Reader’s links for January 18, 2018

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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.

This way, under the various posts of the day, conversation can take place without as much ‘noise’ on the various links and articles and ideas in the main posts and all the news links being submitted can be seen under these auto-posts by clicking on the comments-link right below these ones.

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

128 Replies to “Reader’s links for January 18, 2018”

  1. euronews – ‘Standing up to hate-inciting populists does work’: Human Rights Watch report

    Human Rights Watch praises France under Macron for tackling xenophobia, but blasts Austria and the Netherlands for pandering to populists.

    • If you don’t support them you are hate filled, they are pushing people to become haters.

  2. Syria: ‘Erdogan, Afrin will be your graveyard’ – Kurds protest against Turkish invasion plans

    Thousands of Kurds marched in Afrin on Thursday to protest against Turkish preparations to invade the Syrian canton of Afrin.

    “Today the people of Afrin are protesting to assure that Afrin will never fall into Turkish traitors’ hands,” claimed one protester.

    • My dog “Babs” was a democrat. A black female born out of wedlock and dependent on us for everything. But I loved her dearly.
      I even took her name on the internet!
      Yes, my dog was a democrat (they can’t all be bad).

      • Mine is a hard core classical liberal. Loyal to a fault, even unto death for what matters to him, which is his family and his rules.

        He works for everything he gets and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

        He believes in defending those he cares about no matter what others think he should do and he takes his job very seriously, and you cannot stop him from doing it till its done. Even if its annoying as hell every-time someone rings the doorbell.

        He adopted me when he was a little older, so i don’t know what his parent’s marital status was, but I can’t fault him for that anyway. Im just glad they liked each other enough to make him even if it was just for an hour or so.

        • That was my dog, he earned everything by protect us, even our extended family knew that they had to be let in or he would try to eat them. He was a loyal companion that I still miss even after close to 50 years since he died.

  3. Pyramid of White Supremacy’ taught in required class for college’s elementary education majors

    “Pyramid of White Supremacy” is taught as part of a required course for elementary education majors at Salisbury University in Maryland, a public college funded with tax dollars.

    The white supremacy pyramid — which places “Genocide” (i.e., mass murder) at the top — is part of a one-credit course titled, “Diversity and the Self,” according to Campus Reform, which first reported the story.

    In a pyramid, every brick depends upon the one below it for support,” the pyramid’s accompanying caption reads. “If the bricks at the bottom are removed, the whole structure comes tumbling down.”

    https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/18/pyramid-of-white-supremacy-taught-in-required-class-for-colleges-elementary-education-majors

  4. Conservative Lobbyist Who Offered Reward For Info On Seth Rich Murder Violently Attacked

    A well-known conservative lobbyist was sprayed with a “caustic substance” by a masked attacker outside his Arlington home Tuesday, according to local police.

    Jack Burkman, who made headlines in 2016 by offering a $130,000 reward for information on the mysterious murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, was reportedly attacked Tuesday. Local police told The Washington Post they have not yet determined the perpetrator’s identity.

    Burkman told WaPo he was returning from the grocery store when a man wearing a ski mask jumped out of a black SUV, sprayed him in the face with what appeared to be pepper spray, and hit him the head before speeding away. He added that he thought “the end is coming,” when he spotted the man coming up his driveway, and said the attack “seemed professional,” though he had trouble pinning down who exactly might have cause to attack him.

    “You could have 10 different causal nexi,” said Burkman, who made enemies in 2014 by campaigning to ban gay players from the National Football League.

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/18/lobbyist-who-offered-seth-rich-reward-attacked/

  5. The Soviet-Style Push To Paint Trump As Mentally Ill
    The president’s actual mental health is irrelevant when you’re carrying out a coup.
    January 18, 2018
    Matthew Vadum

    Powerless to dislodge the duly elected 45th president from office, desperate left-wingers and their media allies are borrowing a page from Soviet Communism by dishonestly portraying President Trump as mentally unfit.

    This is a coup attempt in progress and there is no indication it will go away anytime soon. In an earlier age, it might have been called high treason. The difference is that in the Soviet Union it was the government doing the smearing in order to maintain power. In America today, it is the opposition that is doing the smearing in the hope of removing its enemy from power and becoming the government.

    Decades ago Moscow set the example that Trump-haters are now following. (Former Soviet propagandist Oleg Atbashian wrote an excellent piece at FrontPage last week on Soviet-style psychiatry.)

    “The Soviets devised a system that allowed for political figures — especially those who posed a threat to party leaders — to be declared mentally unfit for office,” Jordan Schachtel writes at Conservative Review.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269060/soviet-style-push-paint-trump-mentally-ill-matthew-vadum

  6. How Hollywood Killed #MeToo
    It’s a real Hollywood ending.
    January 18, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    When Time picks an abstract concept as its ‘Thing of the Year’, it’s the kiss of death.

    The magazine’s 2011 edition celebrated the Arab Spring’s ‘Protester’ just as the worst of the civil wars were getting started. In 2006, it picked ‘You’ just as the big web companies began crushing individuality on the internet. In 2002, it cheered the ‘Whistleblowers’ you haven’t heard from since. And in 1993, it put Arafat and Mandela on the cover as the ‘Peacemakers’. Good luck finding that peace.

    So #MeToo was headed for trouble as soon as it became Time’s ‘Thing of the Year’. The cover, with the accusers dressed in somber black, foreshadowed the black dress code at the Golden Globes.

    The cover wasn’t a win. It was a sigh of relief. Hollywood, the media and other cultural industries had been running scared of the scandal for months. Now they were finally getting a handle on it. In public relations, you get ahead of the scandal. You understand what makes it tick and take it apart.

    Awards season was looming. And the culture industries were figuring out how to take #MeToo apart.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268994/how-hollywood-killed-metoo-daniel-greenfield

  7. Greece’s “Robin Hood” Terrorists

    by Maria Polizoidou
    January 18, 2018 at 4:30 am

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11746/greece-terrorists

    The radical leftist Greek organization, the Group of People’s Fighters (OLA), which claimed responsibility for the December 22 bombing of the Athens Court of Appeal, has been committing terrorist attacks on governmental targets since 2013, when the country entered its serious debt crisis. According to the Greek authorities the OLA has ties with the terrorist organization “Revolutionary Struggle” (EA), and attacked at the past the offices of New Democracy political party, a Bank, the Greek Industrialists Association and the German Ambassador’s home in Athens.

    The OLA boasted of this and other attacks on the “bourgeois, imperialist and capitalist” government institutions, the media and businesses in a 4,500-word manifesto published on the anarchist website Indymedia. Among the declarations in its lengthy rant is a message of

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11746/greece-terrorists

  8. Persecution of Alevis in Turkey: Threats, Arbitrary Arrests

    by Uzay Bulut
    January 18, 2018 at 4:00 am

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11744/turkey-alevis-persecution

    Pressures against the Alevi community in Turkey are becoming alarmingly commonplace.

    Just like the Christian, Jewish, and Yazidi communities in Turkey, Alevis have also been victims of Islamic supremacism for centuries — both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey.

    Alevis are a religious minority Turkey with a distinct faith, philosophy, and culture that largely upholds secularism and humanism. Turkey’s Alevi community is estimated in the tens of millions — up to 25% of the population, making up the country’s largest minority. But the number is only an approximation, because legally, Alevis in Turkey are “non-existent”. The Turkish government does not officially recognize them, so it does not include them in a census and counts them as “Muslims.”

    Recently, officials at the Istanbul airport seized the passport of Fatma Tunç, the wife of a dissident author, Aziz Tunç. Mrs. Tunç was preparing to board a plane to Germany when she was told by officials that her passport has been cancelled because “there are dangerous people in her family” and that for her to travel outside of Turkey, her husband and son would have to return. Aziz Tunç’s passport has also been cancelled due to his being prosecuted at a political trial in Turkey.

    Mr. Tunç, a columnist and the author of two books about the 1978 Alevi massacre in the city of Mara? in southeastern Turkey, and his son, have been living in exile in Germany for the past two years, as a result of government persecution. “This is downright hostage-taking,” he said.

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11744/turkey-alevis-persecution

  9. CBC – Mother’s odyssey to rescue daughter from ISIS explored in new doc

    A Montreal mother said she is relieved her daughter is finally safe after successful efforts to help her escape ISIS. Her daughter left Canada in November 2014 at the age of 18, entered Syria and signed up with ISIS. A new documentary The Way Out, directed by Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard and David York of 52 Media Inc. chronicles the mother’s fight to free her daughter.

  10. Saudi Arabia Invokes Islamophobia in Landmark 9/11 Suit

    MANHATTAN (CN) – A 9/11 widow voiced alarm Thursday after attorneys for Saudi Arabia tried to dismiss a landmark challenge to its alleged funding of jihad as an attack on Islam.

    “Of course the Saudis wanted to come out and make us feel ashamed because we’re actually holding an Islamic country accountable,” she said. “I found that completely disgraceful and shameful on their part. Our family members were murdered. That’s why we’re here.”

    Strada’s husband was a bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald inside the World Trade Center when a pair of hijacked planes brought down the Twin Towers in 2001.

    On 9/11, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. For years, however, survivors of the attacks and relatives of the victims proved unable to hold the kingdom accountable because the law restricted them to suing governments that the U.S. has designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

    Pending now before U.S. District Judge George Daniels in New York, the new lawsuit was filed after Congress finally removed Saudi Arabia’s shield with its passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.

    Saudi Arabia’s attorneys at the firm Kellogg Hansen called the claims thin on evidence at Thursday’s landmark hearing.

    “The plaintiffs are repeatedly trying to paint Islam itself as a form of terrorism,” attorney Michael Kellogg said.

    Steven Pounian, an attorney for the 9/11 families with the firm Kreindler & Kreindler, meanwhile reminded Judge Daniels of his ruling on an earlier version of the case.

    “The labyrinthine means by which al-Qaida receives material support will not act as a shield to protect the providers of such support from liability,” Pounian said, quoting the judge’s ruling from Sept., 13, 2010.

    Though Daniels dismissed this earlier lawsuit, the passage of JASTA in 2016 allowed the 9/11 families to refile their lawsuit, with support from newly declassified information that places the kingdom’s agents close to the hijackers.

    Among other materials, a previously suppressed chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report offered new allegations that Saudi agents coordinated with a hijacker cell in Los Angeles.

    Pounian said that he wants the opportunity to depose some of the men who made appearances in that chapter, including Omar al-Bayoumi, a reputed intelligence officer, and Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi consular official.

    “Here, we need the evidence,” Pounian said. “We’re entitled to discovery of the evidence.”

    Kellogg, the kingdom’s attorney, countered that the terrorist attack already has been fully probed.

    “We’re talking about the most investigated event in U.S. history,” he said.

    Strada, the 9/11 widow, said that she and her fellow families are not ready to wrap up their hunt for answers.

    “Make no mistake: Saudi nationals came here and murdered our loved ones,” she said. “We’re here today in this courtroom once again for the jurisdiction to be ruled in our favor that we can now present our evidence into a courtroom. This is something the 9/11 families have been denied for a very long time – for too long.”

    Strada also noted that JASTA, which made today’s hearing possible, resulted from their four-year lobbying effort. The New Jersey-based mother of three is national chair of a group called 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.

    https://www.courthousenews.com/saudi-arabia-invokes-islamophobia-in-landmark-9-11-suit/

  11. Italy: Virgin Mary cradling black refugee ‘Jesus’ stuns Milan

    An art exhibition featuring a duplicate of Michelangelo’s Pieta featuring the Virgin Mary holding a Nigerian refugee in the place of Jesus opened in Milan’s Poggiali gallery on Thursday.

  12. Sweden: Malmo hit by fourth explosion in three weeks

    An explosion rocked central Malmo on Thursday evening, the fourth to hit the Swedish port city in three weeks.

  13. Study: Muslim Migrants Have Medieval Attitudes Towards Jews, Gays, Women, and ‘Infidels’ (breitbart, Jan 18, 2018)
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/01/18/study-muslim-migrants-medieval-attitudes-jews-gays-women-infidels/

    “An academic survey of asylum seekers in Graz, Austria, has found increasing religiosity and deeply worrying attitudes towards Jews, gay people, women, and ‘infidels’.
    The study was carried out by Ednan Aslan, Professor of Islamic Religious Education at the University of Vienna, on behalf of local authorities responsible for integration, the Kurier reports.

    “We wanted to know, who lives with us?” explained Kurt Hohensinner, a city councillor for the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), which currently governs alongside the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

    Professor Aslan interviewed a sample of 288 of the approximately 4,000 predominantly Afghan asylum seekers in state care in Graz, and discovered that some 54.5 per cent believe Jewish people do not care about anyone but themselves, with 44.2 per cent saying that Judaism is actively harmful to the world.

    “For certain refugees anti-Semitism is a matter of course, which has given the refugee movement a new dimension,” Professor Aslan observed.

    More than half – 51.7 per cent – of migrants said they regarded homosexuality as immoral, with 59 per cent voicing opposition to same-sex marriage.

    Two-thirds of those surveyed were young men under 30, and Professor Aslan found attitudes which would be considered decidedly misogynistic by Western standards: 44.2 per cent said they would support the use of violence against wives who were disloyal to their husbands.

    However, the Muslim women Professor Aslan surveyed appeared no less prone to extremism than their male counterparts, with 62 per cent saying they attached great importance to wearing the Islamic headscarf in public, and 44.3 per cent saying they would refuse to shake hands with a man.

    Perhaps most striking was a finding that almost half of the migrants surveyed — 49.8 per cent — said Islam played a bigger role in their lives in Austria than it had in their native countries.

    “Mosques have a certain influence on these people,” observed Professor Aslan, with 70 per cent saying they attended prayers every Friday, and 55 per cent saying they believed unbelievers would burn in Hell.

    Breitbart London has previously reported concerns that Graz’s mosques have already turned the city into a “stronghold” of radical Islam, with experts saying that 11 out of 20 are under constant surveillance for extremist links.

    It is possible that hardline attitudes may be even more prevalent than Professor Aslan’s study suggests, too, with European Union Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator Gilles de Kerchove noting that “most fanatics disguise their convictions [through] increasing use of taqiyya” after the Barcelona terror attacks.

    Taqiyya is a form religiously-sanctioned deception which allows Muslims to lie about their beliefs in the service of a greater cause or to avoid “persecution”, without the threat of punishment in the afterlife.

    Indeed, a Bosnian migrant who ran down and killed four people in Graz in 2015, including a small child, was found to have lied about being a Christian, when he was really a devout Muslim who attended mosque six times a week.”

    • Study: Muslim Migrants Have Medieval Attitudes Towards Jews, Gays, Women, and ‘Infidels’

      Well, alrighty then. Isn’t about time to go all “Medieval” on Islam?

  14. Woman in a Hijab Stars in Hair Product Advertisement for L’Oreal (breitbart, Jan 18, 2018)
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/01/18/woman-hijab-stars-loreal-hair-product-advertisement/

    “L’Oréal Paris UK has cast a woman who wears an Islamic headscarf as a model in a hair care product campaign.

    Youtuber and Instagram personality Amena Khan called the L’Oréal hair care ad campaign, launched Monday, “game changing” for showcasing a woman who completely covers her hair.

    “How many brands are doing things like this? Not many. They’re literally putting a girl in a headscarf – whose hair you can’t see – in a hair campaign,” she told the British edition of Vogue.

    The fashion magazine applauded the “conversations” the ad will “provoke”, saying that L’Oréal has now “democratised” its “Worth It” messaging…”

  15. Turkey to deploy 60,000 soldiers in bases abroad, including in Qatar (memo, Jan 18, 2018)
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180118-turkey-to-deploy-60000-soldiers-in-bases-abroad-including-in-qatar/

    “60,000 armed Turkish soldiers will be deployed across four military bases abroad in accordance with a new 2022 plan, The New Khalij reported today.

    The Turkish National Security Council finalised the plan yesterday, in order to meet Turkey’s military and commercial interests to support its allies.

    Turkey already has 3,000 troops deployed near the Red Sea, in Somalia and a military base in Sudan’s Suakin Island, which is capable of holding some 20,000 military personnel for five years. 200 Turkish soldiers have been deployed in Somalia since October last year, training Somalia’s military.

    In addition to some hundred soldiers currently based in Qatar’s Al-Udeid military base since shortly after the blockade on Qatar, Turkey plans to deploy more to fulfil its 2022 plan. The number has not publically been disclosed.

    Qatar announced today that Turkish commercial firms will be given priority for business during the World Cup in 2022, to be held in the capital of Qatar, Doha.

    Some 112 companies from a variety of sectors will be attending Expo Turkey by Qatar, co-organized with Turkey’s Independent Industrialists and Business people’s’ Association (MUSIAD). Turkish and Qatari commercial firms have already signed business agreements worth some 60 million dollars.”

  16. Prominent Egyptian scholar Qaradawi sentenced to life in prison (alaraby, Jan 18, 2018)
    https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2018/1/18/prominent-egyptian-scholar-qaradawi-sentenced-to-life-in-prison

    “Prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been sentenced by an Egyptian court to life in prison.

    Qaradawi was sentenced in absentia by an Egyptian military court on Thursday, charged with “incitement to murder”, “spreading false news” and “vandalising public property”.

    The same court sentenced eight people to death, including four in absentia, for alleged involvement in acts of violence in 2015, a local judicial source told Anadolu Agency.

    With Qaradawi, another 16 people were sentenced to life behind bars. The alleged acts of violence include the murder of a police officer in Cairo, the judicial source said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media.

    All convicts can appeal the verdicts. Defendants who were tried in absentia will receive retrials if they are arrested or turn themselves in to authorities.

    Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, chairs the International Union of Muslim Scholars, one of 12 institutions and 59 individuals which Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have blacklisted as “terrorist” organisations…”

  17. Rep. Matt Gaetz: I Believe This Will Not End Only With Firings – I BELIEVE PEOPLE WILL GO TO JAIL