Reader’s links for December 13, 2019

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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 must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

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

106 Replies to “Reader’s links for December 13, 2019”

  1. FLASHBACK: IMRAN AWAN WORKED IN PAKISTAN WHILE MANAGING HOUSE DEMS CYBERSECURITY – HEARING TODAY
    video – 2 minutes 4 seconds
    Judicial Watch announced that a federal court ordered a hearing for Friday, December 13, 2019, on the Congressional Democrat IT (information technology) scandal involving the Awan brothers. The hearing was ordered in accordance with a November 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, which was filed after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to respond adequately to two separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02563)).

  2. WOMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BOYS DRESSED AS PRINCESSES TO MAKE THE BEHAVIOR “NORMAL”
    Includes video – 38 minutes 52 seconds [Norwegian with English subtitles]
    The woman, Kitty Wolf, “is offering young boys the opportunity to have their pictures taken dressed up as their favorite princess, saying, ‘the more photos of boys playing princess we put out there,’ the more “normal” it will become,’” reports the Blaze. Selwyn Duke
    https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/item/34319-woman-photographs-boys-dressed-as-princesses-to-make-the-behavior-normal

  3. JAMES O’KEEFE DESTROYS BIG TECH’S POLITICAL BIAS IN SILICON VALLEY DEBATE
    video – 4 minutes 26 seconds

  4. UN SPEAKER SEEKS RADICAL POPULATION REDUCTION – ESPECIALLY OF WHITES
    video – 22 minutes 4 seconds
    A leading United Nations speaker, Oscar-winning Woodstock Director Michael Wadleigh, called for radical reduction of the human population–especially among white people. The reason why it is so important to reduce the population of Europeans and their descendants is because their nations are more developed and they consume more resources. Even Scandinavia and Sweden are destroying the planet, he said, warning that average Swedes consume 40 times more than average Tanzanians. As for the solution: “Don’t have children – and I’m looking at you, white man,” he told The New American. Alex Newman

      • Happiness, health and success
        Where’s the cake for the rest?
        Already not breeding
        But why aren’t they bleeding
        So I can wear love on my chest?

    • Dr. Wadleigh hides some sinister truths behind his “clever messaging” and jovial personna. I’m sure Stalin and Mao came across as friendly when they felt like it, too. I found it difficult to hear him because I was choking on his jet-fuel-emissions as he zips around the globe spreading his hippy-dippy collectivism. And while he’s flying “back to the garden”, UN Agendas 21 & 30 want us all back to the cities where we are more easily collected and controlled. Meanwhile, back at the globalist ranch, the virtuous human traits of ambition, industriousness and productivity are necessarily suppressed for the “greater good” while our masters decide who succeeds and who fails. No thank you. Wanting to reduce the population of higher IQs in the service of lower ones is an astounding assessment given this man’s lofty accomplishments in life, and will result in the kind of retrograde animalism he lauds so effusively in “…advanced Islam…” All remarkable, given that the real advancement of humanity is the result of willful individualists applying their genius against consensus, whether it be in science, art or politics. In all of his nonsensical wisdom his message is to deny this individualism, which in the interests of humanity is most embodied by the success of the United States of America. I agree that conspicuous consumerism is vulgar, but let the marketplace take care of this by drying up credit, which it will, so keep your centrally-planned social engineering to yourself, brother. And signing up to an ideology while fully aware that communism has murdered over 100 million people makes him a gregarious, jet-setting, hypocritical, deceptive, dangerous, arsehole.

      Wouldn’t it be a great leap forward for humanity if Black Israelites, and all the other lost farts in the world, would shift their focus to the real threats, for a change?

  5. NATO WANTS TO BECOME THE ATLANTIC-PACIFIC ALLIANCE
    No one stops the Pentagon. While the military deployment project around China mentioned by Hillary Clinton in 2011 had officially been abandoned, NATO had just had it endorsed by the London Summit. The process has been launched and is expected to start with Australia’s accession in 2026. Thierry Meyssan
    https://www.voltairenet.org/article208535.html

  6. LEBANON: SHIITE PROTESTER IN BEIRUT DESTROYS HIZBULLAH MEMBERSHIP CARD – COMPLAINS: WE ARE DYING OF HUNGER
    video – 4 minutes 22 seconds [Arabic with English subtitles]

  7. GERMANY: THE GLOBAL JUDGES
    EU Prepares Global Sanctions Regime
    BERLIN/BRUSSELS(Own report) – The EU is preparing a new sanctions regime and wants to impose coercive measures on human rights violators – both presumed and real – throughout the world. It will be equivalent to two US sanctions laws Washington uses to penalize undesirable persons from Russia and other countries. Those listed under the US law can no longer travel to the United States and any assets they may have in the USA would be frozen. During a conflict with Turkey, the Trump administration enforced one of those laws, the “Global Magnitsky Act”, to impose sanctions on Turkey’s justice and interior ministers. The EU foreign ministers have now instructed the European External Action Service to prepare a corresponding law for the EU, the ‘European Magnitsky Act”. ‘This will be a tangible step reaffirming the EU’s global lead on human rights,” the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell declared. An EU diplomat was quoted saying that the aim is to show that “we have muscles.” It is therefore an instrument of power draped in a humanitarian disguise.
    ? The “Global Magnitsky Act”
    ? The “European Magnitsky Act”
    ? EU Internal Disciplinary Measures
    ? “A Global EU Sanctions Regime”
    ? “Europe’s Vocation”
    https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/news/detail/8137/

  8. BORIS JOHNSON: THIS GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN GIVEN A POWERFUL NEW MANDATE TO GET BREXIT DONE – 2 mins 8 secs

  9. As the results of the UK’s 2019 election continue to come in, it appears Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a landslide victory. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed that he will not lead his party in any future elections but will stay on during a period of reflection about what happened in this campaign. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has lost her seat. Experts react to the news.

    Brexit
    Paul James Cardwell, Professor of Law, University of Strathclyde

    A Conservative majority is what Boris Johnson wanted in order to ensure that his Brexit deal passed the Commons. There is now little in principle to stop his deal passing.

    Various EU leaders will also be relieved that a majority in the Commons will clear a path forward. The exit day of January 312020 seems more certain that any of the previous “Brexit days” due to the lack of domestic political hurdles. However, as has been noted repeatedly during the campaign, this would not mark the end of Brexit as a process. The transition period is due only to last for 2020 and what follows from that is still unknown – the future relationship between the UK and the EU is highly uncertain.

    https://news.yahoo.com/boris-johnsons-conservatives-set-win-043418682.html

  12. Germany Attack: Pensioner Killed And Two Others Hurt As Man Ploughs Car Into Pedestrians In Heidelberg
    December 12, 2019 Staff WriterComment(0)
    A pensioner has died and two others injured after an attacker ploughed a car into pedestrians in a busy square in Germany.

    The man, who was believed to be carrying a knife, was shot by police after the attack in the city of Heidelberg on Saturday.

    Police spokeswoman Anne Baas said one of the three people struck outside a bakery on Saturday afternoon was a pensioner and was seriously hurt.

    The elderly victim, who was a German 73-year-old man, later died of his injuries.

    Investigators at the scene in Heidelberg. (AFP/Getty Images)

    The suspect – thought to be a 35-year-old German – reportedly fled before being found by a police patrol.

    https://insiderfinancial.net/germany-attack-pensioner-killed-and-two-others-hurt-as-man-ploughs-car-into-pedestrians-in-heidelberg.html

  13. ROME (REUTERS) – THREE senators of the ruling anti-establishment 5-Star Movement quit the party on Thursday to join the far-right League opposition group, cutting the government’s already slim majority in the upper-house of parliament.

    The move, which was announced by League leader Matteo Salvini, will make it harder for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to govern an already fractious coalition and leave him vulnerable to opposition ambushes in the 321-seat Senate.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-12-12/italys-coalition-loses-three-senators-in-blow-to-already-tiny-majority

  15. Man Threatening Police With Knife ‘Neutralised’ in Paris (sputniknews, Dec 13, 2019)
    https://sputniknews.com/europe/201912131077564837-man-threatening-police-with-knife-neutralised-in-paris/

    “A police operation is underway in the La Défense financial district of Paris, after a man threatened police officers with a knife.

    Paris police have neutralized a man who threatened their colleagues with cold arms, the police prefecture of the French capital said on Friday.

    “The man who threatened police officers with weapons was neutralized by police officers who interfered,” the Paris Police Prefecture wrote on Twitter.

    According to BFMTV media outlet, around 10 am, a man armed with a knife advanced towards three police officers on foot patrol.

    After the man was asked to put down his knife, the officials took out their weapons and fired five times. The man was hit but was conscious. On the ground, he told the policemen that he wanted to kill them.

    The incident occurred in the suburbs of Paris, in La Defense business district.”

  16. “The boy’s mother explained on Twitter that she believed the attackers were motivated by a Trump 2020 campaign hat that her son had previously worn to school.

    She said that the boy stopped wearing the hat due to harassment, but that the bullying continued.

    ‘To be clear, my son bought his Trump 2020 hat with his own money at the flea market a few weeks ago,’ the mother wrote.

    ‘He was proud to wear it. He wore it to School, but due to immediate bullying he put it away & didn’t wear it to school again, sadly the damage was already done & [he] was now a target,’ she said.”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7787635/Florida-school-bus-bullies-pummel-14-year-old-boy-Trump-hat.html

    Phase One: When the teachers first have the power. The rabid Hate Speech correctors.
    https://youtu.be/4NY9I4jTbPs

    Phase Two:
    “This article provides a detailed description of how educators were insulted, tortured, and even killed by their students. Mobilized as members of a new youth organization named “Red Guards,” the students attacked the educators for being “capitalist intellectuals.” In those schools, twenty-seven educators were murdered; more committed suicide subsequent to torture. Cruel oppression silenced resistance. Stories about bloody campus persecutions were too politically sensitive following the Cultural Revolution, so have heretofore received scant attention in the historical narrative…”
    http://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/1966teacher.htm

    • Supplanting the bully.

      ‘All men are rapists,’ – Feminism
      ‘All Christians and Jews are pigs and dogs’ – islam.
      ‘All captalists are bourgeoise’ – Communist-Oligarch Alliance.

      Worse off than under those before.

      The Ancient Greeks’ ‘let the wheat and the tare grow side by side,’ is because without subsidy, the tares will die off on their own accord. The meek shall inherit the Earth. These who live by win-win, and not a Blockbuster Video chain using a win-lose model of profit through penalties from late returns.

      The West subsidizes Socialism and islam, big-time. Unless it changes, it too will die. At the hands those they ‘help’- who want it to die. Welcoming your killers into your Safe Spaces.

  18. This is a nasty one. Has video, and graphic photos in original story at friatider:

    ‘Hitler-worshipping Islamist’ migrant nearly kills Swedish teen during hours of brutal torture
    https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/12/hitler-worshipping-islamist-migrant-nearly-kills-swedish-teen-during-hours-of-brutal-torture/

    An African migrant described as a “Hitler-worshipping Islamist” has been sentenced to five years in prison for kidnapping a young Swedish couple and subjecting an 18-year-old male to hours of brutal torture.
    Pa Demba Nyassi, a 20-year-old Gambian national, kidnapped 18-year-old Erik and his girlfriend in Farsta, Sweden before subjecting the teen to hours of torture with a machete and metal bars while making his girlfriend watch the entire ordeal, Fria Tider reports.
    Erik has shared the harrowing story with the Swedish alternative news outlet Samnytt.
    The kidnapping and torture began when Erik along with his girlfriend visited Nyassi to discuss a past, separate incident which involved one of Nyassi’s friends, an Afghan migrant, allegedly raping Erik’s girlfriend. Nyassi had allegedly mentioned that he would corroborate Erik’s girlfriend’s claim to police until he discovered she was half Jewish.
    Shortly after, Nyassi went on an anti-Semitic rant before stabbing Erik in his torso and puncturing his lung. The Gambian migrant then forced Erik into a bathroom where he stripped him of his clothing, sliced him with the blade, burned cigarettes into his body, and beat him with a metal rod.
    Nyassi then shaved the hair off of Erik’s body to somehow “show what Hitler did to the Jews”. After that, he poured household cleaning products into the wounds that he had inflicted on the teenage victim earlier.
    Nyassi forced Erik’s girlfriend to watch the entire incident take place and threatened to cut off her “Jewish nose” if she didn’t promise to shut her mouth about the rape. He also is said to have made several phone calls to his Afghan friend – the alleged rapist – who offered up torture advice.
    After managing to escape from the apartment, Erik was hospitalized with “life-threatening” injuries which included a fractured skull, a brain hemorrhage, a broken jaw, a punctured lung, and a knee injury.
    The anesthesiologist who treated Erik told the court that Erik’s survival was a miracle. Shockingly, the mainstream press in Sweden has failed to mention anything about the gruesome incident.

    Story at friatider:
    https://www.friatider.se/media-m-rkade-tortyrd-d-mot-ungt-par-i-stockholm

  22. Victor Davis Hanson: Spygate, Impeachment & the Assault on Trump For Undoing the Progressive Agenda

  23. Turkey Moves to Stop Israel from Building Undersea Gas Line to Europe

    Turkey is claiming that a planned Israeli undersea natural gas pipeline, agreed upon with Italy, Greece and Cyprus, infringes on an area claimed by Turkey under an economic agreement it reached with Libya…

    Turkey has officially asked the UN to recognize the agreement with Libya as a first step toward preventing Israel from building its pipeline.
    https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/12/turkey-moves-to-stop-israel-from-building-undersea-gas-line-to-europe/
    …..
    Not “with Libya”. Rather, the jihadi-rump puppet in Tripoli.
    But MB,Inc. controls much Western media right now. Think of the Khashoggi Info op.

      • Also online: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2019/12/11/brothers-in-arms/

        Policy Recommendations

        Few recognize the extent to which the Turkey-Qatar alliance has enabled terror financiers to operate in not one but both jurisdictions. As with providing joint safe havens, Turkey’s and Qatar’s willful negligence on terror finance allows these financiers to act with impunity, by providing them a back-up base from which to operate should either Qatar or Turkey face pressure.

    • Trump Administration Continues to Enable and Fund Troubled Islamic Organization

      Since 2014, the U.S. government, under both Obama and Trump, has given two branches of Islamic Relief, a global Islamist charity tied closely to the Muslim Brotherhood, over $2 million of taxpayers’ money.

      Most recently, in October, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) handed over $356,000 to Islamic Relief Worldwide, the radical franchise’s parent organization.

      Is the extent of Islamic Relief’s extremist ties small enough that a well-meaning bureaucrat might simply be oblivious? Or is this an appalling dereliction of duty that means taxpayers’ money is now subsidizing terrorist acts?

      In fact, it is difficult to be unaware of Islamic Relief, the largest Islamic charity in the Western world, which annually raises hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and grants. The charity and its officials are rarely out of the news.

      https://www.meforum.org/60098/trump-administration-funds-islamist-group

    • Turkey Is Trying to Take over the Mediterranean, through Libya

      One of the governments in Libya controls only a small percentage of the country and the capital of Tripoli, but in need of Turkish support it signed a bizarre deal with Ankara over who controls the Mediterranean. Turkey says the deal that it signed is historic and that it has “proven its capabilities to the world in a manner that is compatible with international law but also signaled its future intentions in the region.” Greece is outraged, threatening to take the dispute to international bodies and complain to NATO. It has larger ramifications also for Egypt, Cyprus and Israel as Turkey seeks a vast swath of sea to control as an economic zone.

      https://www.meforum.org/60023/turkey-is-trying-to-take-over-the-mediterranean

      • Pull US Troops Out of Turkey: Former EUCOM Deputy

        …[I]t is vital to note that there are already facilities at hand for quickly transferring U.S. aerial assets away from Turkey.

        First, there is Greece’s Larissa Air Force Base, which is where U.S. MQ-9 Reaper UAVs temporarily operated from during 2018-19. Second, there are the two nearby smaller bases of Stefanovikeio and Volos; the former houses various U.S. helicopters that are used for training missions, while the latter, as of February, hosts 350 U.S. troops. Finally, the United States is planning to “establish a new naval and air force base in…Alexandroupoli to supply NATO allies Bulgaria and Romania.”

        For those concerned that moving assets away from Incirlik might fracture relations between Ankara and Washington, they should recall that the United States already relocated assets elsewhere and began reducing the number of military family members living at the base early last year. Furthermore, Germany – a major U.S. NATO ally – pulled its forces from Incirlik and relocated them to Jordan because the Turks were similarly imposing flying restrictions on them.

        Ultimately, leaving Incirlik minimizes the possibility that Turkey’s worsening strain of anti-Americanism will endanger critical U.S. missions in the region. It will further make clear to Ankara that its actions have not only imperiled its diplomatic relationship with Washington, but now also carry real costs.

        https://jinsa.org/pull-us-troops-out-of-turkey-former-eucom-deputy/

  25. Daniel Pipes continues to push the “Islamist not Islam” line. But that’s the only way to be heard in PC-USA>

    8 Months ago: Islamists Infiltrate the US Political System

    Islamists have been attempting for years to gain influence within the US political system. They align themselves with the left wing of the Democratic Party not because they support LGBT rights or abortion, but to gain power through the progressive agenda of intersectionality and multiculturalism.

    Recently Islamists have begun electing their own candidates, who presented moderate views while campaigning, but after being elected champion left-wing causes. And in private, Islamist activists often say that when they have enough power, they will turn on their progressive allies and implement their own priorities.

  26. Russia: FSB detain five suspected IS militants in Moscow

    Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained five suspected members of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Moscow , footage released on Friday shows.

    According to the FSB statement, two of the detainees were from Russia, and three of them came from Central Asia.

    The FSB said the suspected militants were planning to carry out terror attacks in a major public area.

    FSB agents also found weapons and an improvised explosive device. An investigation has been launched into the plot.

  30. alkers Magazine and The Epoch Times Co-present the second Talk Media Forum on US-China Relations

  32. U.S. Pacific Fleet commander slams China over its militarization of the South China Sea region

    The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet is slamming China for stoking tensions in the South China Sea. While in Bangkok Friday, U.S. Admiral John Aquilino criticized China over its construction of artificial islands in the region, which reportedly impede trade in the important waterway.

    This comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea as Washington has taken steps in recent months to protect freedom of navigation in the area.

    “Over $3 trillion in trade passes through the South China Sea each year and the importance of all nations to be able to access that sea space enables the prosperity of all the nations,” explained the U.S. Admiral. “And just to highlight the ultimate intent of the United States is to enable the free and open Indo-Pacific.”

    https://www.oann.com/u-s-pacific-fleet-commander-slams-china-over-its-militarization-of-the-south-china-sea-region/

  33. Turkey Begins Resettling Refugees in Northeastern Syria

    Turkey has begun shuttling Syrian refugees across the border into northeastern Syria despite dangerous security conditions in the border towns.

    Continued reports of atrocities by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army that now controls the area raise fears that Turkish proxies are committing a form of ethnic cleansing by relocating people of Arab descent into the region while preventing the Kurdish population from returning.

    The people being resettled are largely the families of Turkish-backed fighters who are originally from elsewhere in Syria and are primarily Arab and Turkmen.

    Across the region now controlled by Turkey, human rights groups report that soldiers from the Syrian National Army frequently carry out widespread lootings and summary executions, and soldiers are living unlawfully in residents’ homes.

    Meanwhile, government services have deteriorated, and arbitrary arrests and car bombings are commonplace.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/09/turkey-resettling-refugees-northeastern-syria/

  34. David Horovitz:
    British Voters Didn’t Trust Corbyn

    After a landslide win for the Conservatives, the danger that Britain would be led by a lifelong opponent of Israel, a party leader who has allowed anti-Semitism to flourish in Labour, had been averted. Were Labour to have been narrowly defeated, some Corbyn supporters might have blamed the Jewish community. But most of Corbyn’s most fervent supporters know that responsibility for a defeat so overwhelming can only be ascribed to the party leader himself.

    In an interview on Sky News on Friday, presenter Kay Burley asked Labour chairman MP Ian Lavery whether it all came down to voters’ belief that “Your leader is an anti-Semite, and as a result they didn’t trust him on the security and safety of the nation.”

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/corbyn-repudiated-uk-jews-relieved-if-election-exit-poll-is-accurate/

  35. Corbyn’s Loss Is Jews’ and Israel’s Gain

    After exit polls from the British election showed the Conservatives defeating the Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn, for the Jewish people, a headline reflecting their reaction would be: “Corbyn loses, Jews world-over heave a huge sigh of relief.”

    For the vast majority in Britain, this election had to do with Brexit. But for Jews in the UK, it was about whether anti-Semitism would be mainlined and an anti-Semite would become Britain’s prime minister. That he didn’t is a reason for celebration among Jews, and not only in Britain.

    The UK is currently Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe, a major intelligence partner, and an important friend of Israel on the international stage. All that would have been in jeopardy had Corbyn won. He would have been a significant advocate for Palestinian maximalist positions on the world stage had he taken the reins of power.

    https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Corbyns-loss-is-Jews-and-Israels-gain-analysis-610803

  37. Wendlingen: Bewohner legt Brand im Flüchtlingsheim

    Die Feuerwehr löschte das Feuer zügig

    In einer Flüchtlingsunterkunft in Wendlingen hat sich ein Brand ereignet. Ein Bewohner wurde festgenommen. Er steht im Verdacht, das Feuer verursacht zu haben.

    Am frühen Donnerstagmorgen ist es in einer Flüchtlingsunterkunft in Wendlingen zu einem Zimmerbrand gekommen. Laut Angaben der Polizei wurde ein 20-jähriger Bewohner unter dringendem Tatverdacht, das Feuer verursacht zu haben, vorläufig festgenommen. Kurz vor sechs Uhr ging bei der Feuerwehr ein Brandmeldealarm aus der Asylunterkunft in der Heinrich-Otto-Straße ein. Sofort rückte ein Großaufgebot an Rettungskräften an den Brandort aus. Der Feuerwehr gelang es, die etwa 25 anwesenden Bewohner der Unterkunft unverletzt ins Freie zu retten und das Feuer schnell zu löschen.

    An der Unterkunft dürfte ein Schaden in Höhe von mehreren zehntausend Euro entstanden sein. Eine konkrete Schadenshöhe steht noch nicht fest. Die Bewohner wurden während der Löscharbeiten im Feuerwehrhaus untergebracht und vom Rettungsdienst und Mitarbeitern der Stadt Wendlingen versorgt. Erste Ermittlungen der Kriminalpolizei zur Brandursache führten zu dem 20 Jahre alten Bewohner des Zimmers. Dieser soll Papier angezündet und dadurch das Feuer ausgelöst haben. Beim Eintreffen der Polizei war er bereits vom Brandort geflüchtet. Der Tatverdächtige konnte im Rahmen der Fahndung kurz vor neun Uhr in Kirchheim vorläufig festgenommen werden.

    Gegen den Festgenommenen wurde ein Strafverfahren wegen schwerer Brandstiftung eingeleitet. Der 20 Jahre alte Syrer wurde am Nachmittag einem Haftrichter vorgeführt. Dieser erließ den von der Staatsanwaltschaft Stuttgart beantragten Haftbefehl. Der Mann wurde in eine Justizvollzugsanstalt eingeliefert.

    https://www.esslinger-zeitung.de/region/polizei_artikel,-wendlingen-bewohner-legt-brand-im-fluechtlingsheim-_arid,2299354.html

  39. Massive Muslim Protests Erupt in India’s UP, Bihar States Against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (sputniknews, Dec 13, 2019)
    https://sputniknews.com/asia/201912131077568927-massive-muslim-protests-erupt-in-indias-up-bihar-states-against-citizenship-amendment-actb/

    “The protests that hit India’s northeastern states, particularly Assam and Tripura, over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have now reached Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The protests are occurring despite Home Minister Amit Shah claiming that CAB is not anti-Muslim.

    Hundreds of thousands of Muslims took to the streets in different parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar on Friday. They were sloganeering against the Narendra Modi government for passing the contentious CAB and over the proposed National Register of Citizens.

    In several cities in Uttar Pradesh, the Muslim protesters shouted against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying that they won’t stop and won’t surrender. Around 32,000 Aligarh Muslim University students took to the streets in Aligarh city alone.

    While thousands of the protestors surrounded the Hussainabad Clock Towers in the State’s capital city of Lucknow.

    Despite heavy downpour, hundreds of Muslim protestors took out a march against CAB in the State’s Muzaffarnagar district.

    In another Indian state of Bihar, over 100,000 Muslims hit the streets in Gaya district and slammed the central government’s decision to make CAB into legislation.

    On 11 December, the upper house of the Indian Parliament passed the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act. It completed the legislative process for giving Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with Home Minister Shah asserting that Indian Muslims have nothing to fear as they will not be affected by the law.

    The Opposition termed the law, which was passed by Lok Sabha on Monday, as “unconstitutional”, “divisive” and “an assault on the democratic and secular fabric of the nation”.

    Several opposition parties are criticising the CAB, saying it discriminates against Muslims, while allowing persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians only from India’s neighbouring Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

    On the other side, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register containing names of all genuine Indian citizens. Maintained by the Government of India, it contains the names and certain relevant information for identification of the citizens. The NRC was initially, specifically made for Assam.

    Though the NRC is an offshoot of the Citizenship Act, 1955, both are fundamentally different. Despite both are linked to the subject of citizenship, the CAB is meant to grant citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims illegal migrants from India’s three neighbouring states. However, the other one the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is an exercise to differentiate illegal migrants from genuine citizens of India.”

  40. WIRED – Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security

    The network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous.

    Monday’s split-screen drama, as the House Judiciary Committee weighed impeachment charges against President Trump and as the Justice Department’s inspector general released a 476-page report on the FBI’s handling of its 2016 investigation into Trump’s campaign, made one truth of the modern world inescapable: The lies and obfuscations forwarded ad infinitum on Fox News pose a dangerous threat to the national security of the United States.

    The facts of both dramas were clear to objective viewers: In the one instance, there’s conclusive and surprisingly consistent evidence that President Trump pushed Ukraine to concoct dirt on a domestic political rival to affect the 2020 presidential election, and in the other, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI was proper to investigate Trump’s dealings with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.

    But that set of facts is not what anyone who was watching Fox News heard. Instead, Fox spent the night describing an upside-down world where the president’s enemies had spun a web of lies about Trump and Ukraine, even as Horowitz blew open the base corruption that has driven every attack on the president since 2016.

    Sean Hannity, who had long trumpeted the forthcoming inspector general report and expected a thorough indictment of the behavior of former FBI director James Comey and other members of the “deep state,” had a simple message for his viewers during Fox’s Monday night prime time: “Everything we said, everything we reported, everything we told you was dead-on-center accurate,” he said. “It is all there in black and white, it’s all there.”

    Except they weren’t right and it wasn’t there. But Fox News’ viewers evidently were not to be told those hard truths—they were to be kept thinking that everything in their self-selected filter bubble was just peachy keen.

    Over on Fox Business, Lou Dobbs said the mere fact that the IG found no political bias in the FBI’s investigation of Trump and Russia in 2016 was de facto proof of the power of the deep state.

    John Harwood, long one of Washington’s most respected conservative voices in journalism, summed up Fox’s approach Monday night simply: “Lunacy.”

    It’s worse than lunacy, though. Fox’s bubble reality creates a situation where it’s impossible to have the conversations and debate necessary to function as a democracy. Facts that are inconvenient to President Trump simply disappear down Fox News’ “memory hole,” as thoroughly as George Orwell could have imagined in 1984.

    The idea that Fox News represents a literal threat to our national security, on par with Russia’s Internet Research Agency or China’s Ministry of State Security, may seem like a dramatic overstatement of its own—and I, a paid contributor to its competitor CNN, may appear a biased voice anyway—but this week has made clear that, as we get deeper into the impeachment process and as the 2020 election approaches, Fox News is prepared to destroy America’s democratic traditions if it will help its most important and most dedicated daily viewer.

    • The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.

      In the impeachment hearings, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill and other witnesses made clear how those who, like Fox News hosts and the president, advance the false narrative that Ukraine meddled in the US election are serving the Kremlin’s interests. Russia is playing a weak hand geopolitically—its economy is sputtering along and its population shrinking—and so its greatest hope is to stoke internal discord in the West. Robert Mueller warned of this; James Clapper has warned of it; and now Fiona Hill has done the same. “Our nation is being torn apart,” she said. “Truth is questioned.” Yet Fox, and the GOP more broadly, has warmly embraced almost every twist of Kremlin propaganda, up to and including the idea that Russia never meddled in the 2016 election to begin with.

      Fox’s clear willingness to parry the wingnuttiest ideas in service of the president, long-term implications to the United States be damned, should worry all concerned about the state of the United States. The Ukraine myth is hardly the only example; for years, it has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media. (To say nothing of Fox’s long-term commitment to undermining and questioning climate science, leaving the US both behind in mitigating the worst effects of climate change and also ill-equipped to face the myriad security consequences of a warming planet.)

      It’s possible to paint Fox with too broad of a brush—Chris Wallace remains one of the toughest and best interviewers on television and has repeatedly stood up to vapid GOP talking points, and Bret Baier is a talented journalist and historian—but it’s clear from this year that something fundamental and meaningful has tipped inside the network.

      While propagandizing has long been a key facet of Fox’s business (Stephen Colbert debuted his own Fox News host alter ego, in dedicated pursuit of “truthiness,” all the way back in 2005), the situation is clearly getting worse: the lies deeper, its always-tenuous commitment to “Fair and Balanced” unraveling further. Whatever loose adherence to a reality-based world the Fox worldview once possessed, whatever guardrails on truth the network might have once installed, are now gone. Shep Smith, long one of the network’s biggest names and best reporters, literally walked out of the Fox building this fall, departing abruptly after apparently deciding that he couldn’t in good conscience be part of a “news” operation that treated facts so fungibly.

      Indeed, as the year has unfolded, Fox’s evening talk shows and its presidentially endorsed morning show have proven to be a particularly egregious and odious swamp of fetid, metastasizing lies and bad faith feedback loops that leave its viewers—and, notably, its Presidential Audience of One—foaming at the mouth with outrage and bile.

      It’s hard not to think that the increasingly odd behavior and untethered-to-reality pronouncements of the president’s two top lawyers—Attorney General Bill Barr and personal defender Rudy Giuliani—have not been deeply influenced by the filter bubble on the right created, fostered, and fertilized by Fox News. As Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey tweeted after Barr set out on his Quixotic quest to prove the deep state was behind the FBI’s 2016 investigation, “The Attorney General is a fully-committed Fox News conspiracy theorist.”

      The network’s pantheon of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and the rotating couch-cast of Fox & Friends’ morning show dunces-by-choice together represent a level of ill-informed demagoguery that would make Father Coughlin and Huey Long wince.

      More than simply embarrassing themselves by spouting obvious falsehoods, though, Fox News’ incendiary, fanatical rants serve to delegitimize to its viewers the very idea of a political opposition. Every Democrat is evil. Every person who disagrees with President Trump is an enemy of the state. Every career federal employee is a member of a deep state opposition.

      As writer Gabe Sherman, who authored a history of Fox News, tweeted over the weekend, “Been thinking a lot about why Trump will survive impeachment when Nixon didn’t. For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil. As lawless as Trump is, Republicans believe Dems are worse. That’s the power of propaganda.”

      These pronouncements—uttered around the clock on weekdays and doubled down on weekends by hosts like the president’s favorite, Jeanine Pirro—are an attack on the very ideals and foundations of the American experiment.

      The founders settled on political parties as a mechanism to institutionalize channels for ongoing debate. As historian Joseph Ellis wrote in American Creation, political parties “eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in an endless argument.” It is that willingness to view opponents as legitimate that has long allowed America to hold together even under trying political times and to deal with political disagreements in the political arena, rather than resorting to violence against national leaders. For all of Fox News and President Trump’s daily declaration of coups and attempted coups against the administration, American history has actually been shockingly free of actual coups.

      Part of what drives the unique national interest in the rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr was that their fatal showdown represents the only case of a founder taking another founder’s life. It was one of only a handful of times in our entire national history where we’ve seen political figures fight each other and inflict real wounds. (The caning of Senator Charles Sumner in the pre–Civil War Capitol comes to mind as another such rare instance.)

      In the midst of his own presidential run in 2008, John McCain stopped one of his own supporters in her tracks attacking Barack Obama as a Muslim to defend the Democratic nominee: “No ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

      That tradition and idea of American politics as an ongoing conversation, an endless argument, is key to preserving our democratic experiment. The idea that you will be in power sometimes, and out of power other times, is what preserves norms and traditions, and curbs the worst abuses and impulses; politicians traditionally understand that actions taken in the majority could serve to bite them if and when they return to the minority.

      Donald Trump, who rose to prominence trumpeting the very “birther” falsehood that McCain once batted away, seems bent on undermining that tradition; he has proven he’s perfectly willing to burn down political norms for short-term gain. Fox News seems intent on helping him—and on a daily basis, they’re telling their viewers he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him is less than human. Trump’s lies are the one constant and consistent position of his presidency (13,000 and counting!), and Fox News has gone all in.

      We, as a democratic society, cannot survive such consequences-be-damned, winner-take-all, facts-don’t-matter politics. Fox News has upended Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous proclamation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Its daily programming seems driven by the idea that everyone might be entitled to their own facts, but that there is only one correct opinion: President Trump’s.

      In 1984, George Orwell wrote his imagined dystopian regime “told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” but Fox News has actually figured out a tactic even more pernicious: Fox News’ own masters of Orwellian doublespeak, its Hannitys, Carlsons, and Doocys, the ones who smugly declare down up and up down, aren’t even bothering to tell their viewers to ignore their eyes and ears, because the truth never even approaches their airtime.

      Let’s hope that Fox News today, unlike in Orwell’s world, doesn’t manage to succeed in transforming our country from a functional democracy into an authoritarian cult.

      https://www.wired.com/story/fox-news-is-now-a-threat-to-national-security/

  42. Authorities close Pakistani university after student killed (abcnews, Dec 13, 2019)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/authorities-close-pakistani-university-student-killed-67709401

    “Authorities in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Friday temporarily closed a major university following overnight armed clashes between rival groups that left one student dead and and several others wounded.

    Police said the decision to close the International Islamic University was made by university administrators to avoid more clashes.

    Authorities have deployed additional police to the campus to avoid further violence.

    The decision came after clashes Thursday night in which both sides used batons and guns, spreading panic among students and prompting parents to ask their children to leave the hostels at the campus for their safety.

    Police said the fighting was sparked when two groups of students disagreed over the organizing of a book exhibition. But the melee came amid a broader campaign by students across the country to lift a decades-long ban on peaceful political activities at educational institutions.

    Slain student Syed Tufail belonged to the student wing of a radical Islamic party.”

  44. UN: Greece still in violation of some norms for detention (abcnews, Dec 13, 2019)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/greece-violation-norms-detention-67714941

    “A group of United Nations experts on arbitrary detention said Friday that despite some improvements, Greece was still in violation of certain international obligations in how and where people are imprisoned.

    The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention presented a preliminary report following a visit to 20 detention facilities across the country between Dec. 2 and Dec. 13. It noted several areas of concern involving both the criminal justice system and migration.

    A final report will be be issued in several months. The group, which visited Greece following an invitation by the 6-month-old government, said it had enjoyed unrestricted access to facilities and full cooperation from Greek officials.

    The group’s concerns included prison overcrowding, the non-segregation of suspects held in pre-trial detention from those already convicted, the access of asylum seekers to interpreters and legal help, and reports of arbitrary push-backs into Turkey of migrants attempting to cross the border into Greece.

    Greek prisons have suffered from overcrowding for years. A recent change to the penal code reducing the length of prison sentences and encouraging the use of alternatives such as community service “are positive steps forward,” the group said. But it added that “there is still considerable scope for their implementation,” and noted that the conditions in prisons and police station holding cells “do not generally meet international standards.”

    The preliminary findings criticized the widespread use of pre-trial detention. It also said that holding people awaiting trial together with convicts runs contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and is “contrary to the presumption of innocence that all persons are entitled to prior to conviction.”

    Regarding push-backs, the group said it had received information from various sources, including lawyers and non-governmental groups, that some migrants attempting to enter Greece from Turkey “are arrested, detained in very poor conditions, and summarily returned across the Greece-Turkey land border” without being given the chance to apply for asylum.

    “We understand that it’s not occasional. In fact, we understand that it’s a long-standing practice dating back several years now,” said Leigh Toomey, vice chair of the group.

    Toomey said the group was currently “in dialogue” with the government regarding the reports, and did not have information on how many people were believed to have been the subject of push-backs.

    This was the second visit by the UN’s Working Group of Arbitrary Detention to Greece. The first was conducted in 2013.”

  45. (Richard: In the last 3 to 4 minutes of the show the latest AOC stupidity is highlighted. Dan’s reaction is to lose it.)

    Ep1134 How Did The Media Miss This Explosive Footnote in the IG Report?The Dan Bongino Show 12/13/19

  46. Afghan official: Roadside bombing kills 10 civilians (abcnews, Dec 13, 2019)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/afghan-official-roadside-bombing-kills-10-civilians-67708692

    “A roadside bombing in central Afghanistan on Friday killed 10 civilians, including four women and a child, an Afghan official said.

    The explosion, which took place in the district of Jaghato in Ghazni province, also wounded six civilians, according to Marwa Amini, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry.

    The civilians were in a minivan, traveling from the Day Kundi province to the city of Ghazni, the Ghazni provincial capital, when their vehicle was targeted.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Amini blamed the Taliban, who control much of the region.

    The Taliban control or hold sway over nearly half of Afghanistan, staging regular attacks that target foreign and Afghan forces, as well as Kabul government officials, but also kill scores of civilians.”

  48. (Richard: There are 30 million + vets in the US, the vast majority support President Trump and don’t think he did anything wrong. We are willing to let this play itself out through the legal system and Congress, but if the Dems coup works (small chance) Katy bar the door because the pros are going to show antifa and others how violence is suppose to be used. You get us pissed enough to move and the world will shake with the results of our anger.)

    ‘My .357 Magnum is comfortable with that’: Supporters threaten ‘second Civil War’ if Trump is removed

    Supporters of President Trump sounded the alarm on his potential removal from office, saying they would fight back in his defense.

    “My .357 Magnum is comfortable with that. End of story,” one Trump supporter told CBS News in video taken at the president’s Tuesday rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

    His remark was in response to whether he was sure Trump would not be kicked out of the Oval Office. A second man, identified as Infowars host Will Johnson, said he believed removing Trump from office could lead to another Civil War.

    “I think it would cause physical violence in this country that we haven’t seen since the first Civil War. I think it would become the second Civil War,” Johnson said.

    A third man predicted a “strong movement” and “possible violence” if the president was removed from office, but said he did not condone any violence.

    “There’ll be a lot of mad Americans, possibly 70, 80,000 — 70, 80 million Americans on the loose, not very happy,” he said.

    The president blasted Democrats during the Pennsylvania rally over impeachment, saying they were doing it to try and win the 2020 election. His visit to the state came as it will likely play a central role in his reelection campaign.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/my-357-magnum-is-comfortable-with-that-supporters-threaten-second-civil-war-if-trump-is-removed

  49. BOMBSHELL: Whistleblowers Present Hundreds of Pages of Evidence Alleging Illicit Behavior of Clinton Foundation

    Will this be what finally puts Crooked Hillary behind bars?

    Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) said in a Fox News interview last week that three whistleblowers have come forward with hundreds of documents exposing the illicit behavior of the Clinton Foundation.

    The documents allegedly indicate the misappropriation of funds and quid-pro-quo promises made to elite donors. The Clinton Foundation is widely believed to be a slush fund used by the Clintons to enrich themselves and their cronies.

    Meadows, a House Freedom Caucus leader who leads the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations, is set to have a hearing this week on the status of the ongoing investigation into the Foundation. U.S. Attorney John Huber has been tasked with investigating the Foundation since 2018, being appointed to the position by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    https://bigleaguepolitics.com/bombshell-whistleblowers-present-hundreds-of-pages-of-evidence-alleging-illicit-behavior-of-clinton-foundation/