Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Europe

Ireland's immigrant backlash: Huge crowds march after 300 percent rise in asylum seekers

2025-05-06

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] … as protesters blame Irish government for 'inviting the whole third world to come in'

Huge crowds have staged anti-migrant protests in Ireland amid growing anger at the government over an increase in arrivals and asylum claims.

More than a thousand are believed to have joined a march in County Donegal's Letterkenny over the weekend, with several hundred having organised a counter-protest.

Ireland has seen anti-migrant anger growing in recent months, over the sheer number of asylum seekers being housed across the nation. Many of them are unable to get accommodation, forcing them to sleep in tents which has further incited anger.

The 'Letterkenny Peaceful Assembly/Protest Against Illegal Immigration' started at the lower end of Port Road, in the town's eastern side, and and concluded at Market Square.

Over in Carrickmacross, a similar protest, this one attended by around 800, was launched on Friday, where speakers criticised the Irish government and landlords profiting from housing asylum seekers.

Local independent councillor Seamus Treanor said people living in his ward did not feel safe in their own homes, given heightened levels of anti-social behaviour.

'I want to get one thing straight - the reason we have a housing problem in this county is because our government opened our borders, and invited the whole third world to come in.

'They came in their tens of thousands, and communities like Carrickmacross are suffering the consequences.

'The so-called opposition are in step with the government, and agree with their policy.'

Many were seen waving Irish and Donegal flags in protest against what they believed was a surge of illegal migration to the country.

One little girl was seen holding a large sign that read: 'TRAITORS ARE LIVING AMONGST US.'

But hundreds of counter-protesters were also present at the Letterkenny march, railing against the anti-migrant sentiment seen across the nation in recent months.

The United Against Racism Donegal Group invited speakers, who spoke in favour of inclusion, respect and equality for all, and rejected the incitement to hatred.

Cops reportedly managed to watch over the incident without any confrontations, having erected a physical barrier between the two groups.

In February, Ireland saw a wave of violence, with anti-migrant anger at an all time high - after the number of people applying to come into the country rocketed by nearly 300 per cent in five years.

Shocking videos showed Dublin descending into chaos - with fighting thugs throwing themselves into busses, knife fights on their streets and mass brawls sparking in residential roads.

In others, men patrol the capital to keep the city 'safe' while police can be seen using riot shields and pepper spray as they crack down on protests.

As many as 150,000 people moved to Ireland in 2023-24, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures revealed, the highest number in 17 years.

Many of them are being accommodated in poor areas of central Dublin or small provincial towns. Only 30,000 of these were returning Irish citizens.

There are now nearly 33,000 international protection applicants being housed across the nation, up from 7,244 in 2017. Alongside arrivals from Africa and the Middle East, 100,000 refugees flocked to the country following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Each costs the nation nearly £70 a day, a figure that has increased by a third in two years. At the end of last year the Irish Refugee Council revealed there were a record 3,001 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland.

The budget for housing Ukranian refugees has been slashed from £910million in 2023 to less than £340million this year, with officials saying the reduction is expected to continue.

Once sleepy towns are now homes to hundreds of asylum seekers while tent cities have been set up along Dublin's Grand Canal.

And with hard-right sentiment at fever pitch the country is on a knife edge - with even Ireland's left-wing politicians admitting that the influx of migrants was driving a spike in homelessness.

Aoife Gallagher, from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, who monitors hard-right activity, has previously said that there has been an escalation in migrants being targeted in Ireland.

'We see consistently, a couple of times every week, horrific attacks on migrants,' she told the BBC.

'We see people standing outside IPAS centres waiting for asylum seekers in order to confront them and intimidate them.

'There's a level of political violence that we haven't seen before.'

The Irish Refugee Council say there are now more than 3,000 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland. Since December 2023, 5,671 of 6,407 have been refused accommodation, while only 736 were immediately accommodated after a vulnerability triage.

Irish Refugee Council CEO, Nick Henderson, said: 'We can’t continue to normalise homelessness and have the State effectively delegate its duties to volunteers and under resourced charities. It puts both people seeking protection and those helping them at risk of harm.'

Last year UK Government ministers flatly rejected Dublin's demands to take back asylum seekers crossing from Northern Ireland.

The Republic has voiced alarm that large numbers are taking advantage of the invisible border on the island to avoid being deported to Rwanda, with ministers saying more than 80 per cent of the country's asylum seekers arrive this way.

Then-Taoiseach Simon Harris vowed to pass new laws to facilitate returns of migrants, after the country's courts declared the UK cannot be classed as 'safe' due to the pact with the African state.

The government has previously spoken favourably about migration. Jamie Drummond, Co-Founder and Executive Director of NGO ONE and a friend of U2 star Bono, told the International Development Committee in 2015 that young immigrants were needed to help with Ireland's 'senile' aging population.

She said: 'Just as this country and this continent will be at its most senile demographically speaking, Africa will be the world’s youth and the supply of the world’s energy, creativity and dynamism.

'If we have invested properly in their education, governance and long-term security and the ability and belief that people can make a contribution in their economies and societies.

'If we fail to make those long-term investments because we are lurching in response from crisis to crisis or because we are indifferent, we will significantly regret the missed opportunity of having their engagement in a positive way and we will regret unfolding increased crises at that time.'

Project Ireland 2040 - an initiative unveiled in 2018 - forecasting nearly two million extra people in Ireland in 15 years time who would need an extra £96billion in investment for infrastructure and housing.

This huge figure was intended to be used to expand cities and settle rural areas, although it has quickly been left in the dust as the number of arrivals has reached more than double the initial estimates, The Telegraph reports.

A study by the London School of Economics found that hard-right protests in Ireland had seen structural racism and existing views 'supercharged' by social media.

And they blamed the government for cutting funding to anti-racism initiatives in the wake of the 2008 financial crash for allowing views to spiral.

They concluded: 'More needs to be done to ensure already woefully neglected communities receive sufficient state resources to facilitate greater community integration of asylum seekers and migrants, allowing these communities to view immigration as beneficial, hence helping to tackle embedded racism.

'It is this issue of distribution which needs to be at the centre of public debate on immigration, rather than the toxic, polarising and racist frames favoured by the far right and, increasingly, some "mainstream" politicians.

The hashtag 'Ireland is full' frequently trends on social media as experts fear sites like X have fanned suspicion within communities.

Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found misinformation by hard-right Irish figures is rising across all social media platforms in analysis of 13million posts from 1,640 accounts over the last three years.

They found that the pandemic had brought together previously fringe groups including those holding right-wing views and anti-vaxx campaigners around Covid conspiracy theories.

And when this passed the links 'didn't disappear', with many moving on to target refugees and the LGBT community, The Irish Times reports.

X is the most common platform for hateful posts, with researchers finding 1,158 accounts that posted 11.7million tweets between January 2020 and April 2023. The creation of these spiked following 2022 immigration protests and Elon Musk taking over the site in 2023.

Kremlin disinformation also sparked a flood of disinformation following the invasion of Ukraine, including claims the war was started by the West and that Zelensky's government was controlled by Nazis.

ISD said: 'These narratives also aim to downplay the severity of the war and fuel animosity towards Ukrainian refugees by suggesting they receive preferential treatment over the local population.'

Link

International-UN-NGOs

As European and Arab leaders panic, Trump gives Netanyahu rare freedom of action

2025-03-05

[IsraelTimes] In a fateful week for the Ukraine and Gaza wars, with summits in London and Cairo, the PM aims to ramp up pressure on Hamas, buoyed by the US president’s ‘do whatever you want’ approach

The course of the two conflicts that have dominated the global agenda in recent years could be set this week, as Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
tries to figure out its response to growing White House hostility toward Ukraine, and the ceasefire in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
moves beyond its surprisingly resilient first phase.

In both wars, the positions — and often mind-boggling statements — of US President Donald Trump
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
loom large. But as Europe scrambles to come up with a response to the angry new American approach to Kyiv, Israel finds itself with no overt criticism from the Trump administration and wide freedom of action as it seeks to achieve its key war goals of destroying Hamas
Hamas

..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
and bringing home all remaining hostages.

Western leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met in London on Sunday after a disastrous visit by the wartime leader to the Oval Office. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance had berated Zelensky on live TV, confirming the worst fears in Kyiv and European capitals about Trump’s vision for ending the war in Ukraine.

In response, 18 mostly European leaders hurried to London to embrace Zelensky, a stark contrast from the dressing down he received in Washington.

"We are at a crossroads in history today," said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

They certainly are. It’s just unclear how the leaders in London will get history to move down their desired path.

DETERRENCE WITHOUT THE US
The Europeans are first of all trying to figure out a way to get Trump and Zelensky talking again, with the hopes that the two will finally sign a mineral deal that could lay the groundwork for a postwar economic and security arrangement with enough US involvement to keep the Russians from violating any armistice.

But with Trump emphatically choosing to pursue an end to the war over the defeat of Russia, a larger challenge remains. "The free world needs a new leader," said EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas last week.

Rhetoric aside, Europe will struggle to fill that role in any practical sense, and certainly when it comes to Ukraine.

Zelensky believes that deterring Russia in postbellum Ukraine would take a minimum of 200,000 peacekeepers in his country. But Europe is unable to provide anything close to that number, and top US officials rule out sending American soldiers to Ukraine.

Britannia and La Belle France, two of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
’s most powerful non-US militaries, are calling for a European "reassurance" force of under 30,000 troops, which officials say would be focused mainly on air and maritime defense.

But even that would be largely impotent without significant US backing.

For example, when fighting against Muammar Qadaffy
...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland and was then murdered by his indignant subjects 42 years later...>
’s dilapidated Libyan army in 2011 European NATO countries began running short of munitions before a month had passed.

Libya "has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting," John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, told The Washington Post at the time. "Maybe they were just planning on using their air force for air shows."

Even as the Europeans were ostensibly taking the lead in Libya, the US still flew 80% of intelligence flights and did almost the same percentage of midair refueling. "In effect," wrote Chris Brown of the London School of Economics, "Europe flew the planes and attack helicopters, but most of the time they were firing US munitions at targets identified by the US in operations coordinated by US technology."

European defense spending has surged over the last decade, but so has Russia’s. EU member states spent an estimated €326 billion on defense in 2024, but would have to raise that number by €250 billion a year if they want to create a meaningful deterrent against Russia, according to European economic think tank Bruegel.

"If defense spending is to be permanently higher," wrote Financial Times chief economic commentator Martin Wolf on Tuesday, "taxes must rise, unless the government can find sufficient spending cuts, which is doubtful."

Russia isn’t likely to take European will especially seriously either.

If they aren’t willing to accept Ukraine into NATO over fears that they could be drawn into a conventional war with nuclear-armed Russia, why would European states be willing to fight if their peacekeepers are attacked in Ukraine? And if their limited tanks didn’t come rumbling across the continent during the three years of war in Ukraine to date, why would they be more serious about committing them to the fight if Russia violates a ceasefire?

There are no easy answers for Europe. But while its leaders may be mostly infuriated by Trump’s positions and his treatment of Zelensky, they are being extremely careful about how they talk about the situation. A phrase taken the wrong way by the thin-skinned American president could send careful efforts to produce effective US-European dialogue on Ukraine skidding off the tracks.

NO PHASE TWO
While politicians sweat in Europe, Israel’s government — which endured from these same European leaders months of condemnation, quiet arms embargoes, and pressure to end the Gaza war with Hamas still in power — is acting with fresh confidence because of the US president.

In these first weeks of his second term, Trump has been everything Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have wanted, and more. The president restored the maximum pressure policy against Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and its nuclear program. He and his team have promised repeatedly to work with Israel "to ensure Hamas is eliminated" — not just pushed out of ruling Gaza. He wants to broker the Saudi-Israeli normalization deal. And he is going after the International Criminal Court for targeting Israel’s leaders, with obsessive Israel critics like South Africa and Ireland in the crosshairs.

Link

Fifth Column

With the West excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

2025-01-03

[IsraelNationalNews] Europe and America gave many terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. The terrorists below have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

With Westerners excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

July 14, 2016, Nice. During the fireworks festival, an Islamic terrorist kills 87 people, adults and children, under a truck that claimed to be carrying ice cream to the celebration of the French Revolution.

Four days later, the famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, disciple and friend of Jacques Derrida, publishes an article in Libération entitled "A truck launched". Despite having gone almost unnoticed, the article has lost none of its interest:

"A truck launched to run over children - among others - gives an unbearable image of nihilism. Nihilism itself names an end: that of our history and our civilization (...) It is not enough to declare war on it. We must attack ourselves, climb aboard and dismantle the mad trucks of our supposed progress, our fantasies of domination and our commercial obesity".

Clear? Terrorists and Westerners are the same, for our little masters of thought.

The terrorist who killed 15 people with a pickup truck in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (what better way to start the year than with another Islamic massacre?) was named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good portrait: a native Texan, an Army veteran (he also served in Afghanistan), a state university graduate, and a father of three, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder. Jabbar was an attentive neighbor who regularly asked a retiree if she needed anything and had given her a vacuum cleaner, washer, and dryer when he moved in. A model citizen. The New York Times reveals that he had converted to Islam.

This time, no taqiya, like there was in the case of the attacker who drove the car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg (by the way, the security of the German market was contracted to a company called "Mecca Security" !! some stories are so absurd that they can’t be invented).

But according to the official media, a "vehicle" killed 15 people in New Orleans.

Worse than the media is the legion of Western idiots who say that Islamic terrorism is a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, Israel, white and Jewish supremacy, in short, it is our fault, the West.

The Islamic terrorist who killed the British MP David Amess in the church is the son of a former advisor to the prime minister of Somalia.

Poverty and deprivation are not, as the fatuous John Kerry said, "the main cause of terrorism." Islam is.

Syed Rizwan Farook, a thirty-year-old Muslim of Pakistani origin, and his Saudi wife Tashfeen Malik, unloaded their semi-automatic rifles on the employees of a center for the disabled in California, killing 14 people during a Christmas party, the favorite season for massacres. Farook was an American citizen and worked as an inspector at the county health department. He earned seventy thousand dollars a year.

A graduate in engineering, his father a public works employee, his sister an elementary school teacher, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four marines in a recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Michael Adebowale, the terrorist who slaughtered British soldier Lee Regby in the heart of London, had a bright future ahead of him. At school, his teachers had chosen him as a "model student".

Take Aafia Siddiqui, one of Al Qaeda’s Amazons, she is a neurologist who graduated from MIT and was sentenced to 86 years in prison.

And don't forget the psychiatrist who, shouting "Allahu Akbar", massacred his comrades at Fort Hood. Thirteen dead. Dr. Nidal Hassan.

The son of a wealthy banker who studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University College London (in terms of academic results, it is the fourth university in the world) and lived in the chic heart of the English capital - that was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attacker of the Christmas flight Amsterdam-Detroit. He lived on the fifth floor of a building on Mansfield Street. Neoclassical columns, an Art Nouveau door with a large basket of wrought iron roses, a few blocks from Oxford Street, where an apartment costs around two million euro.

And there is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist beheaded because he was Jewish. Sheikh is the son of a wealthy carpet merchant and had graduated from the London School of Economics.

Aqsa Mahmood, one of the most high-profile women in ISIS, lived in Pollokshields, one of the rich neighborhoods of Glasgow. Her father is the first Pakistani cricketer in Scotland. All their children went to private school.

Omar Khan Sharif, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe, attended one of the UK’s most elite schools, Foremarke Hall in Repton, founded in 1557 and whose alumni included writers such as Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Ramsey.

Yet, from the intellectual left to Pope Francis, it is repeated that these Islamic fanatics are being recruited from among the world’s oppressed, from those who, in the words of Karl Marx, have "only their chains to lose." No, my friends, they are religious fanatics intent on overthrowing the Western society that spawned them.

Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist behind the failed Times Square attack, had a $273,000 house and a father who is a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani army. And what about Abdelkarim Mejjati, the mastermind behind the Madrid massacres, who grew up in the exclusive Gauthier neighborhood of Casablanca to a very rich father and a mother who ran a chain of beauty salons?

Europe and America gave these terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. These terrorists have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

The Paris terrorists rejected liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British jihadists rejected the sweet British multicultural lullabies; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh repudiated Dutch relativism and Palestinian Arab terrorists want to cleanse the earth of the Jewish presence.

But for those who think that the West deserves it in part and are now in the top echelons of politics, the media, and universities, it is much easier and more seductive to embrace the common belief that we are the guilty ones. Self-hatred, oikophobia, will end up killing us.

With Westerners like that, who needs Islamic terrorism?

Link

Caribbean-Latin America

China megaport paves way into Latin America as wary US looks on

2024-11-16

[BBC] As the world waits to see how the return of Donald Trump will reshape relations between Washington and Beijing, China has just taken decisive action to entrench its position in Latin America.

Trump won the US presidential election on a platform that promised tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese-made goods. Further south, though, a new China-backed megaport has the potential to create whole new trade routes that will bypass North America entirely.

President Xi Jinping himself attended the inauguration of the Chancay port on the Peruvian coast this week, an indication of just how seriously China takes the development.

Xi was in Peru for the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (Apec). But all eyes were on Chancay and what it says about China's growing assertiveness in a region that the US has traditionally seen as its sphere of influence.

As seasoned observers see it, Washington is now paying the price for years of indifference towards its neighbours and their needs.

"The US has been absent from Latin America for so long, and China has moved in so rapidly, that things have really reconfigured in the past decade," says Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

"You have got the backyard of America engaging directly with China," she tells the BBC. "That's going to be problematic."

Even before it opened, the $3.5bn (£2.75bn) project, masterminded by China's state-owned Cosco Shipping, had already turned a once-sleepy Peruvian fishing town into a logistical powerhouse set to transform the country's economy.

China's official Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, called it "a vindication of China-Peru win-win co-operation".

Peru's President Dina Boluarte was similarly enthusiastic, describing the megaport as a "nerve centre" that would provide "a point of connection to access the gigantic Asian market".

But the implications go far beyond the fortunes of one small Andean nation. Once Chancay is fully up and running, goods from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and even Brazil are expected to pass through it on their way to Shanghai and other Asian ports.

China already has considerable appetite for the region's exports, including Brazilian soybeans and Chilean copper. Now this new port will be able to handle larger ships, as well as cutting shipping times from 35 to 23 days.

However, the new port will favour imports as well as exports. As signs grow that an influx of cheap Chinese goods bought online may be undermining domestic industry, Chile and Brazil have scrapped tax exemptions for individual customers on low-value foreign purchases.

As nervous US military hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can accommodate ultra-large container vessels, it can also handle Chinese warships.

The most strident warnings have come from Gen Laura Richardson, who has just retired as chief of US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

She has accused China of "playing the ‘long game’ with its development of dual-use sites and facilities throughout the region", adding that those sites could serve as "points of future multi-domain access for the [People's Liberation Army] and strategic naval chokepoints".

Even if that prospect never materialises, there is a strong perception that the US is losing ground in Latin America as China forges ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Outgoing US President Joe Biden was among the leaders at the Apec summit, on his first and last visit to South America during his four-year term. Media commentators remarked that he cut a diminished figure next to China's Xi.

Prof Álvaro Méndez, director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics, points out that while the US was taking Latin America for granted, Xi was visiting the region regularly and cultivating good relations.

"The bar has been set so low by the US that China only has to be a little bit better to get through the door," he says.

Of course, Latin America is not the only part of the world targeted by the BRI. Since 2023, China's unprecedented infrastructure splurge has pumped money into nearly 150 countries worldwide.

The results have not always been beneficial, with many projects left unfinished, while many developing countries that signed up for Beijing's largesse have found themselves burdened with debt as a result.

Even so, left-wing and right-wing governments alike have cast aside their initial suspicions of China, because "their interests are aligned" with those of Beijing, says the Peterson Institute's Ms de Bolle: "They have lowered their guard out of sheer necessity."

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Israeli arrested in Beirut, after entering Lebanon as journalist on British passport

2024-10-10

Arrogant idiot.

[IsraelTimes] Joshua Tartakovsky, 42, is a graduate of Brown University, LSE; Israeli official tells TOI government is responding to case, urges citizens not to enter enemy countries

An Israeli citizen was detained in Beirut on Tuesday, after entering the country as a journalist on a foreign passport, and put under arrest when an Israeli passport was found in his possession.

According to Hebrew reports, citing the Hezbollah-aligned al-Akhbar newspaper in Leb
Leb

...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
, Joshua Tartakovsky — a 42-year-old Israeli citizen, born in the United States — entered the country at some point in the last two weeks on a British passport,

…he’s an American-born Israeli — is he also entitled to a third, British passport, and if not how did he acquire it?

with a group of other journalists.

Israeli officials said they were aware of the incident and dealing with it.

Relevant officials in Israel are aware of Tartakovsky’s arrest, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday, and the case is being handled by the appropriate officials.

"Unfortunately," said the official, "this is not the first time that Israeli citizens have entered the territory of enemy countries, even though this is prohibited by law, and constitutes a clear danger to their security."

The National Security Council also said in a statement, "We would like to sharpen the ban on entering these countries, as the issue appears in messages to the public on the NSC website and has been sharpened even recently around the holidays."

Tartakovsky was reportedly detained in Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

One imagines they're a bit on edge there at the moment.

There, his behavior aroused suspicion, according to al-Akhbar, and he was taken for interrogation, at which point an Israeli passport was discovered in his possession.

It is illegal for Israelis to enter Lebanon under both Israeli and Lebanese law.

Nobody wants any unintended incidents triggered by the usual kind of idiots.

According to posts on social media, Tartakovsky, a graduate of Brown University and the London School of Economics, had been in Beirut before.

He was described by friends as traveling the world, with hard-to-pin-down politics that frequently change. "One day he was an extreme right-winger, the next day an extreme leftist," one friend told the Ynet news site.

Cosplaying all the time, it appears.

"Not one of his friends was surprised when he was arrested in Lebanon."

Link

Britain

Anti-Israel BDS calls on UK campuses thwarted by lawfare as antisemitism spikes

2024-09-01

[IsraelTimes] Bombastic university protests fuel a record-breaking rise in reported incidents of Jew-hatred — but the type and scope of divestment they seek is often contrary to British law

For decades, the prestigious London School of Economics has been seen as a hotbed of student radicalism and left-wing politics.

But this summer the school has struck twin blows against anti-Israel student protesters — taking legal action in June to end a monthlong occupation of a university building and last month robustly rejecting the demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The stance by the London School of Economics (LSE) reflects the failure of BDS campaigners to advance their goals on Britannia’s campuses despite a wave of pro-Paleostinian protests and a surge in antisemitic incidents in the UK following the October 7 Hamas
Hamas

..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
-led terror onslaught and the subsequent war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
According to the latest analysis by the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism and provides protection for Jewish venues, there has been "a significant rise in anti-Jewish hate incidents in higher education settings." January to June 2024 saw a record half-year figure and a sharp increase of 465% over the same period in 2023. Nearly three-quarters of incidents — in which the victims or offenders were students or academics, or which involved student unions, societies or other representative bodies — contained discourse relating to Israel, Paleostine and the Middle East, compared to 52% of all incidents nationally.

The Union of Jewish Students agrees. "Following a year where Jewish students have experienced the worst campus antisemitism crisis — that continues to unfold — a renewed campaign of BDS that targets Jewish life on campus is misguided, disruptive, and unacceptable," a union spokesperson said in a statement. "BDS is a divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled...
movement prioritizing a single narrative instead of nuanced and respectful discussion. It divides peers, alienates Jewish students and creates an atmosphere that can and has fueled antisemitism on campuses across the UK."

Since October 7, there has been a jump in anti-Israel campaigning on campuses. Student unions have passed motions attacking the Jewish state and demanding university authorities heed the demands of the BDS movement.

But, as has often been the case in the past, events at the LSE have drawn the most media attention. Anti-Israel, pro-Paleostinian students occupied a building on the school’s central London campus in mid-May and issued a laundry list of demands they wanted fulfilled if they were to vacate. These included divestment from "any and all companies identified as complicit in crimes against the Paleostinian people"; a ban on "representatives of the Israeli state or Zionist holy warriors" speaking at the university; and a bar on "active or reserve IDF members who have participated in genocidal acts or war crimes" enrolling at the university as students.

The students also demanded the university issue a public statement in collaboration with the Paleostine, Islamic and other pro-BDS societies "expressing unwavering solidarity with Paleostinian liberation," and trash its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

At graduation ceremonies in July, students receiving their degrees unfurled Paleostinian flags and banners accusing the university of being "an Islamophobic institution." Unsurprisingly, Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left former leader of the Labour Party, addressed students at the encampment, telling them they were "on the right side of history."

Nonetheless, anti-Israel campaigners appear to have largely faltered in their efforts to use the conflict to push their agenda.

In June, the LSE went to court and became the first UK university to take legal action to end an anti-Israel encampment on its campus. The school’s administration has also taken a tough line against students’ BDS demands.

In a report issued in July, the LSE’s governing council said the school would not adopt the divestment policy demanded by the students which, in effect, encompassed all companies "that do business in or with the State of Israel."

The council’s report argues its decision is consistent with LSE’s environmental, social and governance policy, noting the "impossibility of distinguishing this conflict from so many others of concern to different groups within the LSE community."

The council rejected demands that the university back the Paleostinian cause, saying its duty was to preserve "free expression and thought on campus and protect the academic freedom of all our faculty and students." The Israeli-Paleostinian conflict, it said, is "an ongoing geopolitical dispute with many complex dimensions as to which members of our community hold a wide range of views and positions."

And the council said it would protect "protest and criticism," before pointedly adding "so long as it does not cross the line into harassment or hate and does not impede the teaching, research, and learning opportunities of others."

LEARNING FROM THEIR YANKEE COUNTERPARTS
Inspired by similar efforts in the US, the summer saw pro-Paleostinian encampments appear at universities across the country, including at elite "Russell Group" colleges, such as the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Exeter, and the LSE. In some instances, welcome talks at open days for prospective students were invaded — on occasion, with the permission of staff — by pro-Paleostinian activists. Elsewhere, summer exams were disrupted, canceled and moved due to students barricading themselves in buildings.

The organization UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has been keeping a close eye on developments, warning student unions and university administrators when their actions are likely to breach various British laws which regulate and have an impact upon the higher education sector.

Student unions, for instance, are charities and are barred from campaigning on issues beyond those directly affecting student life.

Those who administer university pension funds — a key target for activists calling for divestment from Israel and companies linked to the Jewish state — are subject to complex legislation. They are, for instance, not allowed to make decisions which might risk significant financial damage to the fund or which might not command broad support from the beneficiaries of the funds — primarily, former university staff.

More broadly, given their reliance on taxpayer funding, universities have to comply with regulations that bar them from allowing politics to influence their purchasing decisions.

Finally, the UK’s Equality Act is stringent and bars discrimination, harassment and victimization on the basis of factors including race (which covers nationality and ethnic origin), religion, or philosophical belief (which may include anti-Zionism), while public order legislation criminalizes threatening or abusive language and stirring up racial or religious hatred. The Terrorism Act bans the expression of views supportive of proscribed terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.

UKLFI has demanded tougher action by universities to protect Jewish students against antisemitism, harassment and discrimination, while warning them of the perils of acceding to the — often illegal — demands made by anti-Israel activists on campuses.

"We are concerned that they are responding to these unlawful encampments by giving in, which will only cause more trouble in future," Jonathan Turner, UKLFI’s chief executive, told The Times of Israel. "They really shouldn’t allow the intimidation by the encampments to affect their policies. It’s one thing to hear reasoned argument from people behaving in a civilized way, but paying off, as it were, those who are making it extremely unpleasant for many of the other students is not actually the best course."

In April, for instance, UKLFI told the University of Exeter, which is ranked one of Britannia’s top universities, that the "current situation" on the campus was "unacceptable" for Jewish students.

It highlighted "extremely aggressive" weekly anti-Israel protests which were accompanied by chants of "genocide," "murderers" and "from the river to the sea." Jewish students, the letter said, were now being forced to cover up outward signs of their Jewish identity and walk in groups. It also detailed instances of lecturers describing the October 7 massacre as "resistance," and PhD students making "viciously antisemitic" comments in an online group.

In June, UKLFI claimed that Oxford University’s "appeasement" had encouraged disruption which had led to the cancellation of some exams, while others took place amid noisy anti-Israel protests. The exam papers of Israeli, Jewish and Zionist students, who had been the "targets of such venomous hostility and threatening behavior," should be marked more generously than those of other students, UKLFI argued, noting anti-discrimination legislation.

And last month, UKLFI wrote to the vice-chancellor of Bristol University — another top UK institution — after masked anti-Israel protesters disrupted visiting day lectures, and were then permitted or encouraged by staff to deliver speeches labeling the university "complicit in the genocide in Gaza" because it had failed to break ties with arms companies. Anyone choosing to attend Bristol University, the protesters told prospective students and their parents, had a "duty to resist" Israel’s "genocide." The "uninterrupted hate speech," and the role of staff in facilitating it, warned UKLFI, breached the university’s obligations under the Equality Act.

FOCUS ON PENSION FUNDS
A number of student unions — including at the University of Manchester and University of Nottingham — that passed motions calling for BDS campaigns have been forced to reverse course by their trustees following warnings by UKLFI and legal advice that advocating on issues not directly affecting students would breach their status as charities.

Turner believes the situation at UK universities is "not quite as bad" as the "horrifying" position on many US campuses.

Nonetheless, pro-Israel groups are not complacent about the potential threat posed by BDS on British campuses. Turner cites the University of Edinburgh’s response to an anti-Israel encampment which included instructions to its fund manager to pause the purchase of new shares in Amazon and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Amazon and Google are targeted by the BDS movement because they have contracts with the Israeli government to provide cloud technology.

In a letter to the university’s vice-chancellor in June, UKLFI warned that, if the instruction affected the institution’s pension fund, the university could be opening itself up to legal action.

UKLFI is also concerned about decisions made by the University of Aberdeen in response to a pro-Paleostinian student encampment.

Aberdeen has pledged a review of its investments and its contracts with IT giant HP and fast-food company Subway. (HP provides and operates technology for the Israeli government while Subway’s local franchises are accused of offering in-kind donations to the IDF).

And although the university responded to the encampment’s demand of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions by defending academic freedom, it went on to say that it had no active agreements with Israeli universities and no intention of embarking on new ones.

Britannia’s previous Conservative government was pushing an anti-BDS bill through parliament when the general election was called. While the new Labour administration hasn’t proposed reviving the bill, Turner believes the UK’s existing laws remain "quite strong."

Link

Europe

How Sweden became a 'haven' for mafia gangs and the EU's gun crime capital off the back of surging...

2024-06-10

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] … migration: As murders surge, police and politicians say the nation is at crisis point.

Over the course of one night last year, three people were killed in separate attacks across Sweden - three of many violent attacks to rock the country in 2023.

The first victim was an 18-year-old man who was shot dead in a Stockholm suburb on September 27. Just hours later, one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the city.

Then, as if two killings weren't enough, Soha Saad - a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher living with her brother and parents - died in an explosion in Uppsala, west of Stockholm, in the early hours of September 28.

In the aftermath, one neighbour described the blast as being 'like a war scene' and 'something you see on the news from Afghanistan.'

The violence meted out across the region in those 12 hours made international headlines, but to many living in Sweden - did not come as a surprise.

In a series of interviews, Swedish academics, a politician and a high ranking police officer have spoken to MailOnline about the multi-faceted crisis, describing a nation at crisis point that is ill equipped to tackle the scale of the violence.

Jale Poljarevius, a senior police officer and chief of intelligence for Sweden's Mitt region, described the 'deadly violence' as being 'very serious' to MailOnline.

He said that although gang violence today has improved slightly from 'Black September,' when a new flare-up in violence will come can be unpredictable.

'That was a bad period in Sweden – September to October last year. Today it's a little bit better, but it's very insecure still because it can turn on and start with a new wave of violence at any time,' he said.

'Sometimes we make arrests of gang members and when they are put away, a vacuum opens, and then new gang members try to take over,' he said. Then 'they are fighting each other and you have new shootings and a new explosion of violence.'

Deadly violence linked to feuds between criminal gangs has escalated in recent years against the backdrop of high levels of migration into the country.

Hundreds of shootings and several bombings have been carried out - with a shooting earlier this week resulting in the death of an award-winning rapper named C. Gambino. Police - who say 62,000 people are linked to criminal networks in the country - have said they suspect the attack was gang related.

Meanwhile, Sweden's share of non-western population grew from 2 percent to 15 percent in just 20 years.

Mafia groups abroad have called the country a 'haven' for their activities, while organised crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.

In response, Swedish police have been given new powers - such as the ability to declare 'visitation' or 'safe zones' in which officers have more temporary powers to increase their presence, and to search people, homes and vehicles.

But many, including within the government, have gone as far to call on a full closure of Sweden's borders to asylum seekers.

It is easy to see why some are calling for drastic measures. September 2023 was a particularly bloodthirsty month, with over 40 violent episodes and 12 deaths recorded in just 20 days - earning the moniker 'Black September'.

In all of 2023, 53 people were killed in shootings across Sweden, which is home to around 10.5 million people. In 2022, that figure stood at 62 - and Stockholm's per-capita murder rate was roughly 30 times that of London's.

The killings have turned Sweden, seen for many years from the outside as a peaceful Scandinavian welfare state, into the European Union's gun-homicide capital.

Gangsters carry out personal vendettas against each other - or hire youngsters to do their dirty work. Almost half the suspects in the gun-related murders in 2022 were aged between 15 and 20 - youngsters who have been groomed by gangs that are, statistics show, largely run by second-generation immigrants.

Young hitmen have admitted to being hired to shoot and kill rivals, being paid as much as a million krona (around £73,000) to do so, or as little as a few thousand.

Experts say the violence has been driven by a number of factors: Turf wars between gangs, a growing drugs market, an influx of guns into the market, growing inequality, high level of immigration and also a failure of migrant integration into society.

But gang activity in Sweden is not limited to street violence and drugs. Organised crime has also taken hold in the country, with many gangs also committing fraud.

The overall issue has led to uncomfortable debates.

The wealthy state has taken in more asylum seekers escaping the Middle East and the Balkans than many other European countries over the past three decades.

This has emboldened right-wing politicians in the country while leaving those on the left feeling nervous about vilifying immigrants and other vulnerable communities.

Some argue that there is a direct link to migration and gang crime in the country, while others argue that it is the unequal conditions in which migrants and others are either placed in or are raised in that push youngsters towards gangs.

Nevertheless, both sides tend to agree that there has been a failure to integrate many new arrivals into the country at a time when there is a growing inequality gap.

How to tackle the issue remains divisive.

Violence has begun to spread into more affluent areas of Sweden, but it is still deprived migrant communities that are seeing the worst of the killings.

Many of the immigrants who enter Sweden end up in these suburbs, meaning first, second and third generation migrants are brought up in satellite towns and council estates that are segregated on the outskirts of the country's main cities.

There, people have fewer economic prospects, increasing social inequality and, as a result, find it more challenging to integrate into society. Gangs often fill that void.

These are ideal conditions for gangs to recruit, with statistics showing that most gang shooting suspects are young men with foreign background - and are often first or second generation immigrants, and therefore Swedish citizens.

Göran Adamson, a political consultant and associate professor with a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE), told MailOnline that there is a clear link between migration and the gang crime in Sweden.

Pointing to his 2020 study 'Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the 21st Century', he said someone with a migrant background can be two, three or even four times more likely to be involved with or a suspect in criminal activity than an average Swede.

'When some people say there is no connection between migration and crime, they are not telling the truth,' he said, adding: 'The data from the crime prevention agency tells us this [...] these are just the bare bones statistics.'

He continued: 'In the suburbs, there is a lot of shooting and a lot of killing going on and its mostly gang related. I would say 99 percent gang related.

'When someone is shot - if someone who is under 20 - is shot or two people are shot in a suburb of Stockholm, you can almost count on them being members of one gang who are killing members of another gang, but these are still young guys.'

Manne Gerell, an associate professor of criminology at Malmo University, told MailOnline that generally, crime in Sweden is trending downwards.

He said the country does have a 'very big problem with violence' largely limited to gangs. Now, though, more people are being caught in the crossfire as turf wars and vendettas spill out from Sweden's marginalised suburbs.

GROWING CONCERN
Unsurprisingly, the violence has left many Swedes concerned.

Swedish newspapers regularly splash stories about gangland attacks on their front pages, and political parties promising a tough response are risen in popularity.

One such party is the Sweden Democrats - a party born out of a neo-Nazi movement at the end of the 1980s which has pivoted in recent years to be a more mainstream political party. It now forms part of the ruling conservative coalition government.

Like Adamson, Charlie Weimers - a Swedish MEP and member of the party, said there is a clear link between migration and gang crime.

'This is why my party has a zero asylum policy for Sweden,' he told MailOnline. 'We must give ourselves the breathing room to start dealing with these problems, because they are systemic and threaten the basic functions of Swedish society.'

Weimers continued: 'In this gang related criminality you have everything from street thugs - who kill for £50 - to very well organised criminals who infiltrate municipalities in order to control welfare payments and other functions of municipalities.

'The first problem - the street problem - is on the news every evening.

'But the latter problem is threatening the basic function of society, the stability of Sweden as a state, because it is then turning into more of a classic mafia. Historically that's been very hard to root out and we need to try to stop this before it's too late.'

The violence has led to many asking: what has led to the rise in gang attacks?

'Sweden had been guaranteed peace, order and quiet for a long time,' Police officer Poljarevius said. 'You take this for granted.

'But when you combine unsuccessful integration and - from late 1990s – globalisation, we have migration that has not been [handled well],' this causes issues, he said. 'In Sweden you must have some sort of normal migration, but the rates have been very high in Sweden during the 1990s and start of the 2000s.'

He also said that police have not been able to keep up with the technical advances being made by gangs .

'Technical development and digitalisation - criminal gangs are using that,' he said.

'Police forces have not been as successful in integrating our systems or our ability to fight crimes with the technical part. So this gap between ability to commit crime and capability to fight crime has just increased for many, many years.'

Similarly, Adamson said Swedish society has not been set up to handle the level of crime.

'Everything in Sweden has been tailor made for a situation with much less crime,' he said. 'Sweden has been tailored to cope with around 25 percent of the murder rate we have. Some say we need to build many more prisons and we need to change the structure of the legal system, but these things take 10 years or 20 years.

'There's a huge backlog. We are not prepared for this, and we keep being unprepared for the escalating violence, which means we can't handle it properly.'

Adamson said a lawyer acquaintance has warned the system could collapse under the strain 'because we simply have no means of coping with the rapid increase of serious crime, and we don't know what's going to happen after that.'

Police say much of the recent violence was down to a drug gang known as 'Foxtrot' - led by notorious leader Rawa Majid, 'the Kurdish Fox' and based in Uppsala - and the fallout after it split into smaller groups.

Majid fled to Turkey in 2018 and fell out with his right-hand man Ismail Abdo, aka 'Strawberry'. Amid the bloodthirsty feud, Abdo's mother was shot dead - also in September 2023, also in Uppsala.

Speaking in April 2022, Sweden's then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson proclaimed that migrant integration in the country had failed, and that it had in turn led to parallel societies forming and gang violence escalating.

Since then, a general election was held in September 2022 and swung to the right, with a minority government forming under Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

The right-wing coalition vowed to crack down on violence by tightening migration policies, doubling prison sentences for offences committed in 'gang environments', widen the use of electronic surveillance and even deport criminals who are not Swedish citizens.

PM Ulf Kristersson reiterated this after the spate of killings in September 2023.

'The wave of violence is... unprecedented in Sweden, but it is also unprecedented in Europe, no other country has a situation like the one we have,' he said at the time.

'Political naivety and cluelessness have brought us to this point. Irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration have brought us to this point.

'Exclusion and parallel societies feed the criminal gangs, providing space for them to ruthlessly recruit children and train future killers. Swedish legislation is not designed for gang wars and child soldiers. But we are now changing that,' he vowed.

Gerell, too, said there was 'no denying' a connection between the violence and migration, but he noted that many of the migrants involved in gang violence are second or third generation immigrants having been born in Sweden.

'I think you can make a distinction,' he said. 'It might be because of migration, and [it might be] because of failed integration, because most of the people involved in this violence were born in Sweden, so they were not migrants - their parents were.'

But, he said, 'you can't really deny the fact that most of both the victims and the perpetrators of this gang violence have a foreign background, so there is a connection to immigration and/or integration, which I think cannot be denied.'

There is something about Sweden, however, that appears to set it apart from other countries, Gerell said. He pointed to Germany, saying that while the country to Sweden's south has also seen high levels of immigration, 'shootings are going down'.

So what sets Sweden apart? 'It's really hard to tell,' he said.

'I do believe that immigration, integration, segregation is part of the answer, but it cannot be the whole answer.'

'I think another partial explanation might be that the Swedish government and Swedish agencies, and particularly the police, took too long to respond to these problems and let them grow too strong and too powerful - these criminal networks.'

Adamson said that while Swedish people typically have a high level of trust in the state, migrants - many of whom live in segregated communities - have less.

'If you come from a culture where the state is very weak then you have other structures - you have your family, you have your extended family, you have your clan, you have your tribe - and you care very little about the state, people it makes more sense to join a gang because the gang is where you have your affiliation, where you have your trust and honour and then you can fight against the state,' he said.

'You see the state as your enemy, and then if your state is also your enemy, it's OK to abuse the state and to try to get money from the state.'

MEP Weimers said that 'policies in Sweden were unusually soft. Crime policy, for instance, and policing.'

'[These policies were] created for a very cohesive country - a homogeneous country - which had one of the world's highest degrees of social trust. The system was not built for dealing with these kind of problems, and that has been exploited.'

He pointed to a report from April in which a journalist in Montenegro had gained access to hundreds of thousands of messages sent between criminals, in which they described Sweden as a 'haven' for their activities. 'This is how criminals have viewed our country due to our very lax policies on crime,' Weimers said.

'That was one of the most important reasons why my party grew and why we were able to form a new Conservative government in 2022, but ever since the 60s, Sweden has had a combination of soft crime policy, multiculturalism and mass migration - and this has put Sweden in this situation.'

Link

The Grand Turk

Is Recep Erdogan's Jew-Hatred Shame Based?

2024-06-02

[JewishPress] During a recent visit to Turkey, I spent time with friends in Istanbul and further north, in Edirne and Kakaralli, where it was hard to ignore the whispers circulating in bars and comedy clubs, that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is one of the Dönmeh. Chatter about him being a Dönmeh is all the buzz in the bazaar, among the trade and working class in Istanbul… it’s everywhere.

According to Wiki, the Dönme were a group of Sabbatian crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire who under coercion converted outwardly to Islam, but secretly held on to their Jewish faith and Kabbalistic beliefs. The movement’s origins date back to the era of Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th-century Sephardic Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist who claimed to be the Messiah and eventually converted to Islam after Sultan Mehmed IV had threatened to execute him. His followers purportedly converted to Islam as well and became the Dönme. The word means “to convert,” but in the pejorative sense of “turncoat.”

According to scholar, Rıfat N. Bali, in her book, “Model Citizens of the State: The Jews of Turkey During the Multi-party Period,” the Turkish word Dönme means ‘to turn’ or “to betray.”

THE TRIAL OF THE MAN WHO SAID ERDOĞAN WAS A SECRET JEW
On November 5, 2021, Alican Uludag reported for Deutsche Welle in Turkish, under the headline, “Calling Erdoğan ‘Jewish’ was considered an insult,” that a Criminal Court of First Instance in the Turkish city of Bursa sentenced the person who used the term “Jew” about President Erdoğan to a judicial fine of 7 thousand Turkish Lira ($1,033) for “insulting the President.”

In 2020, after Bursa resident Yüksel Üstün posted on Facebook that “Tayyip is a Jew who pretends to be a Muslim,” Bursa’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against Üstün for insulting the President. The indictment argued that the suspect committed the crime by “offending the honor, dignity, and respect of the President” with this post.

Presidential Law and Legislation General Director Hakkı Susmaz sent a letter to the court on March 25, 2021, stating the case should be “followed and tried without waiting for the complaint of the President, who is the head of the State and represents the Republic of Turkey and the unity of the Turkish Nation in this capacity.”

The defense asked for acquittal, arguing that “Jews are honorable citizens of this country. Calling someone a Gypsy or a Jew is not a crime.”

At the end of the hearing, the court sentenced Yüksel Üstün to 10 months and 20 days in prison for insulting the president, but later commuted the sentence to a fine of only $1,033.

ERDOĞAN MUST REMAIN MORE ANTISEMITIC THAN THE ANTISEMITES
Modern Turkish antisemitism and the conspiracy theories upon which it relies have always centered on the Dönmeh, according to historian Marc David Baer, professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work, “The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks,” Stanford University Press, California, USA, 2010, is considered authoritative in the field.

Dönmeh machinations were said to have motivated the Young Turks Revolution and the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1909, the dissolution of the Ottoman religious establishment, and the founding of a secular republic in the 1920s. Accusations of Dönmeh ancestry were used against the father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938). Those rumors have persisted to this day.

People in Turkey cannot help but notice the fiery vehemence with which their president denies aspersions of Dönmeh connections whenever they come up, and wonder what new Dönmeh accusation has surfaced to provoke Erdoğan’s latest wave of vicious antisemitic rhetoric.

Have documents outlining Erdoğan’s own or his familial dealings with secret Jews surfaced, and is that what fuels his latest paranoia? The average Turk on the street also wonders how much of Erdoğan’s political rise to power depended on behind-the-scenes manipulations by the Dönmeh.

It is feared that President Erdoğan may once again use his National Intelligence Organization (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı) to gather information against those who attempt to make public any fact that would embarrass him personally. It has been his policy to do so in the past, but whether he can completely eliminate all the historic traces of his Dönmeh connections is doubtful.

On Wednesday this week, President Erdoğan called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “vampire who feeds on blood” and urged Muslims to act against the “Zionist threat.”

“The world is watching the barbarity of a psychopath, a vampire who feeds on blood called Netanyahu, and they are watching it on live broadcast,” Erdoğan said in a speech to members of his AK Party.

Something must be bothering him.

Link

Europe

President of Finland is being prepared for negotiations with Russia on behalf of the West

2024-02-17

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Viktor Lavrinenko

[REGNUM] Following the results of two rounds of presidential elections, Finland has a new head of state. The thirteenth president of Suomi was 55-year-old Kai-Göran Alexander Stubb, for whom 51.6% of voters voted. The inauguration will take place on March 1. Stubb is a definite “Westerner”, an ardent supporter of NATO membership. And all the more unexpected are the assumptions about the role that the West can entrust to him.

And upon closer examination of his biography, it turns out that the image of an uncompromising Russophobe attributed to Stubb is by no means so unambiguous.

SWEDE WITH A RUSSIAN NAME
Interestingly, the new president of Finland is not a purebred Finn. Born in 1968 in Helsinki, Stubb comes from a Finnish-Swedish family and graduated from a Swedish-language high school. It is also noteworthy that his father at one time admitted that he named his two sons Alexander and Nicholas in honor of the Russian emperors, whose possessions included Suomi. That is, the future head of state grew up in an atmosphere of interest in Russian culture and history.

After high school, Stubb received higher education at Furman University in South Carolina and at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He completed his doctorate in international relations at the London School of Economics. After graduating, he received a position in the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Alexander Stubb's political career began when he was elected as a European parliamentarian in 2004, running for the Finnish right-wing party National Coalition. In 2008, he joined the government and headed the Finnish Foreign Ministry.

During his tenure, the South Ossetian crisis occurred. Although Stubb condemned Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he nevertheless showed himself to be a strong opponent of the introduction of sanctions. On September 7, 2008, Stubb announced that he was quite satisfied with Moscow’s cooperation with the OSCE mission in South Ossetia.

However, he advocated for Finland’s membership in NATO even then.

In 2011, Stubb was elected to the Finnish parliament from the same “National Coalition”, and a little later he was appointed Minister of EU Affairs and Foreign Trade. In April 2014, he announced his intention to fight for the post of party chairman and prime minister, since it was the National Coalition that then ruled the government.

He successfully implemented his plans, but after the failure of the National Coalition in the 2015 parliamentary elections, Stubb resigned as prime minister. A member of the Center Party, Juha Sipilä, was elected as the new prime minister, in whose cabinet Stubb took the post of Minister of Finance. In 2016, following the results of internal elections, Stubb lost the leadership of the National Coalition to Petteri Orpo, the current Finnish Prime Minister.

The politician's personal life has never become the subject of scandals.

At one time, Alexander Stubb married an Englishwoman, Susanna Innes, now their son and daughter are already adults. He has the image of an “athlete” - in his youth he was seriously interested in golf and was even a member of the national youth team, but then he gave up this activity to study. Stubb, however, did not completely abandon the sport and later became interested in triathlon. As a minister, he often appeared in the media in tracksuits for running and cycling, and also ran many marathons.

By the way, he was repeatedly criticized for his “too unbusinesslike and inappropriate appearance for a prime minister” (he could show up at a press conference in sandals and shorts), for “excessive arrogance”, for his commitment to foul language and for the fact that he has little understanding of the internal affairs of Finland.

"SIMPLE POLITICS"
As prime minister, Alexander Stubb repeatedly became the target of criticism for failing to establish interactions with coalition partners.

Thus, when Finland decided to cooperate with Rosatom to build a new nuclear power plant, the Green Party was so outraged that it chose to leave the government. In 2022, the Finnish side terminated this agreement by a unilateral decision. Later, Stubb was scolded for not breaking off relations with Russia, although sanctions had already been imposed on it for Crimea. Moreover, he accused his critics of Russophobia - that happened!

In 2017, Stubb left politics completely, seemingly forever. For some time he worked as Deputy General Director of the European Investment Bank, and since 2020 he has worked as a professor at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

However, last summer, representatives of the current Finnish ruling coalition decided to nominate Stubb for the presidency. As political scientists note, Stubb’s agreement was influenced by the fact that in Suomi the president mainly represents the state in the foreign political arena and is practically not involved in internal affairs.

At the same time, Stubb admits that if it were not for the aggravation of the Ukrainian crisis, he would hardly have run for office.

“After the attack (the start of the SVO in Ukraine - editor’s note), I got the impression that my experience, knowledge and network could be useful for Finland in the current situation in world politics,” Stubb said at the pre-election debate. Also, in a conversation with the press, he stated that during his presidency “there will be no political relations with the head of the Russian Federation or the Russian political leadership until they stop the war in Ukraine.”

At the same time, Stubb, however, invariably added that communication between diplomats of the two countries continues. The politician emphasized that he was not interested in the further deterioration of diplomatic ties with Russia, which are already extremely bad. But, according to him, now this “is not the main direction of Helsinki’s foreign policy.” The main direction is relations with the United States, other EU countries and NATO.

During the election debates, he had to fend off attacks from competing candidates, who recalled how Stubb had once signed an agreement on cooperation between Finland and Rosatom. Stubb had no choice but to repent for his action and say that he had made a “mistake” then.

Alexander Stubb also says that “it is very important that we in Europe take care of our own defense.” He explained: "In this sense, I largely agree with the current President of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, who said that we need a more European NATO." Stubb does not believe that the United States, even if Donald Trump is elected president there, will self-isolate on its continent. However, the Finnish presidential candidate believes that “it is always good to be prepared for a situation where we have to take on more responsibility.”

After his election, Stubb held a press conference, during which he repeated most of his previous statements and made new ones.

“The policy towards Russia is simple. Diplomatic and official relations remain. But there are no relations at the political level and there will not be until Russia stops the war in Ukraine,” said the newly elected head of state.

The election winner was also asked about the situation on the border with Russia, which was closed last year. He promised to “consider the issue calmly,” but added that “the government has dealt with the crisis.” In addition, he said that Finland needs to modernize its ground forces and work to bring its army into line with NATO standards. Stubb also said that he would take “an active position in the role of Supreme Commander.”

From this, experts concluded that Finland will continue the process of its militarization.

UNEXPECTED TURN
After Stubb’s victory in the elections became a fait accompli, the local press circulated the most interesting opinion of political scientist Johanna Rainio-Niemi, voiced on Finnish television.

As strange as it may sound now, Rainio-Niemi believes that during Stubb's term, Finland will have to reconsider its relations with Russia. From her point of view, Finland “may be asked” to act as a mediator between the West and Russia. Johanna Rainio-Niot noted that both Stubb and his main election rival Pekka Haavisto expressed their readiness to mediate “if such a wish comes from the Western allies.”

From Rainio-Niemi’s point of view, such a request, given Finland’s previous relations with Russia, quite normal until 2022, is very possible. They say that in the West the Finns are viewed as specialists in Russia, better acquainted with the mentality of its people and leaders. “At some point, relations with Russia will have to be reconsidered, and the president will play a key role in this,” the political scientist said, adding, however, that this is another question: is Suomi interested in playing the role of a mediator?

The fact that such an opinion has some basis was confirmed by Stubb himself.

Speaking at the aforementioned press conference about the formation of his administration, he said that he would need people with connections to the foreign and defense ministries of other Western bloc countries, an expert on NATO, as well as “someone with extensive experience in peace negotiations.”

Stubb's focus on foreign policy will shield him from undue criticism of the state's internal turmoil.

Since the presidency in Finland imposes mainly representative functions on its holder, this means that all the big shots will continue to fall on the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by Petteri Orpo. By the way, Stubb is no longer a member of the Orpo party, because immediately after the victory he left the National Coalition, so as not to be associated with any one party.

Meanwhile, Finland has been rocked by large-scale strikes for more than a year.

The country is short of money, and the right-wing government that came to power last year is trying to cut costs by cutting social benefits. The gigantic budget deficit did not appear out of nowhere: the country is experiencing an economic recession. The reasons for this decline are complex, but not least among them is the breakdown of economic relations with Russia. By refusing to trade with its eastern neighbor, the state of Suomi caused itself significant economic damage, which it would not be possible to compensate for, even if it wanted to.

Representatives of various industries are now on strike in Finland all the time.

Thus, on February 14–16, the Finnish Industrial Trade Union (Teollisuusliitto) is organizing a strike at a number of heavy industry enterprises. About 60 thousand workers from the technological and chemical industries, as well as mechanical wood processing enterprises, take part in the action. Chairman of Teollisuusliitto Riku Aalto considers the strike justified, since the government, according to him, has not expressed any desire to listen to the opinions of trade unions.

Other major trade unions also joined the three-day action initiated by Teollisuusliitto. Among others, drivers of the capital's metro, tram drivers, dock workers, employees of the nuclear power plant in the city of Loviisa, staff of shops and logistics centers, teachers in kindergartens, etc. are on strike.

The end of the strikes is not visible for objective reasons, since there are no grounds for a sharp economic recovery in Finland. And this could be an additional incentive for Stubb if the leadership of the Western bloc really decides to entrust him with the mission of a negotiator.

Improving relations with Russia could have a positive impact on the economy of Suomi and the well-being of its people. But it is clear that the republic will not agree to any negotiations on its own initiative.

Link

Britain

Surveillance State: Tony Blair and Ex-Tory Leader Call for Chinese Communist-Style Digital ID

2023-02-25

[Breitbart] Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the ex-leader of the Tory Party William Hague have called for a “technological revolution” in how the state monitors citizens, including the imposition of a digital ID that would include swaths of personal data, in a scheme being likened to Communist China.

Demonstrating yet again the distinction without difference between the two main parties in Westminster, former Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair and his former Conservative opponent at the parliament dispatch box, William Hague penned a joint article for The Times of London, arguing in favour of the formation of a national Digital ID, that would include passport and driving licence details, as well as tax records and right to work documents.

In order to sell the scheme to the public, which roundly rejected previous attempts by Blair during his time in Downing Street to introduce a national identity card, the two globalist politicians played up how a digital ID would offer a “simpler and easier” means of accessing government benefits and that public services could be specifically tailored to individual needs.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

When will Putin turn his policy around 360 degrees?

2023-02-20

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Commentary by Russian military blogger Andrey Chervonets:
German Foreign Minister Anna-Lena Burbock recently noted an interesting thoughtful statement:

“If Putin does not turn his policy around 360 degrees, then there is no way to ensure the security of Ukraine on a long-term basis, under his rule.”

Oh dear. That really is mock-worthy.
Having turned 360, Russia will not deviate a single degree from the chosen course. But that's hardly what Burbock meant. She just doesn't see the difference between 180 and 360 degrees.

Annalena clearly did not study well at school. Or she is not given to understand serious matters. She graduated from the London School of Economics,

...which I was always told is a hive of communism and similar magical thinking...

however I do not know how he graduated from primary school with such knowledge in mathematics. And she's bad with geography. I remember that she recently announced that there are countries that are several hundred thousand kilometers from Germany. But there are no states on the Moon yet.

The level of education of European elites is amazing, despite high-profile diplomas (Annalena Burbock and Liz Truss are from the same field, they graduated from the same educational institution). It seems that there, in the West, they are specially grown / selected. It's amazing that such fucking characters determine the vector of development of European politics. In this context, the fresh news looks doubly curious that Burbock wants to be nominated for the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in the event of the dissolution of the Bundestag.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Review of ‘ The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros’

2022-11-27

Best Short Summary of the Vast Network of Destruction.

[AmericanThinker] Billionaire George Soros is that rare megalomaniac who not only believes he’s a god but revels in behaving like one. “It’s a sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” he once boasted to The Independent.

This god complex, combined with his downright amorality and bizarre ideas about society, makes the 92-year-old extremely dangerous to democracies, especially America. The warning comes loud and clear in Matt Palumbo’s recent book, The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, which documents Soros’s decades of financial dealings, political operations, and nefarious networks.

Early in the book, Palumbo highlights Soros’s amorality, planted perhaps when his Hungarian Jewish family assumed Christian identities and collaborated with the invading Nazis. The teenaged Soros accompanied his phony godfather, who inventoried properties seized from Jewish families sent to concentration camps. Yet, he says he feels no guilt, only detachment.

“I was only a spectator; the property was being taken away. I had no role in taking away that property. So, I had no sense of guilt,” he said in a 1998 interview on 60 Minutes. He likened his actions then to his playing the markets later. “In a funny way,” he said, “it’s just like in the markets – that if I weren’t there – of course, I wasn’t doing it – but somebody else would – would be taking it away anyhow.” He recounts that period as “probably the happiest year of my life” and “a very happy-making, exhilarating experience.”

Besides hubris and amorality, two major ideas drive Soros. He has a personal theory of ‘reflexivity’ and the philosophy of Karl Popper, his guru at the London School of Economics (LSE). Both have inbuilt ironies. While ‘reflexivity’ might be just an eccentric speculator’s hobby horse, Popper’s ideas, riding on Soros’s mind and money, could lead the free world into an anarchist-leftist hell.

Simply put, reflexivity says the world is very complex, so humans use perceptual shortcuts like generalizations, dichotomies, metaphors, and decision rules. These, in turn, affect reality via the changes they cause in human behavior. Soros believes that, guided by this concept, he has gamed the markets by recognizing when perception and reality are at enough variance for betting big. Like all ‘systems’ to beat the casino, this is humbug and hubris, for it posits someone immune to the perceptual shortcomings that, by the premise, afflict everyone. But every successful speculator’s theorizing gains some indulgence, never mind the informants and networks he’ll never mention. Nor is Soros innocent of insider trading, either.

That is Soros’s business. What should worry us is his obsession with implementing Popper’s ideas. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper propounded that no single philosophy possesses the truth, no society is superior to another, and ‘closed’ cultures are built on taboos and a single version of reality. In Soros’s words, in ‘open’ cultures, “nobody has a monopoly on the truth; a society which is not dominated by the state or any particular ideology, where minorities and minority opinions are respected.”

Link

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