Reader’s Links for September 10, 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.

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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

138 Replies to “Reader’s Links for September 10, 2018”

  1. Germany has been hit with another impromptu protest after a man in the eastern town of Köthen was killed following a physical altercation with two Afghan migrants.

    Around 2,500 demonstrators hit the streets of Köthen on Sunday, carrying German flags and chanting “we are the people”.

    Authorities described around 500 of the protesters as “far-right,” but there were no arrests during the march.

    https://www.infowars.com/2500-germans-stage-impromptu-protest-after-man-killed-following-fight-with-migrants/

  2. Bolton threatens sanctions against International Criminal Court

    The Trump administration on Monday threatened to impose sanctions on International Criminal Court (ICC) personnel if it continues with an investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, a move that could raise questions about the future of the court.

    National security adviser John Bolton, a longtime ICC critic, made the announcement in his first major speech since joining the Trump administration.

    “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton told members of the conservative Federalist Society gathered at a Washington, D.C., hotel.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/405871-bolton-threatens-sanctions-against-international-criminal-court

  3. Hollywood grande dame Carole Cook goes after Trump: ‘Where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?’

    Broadway legend Carole Cook implied she wants to see President Trump get assassinated, asking “Where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?” when approached by a TMZ cameraman in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

    The 94-year-old Cook’s comment delighted her husband, who quickly reminded viewers that John Wilkes Booth killed a president, who was obviously Abraham Lincoln.

    Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. in 1865.

    “Where is he when you need him?” Cook asked again before someone off camera asked, “So we need to kill President Trump?”
    –– ADVERTISEMENT ––

    “Why not?” Cook asked “Now, will that get me in trouble? Will I be on an enemy’s list? My god I hope so… just keep me out of jail.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/09/10/hollywood-grande-dame-carole-cook-goes-after-trump-wheres-john-wilkes-booth-when-need-him.html

  4. Jeweler gets death threats for ‘take a knee’ billboard

    STURBRIDGE — The owners of a local jewelry store say they received death threats after a billboard advertising their business included a reference to NFL players who kneel during the national anthem in protest of racial injustices.

    Scott A. Garieri, who owns Garieri Jewelers on Main Street, put up the billboard message Saturday on Route 20 at Richardson’s Corner Road in Charlton. It has a picture of a man kneeling on a football field inside a stadium while holding a ring as he proposes to a young woman. The billboard reads: “If you’re going to take a knee this season please have a ring in your hand.”

    Mr. Garieri and his daughter, Alexandria L. O’Brien, 31, of Charlton, who manages the store, said since Tuesday they have received hundreds of negative comments on FaceBook, including some that told Ms. O’Brien to kill herself.

    “People have said they’re going to urinate on our property, vomit on our showcases, and I was told to kill myself,” Ms. O’Brien said Wednesday. “I am not going to kill myself. I can assure you that. And the billboard is not coming down. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But when you tell someone to go kill themself, you have absolutely crossed the line.”

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=54225?omhide=true

  5. Seven were wounded, four seriously, after an Afghan male went on a knife rampage in the 19th district of Paris late Sunday evening.
    The attacker, reported in French press to be a 31-year-old Afghan national male, started attacking passers-by outside a cinema around 11-pm local time on Sunday evening. Parisian district police launched an investigation and have reassured the public they do not believe there is a terrorist motive behind the mass-stabbing, regardless the counter-terrorism office is closely watching the investigation reports Le Monde.

    Initially, people were attacked with an iron bar, but the assailant threw that at one of his victims and continued stabbing passers-by. Eyewitness reports say the first attack took place near an ongoing game of petanque, a popular French street game and that players threw the wooden or metal boules at the knifeman’s head to stop him.

    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/09/10/seven-wounded-including-two-british-tourists-in-paris-knife-attack/

  6. John Kerry: Donald Trump ‘clearly doesn’t understand America’

    Former Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said President Trump’s recently lamenting the indictments of two Republican congressmen so close to the midterm elections demonstrates that Mr. Trump doesn’t understand America or how the country’s justice system is supposed to work.

    Mr. Kerry said Mr. Trump chastised Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “following the law” after the Justice Department recently announced charges being brought against GOP Reps. Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, two early supporters of the president, and that the president put the charges in the context of how they could affect the midterm elections.

    “You have a president who clearly doesn’t understand America, doesn’t understand the Constitution, doesn’t understand the role of the Justice Department, the separation of powers, and that’s dangerous,” Mr. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

    Mr. Trump tweeted last week that Democrats must “love” Mr. Sessions now.

    “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……” the president tweeted.

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=54246?omhide=true

  7. Mr. Anonymous Exposes an Even Deeper StateIf Democrats and resistance Republicans think they are going to depose President Trump or thwart his presidency by endlessly savaging him in the name of protecting the republic, they don’t have any concept of the fierce resolve of his supporters.

    The latest salvo in the resistance’s efforts to nullify the will of the American electorate is an anonymous New York Times op-ed purportedly penned by a “senior official” in the Trump administration. This pretend super-patriot declares that Trump faces “a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader. … The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”

    Well, congratulations. But this sounds far more like a damning admission of an unelected, self-important saboteur than a persuasive indictment of the duly elected president. And FYI, Trump does fully grasp it. What do you think he’s been shouting about for two years running?

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=54240?omhide=true

  8. At least eight people were injured during two serious incidents in Paris within just 12 hours of each other.

    This morning a man stabbed a postman in the throat with a pair of scissors then tried to attack other people nearby, as well. The attack took place in Paris’s 11th district, police sources say.

    The incident comes less than 12 hours after an Afghan migrant commit a series of attacks with a knife and an iron bar, in Paris’s 19th Boulevard.

    On Sunday evening around 10:00 p.m, in the Quai de la Loire district, the Afghan attacked several people with a knife and an iron bar.

    https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/09/the-new-paris-two-major-stabbing-spree-attacks-within-12-hours/

  9. In exactly one week, the European Parliament will hold a crucial debate and vote on a proposal so terrible, it can only be called an extinction-level event for the Internet as we know it.

    At issue is the text of the new EU Copyright Directive, which updates the 17-year-old copyright regulations for the 28 member-states of the EU. It makes a vast array of technical changes to EU copyright law, each of which has stakeholders rooting for it, guaranteeing that whatever the final text says will become the law of the land across the EU.

    The Directive was pretty uncontroversial, right up to the day last May when the EU started enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a seismic event that eclipsed all other Internet news for weeks afterward. On that very day, a German MEP called Axl Voss quietly changed the text of the Directive to reintroduce two long-discarded proposals — “Article 11” and “Article 13” — proposals that had been evaluated by the EU’s own experts and dismissed as dangerous and unworkable.

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/why-whole-world-should-be-arms-about-eus-looming-internet-catastrophe

  10. Netherlands Ends Financial Support for White Helmets in Syria (sputniknews, Sep 10, 2018)
    https://sputniknews.com/world/201809101067909100-netherlands-syria-groups-financial-support/

    “The government of the Netherlands reported the complete cessation of assistance to opposition groups and other organizations in Syria due to the inefficiency of the program, a letter to the lower house of the parliament reads.

    “The opportunity to quickly change the situation [in Syria] is extremely small,” the letter by Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag, published on the government’s website, says.

    The ministers said that the program “did not bring the expected results,” while the troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad, in their opinion, “will soon win.”…”

  11. #AbolishICE: Illegal Alien Assaults on ICE Personnel Keep Rising
    September 9, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    How much of an influence is the left’s media backed campaign to demonize ICE personnel while treating illegal alien migrants as the latest civil rights cause? And to what extent is the pro-illegal lobby hoping for its own Ferguson Effect by targeting ICE?

    Assaults on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents reached a decade high in 2017, and assaults on Border Patrol agents also have surged in recent years, according to government numbers that seem to support agents’ claims that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally increasingly are looking to fight rather than flee.

    The new numbers, reported by Homeland Security’s inspector general, could even be underselling the problem, investigators said, because the government doesn’t do a good job of tracking incidents, and agents and officers don’t always report them properly.

    But the report does signal renewed danger particularly on the southwest border, where agents say a surge in illegal immigration in recent years generally correlates with growing violence.

    Prosecutors, meanwhile, often refuse to bring charges or win cases against the perpetrators, the audit found.

    That’s one way to abolish ICE. And it’s another example of lefty privilege.

    When you keep comparing people to Nazis, violence is sure to follow.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271283/abolishice-illegal-alien-assaults-ice-personnel-daniel-greenfield

    • The US is almost as far down the road to communism as the rest of Western Civilization, we are just taking a different route. We have elected a President who is working to preserve freedom but the opposition party is busy starting a civil war. So far they haven’t succeeded in starting the civil war but the war is much closer then many people think. Some Friends of mine who use to think I was going paranoid are now convinced that a civil war is coming and that it isn’t very far in the future.

  12. Obama Claims He Never Tried to Silence Conservative Opponents, He Forgets Operation Rushbo
    September 9, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    Obama’s attack on Trump was filled with lies, omissions and more lies.

    “It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don’t like. I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people.”

    It shouldn’t be Democrats or Republicans who say that we shouldn’t eavesdrop on reporters, prosecute them or target pundits who disagree with you, with organized campaigns.

    But Obama did those things anyway.

    Operation Rushbo comes to mind. As does James Rosen.

    The Justice Department spied extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two days of Rosen’s personal emails, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

    In a chilling move sure to rile defenders of civil liberties, an FBI agent also accused Rosen of breaking anti-espionage law with behavior that—as described in the agent’s own affidavit—falls well inside the bounds of traditional news reporting.

    UPDATE: Fox News responds with a blistering statement that asserts Rosen was “simply doing his job” in his role as “a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”

    The revelations surfaced with President Barack Obama’s administration already under fire for seizing two months of telephone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press. Obama last week said he makes “no apologies” for investigations into national security-related leaks

    It shouldn’t be Democrat or Republican… but it is.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271279/obama-claims-he-never-tried-silence-conservative-daniel-greenfield

  13. Obama Posed With Farrakhan, Accuses Republicans of “Racial Nationalism”
    September 9, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    See if you can spot the Republican racial nationalism in these pictures.

    n his Trump-bashing speech, Barack Hussein Obama accused Republicans of an “appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled”. I don’t see a whole lot of veils up there.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271281/obama-posed-farrakhan-accuses-republicans-racial-daniel-greenfield

    (Richard: This would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.)

  14. 9 Steps to Successfully Counter Jihad
    The crucial strategies that will turn the dire conflict in America’s favor.
    September 10, 2018
    Jamie Glazov
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    9 Steps to Successfully Counter Jihad.
    By Jamie Glazov

    While the Obama administration continues to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to direct American foreign policy and, therefore, to implement “strategies” that render America defenseless in the face of Jihad and stealth Jihad, there are some alternative strategies that have the potential to turn this catastrophic situation around completely in America’s favor.

    Below are 9 concrete steps that, if implemented by a future American administration, would make a big difference in preserving our civilization and in defending Americans from terrorism:

    1. Label the Enemy and Make a Threat Assessment.

    The Obama administration continues to refuse to label our enemy and, therefore, it continues to enable our defeat in the terror war. It is urgent that we name our enemy (i.e. Islamic Jihad) and definitively identify what ideology inspires our enemy (i.e. Islamic law).

    2. Scrap “Countering Violent Extremism.”

    “Countering Violent Extremism” is the pathetic and destructive focus of the Obama administration in allegedly fighting the terror war. On the one hand, this “focus” is vague to the point of being meaningless and completely incapacitates us. On the other hand, this focus allows the administration to perpetuate the destructive fantasy that there are other types of “extremists” — who just happen to be the Left’s political opponents — that pose a great threat to the country.

    For example, as Stephen Coughlin has revealed, the “violent extremists” the administration is clearly worried about are the “right-wing Islamophobes” whom the administration obviously considers to be the real threat to American security.

    The “Countering Violent Extremism” is trash and needs to be thrown in the garbage.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271287/9-steps-successfully-counter-jihad-jamie-glazov

  15. Trump administration closing PLO mission in Washington

    The Trump administration announced Monday that it is closing the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington, citing Palestinian leaders’ resistance to peace talks and attempts to get an international court to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes.

    The announcement marks the latest blow by the United States against the Palestinians amid a stalled Mideast peace process.

    “The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said during a speech to the Federalist Society. “The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/09/10/trump-administration-closing-plo-mission-in-washington.html

  16. VANCOUVER – A man has been arrested and charged in the death of Burnaby teen Marrisa Shen.

    Ibrahim Ali, 28, is charged with first-degree murder of Shen, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Monday.

    The 13-year-old Burnaby girl was reported missing after she failed to return home by 11 p.m. on July 18, 2017. Police launched a search, using GPS to track her phone. Early on July 19, 2017, Shen’s body was found in Burnaby’s Central Park.

    Investigators said the murder appeared to be random.

    At a news conference Monday morning, IHIT police said Ali was arrested Sept. 7 without incident in Burnaby where he had been living.

    “We still believe that this crime was a random act, meaning Marrisa did not know the suspect and vice versa,” said Supt. Donna Richardson, the officer in charge of IHIT. She said she could not talk about motive and other details as the case is now before the courts.

    “Our focus has always been to determine what happened and gather the information and evidence necessary to bring the person identified before the courts. IHIT has reached a significant milestone in this investigation, however there is still work to be done as we work with the B.C. Prosecution Service in preparation for trial.”

    The Shen family also released a statement through police following news of the arrest.

    “We would like to take this opportunity to thank the public for all of their ongoing support and concern for us in this past year. We are aware that so many people reached out to the police to provide information and we were so grateful for that,” it said.

    “We would also like to thank the media for all of their attention to Marrisa’s case. Lastly, we would like to thank the police for all their hard work and specifically IHIT for their perseverance.

    “We hope that justice will now be served and that Marrisa can finally be at peace in heaven.”

    Ali came to Canada 17 months ago from Syria as a refugee, according to IHIT. The officer in charge of the investigation said they did not know whether he came in as a government or privately sponsored refugee.

    Chris Friesen, director of the Immigrant Services Society of B.C., which helps Syrians settle here, did not recognize Ali’s name when reached Monday. He said there are about 3,500 Syrian refugees living in 69 different B.C. communities, and he knows of no others who have had been in trouble with police.

    He called Shen’s murder a “horrific, unfortunate” case, but cautioned that it shouldn’t cast suspicion on all refugees.

    “When a tragedy like this happens, it can and does impact public opinion and it’s unfortunate that entire communities can be whitewashed by the horrific alleged behaviour of one individual. We have found the vast, vast majority have left all of that behind – the trauma, the war – and just want to live a peaceful and productive life in Canada, paying taxes and supporting their kids in school,” Friesen said.

    He said the Vancouver ISS office has a Vancouver police officer who comes regularly to meet with the refugees and assure them that law officials are here to support them in Canada.

    Ali had had no previous dealings with police, according to IHIT.

    A law enforcement source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has reached out to the Canada Border Services Agency to learn more about Ali. A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board was unable to find records of any public proceedings in which Ali was involved.

    Investigators have not said how they came to identify Ali as a suspect.

    Ali is scheduled to appear in Vancouver provincial court on Friday at 9:30 a.m.

    The case was IHIT’s “largest active investigation” since the team was formed in 2003. More than 1,300 residents were canvassed, more than 600 interviews conducted, and more than 1,000 hours of video footage was reviewed as part of the investigation. A website launched to solicit tips from the public also saw 80,000 visits.

    https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/police-to-share-significant-update-in-murder-of-burnaby-teen-marrisa-shen

  17. Pence Says Cabinet Never Discussed Removing Trump From Office

    In an interview aired on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Pence replied “no, never,” when asked if he had taken part in any such talks…

    (Laura King, Los Angeles Times) Vice President Mike Pence might have the most to gain from a premature end to Donald Trump’s presidency, but in an interview aired Sunday, he forcefully denied engaging in any discussion about invoking the 25th Amendment to eject Trump from office.

    The vice president, who made appearances on two major Sunday news-talk shows, also delivered a sweeping condemnation of Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s depiction of a capricious and incurious president, and again denied authorship of a stinging anonymous op-ed published last week in The New York Times that describes high-level officials discussing removing Trump.

    Pence said he was willing to take a lie-detector test to back up his denial of personal authorship of the critique, but said he had not asked his staff whether any of them had penned the anonymous critique because he fully trusted none had done so.

    Trump has vowed to root out the op-ed writer, described by The New York Times as

    https://www.libertyheadlines.com/pence-cabinet-discuss-removing-trump/

  18. I often find this guy frustrating because his goal seems to more often sound clever than to be clever. This time, though, he makes a valid point. Trump can be derailed by the debt implosion. If this happens the left will have a seriously terrifying upper hand as they capitalize on misery (even though Obama and Clinton created the debt).

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/three-bagger/

  19. Turkey: Torture, Sexual Abuse Rampant in Prisons

    by Uzay Bulut
    September 10, 2018 at 5:00 am

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12959/turkey-prisons-torture-sexual-abuse

    In the early 2000s, after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) first came to power in Turkey, its leader, then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, proclaimed a policy of “zero tolerance” for torture.

    In June of this year, Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül repeated the same mantra. “We — as the AKP government — are implementing a policy of zero tolerance for torture,” he said.

    Statements by many prisoners, their lawyers and human-rights defenders, however, tell a much different story; victim and witness accounts reveal that torture and other forms of unlawful abuse are increasingly widespread in Turkish jails and prisons. Inmates in a jail in ?anl?urfa in southeast Turkey, for example, tell of the plight of 27-year-old U?ur Yelo?lu, who they say has been isolated and tortured so badly since his imprisonment seven months ago that his level of functioning is like that of a baby. He has apparently lost his memory and is unable to walk, or even eat, on his own. In addition, these inmates said, the prison’s healthcare staff are lax in their treatment of him.

  20. TORONTO – PEGIDA CANADA – 09 -08-2018 We begin our march to the cenotaph to place a wreath Sept 8, 2018, Toronto

  21. UN chief Antonio Guterres warns of ‘runaway’ climate disaster by 2020

    United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that if action is not taken by 2020 to stop the effects of global warming, it will be too late to avoid the disastrous consequences that will follow.

    “Climate change is moving faster than we are,” said Guterres ahead of this week’s global climate summit in San Francisco. “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change with disastrous consequences.”

    The U.N. billed the speech as a major address on climate change ahead of the global summit in California that begins on Tuesday and the upcoming U.N. General Assembly, where progress on the Paris climate change accord will be a major focus.

    The Guterres speech followed a report issued Sunday at the close of U.N. climate meeting in Bangkok, which showed that there is uneven progress by countries in developing measures for understanding global progress in meeting the Paris goals.

    “This underlines the urgent need for continuing work in the coming weeks,” said Patricia Espinosa, the U.N. climate chief.

    The guidelines for reporting on progress have been in the works since 2016. The hope is that they can be adopted at the U.N.’s annual conference on climate change in December in Poland.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/un-chief-antonio-guterres-warns-of-runaway-climate-disaster-by-2020

    • The debt trap works both ways, China is hoping to get enough money out of their new colonies to keep their economy from collapsing, I don’t think they have time enough to collect that money before they collapse.

  22. VICE News –Nazis May Have Founded Sweden’s Rising Political Party

    Sweden’s far-right populists won their biggest ever share of the vote in Sunday’s general elections, underlining how immigration has reshaped politics even in one of Europe’s most tolerant democracies.

    Although the Sweden Democrats largely set the agenda during the campaign, the far-right party made more modest gains than once feared, coming in third behind the two mainstream parties who are now scrambling to form the next government.

    But while the populists may consider their 17.6 percent disappointing, after earlier polls had predicted they would finish in at least second place, analysts say the nationalist surge represents an alarming change in Sweden’s political landscape.

    The populist party still won their largest ever share of the vote – up from 12.9 percent in 2014 – and successfully shifted both mainstream parties closer to their position on key issues of immigration, integration and identity.

    “The mainstream has certainly moved closer to their positions,” Matthew Goodwin, visiting senior fellow in the Europe programme at the Chatham House think tank told VICE News.

    Both the governing center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Moderates recorded among their worst results in modern history, with the rival blocs led by both parties left in virtually a dead heat.

    With nearly all votes counted Monday, the Social Democrats, together with their allies the Greens and the Left Party, had won 40.6 percent of the vote, while the opposition centre-right Alliance was on 40.3 percent. With overseas votes yet to be counted, the center-left bloc holds 144 seats, and the center-right 143.

    The country now faces weeks of uncertainty as both blocs engage in frantic horse-trading to try to form the next government.

    Both of the main blocs have said they will not work with the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in fascism and neo-Nazism, as part of a tactic to isolate the group and its populist politics.

    The far-right party commanded strong polling numbers during the campaign as it hammered home its core issues of immigration, crime and integration to a voting public anxious over the arrival of 163,000 asylum seekers during the height of the migration crisis.

    But after surging to first-equal in polls in mid-July, support for the populists slackened in recent weeks, as other issues gained attention — including climate change, following a summer of record high temperatures and raging wildfires.

  23. French think tank calls for ‘halal tax’ on Muslims (mee, Sep 10, 2018)
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/french-think-tank-proposes-halal-tax-muslims-530870402

    “France should impose a “halal tax” to pay for an association that would govern Muslims practicing in the country, a French think-tank has recommended in a report published on Monday.

    In its report “The Islamist Factory”, the Institut Montaigne also proposes that instead of being instructed in mosques, the Arabic language should be learnt in more state schools, following a national curriculum.

    The recommendations come as President Emmanuel Macron has promised to redefine relations between Islam and the state and establish rules this autumn to ensure that the religion “will be practised everywhere in accordance with the laws of the republic”.

    The official rule is strict separation between religion and state, with the former considered a strictly private matter.

    The rule has been used to justify bans on the wearing of Muslim veils by public service employees as well as any wearing of fully concealing head-to-toe veils in public places.

    Macron has been under pressure after a wave of terrorist attacks since 2015, which have killed more than 230 people in France.

    In the report, Hakim El Karoui, a Franco-Tunisian consultant, writes that Salafis are “gaining ground” among Muslims practicing in France, particularly among young people and France should construct its own “Muslim religious discourse” to challenge the Salafi discourse.

    “France must equip itself with important means and networks to disseminate this counter-speech. Who can do it? Muslims,” he writes.

    Despite any reluctance they might have, Muslims in France and Europe “must mobilise… because the solution will come from them,” he writes.

    Karoui’s report also suggests once again that the country should establish a national Muslim association through taxes collected from practicing Muslims, a measure that his institute has proposed before.

    “The idea is to create a neutral organisation, independent of the countries of origin, independent of those who hold the mosques today, to take a very small sum of money on every act of consumption and reinvest that money in theological work, because it’s the mother of all the battles,” he writes.

    In a follow up interview with AFP, Karoui suggested that taxable acts could include going on pilgrimages and buying halal products.

    “Muslims have enriched themselves, contrary to what is believed, and they practice a lot,” he told AFP. There is therefore “more and more money related to consumption: the pilgrimage, the halal, the gift”.

    Since the 1980s, French politicians have repeatedly attempted to formulate a “French Islam”, with the dual aim of managing the integration of immigrants and also defending against religiously-inspired violence.

    But these attempts have been met by criticism from Muslim leaders in the country, where 5.7 million Muslims make up the second largest religious community…”

  24. US threatens to arrest ICC judges if they pursue Americans for Afghan war crimes (france24, Sep 10, 2018)
    https://www.france24.com/en/20180910-usa-trump-threatens-arrest-icc-judges-american-soldiers-afghan-war-crimes

    “The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.

    White House National Security Advisor John Bolton called the Hague-based rights body “unaccountable” and “outright dangerous” to the United States, Israel and other allies, and said any probe of US service members would be “an utterly unfounded, unjustifiable investigation.”

    “If the court comes after us, Israel or other US allies, we will not sit quietly,” Bolton said.

    He said the US was prepared to slap financial sanctions and criminal charges on officials of the court if they proceed against any Americans.

    “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system,” he said.

    “We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans,” he said.

    Bolton made the comments in a speech in Washington to the Federalist Society, a powerful association of legal conservatives.

    Investigation into detainee abuse

    Bolton pointed to an ICC prosecutor’s request in November 2017 to open an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the US military and intelligence officials in Afghanistan, especially over the abuse of detainees.

    Neither Afghanistan nor any other government party to the ICC’s Rome Statute has requested an investigation, Bolton said.

    He said the ICC could formally open the investigation “any day now.”

    He also cited a recent move by Palestinian leaders to have Israeli officials prosecuted at the ICC for human rights violations.

    “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton said.

    “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We certainly will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own.”

    ‘Threat’ to US sovereignty

    The condemnation of the ICC added to the White House’s rejection of many supranational institutions and treaties the president does not believe benefit the United States.

    Bolton also condemned the record of the court since it formally started up in 2002, and argued that most major nations had not joined.

    He said it had attained just eight convictions despite spending more than $1.5 billion, and said that had not stemmed atrocities around the world.

    “In fact, despite ongoing ICC investigations, atrocities continue to occur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and many other nations.” he added.

    But Bolton said the main objection of the administration of President Donald Trump is to the idea that the ICC could have higher authority than the US Constitution and US sovereignty.

    “In secular terms we don’t recognize any higher authority than the US constitution,” he said.

    “This president will not allow American citizens to be prosecuted by foreign bureaucrats, and he will not allow other nations to dictate our means of self defense.””

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