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creepingsharia · 4 years

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“I Don’t Like Christians”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, April 2020

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of April, 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: The first two days of April opened with machete-wielding Muslim Fulani herdsmen murdering at least 13 Christians to death. “[W]e woke up to bury seven people burnt to death … from an overnight attack,” one source said. Those killed “are mostly elderly Christians who were unable to escape as members of the community ran into surrounding bushes during the attack.”

Then, on April 7, the Islamic herdsmen slaughtered a pastor and three members of his congregation, including a 10-year-old boy. The pastor, Matthew Tagwai, who was murdered in his home, is survived by a pregnant wife and two small children.

On April 10, the Fulani murdered pastor Stephen Akpor, 55. “Two herdsmen came to a branch of our church, Celestial Church … where they shot him as he was praying and counseling five members in the church,” his colleagues said. “The herdsmen shot the pastor several times and then stabbed him to death.” He is survived by five children and a wife.

On April 11, the Muslim herdsmen shot a Christian farmer dead.

On April 13, they decapitated two more Christians, in a manner that required them to be “buried without their heads.”

On April 14, Fulani butchered nine more Christians, six of whom were children, one a pregnant mother. “They were armed with machetes and AK-47 rifles as they attacked us,” a survivor recalls: “They attacked our village at about 8 p.m., and they were shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as they shot into our houses.” Thirty-three homes were set ablaze.

On April 16, they killed Sebastine Stephen, a young Christian student. “The Fulani herdsmen were over 50 carrying sophisticated guns and shooting sporadically. After they killed the young man,” a survivor reported, “they then broke into the house of Mr. Jack Nweke and abducted him with his wife, leaving behind their three children.”

On April 19, the Muslim terrorists killed four more Christians. “Thirty-eight houses with 86 rooms were also razed down, while about 87 families are affected,” a source said.

On April 20, “A Christian farmer, Titus Nyitar, was shot to death, and his head was cut off,” an area resident said. Titus was “working on his farm when he was killed by the herdsmen.” Afterwards they “proceeded to the village to burn down houses and kidnapped three villagers.”

On April 22, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed another 12 Christians; earlier, the report notes, they kidnapped a couple as they were being married inside their church.

On April 23, the Fulani “killed two people, kidnapped another and burned down a church building that included the pastor’s home in attacks on predominantly Christian areas in north-central Nigeria.”

“What is the crime of these innocent people against Fulani herdsmen?” a local resident of one of the villages that was ravaged asked. “For how long shall we continue to experience this killing? For how long shall we continue to beg the government and the security agencies to come to the aid of our people?”

Congo: The family of Batsemire Ngulongo Yesse, a Christian pastor and father of eight, who, along with 35 other Christians, was slaughtered at the hands of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic rebel group that targets Christians, gave the details surrounding his execution in an April 9 report. According to his son,

[Islamic militia armed with machetes] came at night and knocked at the door. My father opened the door. They asked him why he had defiled their order of leaving Christianity and becoming a Muslim. He replied that he was raised in a Christian family, became a Christian and baptized in an Anglican church and he cannot convert to another religion. The Islamists threatened to kill him. He said that it is only God who knows the time of his death and if it is time for him to die then he is ready to die a Christian. Then they slaughtered him. I was in another house and I heard all that they were doing. When they had killed my father they left.

The martyr’s widow, who was hiding in the house that night, offered other details: on entering the house, “the people introduced themselves as Muslims…. They told him to convert to Islam if he wanted to live. He declined. Right there, they slew his neck and left. He died on the spot.” The man’s son believes that the same Islamic rebel group earlier kidnapped his two brothers, whose fates remain unknown; he adds that “From that time our father used to encourage us to continue serving the local church instead of leaving as many pastors left the region.” Reverend Wilson Kasereka, who knew the slain priest, elaborated on the overall situation:

The war against Christians has been escalating and people are dying daily… We have lost several pastors that have been serving Christians in Congo and we live in fear because we do not know when the ADF will come for us. We have many refugees … [who] need a lot of prayers and support.

Mozambique: On April 7, Islamic terrorists known locally as “al-Shabaab” (“the youth”) and believed to be connected to ISIS, “cruelly and diabolically,” slaughtered 52 villagers in the Christian-majority nation. Although reports do not indicate the religious affiliation of those slaughtered, Mozambique is 60 percent Christian and 19 percent Muslim. The report adds that,

Militants have stepped up attacks in recent weeks as part of a campaign to establish an Islamist caliphate in the gas-rich region, seizing government buildings, blocking roads and briefly hoisting a black-and-white flag carrying religious symbols over towns and villages across Cabo Delgado province. The flag is also used by Isis and other Islamic extremists…. The insurgents have so far mainly targeted isolated villages, killing more than 900 people… The unrest has forced hundreds of thousands of locals to flee and raised concern among big energy firms operating in the region. More than 200,000 people have fled the area hit worst by the violence, according to a local Catholic archbishop, Dom Luiz Fernando.

Attacks on Churches and Easter Day

USA: On April 14, a Muslim man with a history of anti-Christian hate crimes tried to torch a church. Osama El Hannouny, 25, tried to burn down Sacred Heart Church in Palos Hills, Illinois. Surveillance tapes indicate that he knew the church was occupied. Firefighters quickly managed to extinguish the flames. According to the report, “El Hannouny allegedly scratched, bit and spit at police when they tried to stop him,” and later “wrote a religious slur on the wall of his cell.” Earlier, in November 2019, the Muslim man slashed the tires of 19 vehicles in the parking lots of two other churches (First Baptist and Sts. Helen and Constantine). At that time, when he was arrested, he told police that he had damaged the cars because “I don’t like Christians.” He was then released on $10,000 I-bond with electronic monitoring, which did little to deter his most recent church attack.

Osama El Hannouny (in mosque t-shirt)

Denmark: Around 3:30 am on Easter Sunday, the holiest day for Christians around the world, the Vejleå Church in Ishøj was vandalized with phrases saying “We conquer Denmark,” and, in Arabic, “There is no God but Allah.” Many Danes were reportedly “stunned” by the graffiti. Police said they had surveillance pictures, but that they were not clear enough for publishing. This same church in Ishøj had been vandalized earlier, in 2015, when eight of its large windows were smashed by hurled stones. Such attacks on churches in European regions with large Muslim migrant populations have become increasingly common.

Algeria: For the first time in its history, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) added Algeria to its 2020 annual report on the worst violators of religious freedom around the world. A portion of the report follows:

In 2019, Algeria escalated its ongoing repression of religious minorities. The government systematically cracked down on the Evangelical Protestant community in particular through a string of church closures and raids, including two of the largest Protestant churches in the country. The current crackdown mirrors the scale of past waves of church closures in 2008 and 2011, and has been ongoing since November 2017 and worsened in 2019. Officials have made arbitrary demands that churches cease all religious activities, accusing them of violating safety regulations, operating illegally, or evangelizing, or giving them other justifications for sealing off their places of worship. The Algerian government forcibly closed three of the country’s largest Protestant churches in October 2019…. The government of Algeria systematically restricts non-Muslims’ ability to register, operate houses of worship, proselytize, and practice their faith in other ways…. Ordinance 06-03 also limits proselytization by prohibiting anyone from “shaking the faith of a Muslim.”… These laws are actively used to arrest and charge individuals for proselytism, or for transporting or possessing religious objects such as Bibles.

Egypt: On April 14, Egyptian security forces were involved in a gunfight with an Islamic terror cell ensconced in an apartment building in Cairo’s Amiriyah district, which is known for holding a large Christian population and several churches. Seven would-be terrorists and one police officer were killed in the shootout. Several ammunitions and automatic weapons were found and seized from their apartment. The Egyptian ministry confirmed that “the suspects were planning attacks on the country’s Coptic Christians during the Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christians, one the world’s oldest Christian communities, would celebrate Easter on April 19.” Attacks on churches around Easter are not uncommon in Egypt. On April 9, 2017—Palm Sunday, which initiates the holy week of Easter—two Christian churches were bombed during mass; at least 50 worshippers were killed and 130 injured and/or mutilated. Two days later, another terror attack targeting a Christian monastery was thwarted. On April 12, 2015, Easter Sunday, two explosions targeting two separate churches took place in Egypt. Similarly, on Sunday, April 5, 2015, as Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday, yet another church was attacked in Alexandria; gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on the church during the night injuring a police officer and two civilians.

Indonesia: Members of the Islamic Defenders Front raided and violently disbanded a house church meeting which consisted of about ten people. According to the report, “Video footage … showed two men bursting into a home, Sunday [April 19] in Cikarang.” One of the attackers, Ustad Muliana, was identified as a senior leader of the Islamic Defenders. The video showed the Muslims threatening the worshippers: “One of them physically attacked Christians with a piece of wood,” the report says, adding:

Sunday’s incident followed a series of attacks or threats against churches involving Islamic parties or their supporters…. [W]hile Indonesia is officially secular, there has been a rise in politicians demanding a more significant role for Islam. Some groups, such as FPI, want to turn Indonesia in a full-blown Islamic state.

Greece: Muslim migrants in the island of Chios, according to a report, set fires and attacked police beginning on Holy Saturday and into the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, April 19, for Orthodox. Although riots had erupted earlier, they were exacerbated by a false rumor that an Iraqi woman had died from COVID-19 in Chios, prompting the migrants to hurl stones at police; two cars, tents, a canteen inside of the migrant camp, and houses were burned during the riots. It was later revealed that the woman in question had never even been infected. Chios police arrested three migrants believed to be responsible for inciting the violence.

General Abuse of Christians

Syria: As occurred during the height of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, “jihadist rebels” continue to confiscate Christian properties in the name of “sharia.” According to the report,

Christians in Idlib province face the injustice of jihadist organizations and violations by Islamic factions, in terms of applying ‘Islamic Sharia law’ to members of different religious communities. Islamic factions are clamping down on them and imposing levies ‘Jizya’ in order to force them to leave their homes to regime-controlled areas.

Pakistan: In two separate incidents, Muslim men sexually assaulted very young Christian girls. First, a group of Muslims attempted to kidnap Ishrat, aged 9. According to the report,

The April 9 assault took place while Ishrat was walking in the street in Qutiba. There, a group of Muslim men approached her and asked her to convert to Islam and marry Asim, one of the men in the group. When Ishrat refused, the men beat Ishrat, made derogatory remarks against Ishrat and Christianity, and attempted to kidnap Ishrat. The kidnapping, however, was averted as local villagers intervened. According to Ishrat, another man in the group named Ijaz had been harassing her before the assault. Ishrat claims that Ijaz followed her for a long time in an attempt to develop a physical relationship. Ishrat and her family reported the assault to local police. However, after reporting the incident, a group of armed Muslims attacked Ishrat’s family home. According to Ishrat’s family, the group threatened the family with severe consequences for “creating hurdles to their mission.”

Two days later, on April 11, a Muslim man kidnapped and sexually assaulted Nadia, another Christian girl, aged 7. According to the report,

Nadia was discovered to be missing at 7pm when her father Boota Masih returned home, and he and other neighbours immediately started to look for her. Ghulam Sabir, a Muslim resident of Talwandi, heard a cry coming from a nearby wheat field. There, Sabir found Nadia, who had been beaten and sexually assaulted, and her attacker Muhammad Shoaib. He tried to escape, but he was caught and taken into police custody.

Iran: On April 21, Christian convert and human rights activist Mary Mohammadi was sentenced to three months in prison and flogging—above and beyond what she had already experienced—due to her criticism of the regime’s violations against human rights. The 21-year-old presented her side on social media: “After suffering many types of torture and 46 days in jail in the terrible conditions of Vozara detention and Qarchak Prison [which has a “reputation for various types of gender abuse”], I have been sentenced to 3 months and 1 day in prison and 10 lashes.” Mary added that she was sentenced for protesting “against the slaughter of human beings” and for displaying “sympathy for the families of those who perished on the Ukraine airline crash.” During her hearing, the judge harassed her about her conversion to Christianity even though charges against her had nothing to do with religion. In 2017, Mary spent more than six months in prison for attending an unground church meeting.

Uganda: In two separate instances, Muslims savagely beat two women—a six-month pregnant woman for converting to Christianity, and a Christian girl for evangelizing.

After converting to Christianity and attending church for six weeks, Sylvia Shamimu Nabafa, 27, was spotted by a Muslim neighbor leaving church. He told her father, Haji Juma Suleiman, who proceeded to interrogate his daughter, then six months pregnant: “I did not respond,” she recalls. “He began hitting me with kicks and blows. He then took a blunt object and hit my right leg. I started bleeding, and the next thing I knew, I found myself in the hospital bed at Palissa Health Centre.” She was discharged six weeks later. [delete?] According to local church elder, “At the moment she needs support and encouragements as she recalls the ordeal she has gone through after giving her life to Jesus Christ. At times I find her weeping. She needs food, clothes, medication and hospital check-ups.”

As for Lydia Nabirye, the 23-year-old daughter of a Church of God evangelist, problems began for her after she shared her faith with a Muslim woman who subsequently became Christian. The Muslim family of the apostate woman proceeded to threaten her life. She took refuge with Lydia’s Christian family, where six other apostates from Islam had found sanctuary. Then, on April 7, while traveling to grieve with a Muslim mother whose son died, Muslims ambushed Lydia. “They held me and started beating me up,” Lydia explained. “They slapped me, and others hit me with sticks, saying that they were out to kill me because I was changing Muslims to become Christians.” An eyewitness provides more details: “[T]he Muslims ambushed, strangled and severely beat her. When she shouted and screamed, neighbors called police, and the assailants fled when officers arrived… When I met her at her home on April 14, she was still in pain from multiple injuries – head, right eye and left hand injuries…”

Egypt: Several days after disappearing on April 22, Ranya Abd al-Masih (“servant of Christ”), 39, a Christian wife and mother appeared in a brief video, dressed in all black Islamic attire (niqab), saying that, “praise be to Allah,” she had willingly and secretly converted to Islam nine years earlier, and no longer wanted anyone—her husband, children, family—to bother about her anymore. Her family insists that such claims are for public consumption, likely being made at gunpoint and/or even under the effects of drugs. The Coptic Orthodox Christian Church added its voice in an appeal to President Sisi to intervene and “return our daughter,” whose own “three young daughters are heartbroken at her absence, as is her husband and her entire family.” According to Remon, Ranya’s brother, “She was definitely kidnapped and forced to make that video, due to threats against her or her husband and children if she refused to comply.” He said the idea that she had “secretly” embraced Islam was ludicrous, citing the fact that up until her disappearance she was regularly attending church, visiting and praying in monasteries—even fasting 55 days in the lead up to Easter. “We are sure that Ranya, our beloved sister, whom we know so well, is not the one we saw on the video; that is a woman who is being threatened and coerced.” After complaining that state security—which has been accused of complicity in similar cases—refuses to help, her brother wondered “What will we do about our Coptic mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters? We are in an era when such things should not happen.”

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the recent book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic. Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Previous Reports:

#Persecution #Islam #Muslim #Jihad #Sharia #Legal #Immigration #News #Politics #travel #Media #Terror

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loudlytransparenttrash · 4 years

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Goodbye 2019: A review of the lies that shaped the year

January

One Twitter user posted this thread, describing how there were “50-70 white men” wearing MAGA apparel who “surrounded us” and “sought to intimidate, mock and scare us” by “chanting ‘build the wall’ and “other trumpisms.” “The group was clearly looking for ANY opportunity to get violent,” they were “bumping into us and daring us to get physical.” Video was then clipped and shared on social media, the mainstream media spread the edited footage and within hours the story about “racist white MAGA hat wearing teens cornered an innocent Native elder while chanting build the wall” consumed the country.

Slate wrote an article comparing the student’s “cruelty” to Jim Crow mobs and neo-Nazis. BuzzFeed’s Anne Petersen tweeted how the students and Brett Kavanaugh are the epitome of “white patriarchy.” Kathy Griffin called for doxing the kids and Stormy Daniels in a now-deleted tweet fantasized about putting these children behind electrocuted walls. New York Times author Kurt Eichenwald wished that these kids should be doxed and denied work for the rest of their lives. Headlines included, “White students in MAGA hats taunt Native American elders,” “Covington Catholic High Student's White Privilege Didn't Win,” “White America, come get your children,” “White victimology, white privilege and the Covington Catholic rules of race,” “Boys Will Be Boys. Covington's Showed Yet Again Why Only White Boys Can Smirk Through That.”

The students and their families were doxed, harassed and threatened for weeks after. Covington Catholic High School was forced to close over security concerns. Then the original video was released that provided context: A group of Covington Catholic High School students went to the March for Life during a field trip to Washington, DC. While there, the students were confronted by the radical black supremacy group, Black Hebrew Israelites, where they were verbally harassed and racially abused, calling them crackers, fa*gots and told them to go find a school to shoot up. A black student was berated as a race-traitor and told his white classmates were going to harvest his organs. A Native activist later approached the kids and started continually banging a drum inches from their face. One student, Nick Sandmann, stood calmly in typical teenage bemusement. That’s it. That’s the story. Once it was realized not a single accusation made by the original poster or the media who spread it was true, everyone went silent, and despite many retractions, no apologies.

February

Empire actor Jussie Smollett was approached by two white men wearing Trump’s Make America Great Again caps and yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him before attacking him, dousing him with bleach and tying a noose around his neck, all while chanting, “This MAGA country!” Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Al Sharpton were among those calling it a modern-day lynching and evidence of the fear and hate black people live with. Harris and Booker even wrote an “anti-lynching bill.” Everybody gobbled this story up and quickly used it to push their idea that it said something more important about the state of race in the United States. Essentially they argued that Trump and his supporters are agitating for this kind of violence and, well, here it is.

Afterwards, Smollett proudly bragged how he had fought off his attackers to the loud cheers of a crowd, a true badass. He then appeared in an ABC interview where his eyes welled with tears as he recounted his traumatic experience and how defiant and inspirational he’s gotta be now. When asked why he thinks he was targeted, Smollett blamed Trump and his evil supporters.

But then some red flags started. 1. He held onto his sandwich during the attack and waited 45 minutes to call police. 2. When police arrived to take a report, Smollett asked that the officers turn off their body cameras. 3. He was still wearing the noose around his neck and wore it “like a tie” throughout their entire 40-minute interview. 4. He said he was on the phone with his manager when the attack happened but he refused to show his phone log to police. 5. He supposedly received a threatening letter a week prior to the “attack” which had child-like writing and drawings on it of his name and the word MAGA, and cliche magazine cutouts of letters pieced together to spell out “black fag.” In summary, we were supposed to believe white Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats were roaming around Chicago, carrying a noose, they saw Smollett, knew who he was, knew his show, his sexuality and singled him out for a lynching.

As the police connected the dots, they found the whole thing was a giant hoax plotted by Smollett himself. When the “black fag” serial killer letter stunt failed to receive national attention, Smollett orchestrated the attack by paying two Nigerian brothers he worked with $3,500 to stage the attack on him while getting Subway. Chicago police spent days and worked overtime poring over security footage and devoting resources that could have been put toward real victims. On February 20, Smollett was charged with a class 4 felony for filing a false police report and was later indicted on 16 felony counts of false reporting. Smollett joined a long list of hate crime hoaxes since Trump took office. I can only assume because reality isn’t at all matching their delusion of the gloomy Nazi “MAGA country” they keep going on about, they’re forced to create these endless hate crime hoaxes to validate the delusion.

March

After spending two years perpetuating allegations that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary and wet dreams of Trump being removed from office and even imprisoned, the entire left, every Democrat and the mainstream media were visibly shaken by Mueller’s investigation ending with zilch. When the news broke that there would be no indictments against Trump nor anyone associated with his campaign, and Attorney General William Barr had exonerated him, those who were so certain of victory and so locked into their conspiracy, were once again forced into utter meltdown mode. Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars, employed 19 prosecutors, more than three dozen FBI agents and an analyst and issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 280 demands for phone and email records and interviewed 500 witnesses throughout the course of the investigation. No evidence was found.

There was however a major abuse of the rule of law by Obama administration officials and Department of Justice and FBI employees, a shameful politicization of the Russia investigation by Democrats and an end of journalistic integrity by many members of the media who all did their best to delegitimize and undermine the election. The DOJ and FBI used unverified research to obtain a court order to surveil the Trump campaign, and thereby obtain access to past campaign communications. In applying for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order, the DOJ and FBI did not disclose to the secret surveillance court that the debunked Christopher Steele dossier (Trump/pissing prostitutes) was funded by the DNC and Clinton, the whole basis for the probe. The FISA application also did not inform the court of Steele’s bias and his desperation to keep Trump out of the White House. It was all a setup.

Since Election Day 2016, the Trump-hating political and media establishment have been in a cute relationship to achieve their desired end of destroying Trump. Their shared hatred of the man is indisputable. But the idea of them colluding in this information operation to maximum political and legal effect is altogether more disturbing. Russiagate put Trump’s presidency under a cloud of suspicion for more than half of his days in office, delaying his agenda through forcing the administration to expend valuable time and resources defending itself from the constant hounding. The Five F’s seems to be the Democrat’s only tactic, all they can do is deceive, degrade, deny, disrupt and hope that it all will eventually wear Trump down enough to ultimately destroy him.

April

On Easter Day, churches across Sri Lanka were targeted by radical Islamist suicide bombers. The Muslim terrorists walked into several crowded churches and murdered masses of people. They also targeted international hotels popular with Western travelers. The bombings marked the country’s deadliest violence in a decade, leaving 290 dead and over 500 injured. After the quick condemnation of white supremacy and Islamophobia after the Christchurch shootings a few weeks prior, the media and Democrats avoided at all costs condemning Islamic terrorism and recognizing the victims as Christians. A host of politicians such as Obama, Hillary Clinton and Julian Castro all refused to condemn Islamic terrorism and none called the victims Christians, while others such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Portland mayor Ted Wheeler stayed silent altogether. Christians being killed at the hands of Islamists goes against the entire left-wing doctrine, despite it happening all over the world.

It’s not the only time we’ve seen the media and politicians cover for Islamic extremism. Under Obama, officials were so afraid of the phrase “Islamic terrorism” that they redacted the very mention of Islam and even Islamic State from the Orlando gay nightclub massacre transcripts, despite 49 people being killed and 50 others injured by a Muslim terrorist who had pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the UK, police and child protection workers were so afraid of the phrase “Islamophobia” that they ignored and refused to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child rape rings, allowing 1,400 young British girls to be raped with knives, bottles and their tongues nailed to tables. In Sweden, the police and media were so scared of “anti-immigration sentiment,” they covered up dozens of sexual assaults against teenage girls. Not wanting to make their new waves of Muslim refugees look bad, German media and the government also covered up mass sexual abuse across the country where 1,200 women were sexually assaulted and raped in just one night. Who exactly are we protecting by refusing to tell the truth and call something what it is?

May

Alyssa Milano, an actress who has been a valiant fighter for progressive causes, demanded for American women to undertake a “sex strike.” The idea is that women should not risk pregnancy until they have an insurance policy. Uh, so like exactly what Christian conservatives already believe in. There’s something funny about Milano embracing the banner of Christian conservatives in order to own Christian conservatives. Just like when Janelle Monáe advocated for women to go on a sex strike, saying that “people need to start respecting the vagina.” Once again, that’s what conservatives have already been screaming, respecting your vagina, respecting yourself, respecting sex and the good and bad product of sex.

In championing this “revolutionary” concept of women withholding sex in order to attain bodily autonomy, Milano and her blue-check buddies unwittingly preached the same message you often hear during Sunday sermons, especially in youth groups. The Christian perspective posits that the way for women to attain bodily autonomy is to have self-control over your body and choices, to not give away your body so carelessly and to be aware of the consequences of sexual activity outside of committed relationships. Most Christians embrace Milano’s message, not just because the only women who’d participate and use sex as a political bargaining chip in the first place are those who probably need to reevaluate their sex lives anyway, but it also places greater meaning on sex and the power and responsibility of it, which again is another Christian view.

Milano, like many others, also referred to abortion as “reproductive rights,” which is a pretty new term that replaces abortion and is also much catchier on picket signs when used alongside “human rights.” The problem is the term isn’t even close to being accurate. Abortion has nothing to do with reproductive rights. By the time abortion is even a possibility, post-fertilization has already created a tiny human and the mother has discovered that she is pregnant. In other words, reproduction is already complete. That “right” to reproduction was already exercised when you gave it up, literally and figuratively.

June

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried her best to compare Trump to Hitler by comparing illegal migrant detention centers to actual concentration camps: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” she tweeted. Ocasio-Cortez continued this claim during an Instagram Live video, where she said, “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. That is what they are. The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.”

Of course, the claim that conditions at U.S. border facilities are anything like Nazi concentration camps or Japanese American internment camps is absurd. Detainees are not subjected to forced labor, malnutrition or executions. They also chose to enter these facilities by willingly coming to the United States and either illegally crossing or turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol, while obviously concentration camp inmates were forced to be there. Let’s not forget the little detail that any of the migrants may opt for voluntary departure at any time. I don’t remember concentration camps ever having that policy. Concentration camps detained and persecuted their own citizens because of who they were, not temporarily detained people who chose to illegally break into a different country. I don’t think there were many Jewish people trying to sneak into Nazi Germany. Even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement rejecting such ridiculous comparisons.

But it’s not just AOC driving this rhetoric. MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough showed photos of border officers escorting kids to showers and compared it to Nazi officers marching Jews into gas chambers. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden posted photos of the Auschwitz death camp, also comparing it to the temporary housing policy at the border. The New York Times published an article that called for U.S. Border Patrol agents to be doxed so they can be “publicly shamed" and “held accountable.” Almost the entire Democrat Party and mainstream media have made similar comparisons. Yet the CBP detention centers are not operating any differently today than they were during the Obama administration. The famous photos of caged kids are from Obama’s time in office. Even when the most anti-Trump news network CNN went to investigate, the kids had full bellies, they were watching soccer, playing video games on big flat-screen TVs, sleeping in comfy beds and participating in tai chi classes, rather than ya know, being caged, gassed and worked to death.

July

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal held a hearing on complaints from Jessica Yaniv, a man formerly called Jonathan who now identifies as a woman, after multiple small business beauticians refused to wax Yaniv’s penis and testicles. The defendant in the case was a young mother who operates in her family home, but there were also 12 other female beauticians Yaniv filed human rights complaints against which put some of them out of business while others paid settlements to save further legal action. Up until July 17, Yaniv’s name was fiercely protected by the Canadian government, as well as technology platforms like Twitter, which banned numerous women and some men who’d tried to warn others about his predations. But once the ban was lifted, it was revealed Yaniv had used “connections” to a band to help solicit advice from both women and teenagers on how to approach young girls and talk to them about tampons and menstruation in female washrooms. You can read the whole thing here.

Yaniv also recently tweeted shock to be turned away from a gynecologist. “So a gynaecologist office that I got referred to literally told me today that ‘we don’t serve transgender patients. And me, being me, I’m shocked... and confused… and hurt. Are they allowed to do that, legally?" I’m sure Yaniv will be taking gynecologists to human rights courts next for refusing to inspect anuses. We have to be careful to not misgender Yaniv as several journalists have been banned from Twitter for this crime against Yaniv. Any concerns about women being forced to touch male genitalia or biological men being allowed into women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, rape crisis shelters and prisons, you’re done for. This whole story resembles a new trend forming, such as the Christian cake shop owner who was sued for not wanting to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage: An individual from a politically designated victim class seeks out a service, intentionally from a small business owner who they know they can exploit, and the moment the businessperson declines - voila! A movement is born with a slew of lawsuits, powerful interest groups and media backing.

August

Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix special was only uploaded for a few hours before the PC grievance mob went to work trying to sink it. Buzzfeed lectured Chappelle for his “truly vile” jokes and instructed him “to be more thoughtful.” Salon spoke out against “the cruelty” and Slate compared him to that "uncle who doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how much he’s disappointing you.” While “Uncle Dave” was once cool, they say, his jokes in 2019 make you “wince.” Vice went a step further and gave a total trigger warning to its audience, writing "you can definitely skip” it altogether. As of today, “Sticks & Stones” shows a 38 percent score from media critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while 39,881 of viewers have given it a 99 percent audience score, reflecting the massive disconnect between the media and the general public and proving the only ones who are “out of touch” are themselves. This same pattern can be seen with “woke” movies too. Media critics sing their praises and hail their progressive activist messaging and pandering, yet in reality, these movies completely bomb.

Hollywood wants to water down comedy as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in doing so quickly turns into telling people what’s funny and what’s not and who can laugh and who can’t. Even the most devoted left-wing activist surely can see the problem. But a comedian like Dave Chappelle makes fun of everyone and doesn’t believe in a protected class during a stand up routine, as it should be. He also made fun of things that the right cares about, yet they still applauded the special as a celebration of comedy. But no, because Chappelle didn’t obey by their rules, because he didn’t stand on stage and call Trump a Cheeto (the pinnacle of left-wing comedy), he too must be one of those Nazis we keep hearing about. Chappelle isn’t running for public office. He’s a comic, and we’re not meant to seek the ultimate answers from him. It’s his job to talk about and then joke about current events, trends, what’s going on in the world, his only sin was talking about them a little too honestly.

September

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations through teary eyes and gritted teeth, claiming that the world is about to end and how unfair it is that she has to save it. Throughout the melodramatic speech warning of “mass extinction” and attacking capitalism, Thunberg repeatedly declared “how dare you!” and “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” Sadly, she’s right. How dare a child from one of the most healthiest, progressive, wealthiest, safest and most peaceful countries known to man be indoctrinated to believe adults have failed her and the weight of the world is on her shoulders to save mankind from apocalypse. It’s not her fault.

It’s the fault of the schools who pile on the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster starting from kindergarten. It’s the fault of the ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, whether it’s hot or cold, rain, sun or snow, it’s all evidence of the end looming. And it’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly and desperate for votes to tell people that utopian visions of a world run on windmills is a pipe dream. And why the hell isn’t China being lectured by the Swedish teenager? Their emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world, but we’re the ones being told to ban straws, stop eating meat, roller skate to work and stop having kids? Really? Then again, it’s easier to go after countries which roll out the red carpet, gives her a platform and awards her with prizes in return for her criticisms. The real pollution culprits aren’t nearly as accommodating.

Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of AOC’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat and do in their personal lives. As Hawaii Democrat senator and climate change enthusiast encouraged fellow activists to think of climate change as a religion rather than a science, we can only hope that most Americans will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason we should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation, including her army of schoolchildren, can continue not having to suffer needlessly.

October

Media outlets responded to Trump’s announcement of the U.S. military’s successful mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not met with much praise and excitement that the world’s most wanted terrorist leader had been stopped, but with anger and snark. Many media outlets, the Washington Post for one example, worked hard to spin the killing of Baghdadi into, somehow, a negative story for Trump, beginning with a look at Baghdadi as not as a brutal terrorist and murderer, but as an “austere religious scholar.”

The Washington Post followed it up with a chain of negative stories: “Three ways the Baghdadi raid undermines Trump’s chaotic policy,” “Despite the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, some analysts question U.S. ability to prevent ISIS resurgence,” “The U.S. kills an ISIS leader. But Trump is giving the group a new lease on life.” They even complained how long Trump talked for and how using words such as “dog” and “coward” weren’t as presidential as Obama. Oh, and a Washington Post and CNN journalist tweeted how wrong it was for Trump to call al-Baghdadi a coward because it takes guts to blow yourself up rather than allow yourself to be captured...

If only it ended there. The Washington Post joined other media outlets including the New York Times in debunking the “doctored” and “faked” photo Trump tweeted of himself giving a Medal of Honor to the dog that chased down al-Baghdadi. White House reporter Steve Herman also debunked the meme by breaking news on Twitter, "I've requested details on this photo! There was no such a canine event on today's schedule!" He later confirmed in a tweet after speaking to a White House official that the meme was indeed Photoshopped. Jim Acosta of CNN also made sure everyone was aware, "The dog is not at the White House." The Huffington Post wrote, “A photo tweeted by Donald Trump is getting dogged by accusations that the pic is the very definition of fake news. The photo didn’t really happen,” then proceeded to show side-by-side photos to prove it was photoshopped. Everywhere the meme was called “fake news.”

Once the media confirmed that the very clearly photoshopped dog was not at the White House after all, and the meme was just a meme, they moved onto asserting the meme was insulting and disrespectful to the original recipient of the Medal of Honor, James McCloughan, which the photo was taken from. Yet when the meme was shown to McCloughan, he laughed and said he wasn’t offended and he liked it. Now that another outrage had fizzled out, the only thing that was left for them to complain about was... Trump hates dogs because he used the term negatively to describe the ISIS leader. Yep.

November

Nine American Mexican family members were slaughtered in broad daylight in an ambush by a drug cartel in Northern Mexico, less than a hundred miles from the Arizona border. The family were traveling to visit family when they were attacked by the cartel which left three women and six children dead, including a pair of infant twins. As Trump voiced outrage over the attacks, condemning the violence and offering the Mexican government help to come down harder on the cartels, not a single one of the seventeen Democrats in the race issued a statement on the attacks.

That’s probably because they’ve already established it’s racist and bigoted to point out that some Mexicans can do bad things and there’s gonna be some bad eggs illegally crossing the southern border, despite leading Democrats including Clinton and Obama holding the same view just a few years ago. Let’s forget those behind most illegal border crossings are actually rapists or in just one city, over just a few weeks, seven illegal immigrants were convicted of rape. For the record, Trump never called all Mexicans rapists. He said there are rapists among those being sent over, along with drugs and MS-13 members, all true. He also said in the very next breath that there’s also good people crossing. Now, it’s also racist to call MS-13 gang members “animals” despite them being known for beheadings, dismemberments and cutting out hearts. And now we know we’re not even allowed to talk about the epidemic of terrorism and violence along the border, even when nine American women and children are massacred as it runs counter to the new, insane Democrat narrative mocking the need for stronger border security or the need for borders at all.

This is the latest incident that has shined a spotlight on Mexico’s growing crime problem as drug cartels have launched an insurgency in the failing country. A month earlier, hundreds of gunmen stormed the city of Culiacan after Mexican National Guards arrested one of the sons drug kingpin “El Chapo.” In a stunning display, the Mexican president told his National Guards to surrender to the cartel and release El Chapo’s son. The day after the family massacre, more murders and bus burnings were unleashed on the city of Juarez. The mayor of Juarez said the chaos was the cartel’s response to police arresting suspects involved in an ongoing drug turf war. We’ll have to wait and see if the new Mexican president’s policy of “hugs not bullets” will end the endless territory being controlled by different armed groups, similar to the Middle East and Africa. Maybe love and giving into cartel demands will bring law and order back.

December

Democrats finally did what they’ve been promising to do since Trump won the election, they impeached their mortal enemy. The obsession with impeachment has little to do with anything Trump did, and everything to do with who he is. Democrats never expected to lose the 2016 election, especially not to Donald Trump, which humiliated them even more. And ever since, they have been trying every trick in the book to prove what a horrible mistake voters have made. Democrats have floated the idea of impeachment over fake Russian collusion conspiracy theories, drivel about porn stars and even the president’s criticism of his critics. All of them bombed. With time running out before the 2020 presidential race gets into full swing, they seized on the only thing they had left: bogus “concerns” with a phone call to the newly elected Ukrainian president.

The evidence Democrats have rallied on makes for the weakest impeachment ever launched in American history, highlighting gross abuse of congressional power and serving as a national embarrassment. The impeachment inquiry was kicked off by an unknown person during a phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. An unredacted transcript of the phone call was quickly released to the public, putting the conversation between the two leaders in plain sight for all to see in an unprecedented move. There was nothing to hide. Democrats and media outlets took slices from the transcript and came up with a story about Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid. Yet when Trump mentioned “do us a favor,” in the very next sentence, he referred to Ukraine looking into the 2016 election meddling after Mueller did such a poor job, it had nothing to do with Biden. Zelensky himself said there was no pressure and he didn’t even know about the military aid being delayed.

But House Democrats still held four weeks of impeachment hearings and not a single piece of incriminating evidence to impeach the president of any kind of crime was found, whether it be a “quid pro quo,” “bribery,” or “extortion. In fact, to the contrary, witnesses called by Democrats actually exonerated the president of any wrongdoing. Ousted former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich blatantly admitted that Trump committed no crime. “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the president of the United States has been involved with at all?” “No,” Yovanovitch said. Former State Department Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was asked, “In no way, shape or form did you receive any indication whatsoever, or anything that resembled a quid pro quo, is that correct?” “That’s correct,” Volker said.

Despite clearly having no case against the president, Democrats still voted to deliver their promise, it was now or never. Unlike other impeachment cases, it wasn’t at all bipartisan, the House’s impeachment inquiry passed without a single Republican vote. In fact two Democrats joined GOP lawmakers in voting against the resolution, ironically making opposition to impeachment the more bipartisan vote. One Democrat even switched parties after he was pressured by his Democrat colleagues to vote against his will. Now, Pelosi is refusing to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. She knows Trump will be swiftly exonerated and claim another monumental victory, so let’s savor in the impeachment juices that nobody cares about for as long as we can. At least until the next “existential threat” or “constitutional crisis” they can whip up.

#trump #politics #impeachment #2019 #new year #2020 #democrats #dnc #happy new year #donald trump #conservative #republican

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gyrlversion · 5 years

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Right-wing mosque shooters rant included attack on Sadiq Khan

The vile far-Right terrorist who slaughtered at least 49 people in New Zealand was inspired by Anders Breivik and called for the deaths of Angela Merkel and Sadiq Khan in his twisted ‘manifesto’.

Australian man Brenton Tarrant, 28, published a rambling document he called ‘The Great Replacement’ on the morning before he opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch on New Zealand’s south island.

At least 49 people are believed to have been killed in the attack, with more than 40 also in hospital suffering from gunshot wounds.

The chilling 73-page manifesto lists his twisted grievances, why he picked the mosques in Christchurch and how he was inspired by Norway mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 in 2011. He also cites Finsbury Park terrorist Darren Osborne in the document.

Among his muddled ramblings are rants about sex gangs in Rotherham and other towns in north England, and calls for the deaths of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Turkish leader Recep Erdogan and London mayor Sadiq Khan.

Australian man Brenton Tarrant (pictured), 28, opened fire on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday and live streamed video of the attack through his Facebook account

Tarrant published an online manifesto detailing his plans to carry out a massacre hours before the attack. He called the 73-page document: ‘The Great Replacement’

The rambling manifesto was posted before Tarrant opened fire inside the Al Noor Mosque and another gunman went on a shooting rampage at the Linwood Masjid Mosque

Tarrant wrote about London mayor Sadiq Khan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in his rambling document

Tarrant references previous terror attacks by Breivik, Dylan Roof in the US and Darren Osborne, who killed one in a van attack on a north London mosque.

He says he learned violence on the video game Fortnite and praises memes for spreading the language of the far-Right.

Responding to the document, Nick Lowles, of UK anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate, said today: ‘The bloody terrorist attack in Christchurch was carried out by a far-right activist who has published a manifesto explaining why he did it.

‘The terrorist’s manifesto uses the stock phrases of the alt-right to justify murder, talking of ‘white genocide’ and citing spurious statistics about birth rates to explain away the savagery they have inflicted on people simply engaged in practising their faith.

‘In so many places around the world, this violent ideology destroys lives and rips loved ones apart.’

Tarrant also claimed he had been inspired to carry out the attacks as ‘revenge’ for a terror attack in Sweden that claimed a young girl, Ebba Akerlund, among its victims.

He described himself as an ‘ordinary white man born in Australia to a working class, low-income family.’

‘I am just a regular white man, from a regular family,’ he wrote.

In the manifesto, Tarrant said he had ‘little interest in education’ and ‘did not attend University as I had no great interest in anything offered in the Universities to study’.

He cited Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik and Finsbury Park terrorist Darren Osborne

Witnesses reported hearing 50 shots and police are responding to the incident at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island

Witnesses inside the mosque reported seeing 15 people being shot, including children

London mayor Mr Khan tweeted about the attacks this morning, saying: ‘When the flames of hatred are fanned, when people are demonised because of their faith, when we play on people’s fears rather than addressing them, the consequences are deadly, as we have seen so sadly today.’

He said police patrols outside London mosques had been stepped up.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attacks as ‘the latest example of rising racism and Islamophobia’.

Mr Erdogan said on Twitter: ‘On behalf of my country, I offer my condolences to the Islamic world and the people of New Zealand, who have been targeted by this deplorable act.’

Germany’s foreign minister said the attacks are a ‘brutal crime’ that touches everyone.

The shooter’s weapons were marked with the names of other people who have carried out attacks

Witnesses reported hearing 50 shots from his weapons including a semi-automatic shotgun and a rifle at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island (Pictured)

Tarrant said he initially planned to target a mosque in Dunedin, New Zealand but changed to the Al Noor and Masjid Mosques because they had more people

He also revealed he did not initially plan to carry out the attack in New Zealand at all.

‘I only arrived in New Zealand to live temporarily while I planned and trained, but I soon found out that New Zealand was as target rich of an environment as anywhere else in the West,’ Tarrant wrote.

‘Secondly an attack in New Zealand would bring to attention the truth of the assault on our civilisation.’

The document uses the language of the far-Right, mixed with snatches of poems by Dylan Thomas and Rudyard Kipling.

A man who escaped the mosque during the shooting said he saw his wife lying dead on the footpath

Shooter grew up in small-town Australia

Brenton Tarrant, 28, grew up in Grafton, a small town in northern New South Wales.

Tarrant’s father, who was a competitive athlete and completed 75 triathlons, died of cancer in 2010 aged just 49. His mother still lives in the area.

Tarrant attended a local high school and then worked as a personal trainer at the local Big River Squash and Fitness Centre from 2010.

A woman who knew Tarrant through the gym said he had always followed a strict dietary and exercise regime.

‘He was very dedicated to his own training and to training others,’ she said. ‘He threw himself into his own personal training and then qualified as a trainer and trained others. He was very good.’

‘When I say he was dedicated, he was dedicated more than most people would be.

‘He was in the gym for long periods of time, lifting heaving weights. He pretty much transformed his body.’

The woman said she had not spoken to him or heard him talk about his political or religious beliefs.

‘From the conversations we had about life he didn’t strike me as someone who had any interest in that or extremist views,’ she said.

‘But I know he’s been travelling since he left Grafton. He has been travelling overseas, anywhere and everywhere.

‘I would say it’s something in the nature of his travels, something he’s been around.

‘I know he’s been to lots of different countries trying to experience lots of different things in life and I would say something’s happened in that time in his travels.’

He also claimed to be inspired by Candace Owens, an outspoken backer of United States president Donald Trump.

‘The person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens, each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights.’

Witnesses reported hearing 50 shots from his weapons including a semi-automatic shotgun and a rifle at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island.

The gunman live-streamed the mass shooting inside the Al Noor Mosque, which happened about 1.30pm (11.30am AEDT) as Friday prayers were underway.

A video seen by Daily Mail Australia shows the man firing multiple shots at dozens of people as they try to flee.

Mohammed Jama, the former president of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, said a man with a gun entered the Christchurch Mosque about 1.40pm local time on Friday.

A man inside the mosque at the time of the shooting said there ‘bodies all over me’.

Witnesses inside the mosque reported seeing 15 people being shot, including children.

A man who escaped the mosque during the shooting said he saw his wife lying dead on the footpath.

‘My wife is dead,’ he said while wailing.

Witness Ahmad Al-Mahmoud described one of the shooters as being white, with blond hair and wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest.

‘The guy was wearing like an army [suit]. He had a big gun and lots of bullets. He came through and started shooting everyone in the mosque, everywhere,’ Ahmad Al-Mahmoud told Stuff.

‘They had to smash the door – the glass from the window and the door – to get everyone out.

‘We were trying to get everyone to run away from this area. I ran away from the car park, jumping through the back [yard] of houses.’

The rampage began when he got into his car wearing military-style body armour and a helmet saying ‘let’s get this party started’

After retrieving one of at least six assault rifles stored in his car, he walked up to the front door and began firing at the first person he saw

Pictured: Grieving members of the public after the shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand

Al-Mahmoud said the man was ‘wearing a helmet’ and must have fired ‘hundreds’ of gunshots.

Another witness said he ran behind the mosque to call the police after hearing the gun go off.

‘I heard the sound of the gun. And the second one I heard, I ran. Lots of people were sitting on the floor. I ran behind the mosque, rang the police.

‘I saw one gun on the floor. Lots of people died and injured.’

What to we know about the New Zealand mosque massacre?

49 people have been killed and at least 48 injured at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A shooting has also happened at Christchurch Hospital.

Armed police have locked down all three locations.

One of the gunmen is believed to have live-streamed the mass shooting inside the Al Noor Mosque, which happened about 1.30pm as Friday prayers were underway. The second shooting happened almost simultaneously at the Masjid Mosques in Linwood, which is about 10km away.

The only person identified so far is Brenton Tarrant, 28, from Grafton, Australia.

The Bangladesh cricket team were inside the Al Noor Mosque just before the shooting.

Another shooting has reportedly taken place at nearby Linwood Mosque.

Gunmen reportedly opened fire across the city on Friday afternoon.

At least 30 people have reportedly been killed.

Several bombs were found attached to vehicles across Christchurch.

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californiaprelawland · 3 years

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What Are The Legal Implications Of A Domestic Terrorism Bill?

By Sydney George, Occidental College Class of 2023

January 22, 2021

On January 6th, 2021, a mob of extremist President Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol as Congress planned to verify the Electoral College results of the 2020 Presidential Election. Some of the rioters brought zip-tie handcuffs, and multiple explosive devices were discovered near the Republican and Democratic national committee offices. Five people died from the events and many more were injured.

The insurrection event is only one of many episodes of violence by right-wing extremists in recent years. Incidents of right-wing violence have been escalating on the national level for some time. In 2019, the number of hate crimes in the U.S. reached levels unseen in over a decade. [1] It is estimated that in 2019, far-right extremist attacks and plots constituted nearly two-thirds of terrorist activity in the United States and were responsible for more than 90% of annual fatalities from acts of terrorism within the U.S. [2] Similarly, an October 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that "racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)—will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland." [3]

Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden has condemned these outbreaks of violence and vowed to prioritize passing a statute to combat domestic terrorism. Currently, there are no specific federal laws against domestic terrorism, leaving law enforcement agencies to convict violent extremists on the basis of other related statutes, like laws against hate crimes, assault and battery, organized crime, and illegal firearms. [4] Hence, passing a statute against domestic terrorism would expand the entire legal framework for convicting crimes of this nature. It would also majorly shift the priorities of federal agencies who tend to focus security resources on global terror threats rather than domestic ones.

The bill known as the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2019, which aimed to prevent domestic terrorism, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last fall with bipartisan support but was blocked in the Senate by Senator Ron Johnson. As stated in the language of the bill, the bill was intended to "authorize dedicated domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism" [5] in response to the growing threat of white supremacists and other right-wing terrorist groups.

On January 19th, 2021, in response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, several members of Congress introduced a similar bill called the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA) of 2021. The legislation is nearly identical to the previous bill as it authorizes federal agencies to "analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism" [6].

More specifically, the DTPA would bolster federal efforts in assessing threats and supply more resources to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in order to prevent terrorist activity. It would allow offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism and report to Congress with threat assessments, with a particular emphasis on white supremacist groups. The DTPA further structures a Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee to "coordinate with United States Attorneys and other key public safety officials across the country to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism." [7]

"America must be vigilant to combat those radicalized to violence, and the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act gives our government the tools to identify, monitor and thwart their illegal activities," said one of its co-sponsors, Rep. Brad Schneider (IL-10). [7]

Many current and former national security officials have echoed the support for a federal crackdown on domestic terrorist activity and for a specific law against domestic terrorism. The FBI Agents Association has stated their support for making "domestic terrorism a federal crime" to "ensure that FBI Agents and prosecutors have the best tools to fight domestic terrorism." [8]

Others are not so confident in the possible ramifications of the bill. On January 19th, 2021, a coalition of 220 national civil rights organizations, called the The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, wrote a letter to Congress expressing their deep concern about the "proposed expansion of terrorism-related legal authority." [9] The letter, undersigned by 135 organizations, wrote, "We must meet the challenge of addressing white nationalist and far-right militia violence without causing further harm to communities already disproportionately impacted by the criminal-legal system," specifically Black and brown communities, who have historically been targeted by similar provisions. The bill could give broad legal authority to federal agencies to target activists and religious minorities.

The letter further points out that the DOJ already "has over 50 terrorism-related statutes it can use to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct" and that the present failure to manage the violence of white supremacists stems from a failure to properly use the legal tools already in place.

Rather than pass a domestic terrorism bill, this coalition suggests that Congress should publicize current federal efforts to fight white supremacist violence, investigate the FBI-documented infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacist groups, require public hate crime data, and "regularly hold hearings featuring communities that are experiencing white nationalist violence" to ensure accountability from Congress. The letter was signed by many prominent non-profit organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, and the Human Rights Watch.

Political strategist and organizer Akin Olla expressed similar concerns in a recent article for the Guardian. [10] He reflected on how after 9/11, the USA PATRIOT Act was intended to fight terrorism but was used more broadly to "monitor and interfere with the work of activists – leading to violations of civil liberties such as the placement of undercover NYPD officers in Muslim student groups across the north-east." [11] A law against domestic terrorism might similarly endanger civil liberties.

The potential for increased measures against domestic terrorism has many serious legal implications for both public safety and civil liberties. How Congress and President Biden will proceed will likely have major ramifications for years to come.

______________________________________________________________

[1] Balsamo, M. (2020, November 16). Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than a decade. AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/hate-crimes-rise-fbi-data-ebbcadca8458aba96575da905650120d

[2] Jones, S. G., Doxsee, C., & Harrington, N. (2020, June 17). The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States. Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

[3] Department of Homeland Security. (2020, October). Homeland Threat Assessment. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf

[4] Collins, A. C. (2020). The Need for a Specific Law Against Domestic Terrorism. GW Program on Extremism, 6. https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/The%20Need%20for%20a%20Specific%20Law%20Against%20Domestic%20Terrorism.pdf

[5] 116th Congress. (2019, March 27). Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2019 [Screenshot Photograph]. Congress.Gov. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/894/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22white+supremacy%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=2

[6] 117th Congress. (2021, January 12). Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 [Screenshot Photograph]. Congressman Brad Schneider. https://schneider.house.gov/sites/schneider.house.gov/files/DTPA%20of%202021.pdf

[7] Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA) of 2021 Introduced in House. (2021, January 19). Congressman Brad Schneider. https://schneider.house.gov/media/press-releases/domestic-terrorism-prevention-act-dtpa-2021-introduced-house#:%7E:text=The%20Domestic%20Terrorism%20Prevention%20Act%20of%202021%20would%20strengthen%20the,threat%3B%20and%20providing%20training%20and

[8] FBI Agents Association, [@FBIAgentsAssoc]. (2019, August 6). FBI Agents Association on [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/FBIAgentsAssoc/status/1158748525263511558

[9] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. (2021, January 19). 135 Civil Rights Organizations Oppose a New Domestic Terrorism Charge. https://civilrights.org/resource/135-civil-rights-organizations-oppose-a-new-domestic-terrorism-charge/

[10] Reporter, G. S. (2021, January 21). The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/14/biden-protest-surveillance-repression

[11] Hawley, C. (2016, December 20). NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast. Associated Press. https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2012/nypd-monitored-muslim-students-all-over-northeast

Photo Credit: TapTheForwardAssist

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presssorg · 5 years

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Twitter terror: Arrests prompt concern over online extremism

Twitter terror: Arrests prompt concern over online extremism GREECE, N.Y. — A few months after he turned 17 — and more than two years before he was arrested — Vincent Vetromile recast himself as an online revolutionary. Offline, in this suburb of Rochester, New York, Vetromile was finishing requirements for promotion to Eagle Scout in a troop that met at a local church. He enrolled at Monroe Community College, taking classes to become a heating and air conditioning technician. On weekends, he spent hours in the driveway with his father, a Navy veteran, working on cars. On social media, though, the teenager spoke in world-worn tones about the need to “reclaim our nation at any cost.” Eventually he subbed out the grinning selfie in his Twitter profile, replacing it with the image of a colonial militiaman shouldering an AR-15 rifle. And he traded his name for a handle: “Standing on the Edge.” That edge became apparent in Vetromile’s posts, including many interactions over the last two years with accounts that praised the Confederacy, warned of looming gun confiscation and declared Muslims to be a threat. In 2016, he sent the first of more than 70 replies to tweets from a fiery account with 140,000 followers, run by a man billing himself as Donald Trump’s biggest Canadian supporter. The final exchange came late last year. “Islamic Take Over Has Begun: Muslim No-Go Zones Are Springing Up Across America. Lock and load America!” the Canadian tweeted on December 12, with a video and a map highlighting nine states with Muslim enclaves. “The places listed are too vague,” Vetromile replied. “If there were specific locations like ‘north of X street in the town of Y, in the state of Z’ we could go there and do something about it.” Weeks later, police arrested Vetromile and three friends, charging them with plotting to attack a Muslim settlement in rural New York. And with extremism on the rise across the U.S., this town of neatly kept Cape Cods confronted difficult questions about ideology and young people — and technology’s role in bringing them together. —— The reality of the plot Vetromile and his friends are charged with hatching is, in some ways, both less and more than what was feared when they were arrested in January. Prosecutors say there is no indication that the four — Vetromile, 19; Brian Colaneri, 20; Andrew Crysel, 18; and a 16-year-old The Associated Press isn’t naming because of his age — had set an imminent or specific date for an attack. Reports they had an arsenal of 23 guns are misleading; the weapons belonged to parents or other relatives. Prosecutors allege the four discussed using those guns, along with explosive devices investigators say were made by the 16-year-old, in an attack on the community of Islamberg. Residents of the settlement in Delaware County, New York — mostly African-American Muslims who relocated from Brooklyn in the 1980s — have been harassed for years by right-wing activists who have called it a terrorist training camp. A Tennessee man, Robert Doggart , was convicted in 2017 of plotting to burn down Islamberg’s mosque and other buildings. But there are few clues so far to explain how four with little experience beyond their high school years might have come up with the idea to attack the community. All have pleaded not guilty, and several defence attorneys, back in court Friday, are arguing there was no plan to actually carry out any attack, chalking it up to talk among buddies. Lawyers for the four did not return calls, and parents or other relatives declined interviews. “I don’t know where the exposure came from, if they were exposed to it from other kids at school, through social media,” said Matthew Schwartz, the Monroe County assistant district attorney prosecuting the case. “I have no idea if their parents subscribe to any of these ideologies.” Well beyond upstate New York, the spread of extremist ideology online has sparked growing concern. Google and Facebook executives went before the House Judiciary Committee this month to answer questions about their platforms’ role in feeding hate crime and white nationalism. Twitter announced new rules last fall prohibiting the use of “dehumanizing language” that risks “normalizing serious violence.” But experts said the problem goes beyond language, pointing to algorithms used by search engines and social media platforms to prioritize content and spotlight likeminded accounts. “Once you indicate an inclination, the machine learns,” said Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at New York’s Hunter College who studies the online contagion of alt-right ideology. “That’s exactly what’s happening on all these platforms … and it just sends some people down a terrible rabbit hole.” She and others point to Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. In writings found afterward, Roof recalled how his interest in the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin had prompted a Google search for the term “black on white crime.” The first site the search engine pointed him to was run by a racist group promoting the idea that such crime is common, and as he learned more, Roof wrote, that eventually drove his decision to attack the congregation.

The latest on Sri Lanka's bombing investigation Israel's Counter-Terrorism Bureau issued a travel warning for Sri Lanka on Thursday, raising the threat level to indicate a "high concrete threat," ... In the Rochester-area case, electronic messages between two of those arrested, seen by the AP, along with papers filed in the case suggest doubts divided the group. “I honestly see him being a terrorist,” one of those arrested, Crysel, told his friend Colaneri in an exchange last December on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers that has also gained notoriety for its embrace by some followers of the alt-right. “He also has a very odd obsession with pipe bombs,” Colaneri replied. “Like it’s borderline creepy.” It is not clear from the message fragment seen which of the others they were referencing. What is clear, though, is the long thread of frustration in Vetromile’s online posts — and the way those posts link him to an enduring conspiracy theory. —— A few years ago, Vetromile’s posts on Twitter and Instagram touched on subjects like video games and English class. He made the honour roll as an 11th-grader but sometime thereafter was suspended and never returned, according to former classmates and others. The school district, citing federal law on student records, declined to provide details. Ron Gerth, who lives across the street from the family, recalled Vetromile as a boy roaming the neighbourhood with a friend, pitching residents on a leaf-raking service: “Just a normal, everyday kid wanting to make some money, and he figured a way to do it.” More recently, Gerth said, Vetromile seemed shy and withdrawn, never uttering more than a word or two if greeted on the street. Vetromile and suspect Andrew Crysel earned the rank of Eagle in Boy Scout Troop 240, where the 16-year-old was also a member. None ever warranted concern, said Steve Tyler, an adult leader. “Every kid’s going to have their own sort of geekiness,” Tyler said, “but nothing that would ever be considered a trigger or a warning sign that would make us feel unsafe.” Crysel and the fourth suspect, Colaneri, have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a milder form of autism, their families have said. Friends described Colaneri as socially awkward and largely disinterested in politics. “He asked, if we’re going to build a wall around the Gulf of Mexico, how are people going to go to the beach?” said Rachael Lee, the aunt of Colaneri’s girlfriend. Vetromile attended community college with Colaneri before dropping out in 2017. By then, he was fully engaged in online conversations about immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, gun rights and Trump. Over time, his statements became increasingly militant. “We need a revolution now!” he tweeted in January, replying to a thread warning of a coming “war” over gun ownership. Vetromile directed some of his strongest statements at Muslims. Tweets from the Canadian account, belonging to one Mike Allen, seemed to push that button. In July 2017, Allen tweeted “Somali Muslims take over Tennessee town and force absolute HELL on terrified Christians.” Vetromile replied: “@realDonaldTrump please do something about this!” A few months later, Allen tweeted: “Czech politicians vote to let citizens carry guns, shoot Muslim terrorists on sight.” Vetromile’s response: “We need this here!” Allen’s posts netted hundreds of replies a day, and there’s no sign he read Vetromile’s responses. But others did, including the young man’s reply to the December post about Muslim “no-go zones.” That tweet included a video interview with Martin Mawyer, whose Christian Action Network made a 2009 documentary alleging that Islamberg and other settlements were terrorist training camps. Mawyer linked the settlements, which follow the teachings of a controversial Pakistani cleric, to a group called Jamaat al-Fuqra that drew scrutiny from law enforcement in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, Colorado prosecutors won convictions of four al-Fuqra members in a racketeering case that included charges of fraud, arson and murder. Police and analysts have repeatedly said Islamberg does not threaten violence. Nevertheless, the allegations of Mawyer’s group continue to circulate widely online and in conservative media. Replying to questions by email, Mawyer said his organization has used only legal means to try to shut down the operator of the settlements. “Vigilante violence is always the wrong way to solve social or personal problems,” he said. “Christian Action Network had no role, whatsoever, in inciting any plots.” Online, though, Vetromile reacted with consternation to the video of Mawyer: “But this video just says ‘upstate NY and California’ and that’s too big of an area to search for terrorists,” he wrote. Other followers replied with suggestions. “Doesn’t the video state Red House, Virginia as the place?” one asked. Virginia was too far, Vetromile replied, particularly since the map with the tweet showed an enclave in his own state. When another follower offered a suggestion, Vetromile signed off: “Eh worth a look. Thanks.” The exchange ended without a word from the Canadian account, whose tweet started it.

A few months after he turned 17 — and more than two years before he was arrested — Vincent Vetromile recast himself as an online revolutionary. —— Three months before the December exchange on Twitter, the four suspects started using a Discord channel dubbed “#leaders-only” to discuss weapons and how they would use them in an attack, prosecutors allege. Vetromile set up the channel, one of the defence attorneys contends, but prosecutors say they don’t consider any one of the four a leader. In November, the conversation expanded to a second channel: “#militia-soldiers-wanted.” At some point last fall the 16-year-old made a grenade — “on a whim to satisfy his own curiosity,” his lawyer said in a court filing that claims the teen never told the other suspects. That filing also contends the boy told Vetromile that forming a militia was “stupid.” But other court records contradict those assertions. Another teen, who is not among the accused, told prosecutors that the 16-year-old showed him what looked like a pipe bomb last fall and then said that Vetromile had asked for prototypes. “Let me show you what Vinnie gave me,” the young suspect allegedly said during another conversation, before leaving the room and returning with black explosive powder. In January, the 16-year-old was in the school cafeteria when he showed a photo to a classmate of one of his fellow suspects, wearing some kind of tactical vest. He made a comment like, “He looks like the next school shooter, doesn’t he?” according to Greece Police Chief Patrick Phelan. The other student reported the incident, and questioning by police led to the arrests and charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism. The allegations have jarred a region where political differences are the norm. Rochester, roughly half white and half black and other minorities, votes heavily Democratic. Neighboring Greece, which is 87 per cent white, leans conservative. Town officials went to the Supreme Court to win a 2014 ruling allowing them to start public meetings with a chaplain’s prayer. The arrests dismayed Bob Lonsberry, a conservative talk radio host in Rochester, who said he checked Twitter to confirm Vetromile didn’t follow his feed. But looking at the accounts Vetromile did follow convinced him that politics on social media had crossed a dangerous line. “The people up here, even the hillbillies like me, we would go down with our guns and stand outside the front gate of Islamberg to protect them,” Lonsberry said. “It’s an aberration. But … aberrations, like a cancer, pop up for a reason.” —— Online, it can be hard to know what is true and who is real. Mike Allen, though, is no bot. “He seems addicted to getting followers,” said Allen’s adult son, Chris, when told about the arrest of one of the thousands attuned to his father’s Twitter feed. Allen himself called back a few days later, leaving a brief message with no return number. But a few weeks ago, Allen welcomed in a reporter who knocked on the door of his home, located less than an hour from the Peace Bridge linking upstate New York to Ontario, Canada. “I really don’t believe in regulation of the free marketplace of ideas,” said Allen, a retired real estate executive, explaining his approach to social media. “If somebody wants to put bulls— on Facebook or Twitter, it’s no worse than me selling a bad hamburger, you know what I mean? Buyer beware.” Sinking back in a white leather armchair, Allen, 69, talked about his longtime passion for politics. After a liver transplant stole much of his stamina a few years ago, he filled downtime by tweeting about subjects like interest rates. When Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, in a speech memorable for labeling many Mexican immigrants as criminals, Allen said he was determined to help get the billionaire elected. He began posting voraciously, usually finding material on conservative blogs and Facebook feeds and crafting posts to stir reaction. Soon his account was gaining up to 4,000 followers a week. Allen said he had hoped to monetize his feed somehow. But suspicions that Twitter “shadow-banning” was capping gains in followers made him consider closing the account. That was before he was shown some of his tweets and the replies they drew from Vetromile — and told the 19-year-old was among the suspects charged with plotting to attack Islamberg. “And they got caught? Good,” Allen said. “We’re not supposed to go around shooting people we don’t like. That’s why we have video games.” Allen’s own likes and dislikes are complicated. He said he strongly opposes taking in refugees for humanitarian reasons, arguing only immigrants with needed skills be admitted. He also recounted befriending a Muslim engineer in Pakistan through a physics blog and urging him to move to Canada. Shown one of his tweets from last year — claiming Czech officials had urged people to shoot Muslims — Allen shook his head. “That’s not a good tweet,” he said quietly. “It’s inciting.” Allen said he rarely read replies to his posts — and never noticed Vetromile’s. “If I’d have seen anybody talking violence, I would have banned them,” he said. He turned to his wife, Kim, preparing dinner across the kitchen counter. Maybe he should stop tweeting, he told her. But couldn’t he continue until Trump was reelected? “We have a saying, ‘Oh, it must be true, I read it on the internet,”‘ Allen said, before showing his visitor out. “The internet is phoney. It’s not there. Only kids live in it and old guys, you know what I mean? People with time on their hands.” The next day, Allen shut down his account, and the long narrative he spun all but vanished. —— Read more about the four charged in the New York plot here . AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this story. Geller can be reached at ageller//twitter.com/AdGeller Published at Sun, 28 Apr 2019 14:30:01 +0000 Read the full article

#anonymous #attacks #bombs #censorship #muslims #srilanka #terrorism #twitter

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charlize-alcaraz-blog · 5 years

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White Supremacist Stabs Black Man for “Practice”

Harris Jackson, a 28-year-old white supremacist arrested for stabbing a Timothy Caughman--a black 66 year old male on Monday night, claims that it was for “practice” to for a larger attack targeting black men which will take place in New York Times Square.

Jackson had told a police officer before that he had come to Baltimore a few days before his initial attack on Caughman “for the purpose of killing black men and had stalked numerous potential victims.”

A witness had seen the suspect talking to Caughman around 11:30pm. When Caughman was bent over the trash can to collect bottles, Jackson took the opportunity of his vulnerability and stabbed him merciless. The victim later walked into the police substation with several stab wounds to the chest and back, and later died in Bellevue Hospital.

Jackson had turned himself to the police at the Times Square substation around 12:00 am after seeing himself on the news, just two days after his attack. According to the police, he was caught on surveillance video running down the street just moments after he stabbed Caughman to death.

NYPD Chief of Manhattan Detectives William Aubry states that “the reason why he picked New York is because it’s the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement.” A statement that promotes the resurgence of lynching black people for fun which killed more than 3000 of them from 1900s to 1960s, perhaps?

On the topic of racist 1900s America, New York Daily News highlights Caughman’s criminal record instead of Jackson’s. The article states that “he has 11 prior arrests, including marijuana, assault, resisting arrest, and menacing.” In the latter part of the article, reporters also highlighted an unrelated crime committed by another black man named Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who murdered two NYPD officers on December 2014. The conclude the paragraph which says that Brinsley fled to a nearby subway station and shot himself to death.

New York Daily News is just another ripple in the pond that exemplifies the unjust treatment for black people when they use black criminality to justify black death, while the media continues to justify white criminality by implying their sufferings from mental illnesses.

A quote by a senior staff writer at Mic eloquently defines the biased and unjust reasoning for the Daily News to highlight Caughman’s previous arrests. Zak Cheney Rice says that “None of this was relevant to why or how Brown was killed. Nor was Caughman's arrest record relevant to his violent demise at the hands of a white supremacist, despite the Daily News story's suggestion.”

According to CBS News, “investigators said they were trying to determine what exactly drove Jackson to violence,” as if plain racism wasn’t an appropriate factor. His attorney also suggested that Jackson might have been afflicted with mental illnesses as he says that “[they] are going to address the obvious psychological issues that are present in this case.”

Jackson’s family members continue to defend his actions by painting an image of him that displayed just how “abnormal” it was for him to kill a black man. They said the “allegations were out of character with his family’s beliefs and the way he was raised.”

Racial inequality in imprisonment is not a foreign topic; there exist many cases where a white man received a lighter sentence than a black man who received a heavier sentence for the same crime.

One of the many examples would be Allen Peters; a white man, and Jaquavias Sturgis; a black man who were both 17, has previous criminal records, and robbed a store. However, Peters got probation only while Sturgis was sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Jackson was charged of second degree murder and additional hate crime-related charges could be added and it’s likely possible for the second degree charge to be upgraded to first degree, according to Heavy.com

It is quite obvious that Jackson’s evil intent towards black people were motivated by nothing but pure racism and hatred, but his crime was still not labelled as an act of terrorism by the authority.

Just imagine how a Muslim man would be portrayed if he travelled from Baltimore to New York just as Jackson did, doing the same crime. “TERRORIST” and “ISIS” splattered across every tabloid and news website, while white criminals get “mentally-ill” and “unusual behaviour.” This only proves how America has not evolved at all, and has only gone backwards in time.

#affinity magazine

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fycanadianpolitics · 7 years

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On Sunday night, as news broke that a gunman had stormed into a Quebec mosque and opened fire, people took to Twitter to get the latest information on what had taken place. Soon, word got out that there were two suspects under arrest — with one having a “Muslim”-sounding name — and that there were shouts of “Allahu Akbar” before the shots were fired. Speculation ensued, with some claiming this was an act of white supremacist terror and others pointing the finger at “radical Islam.” Police now allege that Alexandre Bissonnette acted alone and that the person they previously identified as his accomplice, Mohamed Belkhadir, was in fact a witness who called 911.

Columnists like the National Post’s Andrew Coyne and the CBC’s Robyn Urback were quick to point to the confusion surrounding the attacker’s identity as an example of the left and right engaging in the same game of premature speculation in order to prove ideological superiority. But this is a false equivalence; while it is important to wait for all information to come out in a dynamic situation, Muslims and their allies have different reasons for speculating than right-wing Islamophobes. Speculating that a white man may be responsible for a brazen hate crime is an act of self-defence, motivated by a desire to see their community’s oppression taken seriously. The far right, on the other hand, hopes to see a Muslim held responsible to push forward a bigoted narrative of a nation under attack by Islam. These identity differences may seem trivial, but one only needs look at how this attack was covered to see how the distinction manifests materially.

Within hours of the shooting, Islamophobic propaganda outlet The Rebel bought the domain name quebecterror.com and deployed correspondent Faith Goldy to the scene. At this point, it was still believed that there were two shooters who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and that one was of Moroccan heritage — and The Rebel was poised to capitalize on coverage of a Canadian terror attack to feed discussions for weeks to come. It did not matter that a mosque was attacked; it did not matter that the people killed were practicing Muslims; all that mattered was that the attacker was a Muslim. The false information soon spread south, where Fox News erroneously tweeted that a Moroccan had attacked a mosque and where Donald Trump’s press secretary used the attack as a justification for his Muslim ban.

When it became clear that Bissonnette acted alone, The Rebel turned to downplaying the role that white supremacy played in the attack, instead asking questions about why the narrative changed, and suggesting a police/media cover-up. While the mainstream media has generally acknowledged this was likely a hate crime, Bissonnette has had the luxury of being humanized. He is described as a “lone wolf,” as quiet and timid by his friends, and is portrayed in pictures as clean-cut and smiling. He’s been viewed with a sense of lost potential, with people asking how such a nice boy could have committed such an act — a courtesy almost never extended to Muslim perpetrators of terror. Even though both are motivated by ideology, hate crimes are seen as occurring in isolation, divorced from the white supremacist ideology that inspires them, whereas “Islamic” extremist attacks are inseparable from theirs. When it’s just a bad apple committing a crime instead of a vast ideology, it’s hard to see it as a threat to society.

The Rebel’s botched coverage (it was several hours before they posted an update to their initial report) shows the impact the identity of an attacker can have on perceptions and coverage. Even though people of colour and people with Muslim names can indeed have Islamophobic beliefs and be motivated to commit this type of violence, an attacker having a Muslim name is supposed to make us automatically complicit in our own oppression. Despite the fact that it was our people who were killed and injured, there were those who still looked for the opportunity to justify further violence and state-sanctioned repression against our communities. When the attacker is white, we are granted the privilege of having our oppression just barely recognized.

The debates and assumptions that happen during the terrifying and confusing moments after a tragedy are more than just partisan squabbles where each side gets points for being right. The identity of an attacker often has real consequences for communities that have to consistently prove their humanity to people. Depending on who it turns out to be, we either move backwards or we breathe a sigh of relief that we don’t have to spend extra time defending ourselves today. Speculation is not ideal, but when there are countless people waiting to pounce on your community based on what happens in the news, it’s more than understandable.

#the rebel #islamophobia #quebec mosque shooting

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creepingsharia · 7 years

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San Diego School District Rescinds Anti-Islamophobia Initiative After Citizen's Fight Back

Source: San Diego Unified School District Rescinds Anti-Islamophobia Initiative in Response to FCDF’s Lawsuit – Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund

KEY POINTS:

San Diego Unified School District’s Board of Education scrapped an initiative that sought to provide, among other items, special benefits to Muslim students, permit the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to teach students and provide educational materials, and revise curricula to promote a more positive and inclusive portrayal of Islam;

Board’s decision is a result of FCDF’s federal lawsuit filed on behalf of five families challenging the constitutionality of SDUSD’s policy favoring Muslim students and its partnership with CAIR;

Charles LiMandri, FCDF President & Chief Counsel, commented:

“Last night, the School Board recognized the importance of protecting students of all religious beliefs from bullying as well as keeping our children safe from the influence of divisive outside forces. While we are pleased with the Board’s decision, we remain disappointed that it waited until a federal lawsuit had to be filed to implement a fair and equal anti-bullying policy that protects all students.”

BACKGROUND:

Last night, San Diego Unified School District’s (SDUSD) Board of Education overturned its “anti-Islamophobia” bullying prevention initiative and adopted a new program entitled “No Place for Hate,” which was developed by the Anti-Defamation League and will focus on protecting students of all religious beliefs. In addition, the Board voted to back away from another formal partnership with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The Board’s reversal is a response to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF) on behalf of five families and two organization that challenged the initiative’s constitutionality.

On April 5, 2017, the Board approved an Anti-Islamophobia initiative purportedly to combat the bullying of Muslim students. Among other benefits, the initiative instructed teachers and staff to promote Muslim culture, create safe spaces for Muslim students, and vet and revise curricula to ensure a more “positive” and “inclusive” portrayal of Islam. In addition, the initiative sought to formalize SDUSD’s longtime collaboration with CAIR, and it authorized the group to provide training materials, teach students about Islam during class time, and pass out religious materials.

On April 27, Charles LiMandri, FCDF President & Chief Counsel, emailed a detailed, three-page letter to each SDUSD board member and Superintendent Marten, informing them that the initiative, when implemented, would “likely violate the U.S. Constitution, and consequently would invite time-consuming and expensive legal challenges.” LiMandri recommended that the Board rescind the anti-Islamophobia initiative and pursue an anti-bullying measure that protected students of all religions.

SDUSD officials did not respond to the letter, nor did they rescind the policy at either of the two board meetings that were held prior to the filing of the original complaint on May 22, 2017. On June 28, FCDF filed an amended complaint adding additional state law claims, including violations of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and several provisions of the California Education Code.

Limandri commented:

“As part of a quality education, students should learn about all religions. However, allowing an outside Islamic group to dictate how and what students learn about Islam undermines our school children’s right to an objective and unbiased understanding of history and world cultures.

While we hope for a reasonable, final resolution that avoids further litigation, we will continue – for our schoolchildren’s sake – to hold the Board to a standard in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and California state law.”

STATUS:

FCDF has been communicating with SDUSD’s counsel with the goal of addressing the lawsuit’s allegations without further litigation; however, it is still waiting for SDUSD to respond to FCDF’s California Public Records Act request (submitted nearly three months ago) regarding the initiative and the district’s relationship with CAIR. FCDF expects the next step to occur within 1-2 weeks.

More via: CAIR Loses San Diego Schools Partnership :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

The school district’s decision to back away from partnering with CAIR is an important victory, FCDF Executive Director Daniel Piedra told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). But he remains concerned that CAIR still may partner with the school district on other programs.

Mohebi and his allies seemed upset that they will not be able to use the school district to further their agenda, Piedra said after the meeting.

“They talk about equality, but it’s really Orwellian because in their philosophy and the school board’s philosophy, they are really saying that all students are equal but that some students are more equal than others,” Piedra said.

The FCDF lawsuit remains alive despite Tuesday’s decision to switch from CAIR’s program to the ADL’s. The group wants to learn more about CAIR’s role in drafting the anti-bullying program. If it turns out that CAIR was intimately involved, the lawsuit may move forward because students’ rights would have been violated, Piedra said, and to ensure that CAIR loses future opportunities to shape policy.

FCDF could seek monetary damages, he said, but it may ask a judge to impose a consent decree compelling the school district to not partner with CAIR again.

“We are willing to work with them; however, violating the Constitution is a serious allegation, and we are going to hold that to the school district every step of the way,” Piedra said.

Under the now-abandoned program, students accused of bullying Muslim students were supposed to face “restorative justice,” requiring them to reconcile with the other student. The school district would provide monthly reports on the bullying of Muslim students and post them online.

The district’s reversal follows the FCDF’s amended complaint filed last month, which challenged CAIR’s local effort to hide behind the label of being a “civil rights organization.” It pointed to testimony by CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad, who told the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that it lacked jurisdiction over a fight over unionizing CAIR employees because CAIR is a religious organization.

CAIR letterhead includes the invocation, “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” which opens every chapter in the Quran, Charles L. Posner, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, wrote in an April 7 ruling.

This religious acknowledgement goes to the heart of the Establishment Clause‘s separation of church and state.

The loss of the San Diego program is a set-back for CAIR’s desire to take an “anti-Muslim bullying” program national. It represents the biggest government rebuke to CAIR since the FBI instituted a policy in 2008 to break-off outreach programs due to CAIR’s documented history in a Muslim-Brotherhood created Hamas-support network in the United States.

And it should send a message to districts throughout the country, Piedra said, warning CAIR that his organization will sue any public school district that partners with it in a similar anti-bullying program.

“We want to be sure for the benefit of our schoolchildren that CAIR is kept out of America’s schools,” Piedra said.

Five families stood up to the biggest bully of them all: CAIR. It started with one person objecting. Then another. Blogs bringing the information to the attention of a larger audience. Then more opposition. Then legal representation.

A major battle won no doubt. But will it prevent CAIR from infiltrating schools in the U.S.? As IPT notes above, the FBI banned CAIR years ago – and it had little if any affect.

Since that ban and a Senate recommendation to ban government employees from meeting with the Hamas front group, CAIR has continued to publicly verbally assault the FBI, file endless requests for the FBI to investigate supposed crimes, filed endless lawsuits, meet with elected state and federal officials, visit the White House hundreds of times, be the go-to media contact on all issues Islam and meet with rogue FBI agents and leaders regularly. Will anything change under the Trump administration?

It’s a long war.

Please Share & Help Wake America Up

#cair #Creeping Sharia #Education #islam #law #Legal #Life #Media #Muslim #News #Politics #Random #Religion #Sharia #travel

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loudlytransparenttrash · 7 years

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The phobia of Islamophobia

Lol so I just had someone tell me that it is Islamophobic to tell Muslims that they aren’t being banned from entering the US and to not use the word “Islam” in tags.

It reminds me of those groups like the Interfaith Center, who demands films and television to edit and remove the words “Islamist,” “Islamic,” and “jihad”, even from documentaries such The Rise of Al Qaeda - referencing the 9/11 hijackers and their motives. They don’t want the public to think that Islamism or jihad had anything to do with Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, because that would be “Islamophobia.”

Everybody seems so afraid of this word. From the police who are scared to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child abuse rings in the UK, being afraid to make public the mass sexual and violent attacks committed by Muslim refugees across Europe, being afraid to report their fellow officers who expressed radical Muslim beliefs or the teachers being afraid to alert authorities when their Muslim students show warning signs of becoming radicalized. What we are dealing with is not Islamophobia, but Islamophobia-phobia.

As author Ali Rizvi says: “As a brown-skinned person with a Muslim name, I can get away with a lot more than you’d think. I can publicly parade my wife or daughters around in head-to-toe burqas and be excused out of “respect” for my culture and/or religion, thanks to the racism of lowered expectations. I can re-define “racism” as something non-whites can never harbor against whites, and cite colonialism and imperialism as justification for my prejudice. And in an increasingly effective move that’s fast become something of an epidemic, I can shame you into silence for criticizing my ideas simply by calling you bigoted or Islamophobic.”

For decades, Muslims around the world have rightly complained about the Israeli government labeling even legitimate criticism of its policies “anti-Semitic,” effectively shielding itself from accountability. Today, Muslim organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) have borrowed a page from their playbook with the “Islamophobia” label - and taken it even further.

In addition to calling out prejudice against Muslims (a people), the term “Islamophobia” seeks to shield Islam itself (an ideology) from criticism. It’s as if every time you said smoking was a filthy habit, you were perceived to be calling all smokers filthy, horrible people. Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. But when did we start extending those rights to ideas, books, and beliefs? You’d think the difference would be clear, but it isn’t. The ploy has worked over and over again, and now everyone seems petrified of being tagged with this label.

The phobia of being called “Islamophobic” has been on the rise for some time and it has become much more rampant, powerful, and dangerous than Islamophobia itself. Not long ago, a white American man successfully convinced the Massachusetts liberal arts school Brandeis University that he was being victimized and oppressed by a black African woman from Somalia - a woman who underwent genital mutilation at age five and travels with armed security at risk of being assassinated. That is the power of this term.

The man, Ibrahim Hooper, is a Muslim convert and a founding member and spokesman for CAIR. The woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is an unapologetic activist for the rights of girls and women and a harsh, no-holds-barred critic of the religious ideologies (particularly the Islamic ideology in Muslim-majority countries that she experienced first-hand) that perpetuate and maintain their abuse. Having abandoned the Islamic faith of her parents and taken a stance against it, she is guilty of apostasy, a crime that is punishable by death according to most Islamic scholars, not to mention the holy text itself.

Hirsi Ali was also involved with the award-winning documentary, Honor Diaries, which explores violence against women in honor-based societies, including female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, domestic violence, and forced marriage. Despite featuring the voices of several practicing Muslim women, the film was deemed “Islamophobic” by - you guessed it - the poor folks at CAIR. Again, they felt they were the real victims, wanting their own voices heard while silencing those of the victims of FGM and honor killing in the film. Astonishingly, this ludicrous argument was enough to convince both the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan to cancel their screenings of the film which leads to even more deafness and blindness of a very serious human rights issue.

Progressive Muslim Maajid Nawaz tweeted a cartoon with the caption: “This Jesus & Mo cartoon is not offensive & I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it.”

The result? Vicious death threats. A petition signed by tens of thousands to have him removed from his candidacy. Targeting by Western liberal apologists. Admonishments from his own moderate Muslim counterparts. Tweets such as, “Have spoken to someone in Pakistan. They will have a surprise for him on his next visit. He is used to surprises in Pak.” The most tragic aspect of all this is what Alishba Zarmeen has coined the “Greenwald Syndrome” - the phenomenon of Western liberals, in a supposed show of tolerance, embracing an apologist stance in favor of the intolerant.

After being publicly accused by Glenn Greenwald of “spouting and promoting Islamophobia,” Sam Harris responded with these words, which should be read by everyone:

“Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas - like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male ‘honor’ that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls - you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims - especially women and girls. There is no such thing as ‘Islamophobia.’ This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it.”

The fear of being called Islamophobic once led many prominent Westerners to abandon their own values when they abandoned Salman Rushdie. It led Yale to publish a book about the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy, but without the cartoons. It led Comedy Central to censor their shows for fear of offending Muslims, even though the show irreverently lambastes virtually every other religion on a regular basis, unhindered and it has led to countless people being attacked, doxxed, threatened, silenced and their careers ruined, all for having a different opinion.

This epidemic continues today except now people aren’t taking “Islamophobia” as serious anymore and with good reason so Muslims have begun to create hoax hate-crimes against themselves to try and bring some credibility back to keep non-Mulsims in check.

Remember the 18-year-old Muslim girl who was assaulted and called a terrorist on the subway by Trump supporters and they tried to rip her hijab off and all of the social justice warriors had a complete meltdown? It was a lie that she made up to cover her parents finding out she was out fucking a Christian dude and getting drunk. It gets funnier, her Muslim father has forced her to shave her head completely for bringing shame on the family and she was arrested for making false accusations.

Remember the Muslim student who was robbed, beaten and had her hijab ripped off and stolen by Trump supporters? It was a lie. She is now being charged for filing a false report.

Remember when those white supremacist, anti-Muslim Trump supporters burned down the mosque in Houston? It was a lie. While the mosque did get burned down, it was done by a black Muslim who had attended the mosque for years.

Remember the Ohio student who was racially abused and assaulted by Trump supporters? It was a lie. She made it up the day after the election and after she made a post that she wants all Trump supporters to die of AIDS.

Remember the Michigan Muslim student who was harassed and threatened to be burned alive by the Trump supporter if she didn’t remove her hijab? It was a lie. Surveillance cameras show that she wasn’t even in the location where she claimed the attack took place.

Remember the Muslim woman who had her hijab ripped and forced off by police when they took her in for questioning? It was another lie.

Remember the Muslim kid who was beaten up on the school bus by five white kids and it forced the family to leave the country? Yes, another fucking lie.

Remember the student who had her face slashed and was called a terrorist in Lower Manhattan? Yet another lie.

These anti-Islamic hate-crimes even reached the UK with an 18-year-old Muslim student from Birmingham being punched in the face for wearing a hijab. It was a lie. She’s been charged for lying to the police.

These are just some of the false claims made within the past year alone and they received nation-wide coverage and left-wing outrage and hysteria, all pushing the agenda that America is a racist, Islamophobic hellhole and nobody except white people are safe.

This is an effective deterrent. This is exactly how terrorism works. This is how perfectly intelligent, well-read writers, commentators, and broadcasters become silenced by the Islamophobia smear fear - and rationalize themselves into becoming unaware victims of it.

When you’re unable to introduce Islamic-style blasphemy Sharia laws in a secular, Western society, you have to find alternative ways to silence those who offend you, right?

And that’s where the “Islamophobia” smear comes in - the ultimate, lazy substitute for a non-existent counter-argument. Don’t fall for it.

#islam #islamophobia #muslim #muslim ban #SJW #anti sjw #anti social justice warriors #social justice #social justice warrior #Trump #Donald Trump #feminism #feminist #anti feminism

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occupyscifi · 7 years

Text

The Distracter in chief

The day the UN criminal court accused three fossil fuel companies of crimes against humanity for causing irreversible global warming the President of the United States was caught on camera pissing on a tramp in Times Square.

“lots of haters and losers posting fake content” tweeted the president later that day “but I’m above that lying fake news liberal media. So sad to lie to boost their sagging ratings”

His argument was let down by two things, the first that he had tweeted from downtown New York, mere streets from where the incident took place. The other being that the figure in the video had turned to the camera and said “I’m the President of the fucking USA and I endorse this message”.

“video faked” the President later tweeted “beautiful what computers can do. Losers in Hollywood can’t take me because I’m too real”

However not everyone was talking about the president’s innovative new solution for the problem of homelessness.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence?” Said Butterfield Jones, lead guerrilla reporter for the undercover paramilitary wing of CNN “I mean the very day that the UN brings its case against ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and Rosneft for climate genocide. The same fossil fuel companies our president has been championing since he took office, and the same climate change that he’s denied since day one. Doesn’t it strike you as odd on this of all days he decides to take a leak on a homeless guy?”

“err, no” said her editor, arching an impressively thick eyebrow. Unibrows were in this season, along with moustaches for women, though the editor preferred the whispy look of one drawn on in mascara. The two journalists were sitting in a downtown branch of Mcvegans, chosen not because of its right on politics – the name change had come about since a combination of antibiotic resistant diseases and spiralling meat prices had made it impossible to make a profit from animal burgers – but because of its ultra secure WIFI. The editor pointed to a wall where a news feed had been projected, a hashcloud of tweets and mood colours showing the President’s incredulous expression surrounded by his favourite adjectives, ones that frequently had little or no connection to real words, or reality itself “you really think the commander in chief deliberately leaked that footage?” Jones winced slightly at the pun, she had spent too many years sub editing to not have pun based PTSD “that seems pretty unlikely, because it’s something that would sink pretty much every politician if a video of them pissing on a tramp got out…”

“but not this president” countered Jones, tapping at a foldout keyboard in thick primary colours. Since the great cyber paedo scare three years earlier the safest encryption to be found on any device was always on kids networked toys. The fallout from the scandal which had engulfed Mattel and Hasbro had brought in the sort of digital protection that Apple and other Silicon Valley privacy crusaders could only dream of. That terrorists and rogue reporters like Jones had instantly bought up the new ultra safe devices had gone largely unnoticed. That today’s terrorists largely communicated via networked Furbies had been revealed by numerous news outlet but had largely been assumed as simply fake news “he’s being pulling shit like this since day one. look” said Jones, linking the editor’s digital glasses into what she herself was seeing. Two timelines scrolling side by side. One showed a chronological line of the president’s, gaffes, accidental wars, support for fascistic ideas, pointless crusades against imaginary ills and character assassinations against everyone up to and including God himself. The other showed a ticker tape of seemingly unrelated bad news events and political scandals. The admission several years earlier by ExxonMobil that they had spent millions climate change proofing their organisations while denying that climate change even happened. The selling off of all US national parks to a consortium of Russian oligarchs. The announcement that most of the American Midwest had a lower quality of life than most of east Africa. The time that the Chinese had bailed out the US’s national debt in return for total control of the south China sea. The toxic spill that had rendered much of Louisiana inhabitable.

"I don’t remember that happening” said the editor, looking at the date “but, wait, was that was that the day the president gave that nazi salute on live TV?”

"yup” said Jones, bringing up the footage on her Mattel “Which he dismissed as being a high five gone wrong. So you missed the fact that the US now has more internal refugees than Syria. But the fact was that the President’s tiny hands heil was just another piece of nazi trolling, which I believe he does pretty much every day. The only difference this time was that a live TV camera happened to be on him at the time. Which I cannot believe was just a coincidence, what with his handlers now being pretty much experts in the art of not letting the man walk around with his dick hanging out of his pants – you know, after that time he actually did get caught with his dick out. I think someone is leaking these things deliberately, and I think they are doing it to distract us from the worse things that are happening”

“I don’t think the president’s that smart” said the editor “and I don’t really see what can be worse than a president who tried to start a war with every country he doesn’t like and publicly suggests that the far right aren’t really bad guys after all. I mean, I genuinely can’t think of anything horrible, mean or stupid he hasn’t already”

“Exactly” said Jones “he fucks up so often and does such stupid outrageous stuff that always dominates the news cycle. His people just have to time their announcements for when the president drops a shit bomb. No one has the time to be outraged by two things at once. Like no one can be upset about the EPA being shut down or Murdoch being put in charge of the FCC the same week that the President tries to make Steve Bannon a supreme court judge. Fact was the Judge Bannon storm never came to anything. Like everything the president does. Nothing actually happens. Sure he keeps threatening war, like he keeps threatening to build that wall with Mexico. It never actually happens. Its all just clickbait for angry liberals”

"Oh come on" said the editor "You expect me to believe every time the president gets caught doing horrible shit its really done to cover all the really, really horrible shit that goes down? You sound like a conspiracy nut" the editor tapped at her own toy keyboard, the Mattel logo subtly changed to spell the words 'My Hell'. "Look, here they are. A bunch of the Presidents own Nazi Douche bros. Let me read you the highlights" she gained sickly. Dealing with the many openly Nazi online supported of the president was an occupational hazard. The fact that in real life both jones and the editor could have taken out the basement dwelling Third Reichers with one hand tied behind their back didn't matter. The mini blackshirts lived online in an age where everything going was networked. The doxx and the leak had replaced the jackboot and the castor oil in the armoury of fascism. That they were also openly supported by the president and, and indeed had their own federally funded ‘Department of Patriotism and Correct Reporting’ also helped.

"The Femininazi liberals have struck again, their fake news making headlines in the failing Jew York times. Is it a coincidence that George Soros and the Washington Post editorial team were seen at the same function on Saturday? Where they selling out the proud American race? What other conclusion could we come to? So sad that they can't see that they'll be the first in the gas chambers, because that how we deal with traitors to the white race"

"Get to the point" said Jones weary. She knew that most of these screeds were written automatically by a software bot that reacted to real time world events with a set of stock phrases. Both Isis and Fox News used the same, meaning they could claim responsibility for every single terror incident in the world – or denounce muslims - even if they were entirely fictional.

"studies show that there is a correlation between Liberal mothers and boys becoming gay. Coincidence? This cannot be allowed to continue. The little snowflakes need to realise that a real man can stand up for himself' then it's just the usual bunch of rape threats. What I'm saying is you’re paranoid girl. There is now way our bloated POTUS has the smarts to manufacture a crisis every time one of his billionaire plutocrat buddies causes an even bigger one. Besides, I think the media and people in general are smart enough to know when they're being played. We’re pretty savvy these days"

"You sure about that?" said Jones, gesturing at the other dinners in the Mcvegan restaurant. As most didn't have the kiddie encryption of the two journalists everything going they were looking at was easily available to the snooping software that both women had on their digital glasses.

"Look at them" said Jones " Those who aren't streaming AR HBO porn are writing angry tweets against our C in C"

"Good for them" said the editor "The first sign of a healthy democracy is an engaged citizenry. Our job as journalists is first the fight against apathy. Because the true enemy of our way of life is not the jackboot or the swastika but the indifference of our..."

"Spare me" said Jones, who had heard that speech too many times during her internship with numerous liberal crusading organisations "have you noticed what they are actually tweeting about?" She pointed around the room "that guy there is memeing some Dawson’s Creek pics with Pres piss references. That girl with the Amish beard is writing a protest musical about the president"

"Sounds good" said the editor "art and politics are..."

"About the president only. His seismic xenophobia, his comically small hands and his incredibly thin skin. Any mention of how we lost the trade war with China? Or how Russia now owns eastern Europe? Or that Roe versus Wade got suspended last week by the Supreme court? You know, the week that Trump organised his second crusade against imaginary electoral fraud by the alt left – whoever the fuck they are meant to be" Jones clenched her fists "no, course not. Because people like to be outraged by what someone says, rather than what they actually do. Because we aren’t just being gaslighted anymore, we’re being distracted by shiny things that make us angry while someone walks away with America. So instead of a woman’s right to choose we’ve got a musical number about how the President got confused about North and South Korea and sent a bunch of weapons to the last communist state on earth"

"That was a major news event..."

"Sending a couple of cruise missiles to a country so poor they can't eat and so isolated that their literacy rate is under fifty percent doesn't really change much" said Jones "and besides, I don't know if it actually happened. Pentagon said it didn’t. Most experts can’t find any evidence that it did. There was just an anonymous leak to Buzzfeed"

"Who believes the pentagon these days?" said the editor "they were covering their asses. Besides it's just the sort of stupid shit the president does, ever since he punched that disabled woman at his second term inauguration"

"Exactly" said Jones "With this guy in charge people will believe literally anything because of who he is. I don't believe we're the first people to realise this. I think some important people are using the president to bury their bad news. He’s a distraction, a big old orange wizard of Oz. The real guy’s in charge are behind the curtain” she tapped the table in irritation “And I don't think he even knows about it"

"Sounds like a great story sweetie" said the editor patronisingly " but how are you ever going to get proof? I mean sure, tweet it but there's so much shit flying around I doubt anyone would notice. I don't know how you’re going to get anyone to listen"

"Simple" said Jones "I'm going to talk to the man himself. He’s so thin skinned and insecure he’d believe it straight away if I told him that people were trying to ruin his reputation on purpose. If there’s anything he takes seriously its himself"

“umm, how are you going to do that?” said the editor “he doesn’t do interviews. Not since that time he had to admit that he didn’t actually know who Winston Churchill was, and that he thought Thomas Jefferson wrote White Rabbit”

“Oh, that’s easy” said Jones “too easy, in fact”

It was depressingly simple to get access to the president. Not as a journalist of course, any found within three hundred metres of the president would be arrested as a traitor and sent straight to Guantanamo bay. But the president always found time for his fans, especially if they were sycophantic, female and could be ordered to anonymous hotels as easily as calling an uber.

Jones knew the presidents’ predilections, as did everyone after the leaked tape where he had explained in depth the kind of girl he enjoyed cheating on his wife with. And while going undercover as a whore was not easy it was something Jones had done several times before, not least because it was always the easiest way to secure an interview with a politician. Admittedly it did mean having to blackmail them, but since when had journalism not become a form of guerrilla war? After all since they had been designated the opposition party it made sense to use any means necessary.

Jones had then managed to hack the shortlist of the presidents preferred women, which had been secured by a machine inexplicably still running windows XP. Jones had raised an eyebrow, you would have thought after the nuclear codes had been stolen after being stored on a similar machine that the president would have learned his lesson. Now Jones had an inkling as to why, you never knew when you might need to leak a video of the President getting a girl to dress as the House Minority leader while fellating him.

However when Jones finally confronted the President, dressed this time as a Fox news anchor who’d once had the temerity to challenge him, the response she got was not what she had expected.

“Mr President” she had said from her knees, the all too familiar presidential dong hanging inches from her nose “I have some serious news for you”

“hey, not cool. Not part of the script” said the president, looking anxiously around. His security were stationed outside, the POTUS would have had them in the room with him but they had pointed out that went beyond their contracts and threatened to get their union involved.

“I have reason to believe the stream of leaks, allegations and intelligence reports embarrassing you are being used as part of an orchestrated campaign to hide a wider and more destructive agenda”

“no shit” said the president “the libtard media have got it in for me. Always. Not news. It’s not. Now come on, call me the best president ever. I wanna hear it. The best President…”

“not by them, Mr President” said Jones, pulling out a tablet and projecting on the wall her findings. The two timeline bulged with cross referenced facts and incontrovertible proof “I believe a cabal of special interests are using these…incidents to their own advantage. To bury their own bad news and their evil actions at your expense”

“uh huh” said the president, looking at the wall, his flaccid member still hanging from his ten thousand dollar suit. He put one hand on his hip and the other he used to point a stubby finger at the display. The two timelines that matched almost perfectly, for every gaffe and pointless vanity crusade there was a war or corruption scandal whose impact dwarfed whatever stupidity the President had been involved in “you got it all here. Everything. That’s so….”

“look, I know it’s not proof” said Jones quickly, pulling off the curly blonde wig and getting to her feet “but it’s pretty consistent. I mean right back to your first term every time there was something big that people should be discussing then someone releases some dirt on you – usually something ludicrous that gets debunked”

“Fake news. All fake news” said the president with a shrug, his eyes on the timelines “that’s neat. Real neat software you got there”

“you don’t seem concerned” said Jones, her face wrinkling “I mean, they’re ruining your reputation out there. To hide their own shit and corruption” jones looked at the President grinning inanely as he looked at the spike in online traffic after he had got the secret service to waterboard a schoolboy who had insulted him on Twitter “in fact” said jones “I’d say you don’t even look surprised. Did you know about this?”

“know about it?” said the President “oh, I didn’t just know about it. I arranged it. I made the fricking deal. Deal of the century. Every time they wanna use my name to hide a little scandal of theirs I make sure they pay. Pay big. I mean, I gotta make a buck, right? They don’t pay me much as President. I’m a businessman. A businessman. You know what that means right?”

“but your reputation” said Jones, jabbing a finger at the projection “doesn’t that bother you? I mean, you aren’t famous for taking the high road when it comes to how people see you”

“No. you see, the thing is. okay” the president held up his right hand, thumb and forefinger pressed together “one thing, half that shit is made up. It’s made up. Total bullshit. Liberals hate me, they want to believe anything and everything bad against me. Why not make them hate me even more? Gets me off to see how much they hate me. I love it. And the people that support me, they don’t believe it. In fact the more shit gets thrown at me the less they believe. Its scandal fatigue. Scandal fatigue. People get tired of hearing the same thing. I mean, sure, the first time they said I fucked hookers there was outrage. Total outage. Now, no one cares. Besides you gotta remember what really matters. Me. And they keep talking about me. No one cares about what all the whores say. I’m still the big guy on the evening news”

“but you do fuck hookers!” cried Jones “and everyone knows it. But that doesn’t make it right. You’re meant to be president. That carries with it a certain standard. You think it doesn’t disgust people that you do this?”

“hey, I told everyone on the campaign trail that I could shoot a person in Times Square and not lose votes. Everyone knew what they were buying then, right? So why not monetise that? The lying Liberal media was so obsessed with trashing me they couldn’t see the obvious. I played them. I’m the master player. They think they’re so clever. That they can win with their facts. Good businessman knows his enemies weakness. A good entertainer know what people wants. I’m an entertainer. I gave them what they wanted. They wanted to hate me so I gave them something to hate. Not my fault that they missed the real story. And they should thank me. If it wasn’t for me no one would read the New York Times or the Washington Post”

“so you arranged it all?” said Jones, somehow surprised that the president still had the capacity to disgust her “you deliberately leaked scandals just to get bribe money from your big business friends?” Jones clenched her fists and thought of the tiny hidden camera hidden in the skin of her forehead just under the hairline “you have any idea what will happen when I tell people this?”

“it’ll hide whatever I want to it to hide” said the President, grinning at his tumescent member “cause I’d be real careful when you leak it. I so much as get word this hits the headlines and I’m gonna deny it. Like always. And you’ll come back, calling me a liar. Like always. And I’ll trash you on twitter. Like always. And by the time the dust clears no one will remember that this was the same day I released my tax returns or I reveal what my family really owns in Russia – and lemme tell you it’s huge. Huge. I been doing this since before even my first day in office. And the media falls for it. Every time. Everyone does”

“but…” began jones, trying to think of a way to release the compromising footage that meant it couldn’t be used by the president to cover an even bigger scandal. Of a way to release the data that he couldn’t use to cause a social media spat that got people angry without actually having anything new to be angry about or doing anything to change things for the better. She could feel her eyes fill with tears and her hands clench uselessly.

“that’s right sweetheart” said the president, using his free hand to bring himself to climax “keep that expression. The one where you’re real disgusted and defeated at the same time. Love it”

“And he just turned around and walked out the hotel room?” said the editor. She was ubering in her spare time and had picked up the still shaking Jones from the hotel. A short ride around the city was turning into a very long one and only the editor’s infinite knowledge of hacks and workarounds kept that information from appearing on the vast tracking network of Uber “you didn’t try to nail him to anything else? Or, you know, nail him?”

“no” said Jones “I mean what could I do? It was obvious when he told me. We’ve been played by him. We thought he was the big evil bastard….”

“which he is”

“but he’s just the public face. The target. He’s nothing but a live action internet troll. He’s all words. It’s the people behind him that are the problem” she sighed deeply “but how the fuck do we bring them to light? Every time we try to get people’s attention then the president blasts in calling Zika victims a bunch of whining bitches, or the 911 widows a bunch of hotties. He’s totally outclassed us”

“and you say he’s been doing this since the beginning?”

“since his first day on the job. Everything he’s done as president has been to distract us from the real problems. The crusade against the voter fraud that never happened. The fucking wall with Mexico that they didn’t pay for but that we bought from them anyway because it was cheaper. Its like the accusation he likes watching whores pissing. It’s all been to stop us seeing the truth. And it’s just got bigger and bigger. It used just to be stupid shit he’d say, then it was stupid shit he’d do and now its fucking hookers practically in public and pissing on the homeless. Who knows where it goes next?”

“yeah” said the editor, looking distracted as she sped past a stranded Hummer 7, its front axle having snapped trying to go up on a kerb. Since the Russians had taken over Europe and China had taken over Asia the only cars on offer were American gas guzzlers with atrocious safety records “yeah, he is getting worse. Like he’s deliberately trying to troll the American people…” her voice trailed off for a moment “hey, have you checked the retweet figures of his bullshit?” she said “can we get figures as to how many people are talking about him?”

“I guess” said Jones “we can cross twitter data with hashclouds relating to the president. Find the keywords mentioning the President and we get a rough idea of how many people are talking about him”

“do it” said the editor “and see whether the numbers are going up or down”

“umm, I think that’s pretty obvious” said Jones “it’s getting worse, like everything. All people ever do is talk about the President and how shit he is”

“check it anyway. You might be surprised. I have a feeling, you know. not as many people talk about him as they used to. The law of diminishing returns and all that. After a while most people become numb, they become bored. I mean sure, we know a lot of people who get outraged, but this is New York and we hang out with people who live to be offended. I wanna know if America at large still gives a fuck about its shitty Commander in Chief”

“hmm” said jones, not really believing her editor. However she punched up the numbers for the last five years. Looked at them. Checked them again and rubbed her eyes “what the fuck? But I thought…” she asked “how did you know?”

“laws of supply and demand” said the editor “you gotta remember I’ve a masters in celebonomics from Yale. One of the first laws of celebonomics is that the more you expose yourself to the world the more you will need to keep exposing to maintain public interest – and by public interest I mean people actually giving a shit what you do, not whether they like you. Celebrities haven’t needed to be liked since the rise of reality TV. So you need to keep upping the exposure to keep yourself in the public eye, but it’s not physically possible to do that indefinitely. So what happens is you pass a critical point – the Kardashian point they call it – where media saturation is so great that you can be everywhere but no one will care any more. Your ubiquity is so total that people will literally cease to notice you. With the Kardashians they were so overexposed that it didn’t matter how many family members they roped in or much cosmetic surgery they had, or even that time Kim and Kourtney had that knife fight. People just stopped caring, and now they can’t even get arrested in LA” she shrugged “I did my thesis on the Kardashians. That’s where Trump is now. He hasn’t got any more capacity to shock, so people are getting bored and switching off. Give it another few years and they won’t give a fuck about him. He’ll be reduced to giving handjobs to his fans. Like Kanye west did”

“great” said Jones “but we don’t have a few years. In fact if you’re correct then he’s going to clock that people aren’t giving a fuck about him. Then he’ll do something really fucking crazy. Is there anything we can do to speed up the process?”

“there is” said the editor “but I don’t think you’re going to like it”

“what?”

“well, we’re gonna need that footage you shot. For starters. Then we’re going give the President what he wants more than anything else. More than money, more than power”

“what’s that?”

“Our undivided attention”

Six weeks later

The day the UN convicted two US oil companies for genocide the president got a call in his motorcade down the Washington Mall while an aide next to him astrotrufed his twitter ratings.

“Donald” said the Koch brother on the other end. The president could never remember which was which and it hardly mattered so long as one of them picked up the cheque. They were the major backers along with a cabal of silicon valley Caesars and Russian oligarchs that were funding him to hide their criminal activities with his own “you wanna explain why I see my face on the morning news?”

“impossible David” said the president, looking at an aide who nodded that He’d got the right one “impossible. Listen I heard about your little difficulty. So I tweeted a whole bunch of racist shit last night at 3 in the morning and then deleted it so I looked drunk. They’ll be so busy arguing about it they won’t notice what happened in New York…”

“so do you want to explain why the highest trending hashtag is kochbrothersfraud? And why I’m not only now facing federal charges relating to the little, um, difficulty at the UN but a PR meltdown? i thought Liberals didn’t have time to give a fuck about global warming because they were too busy getting pissed off at you”

“listen you don’t need to worry about the Feds. Not at all” said the President “My boys are out there explaining that this UN is all just fake news and the Chinese trying to take our jobs…”

“no, you don’t get it” said Koch “I don’t care about the Feds. We own them, because we own you. I care about the fact that we’re paying you roughly six percent of our annual profit to get your face on the news and currently you’re rated lower than the new series of the pornstar version of the Apprentice”

“hey, now that isn’t true. I’ll tell you. I’m a ratings winner. I’m number one famous. More famous than ever. I’ve been the focus of more news these last weeks than anyone else. A real spike in news traffic” he looked at his aides who nodded and showed tablets with figures all designed to soothe the president’s fragile ego. They had long realised that the president didn’t care whether people were loving or hating him so long as they were talking about him. According to all their estimates more people were talking about him than ever “I had a proper hitjob from some bitch at CNN underground. Then a whole twitter war with….”

“Mr President, I know you’re a fucking idiot so I’m going to explain this simply” said Koch over the phone “you’ve been played. All those news reports, those twitter wars. Someone has been Kardashioning you”

“what?” said the president “what have those losers got to do with this? No one’s cared about them in years. They used to be everywhere. Then people got bored. Old news”

“exactly” sad Koch “people are bored of you, Mr President. They’re bored of your little tricks. They aren’t outraged anymore. They don’t care about the dancing clown who says racist things and grabs ass. That’s bad for us. You need to fix this. Get people interested in you and yours so I don’t have them getting interested in me and mine”

“I could get Ivanka to do the Playboy centrefold from the west wing again. She’s had some work done. Real knock out…”

“it’s been done. No one cares about your daughter’s new tits” said Koch “find something new. Or else we find ourselves a new clown. You got it?”

With that the fossil fuel billionaire was gone and the president was left facing his aides. They waited for the inevitable explosion of self justification and round cursing of someone who had the audacity to oppose the Donald.

“okay” said the president, instead looking icily calm “its D-day. Those fake news CNN bitches think they can take me down. Well I got news for them. I’m gonna leak the biggie. The one that will get everyone talking. Get the liberals creaming their pants with rage and the deplorables creaming with joy”

“your tax returns?” said one female aide “are we sure they’re ready?”

“no, of course not” said Trump “no one’s ready for that” he pointed at another aide from his extended family “you…whatever your fucking name is. Leak the hotel footage from that reporter. Unedited. I wanna make sure they all get the money shot. i wanna see me coming in glorious HD. Then release a tweet that I’m going to have her locked up in Gitmo. Then issue a denial that it ever came from me. Then one doubling down on the first one” he looked out the window at the grey winter of Washington “this’ll get me back on top. This one can’t be stopped” he looked at the aide anxiously after a few seconds “is it ready?”

“footage leaked” said the aide, tapping at a tablet “sending a copy to the news outlets that do what we say- wikileaks and Fox news. Sending the denials now”

“beautiful” said the president as the limo moved through the cold streets “beautiful” he looked at the view, then the inside of the limo “any retweets yet?”

“negative Mr President”

“any news outlets leading on it?”

“umm, fox and friends are talking about it. Or they mentioned it. They didn’t seem interested. They moved on pretty quick to the Koch thing. Apparently there’s a lot of refugees down in Lousiana who can get compensation….”

The aide was silenced by a look.

“fake news” said the president “losers. No ratings. What are my retweets?”

“in the hundreds of thousands” said one aide cagily, his too honest face turning a bright shade of red.

“real tweets, or astroturfed by Russian bots?” asked the President huskily

“umm…” said the aide

“fucking losers” said the president. Five minutes passed in silence. Then ten “and now?” he growled. The aides looked at each other

“well, it might take some time, you know to….” Began one

“no. that doesn’t happen” the president shouted “I’m the fucking president. I don’t get ignored. I’m the star. The ratings winner. The star” he looked crazily about him. Then his eyes narrowed “you know, I said once I could shoot people in Times Square” the aides looked at each other

“sir, I don’t think that…”

“Thinking too small. Yeah I know” said the president “go big or go home. Well people it’s time to go big” he looked at an aide whose wrist was manacled to a briefcase “too big to be ignored”

“I can’t believe this is working” said Jones, looking at the ticker tape of news around Times Square. The burning heat of information, images and advertising bathed them and there was not a single mention of the President “we played him at his own game and won”

“told you” said the editor, toasting her with a nice Starbucks Methalatte “isn’t anyone who can stay famous once they hit the Kardashian point. It’s like the H-bomb of celebrity killers. you can’t fuck with the laws of nature. Celebonomics is a bitch, and the President was the biggest celeb around” Her words were drowned out by the sound of sirens suddenly blatting and the screens above them whiting out due to information overload “what the fuck is that?” she screamed

“well, you know you mentioned H-bombs…” began Jones, looking in her smart glasses with horror as missile silos across the nation started opening up “seems like maybe the President found a way to stay in the story after all”

#impeachtrump #climate change #maga

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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The 2019 mosque attack and freedom of speech in Norway | Far Right

On August 10, 2019, then-21-year-old neo-Nazi Philip Manshaus made his way to al-Noor mosque in the suburban municipality of Baerum near the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on the eve of Eid al-Adha, intending to commit a massacre of Muslim worshippers.

His murderous plot, however, ended in a spectacular failure. It was Saturday afternoon when he burst into the mosque, so only three worshippers were present. Two of them – 77-year-old Mohammad Iqbal and 66-year-old Muhammad Rafiq – managed to wrestle him down to the ground.

Several days later, the neo-Nazi appeared in court with a bruised face, having failed to “kill as many Muslims as possible” and instead having gotten a beating from two elderly Muslims.

Although there were no deaths at the mosque, it turned out that before setting off for the attack, Manshaus had killed his 17-year-old step-sister, Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen, who was adopted from China and in his mind, also constituted a “threat” to the “white race”.

Earlier this month the court case against him started, with prosecutors seeking a 21-year prison sentence for his crimes. As Norway goes through yet another trial of a murderous neo-Nazi, important questions have to be asked about how seriously violent far-right extremism is taken in Norway and how its ideas have been allowed to freely circulate under the guise of protecting “freedom of speech”.

Right-wing extremism

Despite the increasing sway of neo-Nazi ideas in Norwegian society, there is a continuous trend to perceive right-wing extremists as disturbed individuals and their violence as a result of mental illness rather than extreme ideology.

In the case of Anders Breivik, who in 2011 went on a shooting spree in Norway killing 77 people, the Norwegian media extensively covered his psychological profile and claimed he had a problematic relationship with his mother.

Some Norwegian commentators even went as far as comparing him to a “natural disaster”.

Such narratives continue to dominate the public discourse in Norway because they offer a convenient way for a society which has long seen itself as “post-racial” and “colour-blind” to exceptionalise right-wing extremism and the wider societal climate of Islamophobia on which it feeds, rather than see it as a growing native phenomenon and a real threat.

Manshaus, much like other murderous far-right extremists, was not a person with a mental illness. And he was clearly motivated to act violently by neo-Nazi ideology.

According to court documents, forensic psychiatrists found him to be sane and criminally liable for his actions. During the psychiatric assessment, Manshaus did not appear to regret killing his own step-sister, as he considered her “subhuman” due to her Chinese ethnicity. He did express regret that the had not planned his attack on the mosque better so he would have actually been able to kill Muslims.

In addition to espousing the idea of the “great replacement” – that there is a conspiracy to “replace” white Europeans with (mostly Muslim) immigrants – he also appeared to believe various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and called the Holocaust “a myth”. He also declared homosexuality “a disease”.

He clearly had drawn inspiration from Breivik and Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in two mosques in New Zealand in 2019 and whose “manifesto” he cited in court.

Manshaus also applied for membership in the neo-Nazi, pan-Nordic and Swedish-dominated Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in June 2019, and had a meeting with some of their members. Several months earlier, after the New Zealand mosques attack, the NRM had refused to “distance” itself from Tarrant’s terrorist attack.

Manhaus’s increasingly racist attitude prior to the attack worried some people in his immediate family and social circles. In 2018, a man contacted the Police Security Services (PST) expressing concern about his attitudes, but the police did not follow up on it.

Fellow students at a rural ecological college that Manshaus attended in 2018-2019 were also perturbed by his ideas and informed the school administration, which also did not take action.

Back in 2010, the Norwegian authorities also did not act on tip-offs about Breivik.

Free speech vs hate speech

It is undoubtedly something of a paradox that it was after Breivik’s terrorist attacks in 2011, the worst in modern Norwegian history, that the Swedish-dominated neo-Nazi NRM started finding a footing in Norway. The Norwegian media reporter and author, Harald Klungtveit, has estimated that at least 81 Norwegians have passed through the ranks of the NRM since then.

Despite this worrying trend, Norwegians have been duly told by Norwegian free speech liberals in powerful positions that the proverbial “answer to hate speech” is “more and freer speech”.

Since 2011, Norwegian far-right, anti-Muslim and racist activists have enjoyed liberal access to mainstream media outlets, have had their self-published books sponsored by liberal foundations committed to freedom of expression, and have seen continued commitment to state funding of their media outlets.

Norwegian liberal media editors have enforced editorial conventions whereby clearly and discernably racist and Islamophobic organisations have been euphemistically described as merely being “critical of Islam”.

Both far-right anti-Muslim conspiracy theories like the Eurabia theory and identitarian “replacement theory” have been openly promoted by public intellectuals in positions of considerable power in Norway.

Quite how Manshaus first came across the neo-Nazi NRM we do not know. But what we do know is that a central propaganda and recruitment tool for the NRM in Norway as in Sweden has been its public marches. When 60-70 Swedish and Norwegian neo-Nazis from the NRM, including a number of members with violent criminal records, marched through the city centre in Norway’s fifth-largest city of Kristiansand on July 29, 2017, the reaction of the very same Norwegian free speech liberals was that freely permitting them to do so was nothing short of a litmus test for Norwegian liberal democracy.

The media has also extensively covered the Manshaus trial, going into excessive details about his life and printing photos of him, including those in which he makes far-right gestures, thus giving a platform to his propaganda efforts. And just like the media coverage of Breivik’s trial, this raises the questions about the ability of Norwegian media to find the right balance between providing information of public interest and becoming a stage for extremist right-wing propaganda.

As media scholar Gavan Titley cautions in a forthcoming book, “free speech has been adopted as a primary mechanism for amplifying and re-animating racist ideas” in our times. Though relatively few of those regularly exposed to racist hate speech in any society are likely to engage in violence or terror, there can be little doubt that the propagation of hatred made possible by ultra-liberal interpretations of “freedom of speech” is an enabling circumstance for such violence and terror.

Meanwhile, members of immigrant and minority communities are increasingly living in fear. In Baerum, al-Noor mosque has seen few worshippers return and has struggled financially, as donations have dwindled. Norwegian authorities have offered little support, despite high-profile media shows of solidarity from Norwegian PM Erna Solberg and Crown Prince Haakon Magnus in the immediate aftermath of the attacks last August

“Never again” was the mantra in Norway in 2011. But here we are – again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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For the U.S., Addressing Domestic Terrorism Has Been Fraught https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/us/politics/domestic-terrorism.html

Inside the Government, Addressing Domestic Terrorism Has Been Fraught

By Katie Benner | Published Aug. 11, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 12, 2019 8:40 AM ET|

WASHINGTON — Not long after Barack Obama took office in 2009, a Homeland Security Department analyst produced a report presciently predicting that the deep economic downturn, the rise of social media and the election of the first black president would combine to make race-driven extremism a growing and serious threat to national security.

But when the report was made public, it ignited a storm of protest, mostly from the right. Mike Pompeo, then a Republican congressman from Kansas and now secretary of state, said focusing on domestic terrorism was a “dangerous” undertaking born of political correctness that denied “the threat that radical Islamic terrorism poses.”

Inside the Obama administration there was concern that highlighting the issue would only fuel white supremacist conspiracy theories or give unwarranted publicity to fringe figures, according to six former administration officials.

Within weeks, Janet Napolitano, then the homeland security secretary, rescinded the threat assessment. The report’s primary author left the government, and the department’s unit dedicated to tracking domestic terrorism was essentially disbanded.

A decade later, there is clear evidence that violence by white extremists is an undeniable and intensifying problem, especially after the racially motivated mass shooting in El Paso. But the question of how the government should attack domestic extremism, especially white supremacists, remains as politically fraught as ever, if for far different reasons, under President Trump.

Federal law enforcement has been tracking the rise of domestic terrorism. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, told lawmakers last month that the bureau had arrested almost as many domestic terrorists as foreign terrorists this year. He said most of the racially motivated domestic terrorism cases were probably connected to white supremacy.

But a look at the experience of the Homeland Security Department, which is responsible for collecting data on and analyzing threats to the United States, shows how political considerations have constrained efforts to give the problem more prominence and develop policies to counter it.

During the Obama years, the pressure to minimize the problem came largely from outside the administration, primarily from Republicans who saw it as a diversion from fighting Islamic extremism but also to a lesser degree from people on the left concerned about the implications for the civil liberties of American citizens.

Under Mr. Trump, the skepticism is rooted inside the White House.

Officials at the department have felt they could not broach topics like domestic terrorism and white supremacist violence with Mr. Trump because he was not interested in those concerns, two people familiar with deliberations inside the administration said.

At one point, Kirstjen Nielsen, then the homeland security secretary, sought a regular meeting with Mr. Trump to brief him on a variety of topics including domestic terrorism, but her proposal was rejected by the White House, a person with knowledge of the effort said.

And Mr. Trump continues to harbor a deep distrust of the F.B.I., which has made public statements about the threat of domestic terrorists and racially motivated violence as growing national security threats.

Since Mr. Trump took office, the Homeland Security Department has focused primarily on foreign terrorism and immigration, giving little attention to domestic extremism.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting homeland security secretary, said domestic terrorism was becoming a national counterterrorism priority “for the first time,” but confirmed that the department had devoted most resources to “border and international issues.”

One program left over from the Obama administration, a $10 million pot of money to pay for a community partnership program to prevent violent extremism, withered as participants withdrew after Mr. Trump issued a ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries. Intelligence analysts in the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis who focused on domestic terrorism and collaborated with local law enforcement on domestic terrorism were dispersed to other counterterrorism programs.

In the language he uses, the president has also at times played down the threat of white supremacy at home and around the world. Mr. Trump said this spring that he did not see a global increase in the threat of white supremacy. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” he said. After the El Paso shooting he said the nation “must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” but the next day accused a Democratic presidential contender, Beto O’Rourke, of using a “phony name” to play up his Hispanic heritage.

The United States has always been plagued by violence associated with white nationalism. Violence associated with white nationalism has spiked at intervals in recent decades, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But government data shows that, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, far-right extremists carried out nearly three times as many attacks on Americans in the United States as Islamic extremists did.

Incidents of white supremacist propaganda such as the posting of fliers increased 182 percent in 2018, from 421 in 2017 to 1,187 last year, and the number of racist rallies increased nearly 20 percent, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Hate crimes have increased over the past several years, and reached a nine-year high in 2017, the latest year available, according to F.B.I. data.

“Individuals adhering to racially motivated violent extremism ideology have been responsible for the most lethal incidents among domestic terrorists in recent years,” Michael C. McGarrity, an official in the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism division, testified before Congress in June.

The figures were already rising at the time Mr. Obama won the presidency. But the backlash against the 2009 report from the Homeland Security Department underscored how the nexus of race, national security and civil liberties would limit the effort to confront the problem.

Former law enforcement officials say white supremacists were energized by the 2008 election. On social media they discussed the possibility of a race war should Mr. Obama become president. Hate crimes peaked that year in October, according to the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, when his election seemed assured.

And traffic to white nationalist websites like Stormfront increased after the election, said Derek Black, a former white supremacist whose father founded Stormfront. Mr. Black, who has left the movement, said that having a black president motivated new recruits to join.

The Homeland Security Department report, issued amid this activity, predicted the growth of “right-wing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements,” and said the recession could help recruitment because people economically at risk were more susceptible to extremists of all stripes. Internet platforms, the report said, would let domestic extremists meet and radicalize others individuals — just as foreign extremists like the Islamic State would do.

The multipronged Republican backlash included criticism of the term “right-wing extremism,” and a near disavowal of the existence of domestic terrorism. Republican politicians and pundits echoed Mr. Pompeo’s assertion that the idea of domestic terrorism was a feint, born of political correctness, meant to distract from foreign terrorism.

The report, said John D. Cohen, who acted as the Homeland Security Department’s counterterrorism coordinator in the Obama administration and a senior adviser to the director of national intelligence in the George W. Bush administration, had a significant problem: It did not clearly distinguish between hateful speech, which is protected by the First Amendment, and violent behavior. Mr. Cohen said that problem made the job of defending the report much harder by raising substantial civil liberties concerns.

“The C.I.A. and the intelligence community don’t have to distinguish between extreme ideas and violence because they deal with foreign actors whose speech and affiliations are not protected by the First Amendment,” Mr. Cohen said.

Republicans pushed back against the idea that domestic terrorism was a serious national security threat for the duration of the Obama administration, even as local law enforcement officials said white supremacists and other right-wing groups were contributing to crime and endangering officers in the field.

At the same time, Democrats were concerned that clamping down on domestic extremism could pose grave civil liberties risks. The Obama administration’s plan to work with community groups to identify signs of radicalization was seen with some skepticism even inside some corners of the Justice Department at the time because it could smack of inappropriate surveillance, according to a former Justice Department official.

The criticism from the right and qualms from the left meant there was no strong constituency pushing to address policy toward domestic terrorism more effectively, people involved in the issue during the Obama years said.

“The public criticism did at times limit our ability to get the message out,” said George Selim, the former director of the Office of Community Partnerships at the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the counterradicalization program. He left in 2017.

Rather than pursuing a big public strategy, the Obama administration “did a lot of good and often quiet work in this arena,” said Ned Price, a former C.I.A. official and member of Mr. Obama’s National Security Council staff.

By 2016, after much quiet lobbying, the Homeland Security Department obtained the $10 million in funding from Congress for the community partnership program, seeing it as a step toward preventing radicalization.

Mr. Trump’s 2016 election, and his early efforts to implement the travel and to build a wall along the southern border, upended the program. For those already wary of the government, “it was a worst fear come true for organizations we spent literally years building trust with,” Mr. Selim said. “Participants in the program withdrew.”

The White House rejected the previous administration’s decision to counter violent extremism broadly, and instead focused primarily on foreign terrorism, limiting references to domestic extremism in its national counterterrorism strategy, people involved in the issue said.

Republicans who are willing now to acknowledge a growing threat from domestic terrorism and white supremacy still face a difficult political challenge in navigating issues of race and identity, especially given their party’s heavy reliance under Mr. Trump on white voters.

And their efforts would run up against Mr. Trump’s own focus on the threat from foreigners and immigrants.

At a recent hearing, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is chairman of a House Oversight Committee subcommittee with jurisdiction over homeland security, told officials with the Homeland Security Department that “we could not find that it had any comprehensive strategy to address white supremacist violence.”

The department, Mr. Raskin said in an interview, responded that it “would work on it and brief us at the end of the summer.”

The department did not respond to requests for comment.

Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.

In a Suffering City, an El Paso Priest Needed a Message of Hope

By Rick Rojas | Published Aug. 11, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 12, 2019 8:35 AM ET |

EL PASO — The Rev. Fabian Marquez had not slept much. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind filled with the faces he saw draining of hope as they learned their relatives had been killed. His week had been a string of vigils, rosaries, memorial services and funeral planning sessions.

Still, he had another community to attend to, his congregation at El Buen Pastor, a small mission church on the outskirts of El Paso, where every weekend he presides over three Masses in Spanish and one in English and Spanish.

He was in his office, his Bible cracked open and notes splayed on his desk, trying to come up with a sermon. He had to distill the horrors the community had endured in the past week, and somehow find meaning. El Paso had not been struck merely by an episode of random mass violence. The gunman who charged into a Walmart store had a manifesto that made clear that he had a specific target: Hispanic people and immigrants, the people sitting in his pews. Fear had been added to their anguish.

Father Marquez, a Mexican-American and native son of El Paso, wrestled with what to say. It was Friday, and he had not even read the Bible verses scheduled to be the week’s readings. “I haven’t had the time,” he said. He hoped that a message offering comfort would come to him. “I always follow what the spirit tells me, and we take it from there.”

After an exhausting week, he was relying on the spirit to come through.

Father Marquez found himself drawing inspiration to the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment.

“We need to follow the commandment of love — love God, love your neighbor,” the priest said. “This was a tragedy that came to break us and separate us, but God is inviting us to spread the love that only comes from him, and only with that are we going to be able to overcome this tragedy and this sadness.”

He let his words hang for a moment. “I’ve been playing around with that,” he added.

Father Marquez, 46, stumbled into the priesthood. He had taught third grade for several years. He served on the City Council in San Elizario, a small town outside El Paso. He had aspirations of running for the State Legislature. He had always been an observant Catholic, he said, but he became more involved in the church because he thought it would help him politically.

Instead, he said, he received a different call.

“As soon as I walked in, I heard it,” he said. “‘Leave everything and follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.’ It was embedded in my head. It was engraved in my heart. And that never left me.”

He was the Diocese of El Paso’s first seminarian in six years, ordained in 2004. Five years ago, he was dispatched to El Buen Pastor in Sparks, one of the impoverished colonias around El Paso, where residents had fought for years for access to water, sewage and electricity services.

The community sprouted from the scrubby West Texas terrain, with the church sitting beside dusty lots with modest family houses, mobile homes and a graveyard of old eighteen wheelers. It took years for the congregation to raise the money and build the church themselves.

In his office, Father Marquez has crosses, a small statue of Jesus and photos all over the walls, including images of him with Pope Benedict XVI and with Pope John Paul II, whom he met more than once.

He constantly collects thoughts for homilies, sometimes pausing in conversation to jot something down. He holes up in his office to prepare, looking up the verses and sketching out the points he would like to make. That said, he likes to keep it extemporaneous.

“You have to just rely that the Lord will give you the wisdom, the knowledge to say the right thing,” he said. “It feels good. It makes sense. It flows nicely. It feels connected. That’s how I interpret the spirit saying, ‘Yeah, way to go, you’re doing a good job.’”

In the hours after the shooting on Aug. 3, Father Marquez rushed to a school that had been turned into what the police called a family reunification center. Families hoping to find their relatives piled in. Before long, many got word that their loved ones were safe, in hospitals, nearby stores or at a friend’s house. As the hours went by, the number of families waiting dwindled. Eventually, 17 were left.

Father Marquez waited with them overnight and into the following morning. At around 10 a.m., he encouraged them to join him in prayer. They said the Lord’s Prayer, they offered one another peace, and he recited for them the 23rd Psalm: “The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” At 10:30, law enforcement officials began taking families into another room, one by one. The priest sat beside them as they were told that their relative was among the 22 who had died.

“I cried with them,” Father Marquez said. “I prayed with them. I embraced them, because you cannot help but feel their pain.”

He has vowed to attend the funerals held by each of the 17 families he had prayed with. (He wrote their names on a rumpled piece of paper that, a week later, was still in his pocket.) He was also asked to preside over the funeral Mass of Raul and Maria Flores, who had been married for 60 years and who were killed together in the Walmart.

Over the past week, he helped the Flores’s children choose readings and songs for the service. He encouraged them to share stories of their parents; he had never met the couple, but he wanted his homily to reflect their lives and character. He wanted their family to feel reassured.

“Jesus is telling you, don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he said, laying out his thoughts for the sermon. “That brings me a lot of comfort, personally. What happens when you lose someone? You want to know where they are. You want to know that they’re safe. So this scripture tells them, I’m preparing a very special place for you, and when that place is ready, I’m going to come and get you.”

Lee Ann Beck, a friend of Father Marquez for 15 years, went with him to the memorial that grew in a parking lot behind the Walmart, where he led victims’ families and others in prayer.

“The people needed comfort in the chaos, and he happened to be the voice,” she said. “He has this way, he has this gift of bringing that peace. Not everyone has that.”

Still, she worried for him.

“You are the only one who has journeyed with these families,” she said she told him, raising a question about his well-being again, this time at a memorial service on Saturday night for Andre Anchondo, 23; he died with his wife, Jordan, who also was remembered at the service.

“You’re the only one who knows what that’s like — how are you?” Ms. Beck recalled asking Father Marquez.

His reply has been the same: He found solace from being with the families and in the community. “I’m doing O.K.,” she said he told her. “I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed at times. But doing God’s work gives me strength.”

Now, his own congregation needed him.

During the mass on Sunday, candles for each of the 22 people killed had been set before the altar.

In his homily, switching between English and Spanish, Father Marquez shared why he had not been there the weekend before, describing the time spent with the victims’ families. He pulled the list of names from his pocket. He said it had been his toughest week as a pastor.

But he said that he drew comfort from the Mass’s reading from the Gospel of Luke.

“Don’t be afraid,” Father Marquez said, standing in the aisle among the congregation. “Those are the words God gave us when we are all afraid.”

He repeated it, for his congregation, and it seemed, for himself: “You do not have to be afraid.”

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republicstandard · 6 years

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Analyzing The Democrat Platform: Social Issues, Immigration, and Race

In this section of our Analysis of the Democratic Party Platform of 2016, we will mainly look at their Social Policies and views on Race. I do acknowledge that these are sensitive issues for some people. Nothing is more frustrating than realizing that there are factors that you cannot control that determine who you -and your group- are. Alas, it is important to approach with an open mind and realize that sometimes, the truth does hurt.

Race

Institutional Racism does exist and is one of the biggest problems of the US. The anti-meritocratic Systemic Racism that is embedded in the US should come to an end. Democrats proposed to end this; yet it seems like they’ve misunderstood what the issue is at this stage because they talk about a “racist past”, but what about the “racist present”? The majority of White Americans do feel that they are discriminated against. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1997, being black was worth 230 points on the SAT:

“The bonus for African-American applicants is roughly equivalent to an extra 230SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), to 185 points for Hispanics, 200 points for athletes, and 160 points for children of alumni. The Asian disadvantage is comparable to a loss of 50 SAT points.”

Discrimination against whites in top colleges is a 20 years old reality, such a prime example of white privilege!

The story gets uglier when you factor in the Jewish population and the Middle Easterners which were up until recently regarded as White by the U.S Census. When you take out the Jewish population from the white demographic group in these studies, the result is even more shocking (and, dare I say, racist).

I wish the Democratic Party Platform used citations when they make matter-of-fact statements such as:

“The racial wealth and income gaps are the result of policies that discriminate against people of color and constrain their ability to earn income and build assets to the same extent as other Americans”.

We are to believe that the existence of Affirmative Action itself forces policies to be “colorblind”.

“For example, African Americans and Latinos lost more than half of their net worth as a result of the housing crisis and the Great Recession, because they lost jobs at a much faster rate than white workers and because they were disproportionately targeted for subprime, predatory, and fraudulent mortgages during the run-up to the housing crisis.”

Black Americans were targeted for subprime loans due to their low-income, not because of their race. The Financial Crisis got to the state that it was because, during the run-up of the financial crisis, lenders had to “lower the standard” for their subprime mortgages due to high demand from investors. This meant that people whom were previously rejected for being low income, which a lot of Blacks happened to be, were now able to get mortgages.

But that itself creates another issue, why is there a racial income disparity in the first place? A lot of people claim that it is because of “institutional racism”, but there is a lot more nuanced than that.

We have to be honest with ourselves here, if America -and the rest of the world for that matter- wants to solve the issue of race, we have to acknowledge the facts instead of pretending that the truth is false, otherwise we will go nowhere, and the issue will end up intensifying with no solution in sight.

Today’s view on race is based on the long-debunked Lockean thought of "Tabula Rasa", the idea that the human mind is a "blank slate" that is purely shaped from its environment. Having such a view creates the modern liberal ethos of “everyone is inherently equal”. This is absolute “enlightenment era” nonsense, and should never be taken seriously. One reason is that Genetics, which goes against the blank slate claim, has a severe importance, not only when it comes to height and physical appearance, but also when it comes to your actions. An example of this can be shown when you observe that the lives of twins that were separated at birth are pretty much the same. The famed Minnesota Twin Studies also supports this research, showing that this is not just a one-time selective anomaly.

Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate, is a recommended book for this subject. Mr. Pinker manages to debunk the silly idea of Tabula Rasa nonsense that has become a dogma today; but for those who do not want to read a 500 page book, here is a TED presentation from Steven Pinker that is an excellent summary of his argument.

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What has genetic inheritability got to do with the Democratic Party Platform? The Democratic Party Platform assumes that phenomena regarding racial aspects of incarcerations, net worth and many other events are a result of systematic racism. For the Democratic Party, Racial Profiling is a bigoted method to oppress people, where in reality, Racial Profiling is using statistics to increase police efficiency. If you wanted to stop potential suicide bombers in your airport, you’d naturally prioritize screening people from the Middle East, or people who look like they are Middle Eastern since a lot of terrorist attacks do happen in Middle Eastern/African countries. It makes sense to assume that people of Middle-Eastern appearance come from the Middle East. Screening Europeans for Islamic Terrorism just as much as screening those who appear to be from Muslim nations is as illogical as ignoring racial profiling for crime. If you cannot use statistics to enhance your efficiency because "racism", then this hinders your ability to protect your country from future attacks.

Speaking of racial profiling, it is quite interesting to see that whites in TV crime shows are "disproportionately portrayed as criminals five to eight times more often on police dramas compared to actual crime statistics for the city of New York". That seems to be a bigger proof of "systemic racism" than all this other nonsense that the Democrats keep spouting.

“We have been inspired by the movements for criminal justice that directly address the discriminatory treatment of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and American Indians to rebuild trust in the criminal justice system.”

There really is no tangible proof to argue that the police oppresses and discriminates against minorities.

On consulting the FBI 2016 crime table, other than the fact that Blacks commit disproportionate amounts of crime, we can notice that there are no “Hispanics” tab. This makes it difficult to analyze what’s going on with their crime rates. Coupled with the fact that the criminal system is incredibly ill-equipped when it comes to demographics analysis it almost makes one think that it is intentional. Here are a couple examples that the Democrats should target to solve when it comes to reforming our criminal justice system:

How are Hispanics who look Hispanic and have Hispanic names counted as White? Fortunately, the research has been done for us by the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

Another piece of evidence we can use to understand the differences between races is by using the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey:

“Because such a large number of adults participated in this survey, it is possible to report performance results for many more racial/ethnic groups than has been possible in the past. The average prose literacy of White adults is 26 to 80 points higher than that of any of the other nine racial/ethnic groups reported here. Similar patterns are evident on the document and quantitative scales. On the document scale, the average scores of White adults are between 26 and 75 points higher than those of other groups, while on quantitative scale they are from 31 to 84 points higher. With the exception of Hispanic/Other adults, the average proficiencies of the Hispanic subpopulations are not significantly different from one another. On average, Mexican and Central/South American adults were outperformed by Black adults. In contrast, Hispanic/Other adults outperformed Black adults on the prose and document scales by more than 20 points. (On the quantitative scale, the difference is not significant.) Their performance was, on average, similar to that of Asian/Pacific Islander adults and American Indian/Alaskan Native adults.”

One could counter this observance by stating that because of the lower incomes fewer non-whites are able to attain higher education which results in lower earning averages for the next generation. That is a fair statement. Yet, when we factor in the environment by comparing the races by their educational standard, the same result is still maintained:

One of the more shocking parts of this study is that even whites that were born outside of the US have higher scores than US-born Blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. Intelligence is one of the most important measures to explain a person’s success and his/her ability to make good decisions overall. Fully 50 percent of the difference between the intelligence of individuals are due to heritable genetics. The heritability of intelligence also varies from age to age, but perhaps the biggest proof that there is a racial connection to intelligence is the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study and its results:

Despite the average US Black IQ being 85, despite having two well-off white parents, adopted black children in this study wound up presenting a lower IQ than the black average. If that still does not satisfy you, then here is a table of SAT scores:

Other than intelligence, what are the other qualities that differ depending on race? Brain size, psychological traits (even The New York Times reported on this in 1986), gray matter decline, bone geometry, bone density and many other scientifically quantifiable factors.

To conclude my criticism on the Democrats’ opinion on race, they should stop creating scapegoats for minorities under the presumption that we are all equal and the same. We are not the same, we have differences that we cannot control and instead of running away from the core issue of race -the very existence of race the first place- we should acknowledge it. This would allow the different races of man to at least strive for peace, together.

Immigration

On the issue of Immigration, the Democrats make a false start at the gun:

“The United States was founded as, and continues to be, a country of immigrants from throughout the world.”

That is wrong, the US was never founded as a country of immigrants from all around the world. It has to be quite embarrassing that a foreigner like me has to educate an American political party on their own legalistic history. the Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly stated that:

That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen...

5 years later, the government increased the time needed to be in the country to gain citizenship to five years. In 1798, they extended it once again to 14 years, and reduced to 5 years once more in 1802. In 1870 (80 years after the first Naturalization Act) this right to gain citizenship was extended for people of African descent; it is this bill that allowed freed slaves to become citizens. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, which, as the name itself states, banned all legal immigration of Chinese workers. Between the 1880's and 1920's, there indeed was a massive influx of immigration coming to the US, but this was mostly, if not all, from European countries; not the entire world itself as the Democrats like to claim.

The US wanted to limit immigration once more with the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. the aim of this piece of legislation was to "preserve the ideal American homogeneity" by restricting immigration from Southern Europeans, Jews, countries with Roman Catholic majority (which proves that the US restricted immigration based on religion), Eastern Europeans and Arabs. Asians were completely banned from immigrating also. This act was revised in 1952 and with the 1965 Immigration Act, it was effectively terminated. This itself proves that America only had "open borders for the rest of the world" for 50 years of her history, what about the other 190 years?

"The Democratic Party supports legal immigration, within reasonable limits, that meets the needs of families, communities, and the economy as well as maintains the United States’ role as a beacon of hope for people seeking safety, freedom, and security."

There is a good reason why one would be quite skeptical of this statement, as the Democrat president Lyndon Johnson stated before signing the 1965 Hart-Celler act:

"[This is] not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions."

A massive demographic change occurred that affected the lives of millions. when the Democrats say "within reasonable limits", one has to ask "whose reasonable limit?"

"Democrats believe we need to urgently fix our broken immigration system—which tears families apart and keeps workers in the shadows—and create a path to citizenship for law-abiding families who are here, making a better life for their families and contributing to their communities and our country."

If the US managed to create a path to citizenship for law-abiding illegal aliens, then none of those aliens would manage to get citizenship; they have already broken the law by being in the nation without having the legal right to do so.

"We must fix family backlogs and defend against those who would exclude or eliminate legal immigration avenues and denigrate immigrants. Those immigrants already living in the United States, who are assets to their communities and contribute so much to our country, should be incorporated completely into our society through legal processes that give meaning to our national motto: E Pluribus Unum."

I might be wrong here, but it seems like the Democrats are putting illegal immigrants in the same basket with legal immigrants. Either way, reading the immigration policies of the Democrats, it is fair to say that they are a party that supports illegal immigration. They contend that a person who jumps the border or is smuggled in to illegally live in the US should have an easier time to immigrate into the country than a person who follows the legal process. Speaking of those whom want to immigrate legally, how long does it take for them? Here is an article from Litwin & Smith Law Corporation on this issue. If you have an immediate relative in the US, then you are lucky because you only (!) have to wait 9 to 12 months. If you are over 21 year old, a son or a daughter of a permanent resident, it will take you 6 years, same for those under 21-year-olds. Work-based permanent residency takes a long while also, if you are a professional/skilled worker, then it will take you between 2 or 3 years, not to mention that the average processing time is 1½ to 3 years. Knowing this, why would someone who wants to live in the US try to legally immigrate at all when they can just come to the country illegally and be granted free citizenship? The Democrats state that regardless of their immigration status, people should be able to have access to health care and other services as well. It is quite interesting how it is permissible for a political party to advocate for breaking the nation’s law in their own election manifesto.

A 2017 Federation for American Immigration Reform report states that the total economic impact of Illegal Immigration has been $116 Billion. The federal government annually spends $45.8 Billion on Aliens and their children. Illegals in the workforce depress wages, as an illegal alien is more willing to work for lower wages, further causing economic issues in the nation. Additionally, a significant sum is sent out of the USA to relatives living abroad. Remittances, or contributions sent by Mexicans living abroad, mostly in the United States, to their families at home in Mexico comprised $28.5 billion in 2017. Legal immigration it must be said also causes all of the above effects. More workers can cause a strain on the labor market, the big difference is one is controlled and can be ameliorated by the federal government, whereas the other is illegal and cannot be controlled via legalistic fashion if there is no agency able to enforce those laws.

"We reject attempts to impose a religious test to bar immigrants or refugees from entering the United States. It is un-American and runs counter to the founding principles of this country."

As we have observed the US’ past history, this is anything but “un-American”, immigration from Roman Catholics were willingly barred in 1926.

Women

I have already written in the first part of this series about how feminism and egalitarianism negatively affects women and families. Feminism has ultimately failed. The happiness of women has been on a downward spiral since 1975, despite the improvement in living standards for all demographics. If your goal in life is to maximize happiness (which is the proclaimed goal for secularists), then feminism clearly isn’t how you achieve it.

Women are do not generally make reliable workers (aside from "people” oriented tasks). This is mainly due to higher levels of neuroticism, higher agreeableness, and openness to feelings and emotional goals rather than objective goals. they are generally less suited to work in fast-paced, high-stakes business environments. One of the more important things is that employed women severely damage either marriages, or their workplace environment, and sometimes even both.

Firstly, The fact that women can get pregnant means that as an employer, there is a potential risk that one of your employees can enter a six-month stage of low or zero productivity, where you have to pay for her wages even if she doesn’t work for you. That is one of the big reasons why employers generally are not keen on hiring women.

Secondly, women find themselves in a war on two fronts; one with family and another from the working world. Managing a family is a difficult task, so is performing well in a job. Trying to accomplish both is one of the closest things to hell. Men historically didn’t need to have a major stake in family management, since they were responsible for bringing the money to keep the family, whereas the woman was responsible for maintaining the house and the children. As all parents know, raising children to an adequate standard is very difficult. Now that a woman is trying to do what the man used to do, she is in a worse spot than ever. Very few women manage to perform well in their job whilst maintaining the house and the children. The super-mom is a myth perpetuated to promote tensions between the sexes and force women into the workplace through shame. By working, women are not using their maximum potential to nurture their children to the maximum capacity, so it is still a losing battle, even for the "supers".

Thirdly, Let us say that the employer is happy to hire a worker that became pregnant, had to take maternity leave and is now back to work. That employee, who is now a mother, has a much harder task. She has to have a consistent relationship with her child, else her child will be more likely to have long-term mental illnesses and unhappiness. All the while, she has to work well enough to keep and excell in her job. What is even more inconvenient for the employer is that due to the fact that women produce oxytocin during childbirth, and that lactation helps reduce anxiety via the increase of parasympathetic activity, women are predisposed to bond and show bonding behavior. The “just share the work with the father” theory does not work, women by nature will want -and need- to do more for their child than the father.

At the end of the day, "trying to combat biases that hold women back and limit their opportunities" is tilting at windmills. It would be more correct to state that the Democrats are trying to force women to be more like men, which in the end, makes them more miserable. Even in an egalitarian world, the self-regulation of our people will create to inequality between the genders because we are biologically predisposed to do so. The fact that feminists tout "equal rights" without talking about "equal responsibility" is one of the proving points. I am certain that not a single egalitarian woman would approve strict equality. That would mean that they would be fine with removing the social taboo of men hitting women. It would also mean that they’d have to advocate quotas for jobs, including those that have a higher risk of a fatal work injury. I haven’t seen a single feminist advocate for women being able to work those jobs, nor a serious advocacy for more male nursery workers.

Homosexuality

Nothing helps mentally ill people more than telling them that they are not mentally ill. I can hear the objections to my statements since officially, homosexuality and transgenderism are no-longer classified as “mental illnesses”. There are several reasons why I state that this is in fact the case. Homosexuality and trans-sexuality being declassified as mental illness was not done because of a new scientific discovery; it was political correctness to save the psychological institutions. In the 1970s, the homosexual community was at war with the APA (American Psychological Association) because being homosexual was classified as a “Sexual Orientation Disturbance”. A member of the gay community stated that:

“Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate, Psychiatry waged relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a declaration of war against you.”

Dr. Nicholas Andrew Cummings admitted that there was no research to prove that homosexuality was not a mental illness. It is simply disgusting to see that a group of mentally ill people, supported by neo-Marxists, have shut down proper debate within the psychological circle for years. It is even more disgraceful to see medical professionals cave to the pressure, abandoning truth and reasoning in favor of political correctness.

The popular media formed notion of gay people is that the norm is Anderson Cooper or Neil Patrick Harris. However, the truth about homosexuality is less flattering. Homosexuals, bisexuals and other men who have Sex with other men account for 70% of all HIV cases. For syphilis, that number is more than 58%. Homosexuals dominate gonorrhoea statistics as well.

Homosexual men are not only more promiscuous, they are also terrible when it comes to fidelity. Homosexuality itself is a package of health issues, it is not only itself a mental health issue, it also brings health risks that are a result of a promiscuous homosexual lifestyle.

The popular claim for why homosexuals haven’t fully integrated to become healthy members of society is that we haven’t been tolerant enough. This is certainly one of the core talking points of the Democratic Party Platform. This is also demonstrably false. One only needs to observe and compare the Dutch homosexuals and homosexuals of other countries to see if their depression is truly because their community is not “inclusive enough”. The Dutch are incredibly tolerant of homosexuality, yet the homosexuals of Netherlands are not that different from homosexuals of other countries in terms of happiness and health. It cannot be solely inclusivity and tolerance that is sought, and it is a political ploy to claim that this is the panacea to cure our culture of historical sins.

Homosexuality comes with a lot of potential and particular health issues. This means that the US government needs to spend more money per capita -from the taxpayers, who are mostly not homosexual- to combat these health issues. Homosexuality therefore is not only a moral issue, it is also a budgetary issue and the importance of it is very much understated in the mainstream.

The conclusion here is that by pretending that homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality, the Democratic Party and its supporters are doing a massive disservice towards homosexuals. Instead of helping them, they are actively assisting in perpetuating misery for many gay and transgender people. Imagine depressed people rioting and suppressing academic meetings and conferences by psychologists, just because they don’t want to admit that they have a mental disorder. Worse, imagine that the APA caves under the pressure and decides to remove depression as a mental disorder without even doing the necessary research to prove that hypothesis. It is the Democratic Party who are lacking, in their much-vaunted ideals of empathy and compassion. To ignore the evidence that someone is ill and in need of aid is an inhuman abomination.

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