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.
“Obama and Russia”
J. R. Nyquist – February 7, 2020
https://jrnyquist.blog/2020/02/07/obama-and-russia/
Video Link:
UNHCR urges Greece to improve refugee conditions
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/unhcr-urges-greece-to-improve-refugee-conditions-151868
“The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) urged Greece on Feb. 7 to increase efforts to address “alarming” overcrowding and precarious conditions for asylum seekers and migrants staying on the five Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.
“UNHCR has been appealing to the Greek government to use emergency measures to expedite its plans to transfer a greater number of asylum-seekers to appropriate accommodation on the mainland,” UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said at a regular U.N. briefing.
The agency said that more than 36,000 asylum seekers were currently staying in reception centers across five islands initially designed with a capacity of 5,400.
It said Greece had been “generous and compassionate towards refugees, despite a very complex and difficult situation,” noting that the east Aegean islands had shouldered a disproportionate burden and responsibility.
“It is critical that other regions in Greece step up their solidarity to help alleviate pressures by receiving transferred asylum seekers and opening up reception places,” said Mahecic.
UNHCR said continued European support in terms of resources, capacity and solidarity were also needed to boost Greece’s response.
On Samos, 6,782 people are staying in a center designed for 660, while others reside in makeshift shelters pitched in surrounding fields.
Moria, a town on Lesbos, is hosting 18,342 inside a facility for 2,200 and others are staying in adjacent olive groves.
Reception centers on Chios, Kos and Leros are also overcrowded, said UNHCR.
Families make up the majority of the asylum-seekers and migrants, a third of whom are children, most below the age of twelve.
Thousands of women, men and children who currently live in small tents are exposed to cold and rain with little or no access to heating, electricity or hot water.
Hygiene and sanitation conditions are unsafe, with health problems on the rise, said UNHCR, adding that despite the dedication of medical professionals and volunteers, many were unable to receive medical attention as there were not enough doctors at reception centers and local hospitals.
“Longer-term solutions and improvement of conditions on the islands are necessary but will only be possible once the overcrowded centers are decongested,” said Mahecic.”
Man, 23, arrested for raping woman, 20
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2020/02/07/man-23-arrested-for-raping-woman-20_c771d2b0-fef1-44e4-bdec-fd23c2a73ddc.html
“A 23-year-old Tunisian pusher was arrested Friday on suspicion of raping a 20-year-old female drug addict from Turin in a train carriage at the northern city’s Porta Nuova station on Tuesday night.
The man, Haytham M’Sadak, who ha a criminal record, allegedly lured the woman into the carriage with the promise of selling her crack and heroin, police said.”
Norway’s PM wants to ban youth gangs from Oslo
https://www.thelocal.no/20200207/norways-pm-wants-to-ban-youth-gangs-from-oslo
“Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Thursday it may be appropriate to introduce a ban against youth gangs in Oslo.
Solberg’s comments, made at a public meeting in Oslo, were made in the context of recent reports that juvenile delinquency has increased in the Norwegian capital.
A ban against gangs would be a weapon in the fight against rising child and youth crime, Solberg said.
“The purpose of this is to give the police the option of expelling youths from areas so that they can prevent things like fighting,” Solberg told VG.
“This is a tool, not a solution to the main problem of child and youth crime, but it can help to prevent an increase in the level of conflict,” she added.
The PM said to the newspaper that the government was looking into how such a ban might be enforced.
“We are looking into it and will need to find a framework for how it will be regulated. If you are going to restrict people’s freedom of movement, you must have a legal basis for that and know how to implement it,” she said.
Solberg said that a ban of this type could potentially be provided for by city regulations.
Labour politician Jan Bøhler said at the town hall that the number of young people in gangs in Oslo police district has almost tripled over the last four years, VG reports.”
German authorities, politicians divided on niqab, burqa ban
https://www.dw.com/en/german-authorities-politicians-divided-on-niqab-burqa-ban/a-52297543
“Politicians across party lines agree that the niqab and the burqa are out of place at schools and universities. Some, however, fear that a ban could hamper integration into German society.
There are very few women and girls in Germany wearing a full-face veil such as the niqab or the burqa — most likely a mere two-digit number. A recent verdict handed down by a Hamburg court, however, has sparked a fierce debate with surprising front lines: feminists, at least partially, find themselves on the same side as political right-wingers. And Germany’s Green party is particularly divided on the issue.
Recently, the Hamburg court backed the case of a student’s mother. According to the ruling, her 16-year-old daughter is allowed to wear the niqab in class. The school authority had attempted to ban her from wearing the garment during lessons. Veils like the niqab and the burqa cover a woman’s entire face, sometimes even the eyes.
In their ruling, the judges in particular invoked the girl’s “right to unconditional protection of her freedom of religion.” Limiting that freedom, they added, was only permissible on a legal basis, which does not currently exist in Hamburg’s education legislation.
Education laws made at state level
Since German education laws are made at state level, it is up to every single state to provide its own laws for schools and universities. Lower Saxony’s education laws, for example, have been stipulating since 2017 that “female and male students are not allowed to significantly hamper communication with those involved in school life by means of behavior or clothing.” This outlaws full-face veils. Similarly, students in Bavaria must “not cover their faces, except when this is required by school rules.”
There are regulations at the federal level, too — for example, female federal officials and female soldiers are not allowed to cover their faces when they’re on duty. Members of the public must not wear full-face veils when they drive a car. Likewise, the niqab and the burqa must be removed when authorities examine a woman’s identity.
Unlike in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark, Germany has no general ban on wearing full-face veils in public
Closing the legal loophole
Hamburg’s government, made up of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, will now make an effort to close the gap in the city-state’s school legislation. Ties Rabe, the senator responsible for Hamburg’s schools, has already announced an imminent ban on full-face veils: “In school, teachers as well as pupils should have an open, unobstructed face. It is the only way schools and classes can function,” he said.
Hamburg’s deputy mayor Katharina Fegebank from the Green party agrees. “The burqa and the niqab are, for me, symbols of oppression,” she said. Her position is also relevant ahead of the February 23 Hamburg elections. According to the latest opinion polls, the Greens are only slightly less popular than the SPD — which means Fegebank does have a chance to win the city-state’s top post. The opposition parties in Hamburg’s parliament, the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Free Democrats (FDP) and the far-right AfD, also support banning niqabs and burqas from classrooms.
Other German states are following suit. In the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, which is governed by a coalition of Greens and Christian Democrats, Culture Minister Susanne Eisenmann (CDU) has also announced a ban on veils through adjustments to schools legislation. “Teaching is based on open communication, which also manifests itself via gestures and facial expressions. A covered face prevents such open communication.”
Freedom of religion, she added, had its limits if teachers and students were “no longer able, literally, to look in each other’s faces.” Baden-Württemberg’s state premier Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) agreed: “I believe that, in an open society, people should show their faces.”
Bans counterproductive?
In the Green camp, such clear statements have, however, been controversial. Like their fellow party member Fegebank, Baden-Württemberg’s Green party leaders Sandra Detzer and Oliver Hildenbrand call the burqa and the niqab “symbols of oppression”. Simultaneously though they’re accusing Education Minister Susanne Eisenmann of “pursuing an agenda which ultimately only strengthens the far-right.”
Filiz Polat, migration policy spokesperson for the Greens’ parliamentary group, believes that it is one of the features of a democratic society that people can wear religious symbols — or choose not to do so. In her view, the constitution does not allow for a general ban. By the same token, it was also constitutionally required that Germany does not bar devout Muslims from access to its educational system by implementing a ban on veils. The Greens’ parliamentary group in another northern German state, Schleswig-Holstein, had argued along those lines in the state parliament before voting against a full-face veil ban at universities.
Danger of marginalization
Bernhard Kempen, the president of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV), has an equally differentiated view. For him, it is out of the question that women wearing full-face veils participate in seminars, which are usually made up of small groups of people. He would, however, have no such reservations with respect to large-audience lectures. The German Philologists’ Association (DPhV), by contrast, advocates a ban on niqabs and burqas both in schools and universities.
Seyran Ates, a campaigner for women’s rights and the co-founder of the liberal Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin, would prefer, for the sake of peace in schools, to remove all religious and ideological symbols from classrooms — not only those referring to Islam. Islam scholar Riem Spielhaus, meanwhile, warned that marginalizing those who wear burqas and niqabs was conducive to radicalization of Muslims. Instead, they should be invited to a dialogue.
It remains a fact that there are very few women in Germany who wear full-face veils. Therefore, Germany’s other northern city-state of Bremen, for example, sees no reason to modify its school legislation. There was not a single known case, according to Bremen’s school authority — so therefore there was no requirement to change any laws.”
French govt study reveals minorities face discrimination for jobs at major firms
https://www.france24.com/en/20200208-french-govt-study-reveals-minorities-face-discrimination-for-jobs-at-major-firms
“A new study by the French government unveiled on Thursday has found potential discrimination against minorities in the hiring practices among seven of the country’s major companies, including Renault. Among the study’s most egregious findings, that a candidate with an Arabic-sounding name would have a less than 25 percent chance of being vetted compared to other candidates. The companies concerned pointed to a “weak” methodology, but sociologist Jean-François Amadieu told FRANCE 24 that such cases of discrimination are real.
The seven companies were “named and shamed” by the French government after its study reported the “presumed discrimination in hiring” of candidates recognised as ethnic or cultural minorities. The results reveal that the seven companies – Renault, Air France, Accor, Altran, Arkéma, Rexel and Sopra-Steria – tend to favour candidates for jobs who bear names of French origin rather than those of North-African descent.
“Of all the companies tested, candidates with North-African names have had an estimated success rate of 9.3%, whereas candidates bearing European-sounding names have had a success rate of 12.5%”, the study states. The findings also highlighted that candidates with North-African names have “a less than 25% chance” of even having their application acknowledged.
Six of the seven companies – Air France, Accor, Altran, Arkéma, Rexel and Sopra-Steria – have contested the study’s findings announcing in a joint statement on Thursday their “profound disagreement” and “indignation concerning the weak methodology used” as well as “the study’s lack of discipline”.
The French government conducted the study on 40 major companies, with 10.349 fictional or real candidates sending their curriculum vitae (CV) under different names and addresses: either with French-sounding or Arab-sounding names.
Some of the companies have accused the government of bias. They told AFP that some of the applicants’ CVs were sent to staff working at these companies who had nothing to do with the recruitment of employees, and for jobs that had already been filled.
The government said it regretted that the “study’s methodology might have overshadowed its final conclusions: discriminations, be they intentional or not, might exist in our country”, and announced that a second wave of studies, “correcting the first one’s bias” will be conducted.
In an interview with FRANCE 24, Jean-François Amadieu, sociologist and head of the Discrimination Observatory, said companies should set up better hiring systems, including anonymous applications, to ensure a more level playing field.
FRANCE 24: Has job discrimination based on ethnic and cultural origin worsened in France?
Jean-François Amadieu: The results of this test do not surprise me. In the corporate world, discrimination based on cultural and ethnic origin is still the same. A candidate belonging to a minority group has 20 to 25 percent less chance of being chosen by employers, on average. For the past few years, this figure has been stable and it is the same as in the United States.
On the other hand, we do not know what that figure is for small companies as these tests were conducted on major ones. It would be interesting to measure the discrimination in smaller structures, because it is probably much higher.
Discrimination is also linked to the company’s activity. For instance, it is particularly strong in the hospitality business, as it is in sectors that have direct contact with clients. The Accor group (who owns Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and others) has been caught out once again, which is not surprising given it had already been exposed in 2008. In 2017, the group was also named once again by the then Minister of Labour Myriam El Khomry for discrimination.
One must bear in mind that there are multiple types of discrimination. We have 25 types, according to the French law. The two most common categories of discrimination are age and physical appearance, and unfortunately these different types have not been tested by the government.
How could we tackle this kind of discrimination?
An efficient measure could be a law mandating applications to be anonymous. This option had been ruled out by lawmakers in 2015, but I think it is the best possible measure by making résumés anonymous by removing information such as age, gender and address. This alternative has been successful in other European countries such as Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. And there are other major companies, like the BBC, that already impose it.
We either need to have a lot of information, like we have in French résumés nowadays, or we consider that the employer does not need that much information. In the USA or Canada, we don’t have photos in résumés. Does the employer really need to know if one is overweight or if one lives in a poor neighbourhood or one’s sexual orientation? This information has nothing to do with the candidate’s abilities. Moreover, large-sized companies already have software designed to analyse online applications, so they could very easily impose anonymity.
Some of these companies have contested the “weak methodology used” by the study, “which lead to wrong conclusions”…
This test’s methodology was not specifically designed for “naming and shaming”. If we know beforehand that the companies are going to be publicly named afterwards, the government needs to strongly incorporate them in the study, that way the results would be more sound.
These companies contested the study and the government did recognise its “limits”. But this does not diminish the results that clearly show that discrimination is still significant in our country.”
The Netherlands: The Geert Wilders Show Trial Continues
by Soeren Kern
February 8, 2020 at 5:00 am
Newly released documents show that senior members of the Dutch government — including the prime minister and two former justice ministers — applied political pressure on public prosecutors to indict Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV), for hate speech for comments he made about Islam and Moroccan immigrants.
The documents, which the government turned over to the Amsterdam-based newspaper De Volkskrant in compliance with a Freedom of Information request, appear to confirm long-standing allegations by Wilders that the government’s decade-long legal war against him is far from a principled pursuit of justice, and instead politically motivated and aimed at silencing his criticism of multiculturalism and mass migration from the Muslim world.
On February 3, De Volkskrant reported that the government documents — numbering nearly 500 pages — show that as early as 2008, then-Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin was “intensively involved” in the decision to prosecute Wilders.
According to De Volkskrant, the Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie, OM) found nothing illegal about Wilders statements, but Hirsch Ballin pressed the OM on three separate occasions to change its assessment.
In June 2008, the OM dismissed more than 40 criminal complaints against Wilders on the grounds that his statements were made “in the context of political debate” and therefore “not of a punishable nature.”
In January 2009, the Amsterdam Appeals Court, the second-highest legal
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15553/geert-wilders-show-trial
Leftists REFUSE To Date Conservatives. LOL.
The Manosphere is a Response to Injustice
Kaitlin Bennett Exposes Logan Paul
Bannon: GOP has to subpoena John Brennan, Adam Schiff
Just so sick of winning:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexico-under-u-s-pressure-adds-muscle-to-fight-against-drug-cartels-11581105334