Contributor’s Links post for February 14th, 2019

Daily Links Post graphic

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We muse use it while we can.

About Eeyore

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

107 Replies to “Contributor’s Links post for February 14th, 2019”

  1. EU lawmakers urge Saudi Arabia to end women’s guardianship system (memo, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190214-eu-lawmakers-urge-saudi-arabia-to-end-womens-guardianship-system/

    “The European Parliament urged Saudi Arabia on Thursday to abolish its male guardianship system, under which women have to seek permission from their guardian on issues such as getting married, saying it and other rules reduce women to second-class citizens, says Reuters.

    Parliamentarians also expressed concern over “government web services” that allow male guardians to track women when they cross borders. A Saudi application called Absher notifies men when women travel.

    Although male guardianship has been chipped away at over the years it remains in force. Under the system, every Saudi women are assigned a male relative – often a father or husband but sometimes an uncle, brother or even a son – whose approval is needed if she is to marry, obtain a passport and travel abroad.

    In their resolution, approved by more than two-thirds of the assembly, EU lawmakers urged the Saudi government to immediately abolish the system. Current rules in the kingdom effectively make women “second-class citizens”, the document said.

    EU states should continue pressuring Riyadh on improving women conditions and human rights, lawmakers said. Resolutions by the parliament are not binding but can influence decisions made by EU governments and EU institutions.

    The resolution passed a day after the EU executive commission added Saudi Arabia to its blacklist of countries that pose a threat because of lax controls on money laundering and terrorism financing.

    The bloc’s relations with Saudi Arabia have cooled since the murder of Washington-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2.

    Despite reforms introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that have reduced discrimination, such as the lifting of the driving ban for women, lawmakers said: “the Saudi political and social system remains discriminatory”.

    They urged the release from Saudi prisons of women’s rights defenders, including some who were arrested after campaigning to end the ban on women driving.

    Lawmakers also called for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, where it is still applied to punish non-violent offences, such as drug smuggling, treason, adultery and apostasy, they said.

    The EU parliament passed a resolution in October urging an international investigation into Khashoggi’s killing and called on EU states to stop the sale of weapons to the kingdom.”

  2. 187 ex-jihadists surrender in Cameroon (ahram, Feb 14, 2019)
    http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/325602/World/International/-exjihadists-surrender-in-Cameroon.aspx

    “Nearly 200 Cameroonians who were members of Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist group have returned home and surrendered to the authorities after breaking with the organisation, the government said Thursday.

    A total of 187 former jihadists from the district of Mayo-Sava, in Cameroon’s Far North province, gave themselves up, many of them returning from Nigeria on foot, provincial governor Midjiyawa Bakari said.

    After surrendering to the authorities in the towns of Kolofata and Meme, they were enrolled in a programme to reintegrate them into society, he said.

    They were taken on Wednesday to a base of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MMF), an anti-Boko Haram force combining soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, he said.

    “They don’t represent any danger or any risk — quite the opposite, everything will be put in place for them to resocialise, learn the spirit of patriotism and public duty,” Bakari said.

    About a thousand former jihadists, including children under 15, had already joined the reinsertion programme.

    After being assessed to establish that they have definitively broken with Boko Haram, ex-fighters are taken to Mowoure, also in the Far North, where they are given farmland with which to earn a living.

    Boko Haram’s nearly 10-year insurgency is epicentred in northeast Nigeria, but spilled over into Niger and Cameroon as well as the Far North province.

    It has left more than 27,000 people dead and about 1.8 million others homeless.”

  3. Rental Bikes Missing from Strasbourg Found in Casablanca (moroccoworldnews, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/02/265796/rental-bikes-velhop-strasbourg-casablanca/

    “Two Velhop rental bicycles, named after the eponymous Strasbourg bicycle rental company, were recently found in Casablanca.

    A photo, apparently taken in Casablanca, circulated on Moroccan media Facebook pages. In the photo can be seen a man carrying two Velhop bikes.

    Last year, a GPS chip placed on a bicycle helped the Casablanca police dismantle a large network of stolen bicycle smuggling months later, according to France Info…”

  4. Spain Granted Asylum to 55 Moroccans in 2018 (moroccoworldnews, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/02/265774/spain-asylum-moroccans-irregular-migration/

    “The Spanish government is refusing asylum requests from many Moroccan migrants as the country is considered to be in a stable state.

    Spanish news outlet El Pais said that Pedro Sanchez’s cabinet granted asylum to 55 Moroccan migrants. However, the Spanish government denied 595 other requests.

    Despite the denial of hundreds of requests, El Pais said that Moroccans “appear in the statistics among the main beneficiaries of refugee status for the second consecutive year.”

    The news outlet said that most of the migrants have been granted asylum due to their sexual or gender identity.

    The news outlet added that Hirak Rif activists are also among the beneficiaries.

    According to El Pais, the number of Moroccan migrants granted asylum “contrasts” with remarks made by the Spanish Secretary of State for Migration, Consuelo Rumi, who confirmed that Morocco “is not a country whose inhabitants are granted asylum or refuge.”

    In her visit to Rabat on October 3, 2018, the Spanish official explained that applications from Moroccans for political asylum are generally rejected because Spain does not view Moroccan migrants as refugees.

    She added that “emigration is not the solution because the journey of irregular migrants often ends badly.”

    The Spanish official also said that “the European dream does not exist.”

    Morocco and Spain have been facing pressure due to the increase of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan and Maghreb countries.

    The Spanish Ministry of Interior said last year that Moroccan nationals make up the highest number of the 38,000 migrants believed to have entered Spain in 2018.

    In October 2018 alone, 40 Moroccans applied for asylum. The migrants are a group of activists who were involved in Rif protests in Al Hoceima province in 2016 and 2017.

    Undocumented migrants from Morocco are returned home in accordance with bilateral agreements signed between Morocco and Spain.”

  5. Ban or not, Valentine’s brings windfall for florists (tribune, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://tribune.com.pk/story/1910025/1-ban-not-valentines-brings-windfall-florists/

    “Despite a ban, residents of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi are all geared up to mark February 14 as the day of love, Valentine’s Day.

    Amidst the frenzy, stores selling flowers and other paraphernalia are milking the opportunity to make a quick buck by decorating their stores in red colours, flowers, teddy bears and heart-shaped plushies…”

  6. Former far-right Dutch MP van Klaveren tells of reactions to his conversion to Islam (hurriyetdailynews, Feb 14, 2019)
    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/former-far-right-dutch-mp-van-klaveren-tells-of-reactions-to-his-conversion-to-islam-141223

    “Joram van Klaveren spent several years serving far-right and anti-Islam politics in the Netherlands. But van Klaveren, once a right-hand man to Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, took the world by surprise when he announced his conversion to Islam recently. “You are like a vegetarian working in a slaughterhouse,” Wilders told van Klaveren upon his shift to his newfound faith, the former MP recalled in an interview with Hürriyet Daily News on Feb. 12.

    Van Klaveren was a lawmaker for the Party of Freedom (PVV), led by the Dutch populist Wilders, from 2010 to 2014. He was seen as Wilders’ right-hand man and was also the party’s spokesperson on Islam.

    “I favored Wilders’ policies especially on economy because he promised very low taxes, a smaller government etc. Of course he was critical of Islam, I was too. Because in 2004 an artist, Theo van Gogh, was killed by the people who called themselves Islamists. 9/11 and other attacks added to that. Also in my studies Islam was taught very superficially, thus I developed a wrong view on Islam. I was thinking all Muslims wanted to kill Christians,” he said, recalling the time he joined the PVV.

    Van Klaveren fought a relentless campaign against Islam for many years. “I studied comparative religion at university, that’s why I took that position, but I was the spokesperson of the party on Islam. So after Wilders I was the main person who could talk about Islam. That had lasted seven-eight years.”

    But his views drastically changed during a party rally in 2014.

    “Wilders asked supporters ‘do you want more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands?’ Then the crowd shouted back ‘fewer, fewer, fewer.’ Wilders smiled and answered: I’ll make sure that it will happen. Then I thought it’s not about political ideology anymore, but the idea of getting rid of an ethnic group. A lot of people thought he sounded like the Nazi [Joseph] Goebbels. I thought he was crossing a line. Then I left the party,” he said.

    Van Klaveren, 40, said he had changed his views halfway through writing an anti-Islam book, which morphed into a defense of the religion.

    “While I was writing the book I started to make researches, then I wrote to Timothy Winter from Cambridge University, who got the name Abdul Hakim Murad after he converted to Islam. I thought he would not answer me because I was a far-right politician. But he did. After some conversations, he said: ‘The Islam you think you know is more like Wahhabism.’ I asked him: ‘What is real Islam then?’ He gave some book names that he wanted me to read; he sent me some other books. He answered my questions and opened the gates for me. I started re-writing my book,” van Klaveren added.

    He said that all the stereotypes he had about Islam, including how they treat women “badly” or wanted to take over the world through terrorism, vanished in the months he read about Islam.

    He said he discovered that many anti-Islam stories had no basis at all. “Then I started reading about Prophet Mohammad and his life. I discovered another Prophet Mohammad who was very gentle, very helpful, very understanding towards people who were not Muslims at all. Then I thought what I knew was not the real Islam,” he said.

    “When I started socializing with imams in the Netherlands they said that I slowly turned into a Muslim, ‘believe it or not you are a Muslim,’ they told me after several conversations,” van Klaveren, who grew up in an orthodox Protestant Christian environment, said.

    He took the shahadah, an oath which means “There is no God but Allah and his prophet is Mohammed,” last November. Since then he has learned some of the essential prayers. His next target is to pray five times a day. “I have to learn everything as I am a religious baby, I have the intention in the heart,” he said.

    When asked how his family reacted to his decision, he said: “Some thought I went crazy. But my brother and my wife said that they feel happy for me. My grandfather is very religious. He is in sick bed now that’s why I hesitated. But he woke up one day and I was all over the news. He was in shock. Old political friends were not happy. Wilders told me that he sees me as a vegetarian working in a slaughterhouse.””

  7. Turkish aid bodies inaugurate mosque, schools in Ghana (aa, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/turkish-aid-bodies-inaugurate-mosque-schools-in-ghana-/1393169

    “Two Turkish aid bodies inaugurated a national mosque and two schools in Ghana on Thursday.

    Turkey’s state-run Religious Affairs Directorate and the Aziz Mahmut Hudayi Foundation, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization, finished the construction of two primary schools and a national mosque and its complex in the West African nation.

    According to a statement from the foundation, the mosque’s cornerstone was laid when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid Ghana an official visit in 2016.

    Its construction was sponsored by the late brothers Fahrettin and Abdullah Tivinkli, Turkish philanthropists and founding members of the foundation.

    Meanwhile, a six-classroom boarding school was built for 80 students in the Wa region of Ghana through donations by another Turkish philanthropist Nihat Karatas.

    Another philanthropist, Emin Ustun, also sponsored construction of a primary school in the country’s Kumasi region. The school boasts 12 classrooms and a capacity for 120 students.

    The Turkish bodies have also dug wells and distributed packages of basic goods and meat in the Wa and Kumasi regions.”

  8. Democratic Whip praises Ilhan Omar as ‘incredible young lady’ with ‘tremendous future’

    • We are watching the Democrat Party return to its roots, racism and totalitarian attitudes. They played the role of caring for the working class until they discovered that this wasn’t going to get them as many votes as identity politics would. The ethnic groups they are now supporting need to study what is happening because the Democrats are showing they will through any one group under the bus when another group will give them more votes.

    • More evidence the Dems are throwing the Jews under the bus and when enough Moslems are in the US the Blacks will go under the bus also.

      Connolly Defends Omar: ‘She just got there’

      (Richard: Meaning she hasn’t learned to censor what she says to ensure that the voters don’t learn what she really thinks.)

  9. Sweden dismiss swimming head for anti-headscarf remarks (aa, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/sweden-dismiss-swimming-head-for-anti-headscarf-remarks/1393301

    “The Swedish Athletic Federation dismissed its swimming federation president due to anti-headscarf criticisms Thursday.

    The federation decided Ulla Gustavsson will be removed from office after a meeting.

    The federation said it would not discriminate against athletes, nor allow anyone to do it.

    The move came after Gustavsson criticized a photograph of an athlete wearing a headscarf in the publication of the athletic federation’s online website.

    “Headscarf is a means of pressure on children and a sign of sexuality. Child marriage, honor killings, do we have a place for these in our values? If immigrants want to do sports, they can do it without a headscarf,” Gustavsson said.

    Swimming Federation Vice President Stefan Persson criticized the remarks and said the group serves all children on equal terms.”

  10. European Court of Human Rights upholds Danish deportation of former citizen who incited terror (thelocal, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.thelocal.dk/20190214/european-court-of-human-rights-upholds-danish-deportation-of-former-citizen

    “In a unanimous decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has rejected an appeal by Moroccan Said Mansour against being deported from Denmark for terror-related convictions.
    Mansour, who is known in Danish media as the “Bookseller from Brønshøj” in reference to the district of Copenhagen with which he is associated, was recently deported to Morocco after twice being convicted in Denmark of inciting terror.

    The decision has now been upheld by the ECHR.

    “This appears to be a thorough, well-considered decision, which we take into account,” Mansour’s defence lawyer Michael Juul Eriksen told news agency Ritzau via written message.

    Mansour’s appeal was based on three elements of the European Convention on Human Rights which he believed the decision did not fulfil, primarily article 3, which states that “(n)o one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

    The Moroccan claimed that he was in danger in the north African country, having criticised its king and government.

    But the ECHR did not agree with that claim, and did not consider that Mansour would be treated in breach of article 3, should he be arrested and placed on trial in Morocco.

    “The court finds, based on international material, that the human rights situation in Morocco has generally improved over several years, and that authorities are working to comply with international human rights,” the court wrote in its verdict, according to Ritzau’s report.

    The European court also referred to an assessment made by Denmark’s Refugee Appeals Board (Flygtningenævnet) on March 3rd, 2018, which found that Mansour was not in danger in Morocco.

    But the court did recognise that torture does still take place in the north African country, and is conducted by both police and security services.

    According to the court, persons particularly suspected of terror or for threatening state security are those subjected to torture.

    Mansour was placed under arrest and detained upon his arrival in Morocco. The exact nature of charges against him is unknown.

    Morocco’s ambassador in Denmark has previously stated that Mansour is suspected of being part of a 2003 terror attack in Casablanca, in which 41 people were killed.

    In 2016, Mansour had his Danish citizenship revoked after being convicted for posting online threats, screeds, photos, links and messages that praised Osama bin Laden and called on his readers to join al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra front. The Moroccan has also posted online videos of soldiers being executed in Syria and Iraq.

    Additionally, he was convicted on charges related to the editing and publishing of three books considered to be terrorist propaganda.

    He was deported from Denmark on January 4th this year.”

  11. Eight Illegal Alien Families Are Suing U.S. Taxpayers For $48 MILLION Over Border Detention Policies

  12. Birmingham stabbing: Boy, 16, ‘fighting for his life’ after attack by ‘masked’ knifeman (express, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1087159/birmingham-stabbing-Joseph-Chamberlain-College-attack-highgate-news

    “A TEENAGER is fighting for his life after he was stabbed in the chest by a “masked” knifeman in a shocking attack in broad daylight outside his college in Birmingham.

    The 16-year-old was attacked at about 4pm on Thursday outside Joseph Chamberlain College in Highgate. A fellow student told how they held the victim after he was attacked and urged him to “stay with me, stay with me”. Police say the victim was taken to hospital in a critical condition.

    Two others were also injured in the attack on Belgrave Road.

    A West Midlands Police spokesman said a 16-year-old has been arrested following the incident.

    An 18-year-old witness said the attacker was wearing a mask.

    He told Birmingham Live how he saw the victim “tumbling towards the floor”…”

  13. Revealed: The fates of the Britons who left to fight for the caliphate and how 450 of them have already returned to the UK (dailymail, Feb 14, 2019)
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6706621/Revealed-fates-Britons-left-fight-caliphate.html

    “An estimated 900 Britons travelled from the UK to join the murderous Islamic State.

    Terrifyingly, as their caliphate crumbles, at least 260 of them are still unaccounted for.

    The biggest nightmare for the security services is trying to keep tabs on battle-hardened maniacs.

    Some 180 with UK passports were killed on the battlefield either by allied warplanes or in fighting on the ground.

    An estimated 450 of them are believed to have returned to Britain, where they are kept under as close scrutiny as the security services can manage.

    Only a handful have been prosecuted, mainly because of a lack of evidence.

    Here we profile some of the more notorious Britons who went to Syria after the caliphate sprang up in 2014:……”

  14. Un Gilet Jaune met en PLS le plateau de LCI en dénonçant les manipulations des médias (14/02/19)

    Yann Le Bihan (figure des Gilets Jaunes) dénonce sur LCI les manipulations des médias visant à diaboliser les Gilets Jaunes en insinuant que le mouvement est responsable de l’incendie du domicile de Richard Ferrand ou des tags antisémites sur le portrait de Simone Veil.

    Il confirme la préparation d’un Acte XIV non-déclaré dont il communiquera le lieu de rassemblement au dernier moment.
    – LCI, 14 février 2019, 22h34

    • Read the Bill. Read the 1,169-page three times!

      It the House of Representatives had to read the Funding Bill three times, I guarantee you, it would not be 1,169 pages long.

      Click Page to Enlarge

      THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
      of the United States
      At the First Session of the first Congress, begun at the City of New York, March 4, 1789
      http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=51

      Tuesday, April 7, 1789

      III – Of Bills.

      Every bill shall be introduced by motion for leave, or by an order of the House on the report of a committee; and, in either case, a committee to prepare the same shall be appointed. In cases of a general nature, one day’s notice, at least, shall be given of the motion to bring in a bill; and every such motion may be committed.
      Every bill shall receive three several readings in the House previous to its passage; and all bills shall be despatched in order as they were introduced, unless where the House shall direct otherwise; but no bill shall be twice read on the same day without special order of the House.
      The first reading of the bill shall be for information, and, if opposition be made to it, the question shall be, “Shall the bill be rejected?” If no opposition be made, or the question to reject be negatived, the bill shall go to its second reading without a question.
      Upon the second reading of a bill, the Speaker shall state it as ready for commitment or engrossment, and, if committed, then a question shall be whether to a Select Committee, or a Committee of the whole House; if to a Committee of the whole House, the House shall determine on what day. But if the Bill be ordered to be engrossed, the House shall appoint a day when it shall be read the third time. After commitment, and a report thereof to the House, a bill may be re-committed, or at any time before its passage.
      All bills ordered to be engrossed shall be executed in a fair round hand.
      The enacting style of bills shall be, “Be it enacted by the Senators and Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled.”
      When bill shall pass, it shall be certified by the Clerk, noting the day of its passing at the foot thereof. No bill amended by the Senate shall be committed.
      http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=54

  15. This post concerns a popular Australian television presenter, Sonia Kruger.
    https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/sonia-kruger-vilified-muslims-in-today-show-segment-20190215-p50y11.html
    Sonia Kruger vilified Muslim people when she called for Australia to close its borders to those of the Islamic faith during a segment on the Today show, but did not engage in racial vilification because Muslim people living in Australia are not a race, a tribunal has found.
    In a decision on Friday, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal said Kruger’s”vilifying remarks” in July 2016 had the capacity to “encourage hatred towards, or serious contempt for, Australian Muslims by ordinary members of the Australian population”.
    However, the racial vilification complaint filed by Australian Muslim man Sam Ekermawi was dismissed by the tribunal because “the evidence does not support a finding that Muslims living in Australia are a ‘race’ by reason of a common ethnic or ethno-religious origin”.
    “Apart from that issue, we would have found that both [Kruger and the Nine Network] engaged in racial vilification of the Australian Muslim community, being Muslims living in Australia,” the tribunal said.
    Kruger, the co-host of Channel Nine’s Today Extra program, left her fellow presenter David Campbell and Today host Lisa Wilkinson, now at Network Ten, visibly discomfited on July 18, 2016, after she said she would like to see the immigration of Muslims to Australia “stopped now … because I would like to feel safe”.
    Her comments followed a terrorist attack in Nice on Bastille Day and were a response to a column by conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, who wrote in the News Corp press that jihadist terrorists had made France “Europe’s bloodiest battlefield” because “France let in the most Muslims”.
    “We are fools not to change our own immigration policies to protect ourselves,” Bolt said.
    Kruger said on air: “Personally I think Andrew Bolt has a point here that there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks.”
    The former Dancing With The Stars host added she had “a lot of friends who are Muslim who are peace-loving, who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics”.
    She said Japan had a population of 174 million – inflating its population count by almost 50 million people – including 100,000 Muslims, and “you never hear of terrorist attacks in Japan”.
    “Personally I would like to see it [the immigration of Muslims] stopped now for Australia because I would like to feel safe as all of our citizens do when they go out to celebrate Australia Day and I’d like to see freedom of speech,” Kruger said.
    The tribunal said Kruger’s comments were “calm and measured” and she “made it clear she did not think every Muslim in Australia or overseas was a fanatic”, but taken in context her comments were likely to encourage or incite “feelings of hatred towards, or serious contempt for, Australian Muslims as a whole” by linking them to terrorist attacks.
    It accepted that Kruger and Nine were “acting in good faith without malice and not for an improper purpose” but said it “cannot accept that the remarks of Ms Kruger were ‘reasonable'”.
    “She expressed the view that the size of Australia’s Muslim population meant there should be no further Muslim migration irrespective of any other matter. This appears to be unsupported by any evidence or material placed before the Tribunal,” the tribunal said.
    In an impassioned retort after Kruger’s on-air comments, her co-host David Campbell said: “This breeds hate. This sort of article breeds hate.”
    Wilkinson interjected that “in fact the very first person who was killed, mown down in that truck, was a Muslim woman so it’s killing Muslims, it’s indiscriminate”.
    “Just to clarify, Sonia, are you saying you would like our borders closed to Muslims at this point?” Wilkinson said.
    Kruger replied: “Yes I would.”
    Wilkinson added that this was the ” Donald Trump approach”.
    A day after the segment, Kruger delivered an on-air statement in which she said she felt Bolt’s column “made some relevant points” but wanted to “make it very clear that I have complete respect for people of all races and religions”.
    “I acknowledge my views yesterday may have been extreme. It is a hugely complex and sensitive issue, it’s an issue with no simple answer and it’s an issue that cannot be fully discussed in a short televised segment.”