Reader’s Links for September 13, 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

113 Replies to “Reader’s Links for September 13, 2018”

  1. New Strzok texts indicate more gov’t leaks amid Russia probe

    Ex-FBI official Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page in December 2016 that he was worried about others ‘leaking like mad’;

    Catherine Herridge reports on the latest revelations.

    • Strzok-Page texts reveal others were ‘leaking like mad’

      Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) discusses the release of new text messages between ex-FBI employee Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which reveal that others were leaking information.

  2. Turkey’s Constitutional Court To Decide If Hagia Sophia Will Become A Mosque

    The Constitutional Court of Turkey is due to decide on Thursday whether Hagia Sophia will be turned into a place of Muslim worship after an appeal made by a private organization called “Authority for Historical Monuments and Environment”.

    The Temple that was built in the 6th Century AD by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian as a Christian Cathedral, is now a Museum.

    The organization had requested the Turkish government in 2004 to make arrangements to open Hagia Sophia as a mosque but did not receive a response.

    Then, in 2005, they appealed to the Council of State, which rejected their request.

    The organization, which campaigns to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque since 2004, claims that the denial of the conversion is against freedom of religion.

    https://eu.greekreporter.com/2018/09/12/turkeys-constitutional-court-to-decide-if-hagia-sophia-will-become-a-mosque/

    =======================================================

    Turkey court rejects plea to open Hagia Sophia for Islamic prayer

    ISTANBUL: Turkey’s top court on Thursday turned down a plea to open the Hagia Sofia, an Istanbul landmark that is now a museum after serving as both a church and a mosque over its long history, for Muslim worshipping.

    The Constitutional Court rejected an association’s demand that the Hagia Sophia be opened for Muslim prayers on “non-competence” grounds, indicating it was not the proper instance to allow any change, the official Anadolu news agency reported.

    In its plea, the association had claimed that barring prayers at Hagia Sophia was breaching the right to freedom of expression and conscience.

    The Haberturk website said that the demand had come from an independent Turkish heritage association.

    The Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum accessible to all by the secular founders of modern Turkey in the 1930s. Secular Turks are wary of any moves to re-Islamise the building or have it reconsecrated as a mosque.

    There has in recent years under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan been an increase in Muslim activity inside the museum, with Koran readings taking place on occasion.

    The Hagia Sophia was constructed in the sixth century as a church in the Christian Byzantine Empire and was the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Istanbul’s former name.

    When Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453 he ordered the immediate conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Islamic minarets were built around its Byzantine dome.

    It served as a mosque until after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire when in the mid-1930s the authorities of the new Turkish state under its secular founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ordered it to become a museum for all.

    Neighbouring Greece, which keeps a close eye on the state of Byzantine heritage in Istanbul, has occasionally expressed concern that the Hagia Sophia’s status as a secular museum could be under threat.

    Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/turkey-court-rejects-plea-to-open-hagia-sophia-for-islamic-prayer-10718916

    =========================================================

    Turkey’s Constitutional Court Rejects Proposal For Hagia Sophia’s Conversion To Mosque

    The Constitutional Court of Turkey decided that Hagia Sophia will not be turned into a place of Muslim worship after an appeal made by a private organization called “Authority for Historical Monuments and Environment”.

    The Temple that was built in the 6th Century AD by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian as a Christian Cathedral, is now a Museum and will remain a Museum.

    The organization had requested the Turkish government in 2004 to make arrangements to open Hagia Sophia as a mosque but did not receive a response.

    Then, in 2015, they appealed to the Council of State, which rejected their request.

    The organization claimed that the denial of the conversion is against freedom of religion.

    http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/turkey-court-rejects-plea-to-open-hagia-sophia-for-islamic-prayer-10718916

  3. Rise of the Right in EU: ‘People Don’t Want to be Raped and Robbed’ – Academic (sputniknews, Sep 13, 2018)
    https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201809131068010284-eu-migrant-conservative-rise/

    “The EU-promoted globalist agenda, socioeconomic experiments and migrant policies have prompted rejection among Europeans and triggered a rise in the power of conservative parties, Sweden-based academic Dr. Bilyana Martinovski told Sputnik, discussing the Swedish 2018 vote and shedding light on the silenced surge in rape cases in the country.

    The rise of conservatism in Europe is “a natural reaction to extremely violent leftist and globalist policies,” Sweden-based academic Dr. Bilyana Martinovski, an associate professor in human-machine interaction, told Sputnik, referring to the emergence of right-wing and anti-migrant parties across Europe.

    “Generally and historically, right equals conservatism: family values, big individual freedom, small government, free market, etc.,” she highlighted, commenting on the stigmatization of right-wing parties by the liberal MSM in Europe. “So, right has nothing to do with leftist ideologies such as international socialism or Mussolini’s Big State fascism, other than as opposition to those. I don’t think there is a rise of the ‘right’ in the sense of ‘Hitler’ or nationalism. There is a rise of people who want to stay alive without being raped, robbed and murdered. One could call it ‘patriotism,’ I would call it ‘survival.'”

    Such is the case in Sweden, the academic noted, referring to the Sweden Democrats (SD) winning about 18 percent of the vote in the recent general elections.

    The professor explained that the SD party actually has a left-wing program, which includes regulation of immigration. “Regulation of immigration leads them to oppose the EU because the EU directs the current immigration policy,” she noted, adding that “this party has struggled for exactly 30 years to get where it is now.”

    “Their leaders have been persecuted and literally abused for three decades by all parties, all institutions, all main stream media, and most people due to their position on immigration and criminality. In globalist terminology, they are the Swedish ‘deplorables,'” she elaborated.

    Dr. Martinovski noted that in fact “the only right-wing party in Sweden is the Alternative for Sweden (AfS), which registered for the first time in spring 2018 and includes young people who left the Sweden Democrats party.” Among other issues, this party advocates “Swexit,” and the “repatriation of 500,000 alien criminals and dysfunctional immigrants.”

    “They love [US President Donald] Trump and they changed the Swedish political discourse this summer with their ‘repartition tour’ around the entire country. What they did has never happen before and they got literally zero coverage by MSM,” she said, suggesting that they had failed to overcome a threshold of 4 percent due to no media coverage.

    Nevertheless, Dr. Martinovski foresees that the AfS will continue its political struggle and may have better chances in the EU election next year.

    Social Democrats Sustained Historic Loss of Trust

    Assessing the results of the vote, the professor highlighted that the largest and oldest left-wing Social Democratic Party “sustained a historic loss of trust among Swedes.”

    Likewise, the liberal-conservative Moderate Party — “pro-EU, pro-NATO and pro-Soros” — has lost some of its positions, but not as dramatically as the Social Democrats, she added.

    “The Social Democrats, yes, historic fail of trust among Swedes and non-Islamic immigrants, if we exclude the 10 percent they got from MENA [Middle Eastern and North African] immigrants with or without citizenship, they would have only 20 percent votes,” the professor pointed out.

    She specified that the Social Democrats “lost dramatically in Swedish areas this year and gained dramatically in immigrant-heavy areas.”

    “On election day, the Social Democrats sent out 700,000 sms to immigrant-dense-area voters offering benefits if they vote for their party and the results came out crystal clear,” she said referring to a report by Dagens Nyheter (DN), a daily newspaper in Sweden.

    Meanwhile, the Sweden Democrats gained additional 5 percent if compared to 2014, i.e., more than 300,000 votes, she underscored. “They were expected to reach 27-30 percent given the polls and voters’ fear of sharing [their] political choice due to violent stigmatization and persecution (e.g., loss of job, socialization issues),” the academic noted.

    ‘Massive Rape Cases Silenced in Sweden’

    The failure of left and center-left pro-globalist forces during the Swedish general elections is quite understandable given their “horrible” handling of the refugee problem in the last few years.

    “Have in mind that most of the migrants are not refugees. For instance, January-August, 2018, Sweden awarded residency to about 87,000 migrants, of which 14,000 were classed as refugees. So, the rhetoric involves the word ‘refugee’ because it appeals to viewers but in reality we have a general immigration and little refugee migration,” she explained.

    However, the greater problem is that refugees are heavily involved in crime and these cases are deliberately silenced by the established MSM, which are partially or fully state-subsidized, she emphasized.

    “The government and the MSM deliberately hide any statistics that show the origin of the perpetrators and persecute those who dared to discuss, do or evaluated such statistics,” Dr. Martinovski stressed, adding that she had found herself in dire straits because she checked and validated a gang-rape statistics she had seen online. She was subsequently removed from the University of Stockholm, where she had worked for years.

    However, the situation has dramatically changed since then, the academic highlighted: “All of a sudden, MSM published part of the statistics, it became an open topic, Jeff Ahl (SD now AfS) raised the issue in parliament for the first time (he was boycotted by Parliament, the feminists did not attend). Yet, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ), which is supposed to offer official statistics, continues to refuse to provide crime statistics based on origin of perpetrator and victim. The MSM published only partial data.”

    The academic underscored that she had gotten 50,000 court registered rape cases from the 43 district courts for 2012-2017.
    In March 2018, Bloomberg raised the issue of the surge in rape case in Sweden highlighting that the number of reported rapes soared 35 percent over the past 10 years.

    In August 2018, Swedish national broadcaster Sveriges Television AB (SVT) reported that 843 people were convicted in the same period, specifying that 58 percent of the culprits were of foreign birth. However, 49,100 cases remain largely silenced, she said, presuming that the authorities were not interested in publishing the damning statistics before the general vote.

    However, despite the fact that no media outlet ever discusses that, never mentioning the 50,000 registered cases, nor the number of rape police reports, the problem of widespread rape by MENA migrants in Sweden has become so prevalent that it can’t be silenced any more, the professor emphasized.

    “Now, the fact that a true conservative and right-wing party as the AfS was just born this year is an effect of extreme criminal violence, extreme economic abuse, welfare decline, plus political and judicial impotence,” Dr. Martinovski highlighted.

    Dr. Bilyana Martinovski is an associate professor in human-machine interaction. She holds a Ph.D. in General Linguistics (2000), an M.A. in Slavic Philology (1992) and a B.A. in Literary Theory and Linguistics (1992) from the University of Gothenburg. She has worked as a senior lecturer in informatics and human-computer interaction at the University College of Borås (2006-13), as a senior lecturer in communication studies at the University of Gothenburg/Chalmers (2007-10), and as a research associate in artificial intelligence and virtual reality at the University of Southern California, US (2001-07).

    The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.”

  4. Alleged Italian ISIS member held in Syria, say Kurds (thenational, Sep 13, 2018)
    https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/alleged-italian-isis-member-held-in-syria-say-kurds-1.770159

    “Kurdish fighters in northern Syria detained an alleged Italian member of the Islamic State group as he was trying to flee across the border to Turkey, they said Thursday.

    The People’s Protection Units (YPG) have captured several foreign ISIS fighters since the jihadists’ so-called caliphate collapsed nearly a year ago.

    “On August 27, a mercenary called Semir Bogana was captured as a result of a special operation conducted by our Anti-Terror Units, when he was trying to flee to Turkey,” said the YPG.

    It said Bogana – an Italian citizen known also as Abu Hureyre al-Muhajir or Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir – was responsible for weapons shipments to ISIS.”

    • DAILY MAIL – Democrats ask FBI to investigate Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over mysterious last-minute accusation dating back to high school by woman who has hired top #MeToo attorney

      Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is expected to be confirmed by October 1 when the court begins its next term

      Top Judiciary Committee Democrat has mysterious letter alleging Kavanaugh of something in high school but she won’t show it to other senators

      Top D.C. #MeToo attorney is believed to be representing the woman at the center of whatever allegations the letter might contain

      Letter came from someone the woman knows and was sent to a California
      congresswoman, who shared it with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein

      Feinstein got it over the summer but chose this week to publicize it at an inopportune moment for Republicans

      Fellow Democrat Dick Durbin says they have referred the unspecified matter to the FBI; New York Times reports that it concerns ‘sexual misconduct’

      Justice Department says the FBI has previously vetted Kavanaugh when he served in sensitive government posts in the past

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6165337/Brett-Kavanaugh-hit-11th-hour-mystery-letter-MeToo-attorney-involved.html

    • DAILY WIRE – BREAKING: FBI Isn’t Investigating Brett Kavanaugh Over Content Of Vague Dianne Feinstein Document

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation has declined to investigate Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over allegations sent to them by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

      Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post quoted an FBI official as saying: “Upon receipt of the information on the night of September 12, we included it as part of Judge Kavanaugh’s background file, as per the standard process.” He also reported that the agency was not opening a criminal investigation into what Kavanaugh may or may not have done as a high school student.

      Kavanaugh received a background check, which was provided to the White House. Then Feinstein gave them this information (that she had allegedly received back in July, but wouldn’t share with even her fellow Democrats until after all questions and interviews with Kavanaugh were conducted), and they passed the info along to the White House as well.

      Zapotosky ends his thread by suggesting that whatever Kavanaugh was accused of may have been serious or deserved scrutiny, but that the FBI isn’t investigating and just passed the info to the White House in case it wants to act, which it most likely won’t.

      In an article for the Post, reporters Seung Min Kim and Elise Viebeck echoed Zapotosky, writing that “the FBI does not now plan to launch a criminal investigation of the matter, which would normally be handled by local authorities, if it was within the statute of limitations.”

      We still don’t know the specifics of the allegation, but unsubstantiated rumors suggest it has something to do with something of a sexual nature while Kavanaugh was in high school. Had this been a serious allegation, one would suspect Feinstein wouldn’t have sat on it for months and would have brought it up during public or private interviews with Kavanaugh.

      https://www.dailywire.com/news/35848/breaking-fbi-isnt-investigating-brett-kavanaugh-ashe-schow

      ======================================================
      the daily caller –KIMBERLEY STRASSEL PICKS APART FEINSTEIN’S KAVANAUGH LETTER: ‘TIMING HERE CANNOT BE IGNORED’

      California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a statement on Thursday alluding to a letter she received that raised concerns about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — but the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel suggested that the whole scenario didn’t exactly add up.

      The letter, to which Feinstein referred in a vague statement, is believed to contain an allegation of some instance of sexual misconduct involving Kavanaugh and a woman when they were both in high school.

      But in Feinstein’s statement, Strassel saw a few things that were potentially problematic.

      FIRST PROBLEM: THE ACCUSATION.

      Strassel began by pointing out reports from the New York Times that suggested Feinstein had at least been aware of the letter’s existence since summer — and argued that if the accusation was truly damning enough to warrant an FBI investigation, it would have been reason enough for Feinstein to present it to authorities immediately.

      SECOND PROBLEM: THE HANDLING.

      Strassel went on to question whether a letter concerning enough to warrant a federal investigation should have been shared with Senate Republicans, who, just like their Democratic counterparts, were charged to “advise and consent” with regard to Kavanaugh’s nomination. Additionally, she suggested that if the accuser had explicitly stated a request to not take things further, Feinstein could be betraying that trust by going to the FBI.

      THIRD PROBLEM: THE TIMING.

      Finally, Strassel argued that the timing of the letter’s introduction into public discourse “cannot be ignored” — it was made public only after Senate Democrats made numerous attempts to stall or delay Kavanaugh’s hearings, all of which were shut down.

      Strassel’s overall assessment was that Democrats and the media were “using a secret letter with a secret accusation from a secret person, to try to take down Kavanaugh. Scary.”

      http://dailycaller.com/2018/09/13/kimberly-strassel-feinsteins-kavanaugh-letter/

  5. New video shows dozens of IS-held Syrian Druze pleading to be saved (mee, Sep 13, 2018)
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/video-shows-dozens-held-syrian-druze-sweida-plead-be-saved-say-theyre-forgotten-840919520

    “Dozens of Syrian Druze captives pleaded to be saved from the Islamic State (IS) group in a recent video, bringing to the forefront a hostage situation that began in July with the group’s bloody attacks on Sweida.

    Around 30 forlorn-looking women and children, with the youngest only a few years old, appeared in the 47-second video, huddled on the floor in a room with peeling paint.

    The video, whose authenticity Middle East Eye could not immediately confirm, was published on Wednesday by a Facebook page created to support those kidnapped. The “Page for Sweida hostages” said it had received the video from IS itself, but did not immediately respond to an MEE request for comment.

    Sweida, the southern government-held province of Syria, had survived much of the destruction and death caused by the years-long civil war that has gripped the country. A large majority of the population are Druze.

    But in July, it was targeted by a string of IS-claimed suicide blasts and shootings that left more than 250 people dead, mostly civilians, in the provincial capital and nearby villages.

    At the time, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 14 women and 16 children were kidnapped by IS, but the group had not claimed the kidnappings and IS has not provided evidence of them being held on its propaganda channels.

    The video would seem to confirm IS’s responsibility for the kidnapping…”

  6. If you are having trouble down loading any youtube videos try reinstalling your downloader, yesterday it didn’t do anything today they have made modifications and it works.

  7. Syria-bound Swiss man held in Bulgaria on terror charges (thelocal, Sep 13, 2018)
    https://www.thelocal.ch/20180913/syria-bound-swiss-man-held-in-bulgaria-on-terror-charges

    “A heavily-armed Swiss man has been detained at Bulgaria’s eastern border with Turkey and charged with terrorism after allegedly planning to go to Syria, prosecutors announced on Thursday.

    The man, whose identity has not been revealed, was arrested at Bulgaria’s main Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint on Tuesday and charged for “terrorism and arms smuggling,” prosecutors said in a statement.

    Two automatic rifles, a smoothbore hunting rifle, a SIG Sauer pistol and ammunition for the weapons were found in his car as well as 24 knives and a map of his route showing the Syrian city of Idlib as his final destination, the statement added.

    The arrest followed an alert put out by the Swiss authorities after the man’s father had reported him and his vehicle missing, together with the arms and ammunition.

    The man told prosecutors that he wanted to help civilians in Syria…”

  8. Newly released photos raise questions about French military role in Syria’s Deir Ezzor (france24, Sep 13, 2018)
    https://www.france24.com/en/20180913-photo-raises-question-french-military-role-syria-deir-ezzor-us-army

    “A French army vehicle was visible in photos of the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor released by the US on Wednesday, raising questions about the nature of French involvement in the region. FRANCE 24’s Wassim Nasr discusses the implications.

    The US Army released two pictures on Wednesday of US troops in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, where US-backed fighters are battling jihadists to recapture the last Islamic State group stronghold. In the photo’s background a French army vehicle is clearly visible, indicating that French troops may also be taking part in the battle there – something the French government has never acknowledged.

    The pictures were quickly pulled from the internet, but not before they raised new questions about the French military’s role in the region.”

  9. “Multiple Building Fires & Explosions in Massachusetts – LIVE BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE”
    Steve Lookner – September 13, 2018 – Live

  10. Trump Should Worry About “Human Sources” Inside the U.S. Government
    They’re hard to find and hard to remove.
    September 12, 2018
    Michael Ledeen

    As we dig in to Bob Woodward’s latest, let’s start by looking at intelligence. One of the most fascinating elements in Woodward’s accounts is what the Intelligence Community told Trump after the election, and how the president-elect reacted. One of Woodward’s claims is that Trump was very skeptical about human sources, and that claim has been confirmed by the then-head of the intel apparatus, James Clapper:

    According to Clapper—a man with a famously inaccurate memory, it must be said—President-elect Trump didn’t put much stock in human sources. Trump said, “l don’t believe in human sources. … These are people who have sold their souls and sold out their country. … I don’t trust human intelligence and these spies.”

    That view is shared by a lot of intelligence professionals, many of whom are extremely suspicious of enemy defectors. Defectors have certainly sold their souls and sold out their country, and the skeptics suspect they just want to get on the American gravy train. This is particularly common when the defectors present a view of their home country that is at variance with the picture painted by our own intel experts.

    I am fortunate enough to have spent considerable time with General “Mike” Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official to defect to the United States. He was the head of Ceausescu’s secret Romanian intelligence service, and, in case you’re still interested, the author of the best book on life under a Communist regime (Red Horizons). When he defected, one of the hottest questions in front of the US Government was whether we could sell advanced technology to Romania without fear the material would end up in Soviet hands. Most of our diplomats and intelligence experts had been gulled by Ceausescu’s claim to be “independent” of the Kremlin. Pacepa knew they were wrong. He knew that anything of military value that reached Romania would end up in Moscow. Our intel experts hated his saying that, and demanded he change his testimony and threatened to send him back to Bucarest, where a death sentence awaited him.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271290/trump-should-worry-about-human-sources-inside-us-michael-ledeen

  11. FACT CHECK: Trump is Right, The Media’s 3,000 Puerto Rico Death Toll is Inflated
    September 13, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    The media falsely claims that the 3,000 death toll estimate is a fact. It’s not.

    Trump falsely claims nearly 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico ‘did not die’ — CNN

    Trump Rejects Puerto Rico Death Toll, Falsely Accusing Democrats of Inflating Numbers — New York Times:

    Why Trump’s tweets about Puerto Rico are obviously untrue — Washington Post:

    The only thing obviously untrue is treating any of the studies claiming a hurricane death toll in the thousands as a fact. Fact checking President Trump for not accepting these estimates is a further abuse of the very idea of what a ‘fact’ is.

    “Nearly 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. President Donald Trump denied this reality as a hurricane barrels toward the Carolinas,” CNN’s Betsy Klein shrieks.

    By aftermath, Betsy means from September to February of next year.

    The reality is that people died. The idea that they died in February of next year because of the hurricane is nonsense that’s being spread by the media for partisan reasons.

    Here’s the actual wording of the study that CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post are using to “fact check” Trump.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271320/fact-check-trump-right-medias-3000-puerto-rico-daniel-greenfield

  12. Google Wept at Trump’s Win, Can It Be Trusted in 2020?
    September 13, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    Google’s TGIF pity party video, posted by Breitbart, isn’t surprising to anyone who has worked recently for a major corporation in a major blue city.

    Post-election responses at big name corporations frequently involved lots of tears, hugs, safe spaces and, in at least one case, a pinata of Trump. It’s not that all their employees are left wing. But enough of management is. And those who aren’t know enough to keep their mouths shut. Those who don’t, like James Damore at Google, get fired. Others leak videos to Breitbart.

    Google’s entire management structure takes it for granted that the election is a catastrophe. There are occasional tips of the hat to respecting the democratic process, Ruth Porat mentions it briefly before going into her story of being a Hillary supporter on election night. It’s clear that these mentions are formalities. Everyone who speaks does so from the standpoint that the election results are bad.

    Very bad.

    It also goes, almost without saying, that had Hillary won, Google’s TGIF meeting would have looked very different.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271319/google-wept-trumps-win-can-it-be-trusted-2020-daniel-greenfield

  13. John Kerry Refuses to Deny Telling Iranian Terror State to Wait Out Trump
    September 13, 2018
    Daniel Greenfield

    You know that Logan Act thing that the Dems occasionally got outraged about under Obama. Apparently it no longer exists, because John Kerry certainly acts like it doesn’t.

    Next January, a report appeared that Kerry had met with a top negotiator for the PLO in London.

    The secret back-channel negotiator, Hussein Agha, was a close confidant of terrorist dictator Mahmoud Abbas, the racist PLO boss who around this same time had delivered a speech in which he cursed President Trump, shouting, “May your house be destroyed.” Agha was a frequent collaborator with Robert Malley, who allegedly ran Soros and Obama’s back channel to Hamas.

    Kerry urged Agha to tell the PLO boss to “be strong”, “play for time” and “not yield to President Trump’s demands.”

    Kerry met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif at the United Nations. According to the Boston Globe story, he not only met with Zarif, but also the presidents of France and Germany, and Federica Mogherini, the former Communist activist who is the top EU lobbyist for the Iran Deal.

    According to the Boston Globe, Kerry’s goal in these meetings is, “to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside.” That’s exactly the behavior the Logan Act was meant to sanction.

    Kerry admitted that he’s still meeting with America’s Iranian enemies and isn’t denying that he’s encouraging them to wait out President Trump.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271315/john-kerry-refuses-deny-telling-iranian-terror-daniel-greenfield

  14. Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over “Forfeiture of Our Values” in China
    https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

    “Jack Poulson worked for Google’s research and machine intelligence department, where he was focused on improving the accuracy of the company’s search systems.
    In early August, Poulson raised concerns with his managers at Google after The Intercept revealed that the internet giant was secretly developing a Chinese search app for Android devices. The search system, code-named Dragonfly, was designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.
    After entering into discussions with his bosses, Poulson decided in mid-August that he could no longer work for Google. He tendered his resignation and his last day at the company was August 31.
    He told The Intercept in an interview that he believes he is one of about five of the company’s employees to resign over Dragonfly. He felt it was his “ethical responsibility to resign in protest of the forfeiture of our public human rights commitments,” he said.
    Poulson, who was previously an assistant professor at Stanford University’s department of mathematics, said he believed that the China plan had violated Google’s artificial intelligence principles, which state that the company will not design or deploy technologies “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

    _________________________________________________________

    “Google bosses have tried to contain the anger by shutting down employee access to documents about the China search engine. Following leaks from an all-hands staff meeting last month, sources said, the company has tightened rules so that employees working remotely can no longer view a livestream of the meetings on their own computers — they can only watch them inside a designated room at a Google office overseen by managers.”

  15. VICE NEWS – Afghanistan’s President Says Trump’s Taliban Strategy Is Working

    Afghanistan’s president says President Trump’s strategy to win the war against the Taliban is working, but that if U.S. troops were to withdraw the country would become a breeding ground for terrorism.

    Speaking exclusively to VICE News, Ashraf Ghani said a 3-day ceasefire with the Taliban in June is proof that Afghanistan is moving towards peace saying, “For the first time the possibility of peace is really at hand”

    Despite Ghani’s optimism, there’s little to be hopeful about. This year is on track to be the deadliest for Afghan civilians since fighting began. The government’s grip on power has also rarely been so shaky. Today, the Taliban control or contest more territory than at any point in the conflict. Recently the group won a major victory in their long-simmering war, taking over the city of Ghazni, a strategic provincial capital less than 100 miles from Kabul.

    Yet the Afghan leader appeared undeterred, describing the loss of Ghazni as a mere , “intelligence failure.” And he stressed that U.S. support is vital to reaching his ultimate goal of reconciliation. “If Afghanistan collapses, international terrorism is going to have a breeding ground, a launching pad that is going to be unparalleled,” Ghani said.

    The Taliban has said it will refuse direct peace talks with Ghani’s government until there is a clear timeline for U.S. forces withdrawal from Afghanistan.

  16. Tucker and Avenatti trade blows in explosive interview

    For months, Tucker has mocked Stormy Daniels’ attorney as a ‘Creepy Porn Lawyer’ and ridiculed his potential presidential bid. Now, Michael Avenatti sits down for an interview.

  17. German Authorities Arrest Daesh-Linked Suspect Who Returned From Syria (sputniknews, Sep 14, 2018)
    https://sputniknews.com/europe/201809141068013786-germany-syria-daesh-suspect-arrest/

    “German police arrested a German citizen over his suspected links to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, outlawed in Russia, Stuttgart Prosecutor General’s Office and Baden-Wurttemberg criminal police department said in a joint press release on Thursday.

    According to the press release, the suspect, 29 was detained on Wednesday in Freiburg in Breisgau.

    Investigators believe that the suspect left Germany in 2013 in order to join the terrorist group. In December 2013, he moved to Syria via Turkey and served in a military camp near Aleppo until February 2014.
    After that, the suspect joined another terrorist group as a fighter and possibly a paramedic during the hostilities in Latakia province.

    At the end of the first half of 2014, he departed from Syria and returned to Germany earlier this year, according to the press release. On Wednesday, the individual appeared before the investigating judge of the Higher Regional Court, who issued a warrant for his arrest and a resolution on imprisonment in pretrial detention center.”

    • This is an interesting Twitter convo about the article:
      More
      Why fake miniatures depicting Islamic science are everywhere – https://aeon.co/essays/why-fake-miniatures-depicting-islamic-science-are-everywhere … via @aeonmag good essay on weird Western ‘multiculturalist’ tick of reimagining other cultures as variants of Western culture (‘we are all the same, but dress differently & eat different food)

      12:52 PM – 12 Sep 2018
      142 Retweets 260 Likes KeleTheresa TuckerCommonerZander TaylorBobert_AnuraagDavi VieiraXardElizabeth Waltz
      3 replies 142 retweets 260 likes
      Reply 3 Retweet 142 Like 260
      New conversation

      Razib Khan
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      Verified account

      @razibkhan
      Sep 12
      More
      but one issue: “Before the current political toxicity took hold, I would have taught a class on Arab Science, rather than Islam and Science.”

      though wrote in arabic & flourished in an arab-domianted polity, most of the great muslim intellectuals before 1000 AD were not arab

      3 replies 9 retweets 42 likes
      Reply 3 Retweet 9 Like 42

      Razib Khan
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      Verified account

      @razibkhan
      Sep 12
      More
      some were not even muslim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C4%81bit_ibn_Qurra

      a specialist audience will know this. but unfortunately lay audiences are highly shaped by the selection of particular words….

      4 replies 7 retweets 42 likes
      Reply 4 Retweet 7 Like 42
      End of conversation
      New conversation

      SLAPSTIK
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      @kaeshour
      Sep 12
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      Replying to @razibkhan @aeonmag
      Maybe it is the original Enlightenment idea of physical universalism (i.e. physical laws are independent of reference frames) – strictly true of Science – overzealously applied to culture?

      1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
      Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 6

      Razib Khan
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      Verified account

      @razibkhan
      Sep 12
      More
      so it’s like cultural scientism?

      i mean this is implicit in marxism isn’t it?

      though i don’t think it’s too high-falutin. the weird new new thing is to assume that all the ‘bad’ things about non-western cultures r from the west and they were hippies before…

      2 replies 6 retweets 18 likes
      Reply 2 Retweet 6 Like 18

      SLAPSTIK
      ?

      @kaeshour
      Sep 12
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      Exactly. Was thinking of Marxism too. A social theory with patjological Physics envy.

      Dikotter describes how the Chinese commies tried to categorize Chinese rural population based on Western feudal hierarchies, couldn’t, and ended up arbitrarily labelling people as “landowners”.

      0 replies 2 retweets 11 likes
      Reply Retweet 2 Like 11
      End of conversation

      Stiernburg
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      @Stiernburg
      15h15 hours ago
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      Replying to @razibkhan @aeonmag
      Modern progressives: “We are all one humanity, the Cultural Iceberg doesn’t exist below the waterline, everyone must deep down be just like me because if they weren’t that would mean they were bad”

      0 replies 1 retweet 2 likes
      Reply Retweet 1 Like 2

  18. BFMTV – En Allemagne, le retour de la fièvre néonazie

    ( 8 min 58 )
    L’extrême droite allemande appelle de nouveau à manifester ce vendredi contre les migrants, ce sera le cinquième grand rassemblement depuis la mort d’un allemand le 25 août dernier. Il a été tué dans une rixe impliquant deux migrants. Parmi les manifestants, beaucoup de militants néonazis. Exceptionnellement, un de leur leader a ouvert les portes de son QG à l’équipe de Grand Angle.

    YT comments: people don’t buy it

  19. MEMRI TV – Texas Imam Hasan Khalil: The Woman’s Husband Is Her Path to Heaven; She Should Submit to His Command

    In a Friday sermon at the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) in Plano, TX, Imam Hasan Khalil said that the best woman is “the one who submits to the command of her husband,” because the husband is the woman’s path to heaven.

    He advised women to fix their schedule according to their husband’s, saying that a woman who goes to lectures while her husband has to serve himself and eat alone has “no idea what religion is.”

    Citing the Prophet Muhammad that “a woman who understands the rights of her husband would not sit until her husband finishes his [meal],”

    Imam Khalil lamented that women are willing to work as waitresses, serving other people for a small hourly wage, while their husbands support them.

    He also said that men who do not give their wives money to spend “do not understand [their] religion.” The August 17 sermon was live streamed on EPIC’s YouTube channel.