Reader’s Links for September 22, 2017

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In order to preserve the flow of conversation about various posted items, and also in order to make it easier for visitors to find the list of related links being shared by other readers, regulars and interested parties in one place, each day a post is automatically created at a minute past midnight ET.

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Thank you all for those that take the effort to assist this site in keeping the public informed. Below, typically people can find the latest enemy propaganda, news items of related materials from multiple countries and languages, op-eds from many excellent sites who write on our topics, geopolitics and immigration issues and so on.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

110 Replies to “Reader’s Links for September 22, 2017”

  1. Saudi textbook features image of Yoda with King Faisal (BBC, Sep 22, 2017)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41363156

    “Saudi Arabia’s education minister has apologised for the production of a school textbook in which the Star Wars character Yoda is seen superimposed on a photograph of the late King Faisal.

    Ahmed al-Issa said a committee was looking into the “unintended mistake”.

    The image, which shows the diminutive Jedi Master sitting beside King Faisal as he signs the UN Charter in 1945, was created by the Saudi artist Shaweesh.

    He told the BBC it was not yet clear how it had ended up in the textbook.

    However, he stressed that he had meant no offence to the king, who helped transform Saudi Arabia into a modern state and an actor on the world stage.

    “Everyone loves King Faisal here, even the younger generations,” he said…”

  2. Greek court approves first forced Syrian deportations (dailymail, Sep 22, 2017)
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4910292/Greek-court-approves-forced-Syrian-deportations.html

    “Greece’s top administrative court on Friday approved the forced deportation of two Syrian refugees, setting a precedent for hundreds of similar cases, a justice source said.

    Over 750 Syrian exiles are likely to be affected by the ruling by the Greek council of state, a source with knowledge of the case told AFP.

    The refugees, two men aged 22 and 29, had filed a legal challenge after asylum committees rejected their pleas to not be returned to Turkey, from where they entered Greece last year.

    Dimitris Christopoulos, president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the ruling “violates the refugees’ rights”.

    Rights groups supporting the pair can contest the ruling at the European Court of Human Rights.

    The deportations are part of a pact between Turkey and the European Union that was designed to stem the flow of refugees and migrants after it reached historic proportions in 2015.

    Around a million people — mainly fleeing the war in Syria — landed in Europe that year alone.

    Deporting Syrian refugees to Turkey assumes that this fellow Muslim country is a safe haven for them.

    But rights groups dispute this, arguing that there are few guarantees that Syrian refugees can find shelter and work in Turkey, while there is evidence of abuse and exploitation…”

  3. Fewer rape investigations are being solved in Sweden, new stats suggest (thelocal, Sep 22, 2017)
    https://www.thelocal.se/20170922/fewer-rape-investigations-are-being-solved-in-sweden-new-stats-suggest

    “Fewer rapes have been solved in Sweden so far in 2017 than by the same stage a year before, new figures from the country’s National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå) suggest.

    Brå’s preliminary figures for the first six months of 2017 show that only eight percent of rapes investigated by police this year have been solved (mening 302 have been solved), down from 12 percent at the same stage a year before, when 354 were solved.

    Police say they want to do more, but complain that limited resources are hampering their cause. According to Brå’s researcher on sex crimes, there are also a number of other factors that can influence the change.

    “Eight percent is quite low, but it’s also worth remembering that these crimes are generally difficult to investigate. Even if police could do more to investigate these crimes in a better way, that would perhaps mean a difference of a few percent, and doing everything in the book wouldn’t necessarily mean some kind of extreme change,” Johanna Olseryd told The Local.

    “In general it’s a type of crime where the clearance rate is quite low and it can vary year by year and be up and down. It’s also not unusual for there to be larger cases which include many individual crimes for example. So if a final decision is reached on that kind of case, it can impact the rate of crimes being solved by several percent,” she added.

    In Sweden each case of sexual violence is recorded as a separate instance, so for example if someone tells the police that they were raped by a partner several times, each of those instances would be recorded as an individual potential crime.

    Another factor that could contribute is that the number of rapes that have been processed so far in Sweden this year is up to 4,004 from a lower 3,047 during the first half of 2016, meaning the police simply have more work to do.

    Of those 4,004, an investigation was launched in 3,810 instances, while 194 were dismissed without one. In 2016, 2,843 were investigated and 204 were dismissed.

    But the fact that more rapes have been processed by police does not necessarily mean that more were committed, Olseryd pointed out:

    “In general what we know from research is that more people are coming forward and saying they have been subjected to sexual crimes. We don’t know how much that is down to there being more crimes committed, or because there is a bigger public discussion of the subject, which means more people are likely to understand that they have been subjected to something that’s a crime, or that they have a higher tendency to report it.”

    The increasingly stretched nature of the police force in Sweden has been a prominent subject in the country as of late. Unions have complained that a lack of adequate staff numbers is preventing more crimes from being solved, with a Swedish Police Union (Polisförbundet) survey in May showing that 39 percent of officers think a lack of investigation staff means the crime clearance rate is going in the wrong direction.

    A difficult working environment and low salaries are also blamed for officers leaving their job prematurely, with 200 under the age of 40 leaving their positions in 2016.

    Earlier this week, the Swedish government announced that it will give two billion kronor to the police in 2018 in an effort to help turn the force around, with the money to be directed towards improving working conditions and encouraging people to say in their job, as well as recruiting more officers.”

  4. Daesh Supporters Find Perfect Propaganda Platform in Instagram Stories (sputniknews, Sep 23, 2017)
    https://sputniknews.com/world/201709231057628020-daesh-instagram-stories-propaganda/

    “Researchers say Daesh backers have turned to a new and convenient platform to spread militant propaganda: Instagram’s “Stories,” which automatically disappear after 24 hours.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that almost 90 percent of the Syrian territory has been liberated from the Daesh terrorist group. With the terrorists losing their strongholds in Syria and Iraq and having their Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts deleted, Daesh backers have been struggling to find an alternative platform to share their content with followers.

    According to AP, in their quest to find a new propaganda medium, more than 50,000 of the group’s adherents eventually settled on photo-sharing app Instagram, which provides a unique “Stories” feature. The feature allows sets of images or short videos to be shared widely, but expire and disappear after 24 hours.

    At least 10,000 Instagram accounts have been identified as having “extremely strong links” to Daesh, the report said, which means they were followed back by core Daesh accounts. About 30 percent of the content those accounts post is about the group.

    “They send a message that they know will disappear but they know who the audience is. They are using these stories because they know it is a safe channel to share information,” said Andrea Stroppa, a member of the software research group Ghost Data.

    Instagram is owned by Facebook, which used to be one of the most popular platforms for Daesh recruitment until the company launched a crackdown on Daesh-related accounts after international criticism.

    “There is no place for terrorists, terrorist propaganda, or the praising of terror activity on Instagram, and we work aggressively to remove content or an account as soon as we become aware of it,” an Instagram official statement released on Wednesday said.

    The company said its policy prohibits terrorist content, and that it has specialized teams that work on stopping the spread of improper posts from its platform.”

  5. Police reveal what Muslim man said after beheading co-worker in Oklahoma

    The Muslim man who was apprehended after beheading a co-worker in Moore, Oklahoma, told police why he did it, and the tapes have been released for his trial.

    What did he tell police?

    Alton Nolen told police that he felt oppressed as a Muslim at the food plant by his co-workers, who he said teamed up against him. He spoke to them after being arrested for the attack.

    When the police asked him if he regretted his actions, he responded, “I don’t feel regret, because you know what I’ve done. That’s probably going to make Vaughan Foods a better place to work for a Muslim.”

    What happened during the attack?

    In September 2014, Nolen was suspended from his job at Vaughan Foods because a co-worker said that they had gotten into an argument after he said he didn’t like white people. Nolen returned with a knife, stabbed and beheaded 54-year-old Colleen Hufford, and attacked Traci Johnson, the woman who had issued the complaint about him.

    Is he claiming insanity as a defense?

    Yes, his lawyers are arguing that he was not in his right mind at the time of the attack, while prosecutors are trying to show that he was acting purposely and deliberately with full mental capacities.

    Was radical Islam one of his motiviations?

    Authorities have presented as evidence in the trial that Nolen had a Koran and other “written scripture” in his apartment at the time of the attack. His Facebook page also had many signs of Islamic radicalization, including posts claiming, “Sharia Law is coming!!” and exhibiting pictures of beheadings and the Taliban.

    Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the ongoing trial.

  6. Tom Fitton discusses Court Battle on Clinton Draft Indictment, Obama Wiretaps Trump(?), Deep State P

  7. Police Reports Suggest Dem IT Scandal Ringleader Abused Several Muslim Immigrant Women

    If you thought the Democrat IT scandal couldn’t possibly get any crazier, think again. Because now it has been revealed that Imran Awan, the ringleader of the Pakistani clan under criminal investigation for allegedly stealing equipment and data from Congress, allegedly also beat Muslim immigrant women in his spare time.

    Police reports obtained by The Daily Caller show that several woman outside of Awan’s marriage to Hina Alvi have contacted law enforcement to report various forms of abuse at his hands, including battery, wiretapping, and threatening family members of one of the women.

    In a recent piece designed to minimize the scandal, the Washington Post reported that the indicted former IT aide was popular with House Democrats because he was “charismatic and accommodating.” That may be so, but he also apparently had a dark and sinister side.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/21/police-reports-suggest-dem-scandal-ringleader-abused-several-muslim-immigrant-women/

  8. German Bundesrat approves ‘burqa ban’ for drivers, beefs up road-race sanctions (DW, Sep 22, 2017)
    http://www.dw.com/en/german-bundesrat-approves-burqa-ban-for-drivers-beefs-up-road-race-sanctions/a-40642060

    “The German parliament’s upper house sharpened traffic-related punishments, including a prohibition on face coverings while driving. It’s being seen as a ban on burqas and niqabs — and one Muslim organization isn’t happy…”

  9. ‘Most wanted’ fugitive sought by Sweden arrested in Austria (thelocal, Sep 22, 2017)
    https://www.thelocal.at/20170922/most-wanted-fugitive-sought-by-sweden-arrested-in-austria

    “A 39-year-old man who was on the run from Swedish authorities has been arrested in Vienna, Europol has announced.

    The man, who is a Somali national, was arrested in Austria on September 19th. He was previously charged in Sweden for the attempted murder of his wife, but has been on the run since 2016 and featured on the “Europe’s Most Wanted” list run by the European Network of Fugitive Active Search Teams (ENFAST) and Europol.

    The man attacked his wife with an axe in Sweden last year, causing serious injuries to her, but “evaded justice” according to Europol, and a European Arrest Warrant was issued…”

  10. Sorry, not sorry: Italian minister defends refugee crackdown (gulfnews, Sep 22, 2017)
    http://gulfnews.com/news/europe/italy/sorry-not-sorry-italian-minister-defends-refugee-crackdown-1.2094334

    “In his eight months in office, Marco Minniti, the austere Italian interior minister, has overseen a huge reduction in the number of African migrants and refugees reaching Italian shores from Libya. At the last count in August, the figure was 87 per cent down on the previous year.

    A former communist with deep connections with Italian intelligence and the levers of the Italian state, Minniti is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. His success in reducing migrant flows has won him praise and popularity on the right and notoriety on parts of the left.

    There have been rumours of deals struck in the desert to induce tribes and militia to end the business of human trafficking.

    It is claimed his methods are fragile, and leave unresolved the fate of the tens of thousands of refugees trapped in Libya in inhumane detention camps unable to reach Italy and unwilling to return to their country of origin on the other side of the Sahara desert.

    Minniti offered a stout defence of his methods in an interview in Italy last week.

    ‘Unprecedented moment’

    His country had faced an unprecedented moment in the history of migration, he said. In June, on the way to a meeting in the US, he stopped at Shannon airport to find his phone full of warnings that in the space of 24 hours there had been 12,500 arrivals in 25 vessels operating across the Mediterranean. He feared for Italian democracy.

    “I had a problem. Should I continue my flight to Washington on the basis of showing the show must go on, or should I go back and by doing so dramatise everything?

    “I thought I had to come back to be with operators overseeing the humanitarian rescue. We needed to transmit a message that we as the government had the capacity to react.”

    The deeper worry for Minitti was that he had already set in train the reforms designed to stem the flow, but at that stage the fruits of his effort were invisible.
    It was only in July and August that the picture transformed.

    “The crucial point for me had been to go to Libya to find a solution. In Turkey with its migrant crisis there was a strong leader with which to work — perhaps too strong. In Libya it was the opposite.”

    In many ways Minitti, faced by a fatally divided national state, was trying to create an alternative set of state institutions.

    In February he signed a memorandum with the leader of the UN-recognised government, Fayez Al Serraj, introducing a new level of cooperation between the coastguard and the Italians, including the provision of four patrol vessels.

    “If we look at results the Libyan coastguard has saved more than 13,000 people – figures that were absolutely unthinkable at the start of the year.

    “But my conviction was the southern border of Libya is crucial for the southern border of Europe as a whole. So we have built a relationship with the tribes of southern Sahara. They are fundamental to the south, the guardians of the southern border, but they had been fighting one another and that meant the southern border was not controlled.

    “On March 31 the tribes came to my office here in Rome. It was a very difficult discussion; 72 hours were needed to to try to find a solution and to build a peace that respected their independence.”

    The deal with the southern tribesmen has made it easier to stem the flow of refugees from Chad, Mali and Niger.

    On July 13, Minniti went a stage further, going to Libya to meet the mayors of the most important 14 cities that were interested.

    “We discussed a pact. It was quite simple: engage yourself against the trafficking of human beings and we will help you to build an alternative economy. The problems at the moment is trafficking has been the only industry in Libya capable of producing an income revenue.”

    He denied this process involved bribing militia.

    “We have been quite transparent. We needed to help the communities to free themselves from the traffickers and to produce an alternative income. There is sustained help for the migrants in that city as well as hospitals and parks for children. The idea is to put resources on the table so that a good currency can defeat a bad currency. You needed to build a conversation with the whole society.

    “When I met a sultan of the tribes he said: ‘You have to help me so that my children can lead a different life from trafficking.’ We have taken these projects to the European commission. These people want to change and it is the duty of the international community to help in this reconversion.”

    ‘Common values’

    Minniti knows there is much more to do.

    He wants the UN to regulate the Libyan detention camps, which is difficult due to the current lack of security.

    More money is needed to help with voluntary repatriation of the refugees trapped in Libya. In the long term the EU will need to find billions to help the African economy.

    In a few days he will publish an integration policy for Italy covering issues such as culture, language, routes into work for asylum seekers, the dispersal of reception centres and the governance, financing and transparency of mosques and imams.

    “I am convinced that there is no equation between terrorism and migration,” Minniti says.

    “That is an error of approach, but if we see what has happened in Europe there is a relationship between terrorism and a lack of integration, and I am convinced it is through integration and common values, we build a a security policy.””

  11. Trump considers new travel ban (middleeasteye, Sep 22, 2017)
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-considers-new-travel-ban-203954849

    “President Donald Trump is considering a new order to replace his soon-to-expire travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries, which would be tailored on a country-by-country basis to protect the United States from attacks, US officials said on Friday.

    With the current ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen due to expire on Sunday, Trump was given recommendations by Elaine Duke, the acting homeland security secretary, but has not yet made a decision on the details of the new order, the officials told reporters.

    The officials declined to say which or how many countries would be targeted…”