Reader’s Links October 24, 2020

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

90 Replies to “Reader’s Links October 24, 2020”

  1. Hunter Biden’s role in Chinese-backed firm explained; Official blames NY attack on bail reform law

  2. OIC Condemns Systemic Assault on Islamic Symbols
    https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2583571/oic-condemns-systemic-assault-islamic-symbols

    “The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) denounced the systemic attacks on Muslim sentiments by insulting the religious symbols and the person of the Prophet Mohammed, reiterating its condemnation of any terrorist acts committed in the name of religion.

    The organization’s General Secretariat issued a statement Friday, announcing that it has been following the ongoing practice of running satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

    The organization indicated it was surprised that some French officials gave statements that harm the Muslim-French relations, and allow hatemongering for only serving partisan political interests.

    The General Secretariat says it will always condemn practices of blasphemy and insulting of Prophets of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

    The OIC has earlier condemned the brutal murder of French citizen, Samuel Paty, asserting that it does not represent Islam or its values and that it is an individual or collective act of terrorism that should be punished according to the laws.

    The General Secretariat reiterates its condemnation of the justification for blasphemy-based harassment of any religion in the name of freedom of expression.

    It deplores pairing Islam and Muslims with terrorism, urging for a review of anti-Muslim discriminatory policies, unjustifiably provocative to the feelings of a billion and a half Muslims across the world.”

  3. Afghan security forces kill senior al Qaeda leader al-Masri
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-security-masri/afghan-security-forces-kill-senior-al-qaeda-leader-al-masri-idUSKBN2790VY

    “Afghan security forces have killed Abu Muhsin al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda leader who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) said in a tweet late on Saturday.

    Al-Masri has been charged in the United States with having provided material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.

    Al-Masri, believed to be al Qaeda’s second-in-command, was killed during a special operation in Ghazni province, the NDS said.

    The FBI declined to comment…”

  4. Islamic Scholar Tariq Ramadan Faces 5th Rape Charge in France
    https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2020/10/323592/islamic-scholar-tariq-ramadan-faces-5th-rape-charge-in-france/

    “Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan is facing a fifth rape charge in France, AFP news agency reported on Thursday.

    According to Ramadan’s lawyers, the new charge relates to the alleged rape of a woman on multiple occasions in France, Brussels, and London, between 2013 and 2014.

    The victim first came forward in March 2018. The woman’s testimony led Tariq Ramadan to admit that he had extramarital relations with her. He is adamant, however, that the relation was “consensual.”

    Public prosecution in Paris pushed for a rape charge against Ramadan in 2018 after the woman’s testimony, but judges suspended their decision until recently.

    Commenting to AFP on the new rape charge, Ramadan’s lawyers said “there is no new element” in the investigation.

    The lawyers said that Ramadan’s statements were “reliable and constant,” while the woman’s claims were “serious and consistent lies.”

    The new rape charge does not necessarily mean that Tariq Ramadan will end up on trial, the lawyers explained, saying the charge can be dropped for lack of evidence.

    Previous cases
    The new rape charge is the fifth of its kind against Tariq Ramadan in France. The academic is also involved in a similar case in Switzerland.

    The first rape allegations against Ramadan surfaced in October 2017, when a French woman claimed the scholar had sexually assaulted her in a Paris hotel.

    A few days later, a second woman filed a similar complaint, claiming that Ramadan had lured her in 2009 into a hotel room where he assaulted and raped her.

    The academic, who used to teach at the University of Oxford, took a leave of absence in November 2017.

    Three other women in France accused Ramadan of sexual abuse and filed legal complaints in 2018.

    As a result, Tariq Ramadan was imprisoned in February 2018 and spent 10 months in a French prison. He still has to report to a police station every two weeks as investigations into the various allegations are still ongoing.

    In Switzerland, meanwhile, he is facing charges for allegedly molesting four Swiss women when they were teenagers. The women filed complaints in 2017. Ramadan denies all accusations.”

  5. Amnesty International: Afghans Are ‘Slaughtered’ On A Daily Basis
    https://www.khaama.com/amnesty-international-afghans-are-slaughtered-on-a-daily-basis-767698/

    “Amnesty International has called on the world to take the situation in Afghanistan seriously, as it says the ongoing war in the country is killing civilians every day.

    In October alone, bombings, clashes, and airstrikes in several provinces killed at least 180 civilians and wounded 380 others.

    “The world must sit up and take notice. Afghan civilians are being slaughtered on a daily basis” Amnesty press release quotes Omar Waraich, Head of South Asia at Amnesty International.

    Amnesty International has once again called on both sides of the conflict to prevent civilian casualties and take this matter seriously.

    The organization said that despite the ongoing inter-Afghan peace talks in Doha, the war in Afghanistan is continuously taking the lives of human beings, especially civilians.

    Amnesty reports at a time when bombings, clashes, and airstrikes in Ghor, Helmand, Wardak, and Takhar have killed scores of civilians in October.

    UNAMA had reported 1,282 civilians deaths, and 2,176 injuries during the First Half of 2020.”

  6. French cartoons provocative to Islam, beliefs: Hamas
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/french-cartoons-provocative-to-islam-beliefs-hamas/2018171

    “Hamas on Saturday slammed France for publishing cartoons that degrade Islamic symbols.

    “[French President Emmanuel] Macron’s encouragement to publish insulting cartoons of the Prophet [Muhammad], peace be upon him, is an attempt to revive the Crusades where France was the source of its debut,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior spokesman for the Palestinian group.

    Abu Zuhri said publishing the cartoons was “provocative to the feelings of the [Islamic] Nation and an aggression on its religion and beliefs.”

    Publishing the insulting cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, along with Macron’s remarks about Islam and the Muslim community,

    sparked widespread condemnation in the Arab world on the official and other levels with official statements decrying his remarks.

    Activists launched boycott campaigns against French products in several Arab countries.”

  7. Arab trade groups boycott French products over insults
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/arab-trade-groups-boycott-french-products-over-insults/2017685

    “Several Arab trade groups have announced their boycott of French products in response to incitements against the Islamic religion and insulting statements against Prophet Muhammad.

    Arab activists also launched several social media campaigns for the boycott of all French products, using several hashtags as (#boycottfrance #boycott_French_products #ProphetMuhammad).

    In Kuwait, the Alnaeem Cooperative Society, a large series of supermarkets in the Gulf state, said it will remove all French products from the shelves in protest of the French insulting statements against Islam and the prophet.

    A similar move was taken by several trade groups such as the Suburb Afternoon Association, Eqaila Cooperative Society and Saad Al Abdallah City Cooperative Society. The three groups published photos showing French products being removed from their shelves.

    In Qatar, Alwajba Dairy Company and Almeera Consumer Goods Company said they will boycott the French products and will provide other alternatives.

    Qatar University also joined the boycott campaign, announcing that it decided to postpone the French Cultural Week in protest of the anti-Islam insults.

    “Any denigration or violation of the Islamic beliefs, sanctities and symbols are absolutely rejected,” the university said in a statement. “These insults harm the universal human values and the high ethical principles of all societies,” it added on Twitter.

    In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron attacked Islam and the Muslim community, accusing Muslims of “separatism”. He described Islam as a “a religion in crisis all over the world”.

    This coincided with a provocative move by Charlie Hebdo, a left-wing French magazine infamous for publishing anti-Islamic caricatures, which have drawn widespread anger and outrage across the Muslim world.

    The caricatures were first published in 2006 by a Danish newspaper Jylllands Posten, sparking a wave of protests.”

    • Macron comments provoke Mideast ire, boycotts of French goods

      Calls to boycott French goods are growing in the Arab world and beyond, after President Emmanuel Macron criticised Islamists and vowed not to “give up cartoons” depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

      Macron’s comments, on Wednesday, came in response to the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, outside his school in a suburb outside Paris earlier this month, after he had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class he was leading on free speech.

      The teacher became the target of an online hate campaign over his choice of lesson material — the same images that unleashed a bloody assault by Islamist gunmen on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the original publisher, in January 2015.

      Caricatures of Mohammed are forbidden by Islam.

      On Saturday, Jordan’s foreign ministry said it condemns the “continued publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed under the pretext of freedom of expression” and

      any “discriminatory and misleading attempts that seek to link Islam with terrorism.”

      It did not directly criticise Macron, although the French president had on Wednesday also contended that Paty was “killed because Islamists want our future”.

      But Jordan’s opposition Islamic Action Front party called on the French president to apologise for his comments and urged citizens in the kingdom to boycott French goods.

      Such boycotts are already underway in Kuwait and Qatar.

      – ‘Mental checks’ –

      Dozens of Kuwaiti stores are boycotting French products, with images on social media showing workers removing French Kiri and Babybel processed cheese from shelves.

      In Doha, an AFP correspondent saw workers stripping shelves of French-made St. Dalfour jams and Saf-Instant yeast in a branch of the Al Meera supermarket chain on Saturday.

      Al Meera competes with French supermarket chains Monoprix and Carrefour for market share in the lucrative Qatari grocery sector.

      Al Meera and another grocery operator, Souq Al Baladi, released statements late Friday saying they would pull French products from stores until further notice.

      They stopped short of explicitly naming Macron or citing his comments, but the Al Meera statement said customer “comments guided our actions”.

      Neither operator responded to AFP requests for comment.

      Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the president of Turkey and a major ally of Qatar — on Saturday slammed Macron over his policies toward Muslims, saying that the French president needed “mental checks.”

      “What can one say about a head of state who treats millions of members from different faith groups this way: first of all, have mental checks,” Erdogan said in a televised address.

      Before Macron’s comments on Wednesday, he had already sparked a backlash in early October when he said “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world”.

      Nayef Falah Mubarak Al-Hajraf, secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council called Macron’s words “irresponsible” on Friday, and said they would “increase the spread of a culture of hatred”.

      The same day, Qatar University wrote on Twitter that following “the deliberate abuse of Islam and its symbols”, French Cultural Week would be postponed indefinitely, in a context where 2020 is the France-Qatar year of culture.

      Many Jordanians have changed their profiles on Facebook to add the message “Respect Mohammad the Prophet of Allah (God)”.

      https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201024-macron-comments-provoke-mideast-ire-boycotts-of-french-goods

  8. Looters raid Nigeria food warehouse as unrest spreads
    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201024-looters-raid-nigeria-food-warehouse-as-unrest-spreads

    “Several thousand people ransacked and looted a government food warehouse in central Nigeria on Saturday in the latest in two weeks of unrest sweeping over Africa’s most populous country.

    After pillaging hit Lagos and Ede in the country’s southwest, crowds of people raided a huge warehouse in Jos that was storing supplies destined for distribution during lockdowns imposed to control the virus pandemic.

    Videos on social media showed thousands of people in Jos carrying away sacks of cereals and rice and bags of pasta. Looters stripped away parts of the roof of the building.

    “So during the lockdown they were just hiding the food. I wonder about the kind of government we have,” said Mafeg Pam, who lives in Jos. “Many people have died from hunger.”

    Another Jos resident, Mohammed Ibrahim, said: “They hid this food since the lockdown. By now they should have shared it.”

    Relative calm prevailed Saturday in Lagos however, where a strict curfew imposed on Tuesday in Africa’s biggest city was eased as a week of violence also subsided.

    Peaceful demonstrations against police brutality erupted in Nigeria on October 8 and quickly spiralled into one of the biggest challenges to the ruling elite in decades.

    Police stations had been burnt, supermarkets looted and vehicles destroyed as violence spread across the economic hub of 20 million, with officials accusing “hoodlums” of taking advantage of the mayhem.

    Amnesty International has said at least 12 protesters were gunned down by the army and police in Lagos on Tuesday, and a total of 56 people have died since the demonstrations began.

    Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has called for an end to the protests and warned demonstrators not to “undermine national security”.

    He has not directly addressed the shooting of protesters in Lagos and sought to shrug off international outrage over the use of excessive force by his security agencies.

    “Enough is enough,” the chief of police said in a statement on Saturday, saying security forces would use legitimate means to stop any slide into lawlessness.

    The protests against police brutality have received backing from major celebrities, including Beyonce, Rihanna, Cardi B and heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua.”

  9. the gateway pundit – Twitter Suspends TGP and Bans New Report with Photo of Hunter Biden Smoking Crack with Link to Foot Sex Video

    — Twitter and Facebook Suspend Anyone who Reposts TGP Reporting — Just Like in Communist China!

    The Gateway Pundit DID NOT post any photos or video of nudity or of anyone but Hunter Biden from the video.

    Does anyone believe they would do this for a Trump family member?

    Earlier today Twitter was flooded with images of billboards blaming Ivanka Trump with murdering 220,000 Americans.

    Twitter did not block those images!

    UPDATE— Twitter suspended our account tonight for 12 hours for publishing a news report with a photo of Hunter Biden smoking crack cocaine.

    And Twitter and Facebook suspended anyone who posted our news report on Hunter Biden and his crack addiction and sex shots.

    Think of that!

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/update-twitter-blocks-link-tgp-post-hunter-biden-smoking-crack-link-video/

    • zero hedge – Twitter Nukes Alleged Hunter Biden Sex Tape After Letting Borat-Giuliani Sex Scene Trend

      A few days ago, the MSM and their political allies in the Democratic Party celebrated the release of a “compromising” photo appearing to show former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani with his hands down his pants. Giuliani claimed that he was merely retucking in his shirt after removing some recording equipment, but nevertheless, the whole news cycle played out in full view of the public as social media giants like Twitter and Facebook looked the other way, allowing the photo, and links to news stories covering the controversy (orchestrated by “Borat” prankster Sasha Baron Cohen) to circulate widely.

      However, just days later, a Chinese digital media company has published footage showing a man who looks identical to Hunter Biden engaging in a sex fetish act with an unidentifiable woman (along with a photo purporting to show what appears to be the same man engaging in sex with a Ukrainian prostitute). But instead of allowing discussion and links to the video to circulate, Twitter has scrubbed all links and photos related to the video and story, and is suspending accounts that appear to be trying to spread the video or screenshots from the footage.

      Some background: Late Saturday afternoon, a mysterious link surfaced on Reddit purporting to be the vaunted Hunter Biden sex tape – or at least, one of the Hunter Biden sex tapes (whispers about more footage have so far gone unsubstantiated).

      In it, a naked Hunter Biden can be seen, smoking crack, and laying with an unidentified woman, possibly a prostitute. The woman’s face is blurred out, making it impossible to tell whether or not she appeared to be underage.

      The video itself was posted by a news site purporting to be an anti-CCP intelligence operation called G-TV, which is also tied to Guo Wengui, the Chinese billionaire dissident who is close to Steve Bannon (Bannon was reportedly arrested after a visit on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut).

      Interested parties can find the video here.

      Footage of the sex act is preceded by footage of Guo Wengui at the national press club raging over a Chinese takeover of the US, “9/11 times a thousand,” he says, before transitioning to a screed slamming Western politicians who collaborate with the CCP, and warning about the dangers of American kleptocrats falling sway to CCP “influence” (blackmail etc).

      During the opening minutes if the video, Hunter can be heard complimenting the woman on her technique. “That’s so professional,” Hunter exclaims. “You can’t even find that on there,” he laughs as he gestures toward something off camera.

      A few minutes in, the man who is allegedly Hunter Biden can be seen firing up a crack pipe.

      The reaction on Twitter was swift. Users who tried to share the link and photos were quickly blocked (even though Twitter famously allows porn and nudity). Some cracked jokes about Hunter Biden receiving what appeared to be a ‘footjob’, while shrugging off the video as simply evidence that Biden has been victimized by revenge porn.

      Of course, now that actual pornographic footage of Hunter Biden has been produced, the world will stop and wonder: could these other rumors be true?

      Even some conservatives urged the public not to share the Hunter Biden “revenge porn”.

      Others simply noted the disparity in treatment between the Hunter Biden story and the “Borat” revelations about Giuliani, and wondered aloud how Twitter might be handling this if those photos were of Donald Trump Jr., not Hunter Biden.

      Of course, twitter didn’t simply ignore the Giuliani photo; the news became one of the top trending topics (thanks to the fact that Twitter’s user-base skews toward young leftists).

      One Twitter used even proclaimed that Hunter was really “a victim” of his father, Joe Biden.

      At any rate, the group that released the footage and the above-mentioned screenshot are promising to release more compromising material, while the MSM and Big Tech rallies to Hunter Biden’s defense.

      https://www.zerohedge.com/political/grainy-footage-allegedly-shows-hunter-biden-smoking-crack-and-receiving-footjob