Reader’s Links, Aug. 19, 2018

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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

119 Replies to “Reader’s Links, Aug. 19, 2018”

  1. Sovereigntist protester who confronted Trudeau in Quebec pleads not guilty
    THE CANADIAN PRESS
    JULY 23, 2018
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    A protester who angrily confronted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal during Quebec’s Fete nationale holiday weekend appeared in court Monday and pleaded not guilty to one count of obstructing a peace officer in the execution of his duty.

    The Crown refused to remove a bail condition forbidding Matthieu Brien, 31, from engaging in political activity or being in the presence of a politician, said his lawyer Marc Michaud.

    Michaud said if the case isn’t settled by the Oct. 1 provincial election, Brien — who is a member of a political party — won’t be able to vote.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/canada/article-sovereigntist-protester-who-confronted-trudeau-in-quebec-pleads-not/?__twitter_impression=true

    Note: important because of the video from yesterday of the woman being harassed by RCMP for asking JT a question he did not like.

  2. Switzerland is in shock over the brutal beating of five women, aged 22 to 33 in front of club Geneva’s Petit Palace. Two of the women are seriously injured; one was even left in a coma and is still in critical condition, Blick reports.

    A Geneva woman was near the Petit Palace on the evening of the fight. She tells Blick that she talked to one of the attackers before the attack.

    “He was the only one on crutches that evening, it was unusual,” says the woman. According to the newspaper, the perpetrator is said to have hit the women with crutches.

    The Geneva woman describes the alleged perpetrator a 20-22 year old man with Maghrebian (North African) roots. He was “a bit muscular” and had bleached hair. She is certain: “He definitely does not come from Geneva.”

    https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/08/north-african-and-his-friends-brutally-beat-five-women-in-switzerland-leaving-one-in-a-coma/

  3. If ever there was a vivid illustration of illiberal liberalism, it was the response to one of the essays in this very series. After The Economist published an article by Kathleen Stock, reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, which sensitively questioned whether “self-declaration alone could reasonably be the only criterion of being trans”, the Sussex Students’ Union denounced her as a transphobe. In the union’s original statement, it declared “we will not tolerate hate on our campus.” “Trans and non-binary lives are not a debate.”

    These key tropes—“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—are now frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo, invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful. This secular version of blasphemy follows a sacred script, written by those who consider themselves liberals. Dare to query it and you’ll be damned.

    https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/08/17/the-dangers-of-illiberal-liberalism

    Note: important because of where it was published

  4. A number of unidentified “black-clad” individuals are said to have burned down an election tent kiosk belonging to the populist Sweden Democrats party in the city of Gothenburg.
    Police say they believe around ten individuals were involved in the attack with Peter Adlersson of the Western Regional Police saying a preliminary investigation into the incident has been initiated, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/19/black-clad-individuals-set-populist-sweden-democrat-election-kiosk-on-fire/

  5. Operating out of a small room in an unknown country, a new internet radio station broadcasts a programme aimed at campaigning for greater women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

    With melancholy music playing in the background, the presenter of Nsawya FM (Feminism FM) addresses the issue of domestic violence in the Gulf kingdom.

    The presenter’s voice shakes with emotion as she discusses the fate of Sara, a woman she says was killed by a male relative.

    She was a 33-year-old university graduate with a job who lived with her parents – and who wanted to marry a man with a different nationality, that of Yemen.

    “Sara’s dream was ended with five bullets shot by her 22-year-old brother, even though she had been officially engaged with the consent of her parents,” Ashtar, a 27 year old who uses a pseudonym inspired by the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, later told BBC Arabic by phone.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45181505

  6. Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Several years ago the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a law restricting firearms purchases to one per month. This was intended to discourage smuggling of weapons to urban areas outside Virginia with tight gun control laws and (unsurprisingly) high homicide rates. The law didn’t seem to do much good and in a rare outbreak of common sense was later repealed, though there’s recent misguided talk from Attorney General Mark Herring of reviving it.

    During its short period in force, the prohibition spawned a popular saying in the Old Dominion: “Buy one gun a month – it’s the law!”

    A similar attitude may be appropriate in light of an estimate that due to vague statutes and the proliferation of federal regulations – which have the force of law – we wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, and go to sleep unaware we may have committed several federal crimes in the course of the day. The number varies but the average number of crimes per American seems to be about three.

    The more important point is that every one of us is probably guilty of something. “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime,” retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker told the Wall Street Journal in July 2011. “That is not an exaggeration.”

    This means that if they want you, they can get you.
    That in turn means that who gets charged, prosecuted, and jailed is a matter of the relevant officials’ discretion.
    And that in turn means that discretion can and will be politicized.
    Like the boychiks used to say in the good ol’ NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs; ???????? ??????????? ?????????? ???): “Give Us the Man, and We Will Make the Case.” (I guess nowadays, we should say “person.”)

    Let’s stipulate that the true Rechtsstaat, where justice is administered in a politically neutral manner is few and far between in human history. The norm is politicized justice where holders of power – in an elective system, the winners – use the justice system to harass and terrorize the losers.

    But America today must be the only country that’s ever been so goofy that the losers are able to terrorize the winners. Whatever your feelings about the current administration, consider: the feds come in like gangbusters, breaking down doors, rousting targets from their beds, seizing their personal documents and devices, and subjecting them to piled-on charges and questioning designed to result in perjury, obstruction, and conspiracy charges – especially the phony crime of “lying to the FBI” – adding up to decades in jail. Those accused are forced to plead guilty to a lesser charge or bankrupt themselves hoping they will be vindicated by a jury of sheep their peers, where the feds have a 90 percent-plus conviction rate. That’s treatment meted out to Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, and others.

    Conversely, clear evidence of crime, such as mishandling classified material, is a freebie:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-18/have-you-committed-your-three-felonies-today

  7. A security director is backing President Trump’s idea of creating a Space Force, citing a troubling development of counterspace technologies by some of the United States’ biggest rivals.

    Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that while the U.S. still has a “great advantage” over countries like China and Russia, the U.S. military is not doing enough to protect itself.

    “Where other countries are causing concern for us is not that they’re developing space capabilities, but they’re developing counterspace capabilities,” Harrison told Hill.TV during an interview that aired on Friday, referring to weapons and other destructive systems designed for offensive uses.

    “That’s where we’re not fully protected — that’s where the Air Force has failed to change quickly enough and adapt quickly enough to protect our space systems,” he continued.

    Harrison said other countries have developed counterspace weapons that can thwart Amercia’s military advantage, because those weapons can be used against U.S. military and commercial satellites.

    “That is a big concern … our military uses commercial satellites to supplement it’s own capabilities, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 80 percent of our communications bandwidth that went through space was on commercial satellites,” he said.

    http://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/402332-security-director-says-counterspace-capabilities-are-causing-concern

    • When I watch the mass movement I see trained people who are trying to hide their the fact that they are military. Let me rephrase that, I see trained people when I see the Arabs invading Europe, I see an undisciplined mob when I see the Africans.

      Anyone who can watch this video and not be scared doesn’t have two working brain cells.

  8. Illinois: Muslim leader says “Everything we represent goes in total contradiction to what the West represents”
    AUG 18, 2018 6:40 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER 44 COMMENTS
    “My dear brothers and sisters, this idea of fitting in – we need to eliminate this from our vocabulary. Again, we are to stand out. We are a unique nation with a unique set of solutions. We are not to fit in. How dare the truth and the falsehood hold hands? How dare we think that fitting in is the sole purpose of this message?”

    Will US authorities heed this and ponder its implications? Of course not.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20180819132008/https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/08/illinois-muslim-leader-says-everything-we-represent-goes-in-total-contradiction-to-what-the-west-represents

  9. Intelligent Machines
    The “neuropolitics” consultants who hack voters’ brains
    These experts say they can divine political preferences you can’t express from signals you don’t know you’re producing.
    by Elizabeth Svoboda August 16, 2018
    Maria Pocovi slides her laptop over to me with the webcam switched on. My face stares back at me, overlaid with a grid of white lines that map the contours of my expression. Next to it is a shaded window that tracks six “core emotions”: happiness, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, and sadness. Each time my expression shifts, a measurement bar next to each emotion fluctuates, as if my feelings were an audio signal. After a few seconds, a bold green word flashes in the window: ANXIETY. When I look back at Pocovi, I get the sense she knows exactly what I’m thinking with one glance.

    Recommended for You
    How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
    Baseball players want robots to be their umps
    This company embeds microchips in its employees, and they love it
    A small team of student AI coders beats Google’s machine-learning code
    Intel’s “Foreshadow” flaws are the latest sign of the chipocalypse
    Petite with a welcoming smile, Pocovi, the founder of Emotion Research Lab in Valencia, Spain, is a global entrepreneur par excellence. When she comes to Silicon Valley, she doesn’t even rent an office—she just grabs a table here at the Plug and Play coworking space in Sunnyvale, California. But the technology she’s showing me is at the forefront of a quiet political revolution. Campaigns around the world are employing Emotion Research Lab and other marketers versed in neuroscience to penetrate voters’ unspoken feelings.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611808/the-neuropolitics-consultants-who-hack-voters-brains/

  10. London bloodbath: Man arrested after Greenwich hammer attack leaves two women critical (express, Aug 19, 2018)
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1005518/london-news-eltham-greenwich-attack-adderley-gardens-london-crime-met-police-appeal

    “POLICE have arrested the main suspect in an unprovoked hammer attack in Greenwich, south east London, which left a mother and daughter fighting for their lives.

    Detectives had appealed for urgent public assistance in locating Joe Xuereb, 27, after he allegedly attacked the women at random in Adderley Gardens this afternoon.

    The pair, aged 64 and 30, were rushed to hospital where they remain in a critical condition, police said.

    A hammer was recovered from the scene which was “believed to have been used in the assault”, a police spokesman said.

    Following the appeal for help from the public, police said a woman recognised Xuereb and followed him in her car.

    Scotland Yard confirmed they had arrested Xuereb on suspicion of attempted murder at Old Farm Avenue, Sidcup, south-east London.

    The broad daylight attack in a residential street terrified witnesses as they rushed to help the two women.

    One bystander said the pair were “covered in blood” after the unprovoked attack.

    One woman, who asked not to be named, said: “It was horrific…”

  11. TORONTO — A disabled Toronto man had his name removed from the waiting list of a subsidized city apartment because he does not meet the main criteria for living there: being Muslim.

    “It doesn’t make any sense; I lived in Texas, that doesn’t make sense even there,” said Austin Lewis, 21, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

    Lewis is attempting to find subsidized, rent-to-income accommodations in Toronto. He has applied to dozens of apartments through Housing Connections, an organization that manages a waiting list of applicants applying for subsidized housing.

    UPDATE: Toronto city councillor says Muslim-only subsidized housing is acceptable

    This week, Lewis received a letter from Housing Connections, informing him he would be taken off the list for an apartment at 3001 Finch Ave. West, operated by Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace Inc.

    The letter reads, in part: “The vision of this community includes providing housing for households in which at least one person is a member of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at. This means if none of the individuals of your household are a member … you will be removed from the waiting list.”

    https://globalnews.ca/news/2185359/toronto-man-denied-subsidized-housing-for-not-being-muslim/

  12. London bloodbath: Man in his 50s stabbed to death in Catford as crimewave rages on (express, Aug 19, 2018)
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1005087/london-news-catford-stabbing-se6-crimewave-bloodbath

    “A MAN in his 50s has been stabbed to death at a house in Catford in south-east London in the early hours of this morning, the Metropolitan police has confirmed.

    A police spokesman said they attended a house in Ringstead Road, SE6 after a 999 call at 4am, with the man pronounced dead at 5.28am.

    He added: “Officers attended along with the London Ambulance Service and found a man, believed to be in his 50s suffering from stab injuries.

    “He was taken to a south London hospital where his died at 05:28 hours.

    “His next of kin have not been informed.”…”

  13. Australians who won’t unlock their phones could face 10 years in jail

    The country’s Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia’s existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn’t strong enough.

    The Bill takes a multi-pronged approach to accessing a suspect’s data by co-opting third parties to help the authorities. New rules apply to “communication service providers”, which is a definition with a broad scope. It covers not only telcos, but also device vendors and application publishers, as long as they have “a nexus to Australia”.

    These companies would be subject to two kinds of government order that would compel them to help retrieve a suspect’s information.

    The first of these is a ‘technical assistance notice’ that requires telcos to hand over any decryption keys they hold. This notice would help the government in end-to-end encryption cases where the target lets a service provider hold their own encryption keys.

    But what if the suspect stores the keys themselves? In that case, the government would pull out the big guns with a second kind of order called a technical capability notice. It forces communications providers to build new capabilities that would help the government access a target’s information where possible.

    In short, the government asks companies whether they can access the data. If they can’t, then the second order asks them to figure out a way. Here’s a flowchart explaining how it works.

    https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/08/16/australians-who-wont-unlock-their-phones-could-face-10-years-in-jail/

  14. Justice Dept. Says State AGs Misunderstand Cody Wilson Settlement
    DOJ asks judge to deny state AG’s injunction request in 3D-printed gun case

    The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it filed a brief in opposition to a preliminary injunction against a State Department agreement with 3D-printed gun pioneer Cody Wilson. The injunction was requested by a group of state attorneys general in federal court.

    In the brief, DOJ accused the AGs of misunderstanding the issue at hand in the settlement. It further claimed that the AGs want the Department of State to exceed the authority granted to them under current law. DOJ said the case was not about the legality of 3D-printed firearms but, rather, about the potential export of technical firearms data to foreign nationals.

    “This case is not about the regulation of U.S. persons who wish to utilize a 3D printer to manufacture their own small-caliber firearms,” DOJ said in the brief. “Rather, this case concerns the Department of State’s delegated authority to control the export of defense articles and services, or technical data related thereto, that raise military or intelligence concerns. The Department is tasked with determining what technology and weaponry provides a critical military or intelligence advantage such that it should not be shipped without restriction from the United States to other countries (or otherwise provided to foreigners), where, beyond the reach of U.S. law, it could be used to threaten U.S. national security, foreign policy, or international peace and stability. Domestic activities that do not involve providing access to foreign persons, by contrast, are left to other federal agencies—and the states—to regulate.”

    https://freebeacon.com/issues/justice-dept-says-state-ags-misunderstand-cody-wilson-settlement/

  15. Facebook Bans Jewish-Australian Military Veteran Avi Yemini for ‘Hate Speech’

    Avi Yemini, a Jewish-Australian IDF veteran, conservative political blogger and political candidate, has been banned from Facebook allegedly for publishing “hate speech.”

    A popular Jewish-Australian IDF veteran, political blogger, and Australian state government candidate recently found his Facebook page banned, just 48 hours before the blacklisting of Infowars host Alex Jones. Yemini’s Facebook page boasted a follower count of approximately 175,000 but was suspended for “hate speech” according to a notification Yemini received from Facebook. Yemeni has been on the receiving end of death threats on Facebook himself based on his reporting.

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/17/facebook-bans-jewish-australian-military-veteran-avi-yemeni-for-hate-speech/

  16. NY Democrat Wants to Make it a Hate Crime to Call Police on Black People

    We’ve long felt that the legal category of “hate crime” was unnecessary, easily abused, and redundant. If you commit a crime against someone, the sentence should fit the parameters of that crime. Sorry, but assault does not become more heinous when the perpetrator is a racist or the victim is a gay man. By all means, “hate” can and should play a role in a prosecutor’s attempt to prove motive, but to actually have laws on the books that dispense unequal justice because of the ideological reasons behind a crime? No, that doesn’t make any sense, it never has, and it never will.

    What it does, unfortunately, is open up a can of worms where anti-free speech Democrats can begin stretching the definition of a hate crime to fit their needs and pander to their minority constituents. Such is what we’re seeing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where New York State Senator Jesse Hamilton wants to make it a prosecutable hate crime whenever a person calls the police on a law-abiding person of color. The proposed legislation is personal; Hamilton introduced it after a supposed Trump supporter called 911 to report him for campaigning.

    “That’s gonna be a hate crime,” Hamilton said. “This pattern of calling the police on black people going about their business and participating in the life of our country has to stop.”

    http://patriotnewsdaily.com/ny-democrat-wants-to-make-it-a-hate-crime-to-call-police-on-black-people/

  17. strong>Documentary Film “Zamzam Blessed Water”

    ( 15 min )

    A documentary produced by the General Presidency of the Holy Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque represented by the Department of Media and Communication .

    It tells the historical journey of the glorious water and the stages of care and development that continued trough out the ages , how it began? And where is it now during the era of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

  18. Fox News – Dr. Jordan Peterson opens up about his ’12 Rules for Life’

    Clinical psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson discusses his book ’12 Rules for Life’ on a special edition of ‘The Next Revolution.’

  19. #metoo Asia Argento Paid Off Sexual Assault Accuser

    Argento was one of the first and most vocal accusers of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

    Asia Argento, the Italian actress who was one of the first to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, secretly paid off a young male actor accusing her of sexual misconduct in the months after her revelations about the disgraced movie mogul.

    According to a report in The New York Times, Argento paid former child actor Jimmy Bennett $380,000. Bennett claims that in 2013, a then 37-year-old Argento assaulted him in a California hotel only two months past his 17th birthday. The age of consent in California is 18.

    The Times reports that is has seen the legal documents that layout Bennet’s assault claims and the payments arranged between his lawyers and Argento’s.

    Bennett’s lawyers sent a notice of intent to sue Argento last November, claiming that the sexual assault was so traumatic that it affected his mental health and stymied his acting career. The notice was sent to Richard Hofstetter, the late Anthony Bourdain’s long-time lawyer, who was representing Argento at the time.

    The legal documents outlining the accusations against Argento were sent not long after she went public with her own sexual assault allegations against Weinstein. Argento accused Weinstein of raping her when she was 21 in an incident that took place in 1997 in a bombshell New Yorker report published on Oct. 10.

    The Times reports Bennett’s account of the incident, as laid out in the documents. He claims that he arrived at the Ritz-Carlton to meet Argento on May 13, 2013, with a family member. Argento asked to be alone with Bennett and the family member left. Bennett claims Argento gave him alcohol and also showed him notes she had made on hotel stationery. She then proceeded to kiss him, perform oral sex on him before having intercourse with him.

    The documents say that Argento then asked to take a number of photos with him. Photos of Argento and Bennett semi-clothed in bed, as well as an Instagram post of their faces taken on that day, were included in the notice of intent to sue.

    Argento and Bennett worked together on the 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things which Argento also wrote and directed. Bennett, a 7-year-old at the time, played Argento’s son, who is neglected and sexually assaulted by a boyfriend of Argento’s character.

    The two seemingly kept in touch on Twitter up until August 2012 and Instagram until May 2013, though Bennett’s Twitter account is no longer active. On social media Argento and Bennett referred to each other as mother and son, a reference to The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/asia-argento-paid-sexual-assault-accuser-report-1135872