.co.il/search?q=dette+publique+pib+en+france&oq=dette+publique+pib+en+france&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.7456j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">public debt</a>, which accounted for 89.5% of GDP in 2012, is expected to reach 96% of GDP in 2017.</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>Most of all, the "French Islamist problem" remained undebated and
unchanged.</b><br />
<br />
After two years of continuous terrorist attacks, after five
years of continuous Muslim immigration, after dozens of Muslim riots,
big and small, in the suburbs of big cities, millions of French people
were expecting a change -- or at least a public conversation. But,
intentionally or not, these questions were avoided by the media.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The expected victory of Emmanuel Macron -- a perfect product of the
French techno-sphere -- dashes any hopes of addressing the frightening
questions of Muslim immigration; Muslim no-go-zones (more than a
hundred); the spread of Salafism among Muslim youths, and of the general
secession of the French Muslim community.</span><br />
<br />
<b>Macron, young and modern, cautiously avoided talking about these
problems. Macron, for many analysts, is the candidate of the status quo:
Islamists are not a problem and reforming the job market will
supposedly solve all France's problems.</b><br />
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;">
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French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron (left) and Marine Le Pen. (Image source: LCI video screenshot)</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The results of the first round on April 23 showed that roughly 45% of
the votes cast were motivated by protest and anger against
globalization and dilution of the French nation's sovereignty inside the
European Union. The leftist populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon (19% of the
voters) refused to endorse Macron in the runoff.<br />
Inside <i>Les Républicains</i>, the big party loser of the first round, no one knows if a significant percentage might turn to Le Pen.<br />
<br />
On May 7, more than 228 years after the French Revolution, the
destiny of France may be seriously different -- and whatever the result
of the presidential election, possibly not for the best.<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily,</i> Le Monde, <i>before his retirement.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<span class="no_print"></span><br />
<ul style="font-style: italic;"><span class="no_print">
<li>Follow Yves Mamou on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=581049816">Facebook</a></li>
</span></ul>
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-64051994601656481102017-05-01T13:13:00.004+03:002017-05-01T13:13:58.410+03:001er mai<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>1941, le Maréchal Philippe Pétain instaure le 1er mai comme « la fête du Travail et de la Concorde sociale »</strong>
<br />
Le 24 avril 1941, le Maréchal Philippe Pétain instaure officiellement par la loi Belin le 1er mai comme «<em><strong> la fête du Travail et de la Concorde sociale »</strong></em>, appliquant ainsi la devise<strong> Travail, Famille, Patrie</strong>
: par son refus à la fois du capitalisme et du socialisme, l’État
français recherche une troisième voie fondée sur le corporatisme,
débaptisant « la fête des travailleurs » qui faisait référence à la
lutte des classes. Le jour devient férié, chômé et payé. Le 1<sup>er</sup> mai coïncide aussi avec la fête du saint patron du maréchal, Saint Philippe.<br />
<br />
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-18004952926860843122017-05-01T12:45:00.000+03:002017-05-01T12:45:03.570+03:00Patrick J. Buchanan : Is Macron the EU’s Last Best Hope?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 class="entry-title">
Is Macron the EU’s Last Best Hope?</h1>
<br />
By Patrick J. Buchanan<br />
<br />
For the French establishment, Sunday’s presidential election came
close to a near-death experience. As the Duke of Wellington said of
Waterloo, it was a “damn near-run thing.”<br />
Neither candidate of the two major parties that have ruled France
since Charles De Gaulle even made it into the runoff, an astonishing
repudiation of France’s national elite.<br />
<br />
Marine Le Pen of the National Front ran second with 21.5 percent of
the vote. Emmanuel Macron of the new party En Marche! won 23.8 percent.<br />
Macron is a heavy favorite on May 7. The Republicans’ Francois
Fillon, who got 20 percent, and the Socialists’ Benoit Hamon, who got
less than 7 percent, both have urged their supporters to save France by
backing Macron.<br />
Ominously for U.S. ties, 61 percent of French voters chose Le Pen,
Fillon or radical Socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon. All favor looser ties to
America and repairing relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.<br />
<br />
Le Pen has a mountain to climb to win, but she is clearly the
favorite of the president of Russia, and perhaps of the president of the
United States. Last week, Donald Trump volunteered:<br />
<b>“She’s the strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s
been going on in France. … Whoever is the toughest on radical Islamic
terrorism, and whoever is the toughest at the borders, will do well in
the election.”</b><br />
<br />
As an indicator of historic trends in France, Le Pen seems likely to
win twice the 18 percent her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, won in 2002,
when he lost in the runoff to Jacques Chirac.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">The campaign between now and May 7, however, could make the Trump-Clinton race look like an altarpiece of democratic decorum.</span><br />
<br />
Not only are the differences between the candidates stark, Le Pen has
every incentive to attack to solidify her base and lay down a predicate
for the future failure of a Macron government.<br />
<br />
And Macron is vulnerable. He won because he is fresh, young, 39, and
appealed to French youth as the anti-Le Pen. A personification of Robert
Redford in “The Candidate.”<br />
But he has no established party behind him to take over the
government, and he is an ex-Rothschild banker in a populist environment
where bankers are as welcome as hedge-fund managers at a Bernie Sanders
rally.<br />
He is a pro-EU, open-borders transnationalist who welcomes new
immigrants and suggests that acts of Islamist terrorism may be the price
France must pay for a multiethnic and multicultural society.<br />
Macron was for a year economic minister to President Francois
Hollande who has presided over a 10 percent unemployment rate and a
growth rate that is among the most anemic in the entire European Union.<br />
He is offering corporate tax cuts and a reduction in the size of a
government that consumes 56 percent of GDP, and presents himself as the
“president of patriots to face the threat of nationalists.”<br />
His campaign is as much “us vs. them” as Le Pen’s.<br />
And elite enthusiasm for Macron seems less rooted in any anticipation
of future greatness than in the desperate hope he can save the French
establishment from the dreaded prospect of Marine.<br />
But if Macron is the present, who owns the future?<br />
Across Europe, as in France, center-left and center-right parties
that have been on the scene since World War II appear to be emptying out
like dying churches. The enthusiasm and energy seem to be in the new
parties of left and right, of secessionism and nationalism.<br />
The problem for those who believe the populist movements of Europe
have passed their apogee, with losses in Holland, Austria and, soon,
France, that the fever has broken, is that the causes of the discontent
that spawned these parties are growing stronger.<br />
<br />
<b>What are those causes?</b><br />
A growing desire by peoples everywhere to reclaim their national
sovereignty and identity, and remain who they are. And the threats to
ethnic and national identity are not receding, but growing.<br />
The tide of refugees from the Middle East and Africa has not abated.
Weekly, we read of hundreds drowning in sunken boats that tried to reach
Europe. Thousands make it. But the assimilation of Third World peoples
in Europe is not proceeding. It seems to have halted.<br />
Second-generation Muslims who have lived all their lives in Europe are turning up among the suicide bombers and terrorists.<br />
Fifteen years ago, al-Qaida seemed confined to Afghanistan. Now it is
all over the Middle East, as is ISIS, and calls for Islamists in Europe
to murder Europeans inundate social media.<br />
As the numbers of native-born Europeans begin to fall, with their
anemic fertility rates, will the aging Europeans become more magnanimous
toward destitute newcomers who do not speak the national language or
assimilate into the national culture, but consume its benefits?<br />
<br />
If a referendum were held across Europe today, asking whether the
mass migrations from the former colonies of Africa and the Middle East
have on balance made Europe a happier and better place to live in in
recent decades, what would that secret ballot reveal?<br />
<b>Does Macron really represent the future of France, or is he perhaps one of the last men of yesterday?</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://buchanan.org/blog/macron-eus-last-best-hope-126852">http://buchanan.org/blog/macron-eus-last-best-hope-126852</a><br />
=================== </div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-73296479156638504132017-05-01T12:03:00.002+03:002017-05-01T12:03:50.384+03:00Patrick J. Buchanan : The Rise of the Generals<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 class="entry-title">
The Rise of the Generals</h1>
<div class="post-info">
<span class="date published time" title="2017-04-28T02:10:16+00:00">Friday - April 28, 2017</span> at <span class="published time" title="2017-04-28T02:10:16-0400">2:10 am</span> </div>
<br />
<br />
By Patrick J. Buchanan<br />
<br />
<b>Has President Donald Trump outsourced foreign policy to the generals?</b><br />
So it would seem. Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir
Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to
smash ISIS.<br />
He spoke of getting out and staying out of the misbegotten Middle
East wars into which Presidents Bush II and Obama had plunged the
country.<br />
President Trump’s seeming renunciation of an anti-interventionist
foreign policy is the great surprise of the first 100 days, and the most
ominous. For any new war could vitiate the Trump mandate and consume
his presidency.<br />
Trump no longer calls NATO “obsolete,” but moves U.S. troops toward
Russia in the Baltic and eastern Balkans. Rex Tillerson, holder of
Russia’s Order of Friendship, now warns that the U.S. will not lift
sanctions on Russia until she gets out of Ukraine.<br />
If Tillerson is not bluffing, that would rule out any rapprochement
in the Trump presidency. For neither Putin, nor any successor, could
surrender Crimea and survive.<br />
<br />
<b>What happened to the Trump of 2016?</b><br />
When did Kiev’s claim to Crimea become more crucial to us than a
cooperative relationship with a nuclear-armed Russia? In 1991, Bush I
and Secretary of State James Baker thought the very idea of Ukraine’s
independence was the product of a “suicidal nationalism.”<br />
Where do we think this demonization of Putin and ostracism of Russia is going to lead?<br />
To get Xi Jinping to help with our Pyongyang problem, Trump has
dropped all talk of befriending Taiwan, backed off Tillerson’s warning
to Beijing to vacate its fortified reefs in the South China Sea, and
held out promises of major concessions to Beijing in future trade deals.<br />
“I like (Xi Jinping) and I believe he likes me a lot,” Trump said
this week. One recalls FDR admonishing Churchill, “I think I can
personally handle Stalin better than … your Foreign Office … Stalin
hates the guts of all your people. He thinks he likes me better.”<br />
FDR did not live to see what a fool Stalin had made of him.<br />
<br />
Among the achievements celebrated in Trump’s first 100 days are the
59 cruise missiles launched at the Syrian airfield from which the gas
attack on civilians allegedly came, and the dropping of the 22,000-pound
MOAB bomb in Afghanistan.<br />
<br />
<b>But what did these bombings accomplish?</b><br />
The War Party seems again ascendant. John McCain and Lindsey Graham
are happy campers. In Afghanistan, the U.S. commander is calling for
thousands more U.S. troops to assist the 8,500 still there, to stabilize
an Afghan regime and army that is steadily losing ground to the
Taliban.<br />
<br />
Iran is back on the front burner. While Tillerson concedes that
Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, Trump says it is
violating “the spirit of the agreement.”<br />
<br />
How so? Says Tillerson, Iran is “destabilizing” the region, and threatening U.S. interests in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.<br />
<br />
But Iran is an ally of Syria and was invited in to help the
U.N.-recognized government put down an insurrection that contains
elements of al-Qaida and ISIS. <span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>It is we, the Turks, Saudis and Gulf
Arabs who have been backing the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime.</b></span><br />
<br />
In Yemen, Houthi rebels overthrew and expelled a Saudi satrap. The
bombing, blockading and intervention with troops is being done by Saudi
and Sunni Arabs, assisted by the U.S. Navy and Air Force.<br />
<br />
It is we and the Saudis who are talking of closing the Yemeni port of Hodeida, which could bring on widespread starvation.<br />
<br />
It was not Iran, but the U.S. that invaded Iraq, overthrew the
Baghdad regime and occupied the country. It was not Iran that overthrew
Col. Gadhafi and created the current disaster in Libya.<br />
<br />
Monday, the USS Mahan fired a flare to warn off an Iranian patrol
boat, 1,000 meters away. Supposedly, this was a provocation. But Iranian
foreign minister Javad Zarif had a point when he tweeted:<br />
“Breaking: Our Navy operates in — yes, correct — the Persian Gulf,
not the Gulf of Mexico. Question is what US Navy doing 7,500 miles from
home.”<br />
<br />
<b>Who is behind the seeming conversion of Trump to hawk?</b><br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>The generals, Bibi Netanyahu and the neocons, Congressional hawks
with Cold War mindsets, the Saudi royal family and the Gulf Arabs — they
are winning the battle for the president’s mind.</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>And their agenda for America?</b><br />
We are to recognize that our true enemy in the Mideast is not
al-Qaida or ISIS, but Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s Syria and his
patron, Putin. And until Hezbollah is eviscerated, Assad is gone, and
Iran is smashed the way we did Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, the
flowering of Middle East democracy that we all seek cannot truly begin.<br />
But before President Trump proceeds along the path laid out for him
by his generals, brave and patriotic men that they are, he should
discover if any of them opposed any of the idiotic wars of the last 15
years, beginning with that greatest of strategic blunders — George
Bush’s invasion of Iraq.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://buchanan.org/blog/the-rise-of-the-generals-126882">http://buchanan.org/blog/the-rise-of-the-generals-126882</a><br />
============================ </div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-12537107796747206702017-05-01T09:29:00.000+03:002017-05-01T09:29:16.608+03:00Hungary's Orban defends education law in Brussels, calling EU outrage 'absurd'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<h1>
Hungary's Orban defends education law in Brussels, calling EU outrage 'absurd'</h1>
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Hungary's prime minister lashed out at George Soros,
founder of the embattled Central European University. The PM's remarks
came after the EU Commission sent a "letter of formal notice" to the
Hungarian government.</div>
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<img alt="Belgien Brüssel - Viktor Orban im EU Parlament (picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/W. Dabkowski)" height="225" src="http://www.dw.com/image/38600335_303.jpg" title="Belgien Brüssel - Viktor Orban im EU Parlament (picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/W. Dabkowski)" width="400" /> </a>
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In a speech given to European parliamentarians in Brussels on
Wednesday, Orban insisted Hungary remained committed to the European
Union, describing his nation's membership as "not questionable" but
simultaneously expressing discontent with the bloc and a desire for EU
reform of its "mistakes."<br />
The Hungarian prime minsiter's
appearence in the European Parliament came hours after the European
Commission began legal action against the country in light of a <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/law-passed-against-soros-university/a-38291478">recently passed controversial education law</a> perceived as targeting George Soros' Central European University (CEU).<br />
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EU launches legal action against Hungary</h2>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<strong>EU sends Orban a letter</strong></h2>
<br />
European
Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said on Wednesday that "a
letter of formal notice" had been sent to Orban's government. According
to Dombrovskis, the decision to begin the legal action was made after an
"in-depth legal assessment" concluded the new Hungarian law allegedly
breaches EU laws regarding freedoms for businesses, services and
academia.<br />
The letter is the first step of the EU's so-called
infringement proceedings, whereby Brussels demands legal explanations
from a member state on a particular issue. The Hungarian government has
one month to respond to the letter. Brussels will then consider if any
further steps are warranted. These could include referral to the
European Court of Justice and possible financial penalties.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Orban criticizes EU criticism</strong></h2>
<br />
Orban called the accusations against Hungary "absurd."<br />
Standing
before European lawmakers, Orban described the contested law as a
"minor amendment" that applies to 28 universities and not just to the
CEU. He described the flare-up around the law as "absurd," likening it
to a pre-emptive murder conviction, given that the CEU continues to
operate normally at present.<br />
"It's almost like someone being
accused of murder, then he's convicted, while the alleged victim is
alive and kicking, moreover, pointing fingers at the convicted, crying:
'Murderer!'," Orban said.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Orban attacks Soros</strong></h2>
<br />
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<a class="overlayLink init" href="http://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-orban-defends-education-law-in-brussels-calling-eu-outrage-absurd/a-38599683#" rel="nofollow" style="cursor: pointer;"> </a> George Soros' Central European University faces possible closure<br />
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Orban
had even stronger words for CEU founder George Soros.
He labeled the American-Hungarian billionare a "financial speculator"
who was "attacking" Hungary.<br />
Orban also painted Soros as
detrimental to Europe as a whole, claiming Soros had "destroyed the
lives of millions of Europeans with his financial speculations" and
describing Soros as "an open enemy of the euro." The Hungarian leader
also said the businessman wanted to open Europe's borders to millions of
migrants.<br />
Orban went on to criticize the EU for its warmth
towards the billionare. On Thursday, European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker is scheduled to meet with Soros.<br />
<br />
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<a class="overlayLink init" href="http://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-orban-defends-education-law-in-brussels-calling-eu-outrage-absurd/a-38599683#" rel="nofollow" style="cursor: pointer;"> <img alt="Central European University Budapest (DW/F. Hofmann)" border="0" height="225" src="http://www.dw.com/image/38385431_401.jpg" title="Soros' CEU lies at the center of the controversy. The Univerisity has a campus in Budapest. " width="400" /> </a> <span style="color: red;">Soros' CEU lies at the center of the controversy. The Univerisity has a campus in Budapest.</span><br />
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<strong>CEU at the center of controversy</strong><br />
The
EU's formal letter focuses on the law passed on April 4 that requires
foreign universities operating in Hungary also have a campus in their
home country. The law is seen as aimed squarely at Central European
University, which has been operating in Budapest since 1993. Despite
being accredited in the US state of New York, the university does not
have a campus in the United States.<br />
Orban has accused the
university of maintaining an unfair advantage over other Hungarian
institutions because it confers degrees that are recognized in both
Hungary and the United States, However, he denied wanting to shut it
down.<br />
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DW exclusive: Central European University rector, Michael Ignatieff</h2>
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Critics of the right-wing head of government have decried the law, <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/thousands-in-budapest-protest-against-orban-government/a-38441488">taking to the streets in protest</a> at what they described as a targeted attack on an institution that promotes liberal values Orban is seeking to repress.<br />
Should an agreement cease to materialize, CEU may be forced to cease enrolling new students as of January 2018.<br />
"My institution has a gun pointed to its head," CEU President Michael Ignatieff told EU parliamentarians on Tuesday.<br />
<strong>Showdown between Brussels and Budapest</strong><br />
The launch of legal action has raised the temperature on an already fiery relationship between Orban and the EU.<br />
The EU-skeptic Orban has claimed the supranational bloc threatens Hungary's sovereignty and has <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/the-eu-gives-hungary-a-stern-lecture/a-38406996">launched a "Let's Stop Brussels!" questionnaire</a> asking the opinion of Hungarian households on how to respond to alleged EU interference in Hungarian independence.<br />
Hungarian legislation regarding <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/hungary-opens-shipping-container-camp-for-refugees/a-38152515">systematic detention of asylum seekers</a> and the <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/hungarian-ngos-prepare-for-government-crackdown/a-37213758">proposed required registration of NGOs</a> that received international funds have also drawn criticisms from the EU.</div>
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<a href="http://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-orban-defends-education-law-in-brussels-calling-eu-outrage-absurd/a-38599683">http://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-orban-defends-education-law-in-brussels-calling-eu-outrage-absurd/a-38599683</a></div>
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-38203142661569134782017-04-29T09:05:00.002+03:002017-04-29T09:05:41.573+03:00Moroccan man in Belgium pushed too far by “racism”.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<header class="entry-header">
<h1 class="entry-title">
Moroccan man in Belgium pushed too far by “racism”.</h1>
<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="posted-on"><a href="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2017-04-20T23:05:47+00:00">April 20, 2017</time></a></span> <span class="entry-categories"></span> </div>
</header>
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_16556" style="width: 1016px;"><img alt="wgl58Qy.jpg" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16556" data-attachment-id="16556" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="wgl58Qy" data-large-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/wgl58qy.jpg?w=700?w=700" data-medium-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/wgl58qy.jpg?w=700?w=300" data-orig-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/wgl58qy.jpg?w=700" data-orig-size="1016,665" data-permalink="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/wgl58qy/#main" src="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/wgl58qy.jpg?w=700" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Buddhists do it better.</figcaption></figure>
The Western world is a festering pit of racism, white supremacy, and
bigotry. If you don’t believe me, then just read the Fake News
Mainstream Media, or ask any Marxist humanities professor at your
nearest <del>Communist re-education centre</del> University. They’ll
confirm this is 100% accurate, without any regard for such
trivialities as “evidence” or “truth”, which are racist concepts <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/blog/butthurt-college-students-claim-objective-truth-racist-myth">invented by white supremacists,</a> <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/18/college-activists-searching-truth-makes-racist/">in order to oppress </a><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446862/pomona-students-truth-myth-and-white-supremacy">“people of colour”.</a> Unfortunately,
living under this constant racism became too much for one poor Moroccan
man, eventually causing him to snap under the pressure, and set himself
on fire.<br />
<a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2017/04/214590/38-year-old-moroccan-man-sets-ablaze-belgium/">From Morocco World News</a><br />
<blockquote>
<em><strong>Saying he was “sick of racism,” a 38-year-old-man set himself on fire in the town of Kortrijk, in Belgium on Tuesday.</strong></em><br />
<em>Ahead of the incident, the man, identified on social media as
Chafik Hanchi, posted a video online. In it he declared his intent and
said he was “sick of racism.”</em></blockquote>
This poor man, kidnapped from Morocco against his will, and forced to
live among racist white people. If only they hadn’t taken him from his
homeland, and refused him the right to return home. That must be what
happened, right? If the racism he was experiencing was so terrible, he
surely would have returned to his homeland willingly, if that was an
option for him. He must have been a prisoner in Belgium. He couldn’t
possibly have been there by his own free choice.<br />
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_16581" style="width: 1024px;"><img alt="168774094.jpg" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16581" data-attachment-id="16581" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="168774094" data-large-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/168774094.jpg?w=700?w=700" data-medium-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/168774094.jpg?w=700?w=300" data-orig-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/168774094.jpg?w=700" data-orig-size="1024,683" data-permalink="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/attachment/168774094/#main" height="426" src="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/168774094.jpg?w=700" width="640" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">What kind of person would choose to leave this paradise willingly?</figcaption></figure>
<blockquote>
<em>According to Russian-owned RT Television, on Tuesday,
he left the town’s courthouse and returned some time later carrying a
gasoline canister. Stopping in a square just 15 metres from the
courthouse entrance, the video shows him pouring gasoline and setting it
alight.</em><br />
<em>He then pours more on to his jacket and lights that. Seconds
later he is seen rushing toward fire fighters and paramedics who were
already on scene. He was taken to hospital with severe burns to 35
percent of his body.</em></blockquote>
This is a really harrowing and tragic story. I actually feel sick reading it. That poor jacket didn’t deserve such a fate.<br />
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_16613" style="width: 1280px;"><img alt="1383170743801.jpg" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16613" data-attachment-id="16613" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="1383170743801" data-large-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/1383170743801.jpg?w=700?w=700" data-medium-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/1383170743801.jpg?w=700?w=300" data-orig-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/1383170743801.jpg?w=700" data-orig-size="1280,720" data-permalink="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/attachment/1383170743801/#main" height="360" src="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/1383170743801.jpg?w=700" width="640" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">What a tragedy. No jacket deserves this.</figcaption></figure>
<blockquote>
<em>Police are investigating possible motives for what they are calling an “act of desperation.”</em></blockquote>
If I was to guess, it was a publicity stunt that went too far. They
literally say in the story that fire fighters were already present at
the scene, before he even set himself on fire. If he really wanted to
kill himself, why would he set himself on fire, while fire fighters are
nearby, and then run towards them, unless he was doing so with the
expectation of being saved? Sorry “Chafik”, but I reckon “Allah”, being
all powerful and all knowing, can tell the difference between a genuine
martyr, and a faker like you. No 72 virgins for you just yet.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>According to Jamal Qnioun, head of People Help People
organization and member of the Council for International Coexistence in
Kortrijk, Hanchi sent him a video prior to the incident, threatening
self-immolation. He also sent him a number of text messages where he
talked about being “sick of racism” and that he felt he could no longer
go on living.</em></blockquote>
Returning to Morocco of course wasn’t an option. He was forced to
live there against his will, under this racism. Those damn Belgian
people just wouldn’t let him go home, so his only option was to set
himself on fire in front of fire fighters who would easily save him
before he died.<br />
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_16607" style="width: 600px;"><img alt="e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e.jpg" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16607" data-attachment-id="16607" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e" data-large-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e.jpg?w=700?w=600" data-medium-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e.jpg?w=700?w=300" data-orig-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e.jpg?w=700" data-orig-size="600,600" data-permalink="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e/#main" src="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/e2cc435b2ef671e59a76d3d9b4ca4d3e.jpg?w=700" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Clearly,
not much has changed in the last 60 years or so. This poor man must
have been experiencing a similar fate as this girl here.</figcaption></figure>
<blockquote>
<em>Hanchi had been suffering immense personal street brought about by the recent lost of his father.</em></blockquote>
Probably murdered by racist white people.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>He was also experiencing financial trouble.</em></blockquote>
Probably caused by racist white people.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>He had, at one time, operated a hair salon in the
town but was forced to shut down after inspectors discovered an
undocumented employee working there.</em></blockquote>
The inspectors were probably racist white people.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>According to Qnioun, Hanchi paid the fine and
re-opened a new salon on the same street, only to face another
inspection just days later.</em></blockquote>
So does that mean the second inspection found another violation then?
It’s racist to expect this guy to pass these inspections like any other
salon owner, don’t you know?<br />
<blockquote>
<em>Another video, posted on a separate Facebook account,
shows Hanchi complaining about trouble he was having with the national
security office.</em></blockquote>
He was probably the one causing them trouble.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>Again, he said he was “tired of racism.” Qnioun
expressed concern on social media after the event over what he calls the
“harsh conditions” faced by immigrants in Kortrijk.</em></blockquote>
So harsh… yet they continue to come to Europe by the millions. I wonder why that is?<br />
<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_650" style="width: 693px;"><img alt="5340551651_fbf16a2b3c" class="alignnone wp-image-650" data-attachment-id="650" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="5340551651_fbf16a2b3c" data-large-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/5340551651_fbf16a2b3c.jpg?w=693&h=525?w=500" data-medium-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/5340551651_fbf16a2b3c.jpg?w=693&h=525?w=300" data-orig-file="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/5340551651_fbf16a2b3c.jpg?w=693&h=525" data-orig-size="500,379" data-permalink="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/the-tide-may-finally-be-turning-in-our-favour/5340551651_fbf16a2b3c-2/#main" height="525" src="https://methodicalinsanity.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/5340551651_fbf16a2b3c.jpg?w=693&h=525" width="693" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A real mystery on our hands here.</figcaption></figure>
If I didn’t know better, I would guess that Europe is far superior to
the countries that they originate from. But who am I to speculate? If
this man says the racism is unbearable here, then we should probably
just assume that it’s true, and cry about how guilty we are for having
white skin. It’s the right thing to do. It’s our fault that poor jacket
was lost.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/">https://methodicalinsanity.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/moroccan-man-in-belgium-pushed-too-far-by-racism/</a><br />
==================== </div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-33548409747089685272017-04-28T09:22:00.002+03:002017-04-28T09:22:32.230+03:00Peter Baggins : The French Election: Adieu, la France<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<header class="post-title"><h2 class="entry-title">
The French Election: Adieu, la France</h2>
</header>
<section class="meta-header"><div class="entry-meta entry-header">
<span class="published">
<abbr class="published-time" title="April 27, 2017 - 7:42 am">April 27, 2017</abbr></span>
<span class="meta-sep">—</span>
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</section>
<h3 class="entry-title">
<a class="url fn" href="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/author/peter-baggins/" title="View all posts by Peter Baggins, Ph.D.">Peter Baggins, Ph.D.</a></h3>
<br />
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<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_151823" style="width: 510px;">
<img alt="" class="wp-image-151823" height="333" src="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Macron.jpg" width="500" /><div class="wp-caption-text">
Mainstream
media: Macron saving France (depicted as a White woman) by leading her
to the glorious future of “openness and diverse modernity”</div>
</div>
As anticipated by most observers, liberal globalist Emmanuel Macron
and populist nationalist Marine Le Pen were selected by French voters to
move on to round two in France’s presidential election, scheduled for
May 7<sup>th</sup>. For the first time in the 59-year history of the
French Fifth Republic neither of the country’s two main parties, the
Socialists and the Republicans, made the second round of presidential
balloting. Either the socialists or the center right have run France
since the 1950s, but with this election the old model has been
shattered.<br />
When the two-round system was created, it was expected that the main
candidates of right and left would get around 30% in round one, and then
rally satellite parties to their side for the run-off. But this time
there were four candidates — with four very different versions of what
to do next — all split nearly evenly at around 20%, so whoever is
elected will be a minority candidate. The <strong><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39691111">latest figures</a></strong>
from the French Interior Ministry have Macron at 24%, Le Pen at 21.3%,
while conservative François Fillon missed the runoff at 20%, Left-wing
Jean-Luc Melenchon at 19.6% and Socialist Benoît Hamon at a paltry 6.4%.<br />
By all accounts Macron, is likely to pick up the most votes in the
runoff and will almost certainly become the next president. Marine Le
Pen will fight a hard campaign, and her totals will rise, but it is
almost inconceivable that she will win, according to the French and
International press. Apart from this speculation, what conclusions can
be drawn thus far?<span id="more-151799"></span><br />
<center>
<hr />
</center>
<hr />
First, last Sunday’s vote has shown France to be deeply divided. Four
candidates with markedly different views came within a few points of
one another in the vote on Sunday, suggesting that the fight about what
vision of France will dominate the future is far from over.<br />
Second, many voters are angry at current policies, including economic
policies and open borders, which are seen as responsible for an endless
series of terrorist attacks. For the first time ever, neither of the
top two candidates represents the establishment parties. Le Pen
campaigned stridently against Muslim immigration, linking it to security
threats, and she may have benefited from a final surge of support after
a terrorist attack in Paris two days before the election, the latest in
a string of atrocities that have beset France over the past two years.<br />
Third, the socialist left has been left in ruins<strong>. </strong>Just
five years ago the Socialist party of President François Hollande
achieved electoral dominance in the National Assembly and Senate as well
as the Elysée palace. Benoît Hamon won the January primary vote
convincingly, defeating the former prime minister, Manuel Valls but he
was completely<strong><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39130072"> rejected</a></strong> by the French electorate, attracting just 6.35% of the vote.<br />
Finally, and most importantly, the French have a real choice in the
May 7 runoff, as the two remaining candidates present stark alternatives
for the future of the French Republic. From an American perspective, it
looks a lot like globalist Hillary-Obama squaring off against
nationalist Donald Trump.<br />
Nowhere is this stark contrast between the two more apparent than
their reactions to the latest act of terrorism on French soil. As <strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/21/fears-that-paris-shooting-will-affect-presidental-election-as-first-round-looms">reported</a> </strong>by <em>The Guardian</em>, Macron, has described terrorism as an “imponderable problem” which will be “part of our daily lives for the years to come.”<br />
In contrast to Macron, Le Pen had been highlighting the fact that
crime and security had, in her view, been “completely absent” from the
presidential campaign in a live debate just minutes before news of the <strong><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/20/shots-fired-two-policeman-wounded-paris/">Kalashnikov attack</a></strong> broke.
“It’s a major subject that nobody has mentioned,” she complained. “We
must take control of our national borders to know who is coming in. We
must reorganize the intelligence services, reinforce the means at the
disposal of police and gendarmes, and attack the evil at its roots —
that’s to say the communitarianism and the development of Islamic
fundamentalism.”<br />
<strong>Comparing Macron vs. Le Pen</strong><br />
Macron, a former Goldman Sachs banker and economy minister under
Hollande represents the status quo. Although he has successfully
distanced himself from Hollande, he fervently believes in the EU. As the
only openly Europhile candidate, he told his supporters: “We need
Europe, my friends, so we will rebuild it. … I will rebuild a strong and
balanced alliance, thanks to you, with Germany in order to give back
Europe a real dynamic.”<br />
Macron has praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her generous
policy to asylum seekers that has seen more than a million new arrivals
since 2015. He has pledged to speed up the review process for asylum
requests to France to a maximum of six months, including appeals.<br />
He wants to keep open borders, backs the free market, and is calling
for pro-business measures such as slashing corporation taxes. He is
generally supportive of international trade deals and he backs the
treaty with Canada. Macron also wants a three-year suspension of housing
taxes for 80 percent of French households.<br />
Macron is Obama resurrected and clothed in an expensive and elite
French suit. He has the full support of the EU establishment, the French
President and Prime Minister, as well as the pledged support of several
prominent candidates. Finally, a senior French Muslim leader has called
on the country’s nearly 5 million Muslims to “vote massively” to make
Macron president.<br />
In contrast, Le Pen condemns the EU insisting that she would not
appear before a European Union flag in an interview with the TF1
television channel.<br />
<blockquote>
I want to be President of the French Republic, not of the
European Commission. All the more so since I consider that the European
Union has done a great deal of harm to our country and to our people,
be it in economic matters, in social matters, or in the matter of the
disappearance of borders. This will be my first measure: to restore
national borders to the French, to regain mastery in order to know who
is entering our country [in order] to fight against the danger of
Islamist terrorism [and] migrants [who] come and hit us in the heart.</blockquote>
<strong><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/24/polar-opposites-issues-divide-le-pen-macron/">Le Pen</a></strong>
wants to suspend immigration, introduce new measures to curb
conservative Islam and deport radical Islamists. She would curtail
policies that let migrants bring relatives to France, while also making
it impossible for illegal migrants to secure residency status.
Foreigners convicted on terror charges or any other crime would be
automatically deported, and she would abolish a law that allows children
with migrant parents who are born in France to eventually become
French. She would also ban the wearing of “ostentatious” religious
symbols such as Muslim head scarves and veils in public, having
routinely warned against the “mortal danger that is fundamentalist
Islam.”<br />
<img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-151822" height="345" src="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/le_pen_veil_islam_ben_garrison.jpg" width="500" /><br />
Echoing the recent campaign of Donald Trump (if not the Trumpian
reality), she is for France first and rejects globalization, vowing to
protect French jobs and condemning liberal policies that have left many
workers struggling. Le Pen would impose a 35% tax on goods by companies
that move production outside France, and would penalize groups that hire
foreign workers.<br />
Both candidates see a need for more police. Macron wants to create
10,000 more police jobs, while Le Pen wants 21,000 more police and
customs officials.<br />
A snap Ipsos survey late on Sunday suggested that Macron, who’s
aiming to be the country’s youngest head of state, would win by 62% to
38% for Le Pen.<br />
But will either candidate be capable of carrying out their programs?
Quite possibly not, because Macron has no MPs, and Marine Le Pen has
only two. The new president must appoint a prime minister who can
command a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly (the lower house of
parliament). That could be a problem for either Macron or Le Pen,
because the assembly is currently dominated by the Socialists (271
seats) and center-right Republicans (193). So to have any power to push
through their proposals the next president will need their party to
perform well in legislative elections on 11 and 18 June.<br />
Then there is the judiciary to consider. A <strong><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39713267">report</a></strong> by the leftwing BBC sums up the absurd situation facing French patriots in their courts better than any analysis I’ve seen:<br />
<blockquote>
A far-right French mayor has been fined 2,000 euros for
inciting hatred, after declaring that there were too many Muslim
children in his local schools. Robert Menard, mayor of the southern town
of Beziers, is an ally of the anti-immigrant National Front party. On 1
September 2016, France’s first day back at school, he tweeted that he
was witnessing the “great replacement.” The divisive term is used to
describe the alleged eviction of France’s white Christian population by
migrants.<br />
On 5 September Menard said on LCI television: “In a class in the city
centre of my town, 91% of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a
problem. There are limits to tolerance.”<br />
French law prohibits data based on people’s religious beliefs or
ethnicity. Menard defended his comments, saying: “I just described the
situation in my town. It is not a value judgement, it’s a fact. It’s
what I can see.”<br />
In addition to the fine, a Paris court awarded 1,000 euros
(£0.85-£850; $1.1-$1,100) in court costs to anti-racist groups that had
brought the case. The fine was higher than the 1,800 euros called for by
the public prosecutor, who said Menard had “pointed the finger at kids,
whom he describes as a weight on the national community.”</blockquote>
Finally there is also the media to consider. As we saw with
Obama/Clinton vs. Trump, the mainstream media in France and abroad
openly favor the liberals and show hostile contempt for conservatives.
The account above by the BBC is obviously riddled with biased and
pejorative phrasing. Here’s <strong><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-39683594">another sample</a></strong> of the BBC’s bias with respect to the two candidates.<br />
On Macron:<br />
<blockquote>
“And yet somehow Emmanuel Macron read the zeitgeist. He
found an untapped reservoir of support among the young, the
disillusioned-but-optimistic, the anti-cynics. Through his energy, his
youth, and his incomparable charm and articulacy, he has pulled off a
political coup that will go down in the annals.”</blockquote>
On LePen:<br />
<blockquote>
Bernard Cazeneuve, the sitting Socialist prime minister,
called Ms. Le Pen’s project “dangerous and sectarian” and said it would
“impoverish, isolate and divide” the country. “It will inevitably lead
to the end of Europe and of the euro, and, eventually, to France’s
relegation,” he said. “The National Front cannot be the future of our
country.”</blockquote>
From <strong><a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/04/23/35003-20170423ARTFIG00251-macron-je-veux-etre-le-president-des-patriotes-face-a-la-menace-des-nationalistes.php">French mainstream media</a></strong>:<br />
<blockquote>
Macron : «Je veux être le président des patriotes face à
la menace des nationalistes» (“I want to be the president of the
patriots facing the threat of the nationalists”).</blockquote>
From the EU:<br />
<blockquote>
The EU’s unelected executive is <strong><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/19/le-pen-rejects-eu-flag-president-french-republic-not-european-commission/">quietly terrified</a></strong>
that a Le Pen presidency could bring the European project to a
screeching halt. “From the [European] Commission’s point of view,
success for Marine Le Pen is a disaster and an existential threat to the
European project,” an anonymous high-ranking official confessed in
March 2017. “We can survive a Brexit, but not a Frexit.”</blockquote>
Like Trump, Le Pen must appeal directly to the people, bypassing a
largely hostile media. Having watched both Trump and Le Pen campaign
rallies I am struck by their similarities — hard-hitting direct speech
before large enthusiastic crowds. In front of her cheering supporters,
Le Pen <strong><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/23/french-presidential-election-le-pen-macron-projected-as-winners-in-first-round.html">declared</a> </strong>that
she embodies “the great alternative” for French voters. She portrayed
her duel with Macron as a battle between “patriots” and “wild
deregulation” — warning of job losses overseas, mass migration straining
resources at home and “the free circulation of terrorists.”<br />
“The time has come to free the French people,” she said at her
election day headquarters, adding that nothing short of “the survival of
France” will be at stake in the presidential runoff.<br />
As election results were being broadcast, French police detained 29
people in Paris after “anti-fascist” demonstrators became violent —
hurling glass bottles and firecrackers and setting cars ablaze. The
left-wing protesters said they were angry that far-right leader Marine
Le Pen is advancing to the French presidential runoff. Like the antifa
in the US, they prefer violence to voting. Six officers and three
demonstrators were injured during the protests at the Place de la
Bastille and several businesses sustained damage (Agence-France Presse).<br />
The day after the election Macron came under fire for acting as if
victory next month was already his. Macron’s visit to a chic Left Bank
brasserie on Sunday night after his first round triumph handed
ammunition to his opponents who <strong><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/frances-macron-under-fire-communication-misstep-eyes-elysee-142435599.html">described</a> </strong>it
as shallow, arrogant behavior. “They were patting themselves on the
back with the whole celeb crew,” Le Pen remarked while visiting a
wholesale market near Paris on Tuesday. “It shows that this arrogant
cast thinks it’s already won and can do what it wants with the country.”<br />
Surveying the dismal French political landscape following the election, James Delingpole writing for Breitbart news had this <strong><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/24/delingpole-manchurian-candidate-macron-frances-obama/">pessimistic comment</a></strong>:<br />
<blockquote>
While many French — and pretty much all the global
commentariat — appear to have made up their minds that they have just
dodged a bullet because they are not, after all, going to end up with a
Presidency in the hands of the “far right”, they really have very little
to celebrate. All France has done is to guarantee the election of a
lame-duck caretaker president — Continuation Hollande — who will ensure
that France’s ongoing decline will continue unabated. Its industries
will stagnate; its social unrest will intensify; ever greater numbers of
its citizenry will be murdered in homegrown terrorist attacks; its
economy will tank; the country that was once arguably the most civilised
and beautiful and sophisticated in all the world will descend ever
deeper into chaos, ugliness, and despair.<br />
Salut, President Macron. Adieu, la France.</blockquote>
Over the next two weeks “The great debate will finally take place,”
Ms. Le Pen said on Twitter. “French citizens need to seize this historic
opportunity.”<br />
But will they?<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/04/the-french-election-adieu-la-france/#more-151799">http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/04/the-french-election-adieu-la-france/#more-151799</a><br />
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-5828914261219630372017-04-19T09:05:00.003+03:002017-04-19T09:05:57.144+03:00Alan M. Dershowitz : What North Korea Should Teach Us about Iran<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What North Korea Should Teach Us about Iran</h1>
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<b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Alan+M.+Dershowitz"><span itemprop="author">Alan M. Dershowitz</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-04-18T10:30:00" itemprop="datePublished">April 18, 2017 at 10:30 am</time></b></div>
<div class="nocontent" style="margin: 0 0 10px 0;">
<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10233/north-korea-iran">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10233/north-korea-iran</a></b></div>
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We failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. As a
result, our options to stop them from developing a delivery system
capable of reaching our shores are severely limited.<br />
The hard lesson from our failure to stop North Korea before they
became a nuclear power is that we MUST stop Iran from ever developing or
acquiring a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear Iran would be far more dangerous
to American interests than a nuclear North Korea. Iran already has
missiles capable of reaching numerous American allies. They are in the
process of upgrading them and making them capable of delivering a
nuclear payload to our shores. Its fundamentalist religious leaders
would be willing to sacrifice millions of Iranians to destroy the "Big
Satan" (United States) or the "Little Satan" (Israel). The late
"moderate" leader Hashemi Rafsanjani once told an American journalist
that if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, they "would kill as
many as five million Jews," and that if Israel retaliated, they would
kill fifteen million Iranians, which would be "a small sacrifice from
among the billion Muslims in the world." He concluded that "it is not
irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Recall that the Iranian
mullahs were willing to sacrifice thousands of "child-soldiers" in their
futile war with Iraq. There is nothing more dangerous than a "suicide
regime" armed with nuclear weapons.<br />
The deal signed by Iran in 2015 <i>postpones</i> Iran's quest for a
nuclear arsenal, but it doesn't prevent it, despite Iran's unequivocal
statement in the preamble to the agreement that "Iran reaffirms that
under no circumstances will Iran <i>ever</i> seek, develop or acquire
nuclear weapons." (Emphasis added). Recall that North Korea provided
similar assurances to the Clinton Administration back in 1994, only to
break them several years later -- with no real consequences. The Iranian
mullahs apparently regard their reaffirmation as merely hortatory and
not legally binding. The body of the agreement itself -- the portion
Iran believes is legally binding -- does not preclude Iran from
developing nuclear weapons after a certain time, variously estimated as
between 10 to 15 years from the signing of the agreement. Nor does it
prevent Iran from perfecting its delivery systems, including nuclear
tipped inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the
United States.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" height="232" src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/1388.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<br />
If we are not to make the same mistake with Iran that we made with North Korea, we must do something <i>now</i>
– before Iran secures a weapon – to deter the mullahs from becoming a
nuclear power, over which we would have little or no leverage.<br />
Congress should now enact legislation declaring that Iran's
reaffirmation that it will never "develop or acquire nuclear weapons" is
an integral part of the agreement and represents the policy of the
United States. It is too late to change the words of the deal, but it is
not too late for Congress to insist that Iran comply fully with all of
its provisions, even those in the preamble.<br />
In order to ensure that the entirety of the agreement is carried out, <i>including that reaffirmation</i>,
Congress should adopt the proposal made by Thomas L. Friedman on 22
July 2015 and by myself on 5 September 2013. To quote Friedman:<br />
<blockquote>
"Congress should pass a resolution authorizing this and
future presidents to use force to prevent Iran from ever becoming a
nuclear weapons state ... Iran must know now that the U.S. president is
authorized to destroy – without warning or negotiation – any attempt by
Tehran to build a bomb."<br />
</blockquote>
I put it similarly: Congress should authorize the President "to take
military action against Iran's nuclear weapon's program if it were to
cross the red lines...."<br />
The benefits of enacting such legislation are clear: the law would
underline the centrality to the deal of Iran's reaffirmation never to
acquire nuclear weapons, and would provide both a deterrent against Iran
violating its reaffirmation and an enforcement authorization in the
event it does.<br />
A law based on these two elements -- adopting Iran's reaffirmation as
the official American policy and authorizing a preventive military
strike if Iran tried to obtain nuclear weapons -- may be an alternative
we can live with. But without such an alternative, the deal as currently
interpreted by Iran will not prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear
weapons. In all probability, it would merely postpone that catastrophe
for about a decade while legitimating its occurrence. This is not an
outcome we can live with, as evidenced by the crisis we are now
confronting with North Korea. So let us learn from our mistake and not
repeat it with Iran.<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School and author of</i> Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law<i> and</i> Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for the Unaroused Voter<i>.</i><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
<span class="no_print"><ul style="font-style: italic;">
<li>Follow Alan M. Dershowitz on <a href="https://twitter.com/AlanDersh">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
=================</span></div>
ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1002558064549540085.post-88540016558291276342017-04-19T09:02:00.001+03:002017-04-19T09:02:22.977+03:00Burak Bekdil : Turks Vote to Give Away Their Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Turks Vote to Give Away Their Democracy</h1>
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<b>
by <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Burak+Bekdil"><span itemprop="author">Burak Bekdil</span></a><br />
<time class="nocontent" datetime="2017-04-18T04:00:00" itemprop="datePublished">April 18, 2017 at 4:00 am</time></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10226/turkey-referendum">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10226/turkey-referendum</a></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBd296er9Z_J0tJN5-NWYM8sQ4vcZ0LJw-UFZ9MHdGabTtGIDgLpAKNXzOAXoV7fLCphuya-ptd-_BieAjau6_GblDm666WL1WkXc14XL25yv3PcunjTQbkGAhyPwzp6QHrnmPQn2O71Q/s1600/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBd296er9Z_J0tJN5-NWYM8sQ4vcZ0LJw-UFZ9MHdGabTtGIDgLpAKNXzOAXoV7fLCphuya-ptd-_BieAjau6_GblDm666WL1WkXc14XL25yv3PcunjTQbkGAhyPwzp6QHrnmPQn2O71Q/s320/gatestone-logo-1000.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<li>Alarmingly, Turkey's proposed
system lacks the safety mechanisms of checks and balances that exist in
other countries such as the United States.</li>
<li>It would transfer powers traditionally held by parliament to the
presidency, thereby rendering the parliament merely a ceremonial,
advisory body.</li>
<li>"The conditions for a free and fair plebiscite on proposed
constitutional reforms simply do not hold," said a report released by
the EU Turkey Civic Commission.</li>
</ul>
</div>
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In a bitter irony, nearly 55 million Turks went to the ballot box on
April 16 to exercise their basic democratic right to vote. But they
voted in favor of giving away their democracy. The system for which they
voted looks more like a Middle Eastern sultanate than democracy in the
West.<br />
<br />
According to unofficial results of the referendum, 51.4% of the Turks
voted in favor of constitutional amendments that will give their
authoritarian Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, excessive powers
to augment his one-man rule in comfort.<br />
The changes make Erdogan head of government, head of state and head
of the ruling party -- all at the same time. He now has the power to
appoint cabinet ministers without requiring a confidence vote from
parliament, propose budgets and appoint more than half the members of
the nation's highest judicial body. In addition, he has the power to
dissolve parliament, impose states of emergency and issue decrees.
Alarmingly, the proposed system lacks the safety mechanisms of checks
and balances that exist in other countries such as the United States. It
would <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/18/europe/turkey-erdogan-power-bill/" target="_blank">transfer powers</a> traditionally held by parliament to the presidency, thereby rendering the parliament merely a ceremonial, advisory body.<br />
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<td style="border: 1px solid black; max-width: 600px;"><img border="0" height="229" src="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/2438.jpg" width="400" /><div style="font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;">
Turkey's
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims victory in the April 16
referendum, at a rally the night of the vote. (Image source: VOA video
screenshot)</div>
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</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>Why did the Turks choose democratic suicide?</b><br />
<br />
<b>1.</b> Erdogan's confrontational Islamist-nationalist rhetoric
keeps appealing to masses who adore him for his claims of being in the
process of <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2017/0222/In-Turkey-Erdogan-fans-an-Islamic-nationalism-to-build-Ottoman-style-influence" target="_blank">restoring the country's historical Ottoman influence</a>
as a leader of the Islamic world. His rhetoric -- and practices --
would often echo an authoritarian rule in the form of a sultan. It was
not a coincidence that the thousands of Erdogan fans who <a href="http://www.philstar.com/world/2017/04/11/1689834/ancestral-home-turkish-affection-erdogan-resonates" target="_blank">gathered</a>
to salute their leader after his referendum victory were passionately
waving Turkish and Ottoman flags and chanting "Allah-u aqbar" ["Allah is
the greatest", in Arabic]. For most of Erdogan's conservative fans,
"God comes first... then comes Erdogan". That sentiment explains why the
vote on April 16 was not just a boring constitutional matter for many
Turks: It was about endorsing an ambitious man who promises to revive a
glorious past.<br />
<br />
<b>2.</b> The 'No' campaign and its supporters were <a href="http://www.voanews.com/a/fears-grow-over-fairness-as-election-nears-in-turkey/3726046.html" target="_blank">systematically silenced</a>
and intimidated by a powerful state apparatus, including its police and
judicial powers. In contrast, the 'Yes' campaign enjoyed all possible
government support, with full mobilization of state means and public
resources. Worse, Turkey went to the ballot box under a state of
emergency that was declared after a failed coup in July.<br />
<br />
<b>3.</b> A European Union (EU) parliamentary organization warned
before the referendum that the democratic legitimacy of the vote was in
question. It mentioned that the lawmakers' ability to campaign for the
'No' vote had been undermined by the government. "The conditions for a
free and fair plebiscite on proposed constitutional reforms simply do
not hold," <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/eu-delegation-warns-democratic-legitimacy-risk-over-turkish-referendum-339505016" target="_blank">said a report</a>
released by the EU Turkey Civic Commission. It highlighted, among
several other reasons, that the co-leaders of a pro-Kurdish political
party who campaigned for 'No' have been imprisoned since November on
charges of links with terror groups. In the 15 months leading up to the
referendum, says a civil rights NGO, police used violence to stop a
total of 264 peaceful <a href="http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/mehmet-y-yilmaz/tek-kale-mac-40398837" target="_blank">demonstrations</a> in support of the 'No' campaign.<br />
<br />
<b>4.</b> With around 150 journalists in jail, the pervading climate was fear.<br />
The great Turkish purge spells big numbers. <a href="http://stockholmcf.org/minister-soylu-says-47155-people-jailed-113260-people-detained-over-alleged-gulen-links/" target="_blank">According</a> to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu:<br />
<ul>
<li>47,155 people have been jailed since the coup attempt on July 15;</li>
<li>113,260 people have also been detained;</li>
<li>41,499 people have been released with condition of judicial control
and 23,861 people have been released without any condition; 863 other
suspects remain at large;</li>
<li>10,732 of those who have been arrested are police officers, while
168 military generals and 7,463 military officers have been jailed as of
April 2, 2017;</li>
<li>2,575 judges and prosecutors, and 208 governors or other public
administrators have been imprisoned. The number of jailed civilians,
including handicapped people, housewives and elders, is 26,177</li>
<li>Over 135,000 people have been purged: A total of 7,317 academics
were also purged as well as 4,272 judges and prosecutors who were
dismissed due to alleged involvement in the coup attempt.</li>
</ul>
'No' campaigners were threatened and treated like terrorists.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) confirmed <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/turkeys-lose-lose-referendum-recep-tayyip-erdogan-constitutional-reform/" target="_blank">cases of intimidation</a> against the 'No' campaign across the country.<br />
<br />
5. The main opposition Republican People's Party claimed election
rigging. It claimed the vote was manipulated in terms of content and
method. Only an hour into the vote count, the Supreme Board of Elections
declared as valid voting papers without official seals. That practice
is clearly in violation of the election laws. The opposition also <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/row-sparks-over-vote-count-amid-main-opposition-chps-claims-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=112090&NewsCatID=338" target="_blank">claimed</a>
that in some cities the election observers from the 'No' groups were
removed from their polling stations. In Turkey, it probably does not
matter what is in the ballot box; what matters more is who counts them.<br />
<br />
The April 16 vote in Turkey meant more than a simple vote on a
package of 18 constitutional amendments. <span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>With a narrow and controversial
margin, the Turks voted to change regime in favor of a sultanate.</b></span> It
was not a coincidence that a news editor for <i>Yeni Akit</i>, a
militantly Islamist newspaper and a pro-Erdogan outlet, tweeted after
the referendum results, an obituary for the "Old Turkey." In January, a
columnist for <i>Yeni Akit</i> <a href="http://www.yeniakit.com.tr/haber/hilafet-tbmmde-erdogan-baskan-olursa-262112.html" target="_blank">claimed</a> that Erdogan would become the "caliph" if he wins the referendum and the presidential election.<br />
<br />
Turkey's soul-searching and societal wars never have a moment of
truce. Turkey's wars are not just between political leaders and parties;
they are wars between the supporters of a democratic, secular country
and those of a caliphate which Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey,
abolished almost a century ago. As Kati Piri, the European Parliament's
Turkey rapporteur, <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-16/eu-rapporteur-turkey-warns-turkish-talks-will-be-suspended-if-erdogan-gets-unchecked" target="_blank">said of the referendum</a>: <b>"This is a sad day for all democrats in Turkey".</b><br />
<blockquote>
<i>Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was
just fired from Turkey's leading newspaper after 29 years, for writing
what was taking place in Turkey for Gatestone. He is a Fellow at the
Middle East Forum.</i><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
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ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05704141690266937856noreply@blogger.com0