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#i. a muslim. am NOT advocating for terrorism i promise !!!!!!!
violentdevotion · 1 year
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there is no reforming this. someone needs to die
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sociologyquotes · 7 years
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Winston Churchill: Britain’s “Greatest Briton” Left a Legacy of Global Conflict and Crimes Against Humanity
“The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has called Churchill “the greatest ever Prime Minister”, and Britons have recently voted him as the greatest Briton to have ever lived.
The story that British schoolbooks tell children about Churchill is of a British Bulldog, with unprecedented moral bravery and patriotism. He, who defeated the Nazis during World War II and spread civilisation to indigenous people from all corners of the globe. Historically, nothing could be further from the truth.
To the vast majority of the world, where the sun once never set on the British empire, Winston Churchill remains a great symbol of racist Western imperialist tyranny, who stood on the wrong side of history.
The myth of Churchill is Britain’s greatest propaganda tool because it rewrites Churchill’s true history in order to whitewash Britain’s past imperialist crimes against humanity. The Churchill myth also perpetuates Britain’s ongoing neo-colonial and neo-liberal policies, that still, to the is day, hurt the very people around the world that Churchill was alleged to have helped civilise.
The same man whose image is polished and placed on British mantelpieces as a symbol of all that is Great about Britain was an unapologetic racist and white supremacist. “I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion”, he once bellowed. As Churchill put it, Palestinians were simply “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.”
In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission:
“I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
It is unsurprising that when Barack Obama became President, he returned to Britain a bust of Churchill which he found on his desk in the Oval office. According to historian Johann Hari, Mr. Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill’s watch, for daring to resist Churchill’s empire.
Apart from being an unrepentant racist, Churchill was also a staunch proponent of the use of terrorism as a weapon of war.
During the Kurdish rebellion against the British dictatorship in 1920, Churchill remarked that he simply did not understand the “squeamishness” surrounding the use of gas by civilized Great Britain as a weapon of terror. “I am strongly in favour of using gas against uncivilised tribes, it would spread a lively terror,” he remarked.
In the same year, as Secretary of State for War, Churchill sent the infamous Black and Tans to Ireland to fight the IRA. The group became known for vicious terrorist attacks on civilians which Churchill condoned and encouraged.
While today Britons celebrate Churchill’s legacy, much of the world outside the West mourns the legacy of a man who insisted that it was the solemn duty of Great Britain to invade and loot foreign lands because in Churchill’s own words Britain’s “Aryan stock is bound to triumph”.
Churchill’s legacy in the Far East, Middle East, South Asia and Africa is certainly not one of an affable British Lionheart, intent on spreading civilization amongst the natives of the world. To people of these regions the imperialism, racism, and fascism of a man like Winston Churchill can be blamed for much of the world’s ongoing conflicts and instability.
As Churchill himself boasted, he “created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon,” thereby placing many Jordanians under the brutal thumb of a throneless Hashemite prince, Abdullah. Historian Michael R. Burch recalls how the huge zigzag in Jordan’s eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called “Winston’s Hiccup” or “Churchill’s Sneeze” because Churchill carelessly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch.
Churchill also invented Iraq. After giving Jordan to Prince Abdullah, Churchill, the great believer in democracy that he was, gave Prince Abdullah’s brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert that became Iraq. Faisal and Abdullah were war buddies of Churchill’s friend T. E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia”.
Much like the clumsy actions in Iraq of today’s great Empire, Churchill’s imperial foreign policy caused decades of instability in Iraq by arbitrarily locking together three warring ethnic groups that have been bleeding heavily ever since. In Iraq, Churchill bundled together the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra that was predominantly Shiite, Baghdad that was Sunni, and Mosul that was mainly Kurd.
Ask almost anyone outside of Iraq who is responsible for the unstable mess that Iraq is in today and they are likely to say one word, either “Bush” or “America”. However, if you asked anyone within Iraq who is mainly responsible for Iraq’s problems over the last half century and they are likely to simply say “Churchill”.
Winston Churchill convened the 1912 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British Middle Eastern mandate and T.E. Lawrence was the most influential delegate. Churchill did not invite a single Arab to the conference, which is shocking but hardly surprising since in his memoirs Churchill said that he never consulted the Arabs about his plans for them.
The arbitrary lines drawn in Middle Eastern sand by Churchillian imperialism were never going to withstand the test of time. To this day, Churchill’s actions have denied Jordanians, Iraqis, Kurds and Palestinians anything resembling true democracy and national stability.
The intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict can also be traced directly back to Churchill’s door at number 10 Downing Street and his decision to hand over the “Promised Land” to both Arabs and Jews. Churchill gave practical effect to the Balfour declaration of 1917, which expressed Britain’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, resulting in the biggest single error of British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Churchill’s legacy in Sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya in particular is also one of deep physical and physiological scars that endure to this day.
Of greater consequence to truth and history should be a man’s actions, not merely his words. Whilst Churchill has become one of the most extensively quoted men in the English speaking world, particularly on issues of democracy and freedom, true history speaks of a man whose actions revolved around, in Churchill’s own words, “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”.
One such war was when Kikuyu Kenyans rebelled for their freedom only to have Churchill call them “brutish savage children” and force 150,000 of them into “Britain’s Gulag”.
Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Professor Caroline Elkins, highlights Churchill’s many crimes in Kenya in her book Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Professor Elkins explains how Churchill’s soldiers “whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects”, all in the name of British “civilization”. It is said that President Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama never truly recovered from the torture he endured from Churchill’s men.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved how in Bengal in 1943 Churchill engineered one of the worst famines in human history for profit.
Over three million civilians starved to death whilst Churchill refused to send food aid to India. Instead, Churchill trumpeted that “the famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Churchill intentionally hoarded grain to sell for profit on the open market after the Second World War instead of diverting it to starving inhabitants of a nation controlled by Britain. Churchill’s actions in India unquestionably constituted a crime against humanity.
Churchill was also one of the greatest advocates of Britain’s disastrous divide-and-rule foreign policy.
Churchill’s administration deliberately created and exacerbated sectarian fissures within India’s independence movement, between Indian Hindus and Muslims that have had devastating effects on the region ever since.
Prior to India’s independence from Britain, Churchill was eager to see bloodshed erupt in India, so as to prove that Britain was the benevolent “glue holding the nation together”. For Churchill, bloodshed also had the added strategic advantage that it would also lead to the partition of India and Pakistan. Churchill’s hope was this partition would result in Pakistan remaining within Britain’s sphere of influence. This, in turn, would enable the Great Game against the Soviet empire to continue, no matter the cost to innocent Indian and Pakistanis. The partition of India with Pakistan caused the death of about 2.5 million people and displaced some 12.5 million others.
According to writer, Ishaan Tharoor, Churchill’s own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery,  compared his boss’s understanding of India’s problems to King George III’s apathy for the Americas. In his private diaries Amery vented that “on the subject of India, Churchill is not quite sane” and that he didn’t “see much difference between Churchill’s outlook and Hitler’s.”
Churchill shared far more ideologically in common with Hitler than most British historians care to admit. For instance, Churchill was a keen supporter of eugenics, something he shared in common with Germany’s Nazi leadership, who were estimated estimated to have killed 200,000 disabled people and forcibly sterilised twice that number. Churchill drafted a highly controversial piece of legislation, which mandated that the mentally ill be forcibly sterilized. In a memo to the Prime Minister in 1910, Winston Churchill cautioned, “the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”. He also helped organise the International Eugenics Conference of 1912, which was the largest meeting of proponents of eugenics in history.
Churchill had a long standing belief in racial hierarchies and eugenics. In Churchill’s view, white protestant Christians were at the very top of the pyramid, above white Catholics, while Jews and Indians were only slightly higher than Africans.
Historian, Mr. Hari, rightfully points out, “the fact that we now live in a world where a free and independent India is a superpower eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the Kikuyu ‘savages’ is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his ugliest – and a sweet, ironic victory for Churchill at his best.”
Amid today’s Churchillian parades and celebratory speeches, British media and schoolbooks may choose to only remember Churchill’s opposition to dictatorship in Europe, but the rest of the world cannot choose to forget Churchill’s imposition of dictatorship on darker skinned people outside of Europe. Far from being the Lionheart of Britain, who stood on the ramparts of civilisation, Winston Churchill, all too often, simply stood on the wrong side of history.
Churchill is indeed the Greatest Briton to have ever lived, because for decades, the myth of Churchill has served as Britain’s greatest propaganda tool to bolster national white pride and glorify British imperial culture.”
---from the article Winston Churchill: Britain’s “Greatest Briton” Left a Legacy of Global Conflict and Crimes Against Humanity by Garikai Chengu
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maxwellyjordan · 6 years
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A “view” from the courtroom: The “court of history” is in session
Heading upstairs to the courtroom this morning, we overhear a court employee telling some members of the public who will make it inside, “Welcome to today’s non-argument session.”
Although the court officially refers to opinion days such as today as “non-argument sessions,” that description will be tested today by justices offering arguments and opinions on both sides of two key cases. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Next to last non-argument session, with opinions in NIFLA v. Becerra and Trump v. Hawaii
In the courtroom, Mark Janus and Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois are back in the center section of the public gallery, once again awaiting a decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. It’s a good thing that the governor, who is running for re-election and is supportive of the challenge to the way public-employee unions have been doing business for more than 40 years, has nothing so pressing back in Illinois that it is keeping him from hanging out at the court.
Speaking of elections, today is primary election day in Maryland, where at least one member of the court is an eligible voter. Whether that member voted early or will be getting to the polls today, we hope he finds the “island of calm in which voters can peacefully contemplate their choices,” as Chief Justice John Roberts put it in the recent decision in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, drawing on language from the state’s brief.
In the VIP box, we spot two spouses of the justices. Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, takes her seat, followed by Joanna Breyer, the wife of Justice Stephen Breyer, who was here yesterday.
Also in the justices’ guest box is Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defending Freedom. He is no doubt awaiting the decision in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, in which ADF is representing crisis pregnancy centers challenging certain requirements imposed on them by California law. Lorence sometimes sits in the bar section, as we noted the other day, but this is the second time this spring he has snagged a seat in the VIP box.
On the bench this morning, all the microphones are properly positioned, unlike yesterday, when several were askew. When the court takes the bench, the chief justice announces that Thomas has the opinion in NIFLA.
Thomas begins summarizing how “crisis pregnancy centers” run by “pro-life” organizations were targeted by a California law that imposes certain requirements on them. Licensed clinics must notify women that California provides free or low-cost services, including abortions. Unlicensed clinics must notify women that they are not licensed to provide medical services. The provisions were upheld below.
“In an opinion on file with the clerk today, we reverse,” Thomas says.
The license-notice requirement likely violates the First Amendment, he says, adding that “California has less intrusive ways of informing women” that these services exist.
He soon moves on to the notice required of unlicensed centers, concluding that the provision unduly burdens protected speech and also likely violates the First Amendment.
Thomas is done within about five minutes, and he announces that Justice Anthony Kennedy has filed a concurring opinion, joined by Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
He says that Breyer has filed a dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Breyer is going to read part of his dissent, and there is no confusion about that, as there was yesterday.
He takes issue with the majority’s reasoning that the California law compels the crisis pregnancy centers to speak a particular message. The same can be said of much “ordinary health, economic, or social regulation,” he says.
“What about laws requiring hospitals to talk about vaccines or seat belts, laws requiring landlords to tell tenants about garbage disposal rules,” or laws requiring doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants to disclose information to their clients, Breyer asks.
“There are even disclosure laws relating to petting zoos,” he says.
Breyer makes several points stemming from his view that the majority pays inadequate attention to “precedent directly on point, namely a case involving disclosure in the context of abortion.” He notes that in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, in 1992, the court upheld a law that required doctors to tell women about state resources for adoption services.
“If a state can lawfully require a doctor to tell a woman seeking an abortion about adoption services, why should it not be able to require a medical counselor to tell a woman seeking prenatal care about childbirth and abortion services?” Breyer says. “After all, the law must be evenhanded.”
He makes several more points, but he also reserves some of his energy for later.
Roberts announces that he has the opinion in Trump v. Hawaii. As he says this, it seems to dawn on Janus and Rauner that today will not be the day for the decision in the Janus case.
The chief justice outlines the background of the president’s previous entry bans for citizens of certain Muslim-majority countries, which ended up with the September 2017 presidential proclamation that is known as the third version of the ban.
He notes that there are statutory challenges brought under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as a constitutional claim brought under the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
As Roberts discusses in some detail his conclusion that the proclamation does not violate the INA, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who argued the case for the administration, sits forward in his chair at the counsel table and listens intently.
After disposing of the statutory claims, Roberts tackles the establishment clause claim.
“At the heart of plaintiffs’ case is a series of statements by the president and his advisers casting doubt on the official objective of the proclamation,” Roberts says.
He cites, among others, the best-known one, when candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
He pauses for a moment before he says, “The president of the United States possesses an extraordinary power to speak to his fellow citizens and on their behalf.”
This power has often been used to combat bigotry, he notes, citing among other things comments by President George W. Bush at the Islamic Center in Washington in the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that the “face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”
“Yet it cannot be denied that the federal government and the presidents who have carried its laws into effect have—from the nation’s earliest days— performed unevenly in living up to those inspiring words,” Roberts says.
The chief justice seems, momentarily, to be traveling down one path on a key issue in a major case and heading down the other path overall. That’s never happened before, right?
But he is soon back on the administration’s track.
“The issue before us is not whether to denounce” the president’s statements, the chief justice says. “It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”
Roberts moves quickly through the arguments raised comparing the president’s proclamation with the Japanese internment policy upheld in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States.
“Korematsu has nothing to do with this case,” Roberts says. The dissent’s reference to that case “affords this court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious: Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear,” Roberts says, quoting Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent, it “‘has no place in law under the Constitution.’”
Kennedy and Thomas have written concurrences, the chief justice notes, while Breyer has a dissent joined by Kagan, and Sotomayor has a dissent joined by Ginsburg.
Breyer says he and Kagan “focus primarily on a threshold issue. “The proclamation on its face is neutral and is of a kind that other presidents have issued,” he says. “But the many statements referred to in the respondents’ briefs, including those of the president, suggest the contrary. So which is it?”
Francisco, who barely moved a muscle as he leaned forward to listen to the chief justice, now is sitting back in his chair in a more relaxed posture.
Breyer continues for several minutes, concluding, “If we must decide the basic issue now, we would find the evidence, including the presidential statements set forth in Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion, sufficient to set the proclamation aside.”
There is another pause before Sotomayor begins summarizing her dissent. By now, it is well past 10:30, and the courtroom is silent and somber.
“The United States of America is a nation built upon the promise of religious liberty,” Sotomayor says. “The court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle.”
She provides her own catalogue of the president’s comments about Muslims.
“Despite numerous opportunities to do so, President Trump has never disavowed any of these hurtful statements,” she says. Unlike the majority, she says, “I am unwilling to throw the establishment clause out the window at the mere mention of a national-security concern.”
As alluded to by Roberts, Sotomayor makes several points about Korematsu. She cites Justice Frank Murphy’s dissent in the case for the view that the exclusion order was rooted in dangerous stereotypes about, among other things, a particular group’s supposed inability to assimilate and desire to harm the United States.
“Today, the court takes the important step of finally overruling Korematsu,” Sotomayor says regarding the chief justice’s words about the 1944 decision. (Whether the court has actually done that will be debated in the coming hours.)
“This formal repudiation of a shameful precedent is laud­able and long overdue,” Sotomayor says. “But it does not make the majority’s decision here acceptable or right.”
She sums up with a line that does not appear in her written dissent,
“History will not look kindly on the court’s misguided decision today,” she says. “Nor should it.”
When she is done, the chief justice is ready to announce that the end is in sight.
“This court will next sit tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock,” he says. “And at that time we will announce all remaining opinions ready during this term of the court.”
The post A “view” from the courtroom: The “court of history” is in session appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
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republicstandard · 6 years
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Northern Ireland Is Ripe For Invasion: Police, Media, Politicians Bow To Islam
Considering the bloody history of Northern Ireland when it comes to sectarian violence, one might understand the reticence there to recognize the threat of Islam. On the other hand, given the bloody history of Catholic versus Protestant, one might expect a greater understanding of what turf wars between religious rivals can look like.
It appears that we must again recognize the power of the Cathedral; what the neoractionaries call the sometimes-self-aware social construct of media, education, and government. The narrative that runs through all aspects of this profane artifice is one of tolerance above all else- shattering the wisdom of Karl Popper and setting the stage for destruction.
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Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ~ Karl Popper
There is a small pan-Christian identitarian group in Northern Ireland which has adopted the moniker Generation Sparta. One might have imagined a slightly more Celtic influenced name, but in any case, the group is counter-jihad in orientation and have taken it upon themselves to alert their countrymen to the threat posed by Islam to the West. What I am about to describe mirrors almost perfectly both my own experience as a young man growing up in an almost entirely White town in Yorkshire and also that of the YouTuber Millenial Woes in his own White Scottish village.
People in virtual ethnostate conditions have no idea how good they have it. They may look at a pamphlet that bears uncomfortable news and uncritically reject it. We are all, I am sure, guilty of this at some point. We have only people like ourselves to contend with, which becomes boring. Mundane. We might fantasise about the exotic East, or the cosmopolitan cities; far away from the backwards looking troglodytes we are spawned from and fear to become. Islam itself becomes exciting, culturally enriching, and a colorful counter to the dour gloom of the slate-gray Ulster skies.
I will wager good money that I know of someone who feels today as we once felt. So begins the story of Northern Ireland resident 'Meg'.
This insane and terrifying pamphlet was posted through my door yesterday wtf pic.twitter.com/vHWJadJej5
— Meg Brad (@MegMog95) April 3, 2018
Yes indeed, this looks like a scary leaflet to receive if one does not have the prerequisite education -or rather, if one has the requisite indoctrination- to understand the reality of it. It is easy to dismiss as insane and terrifying that which we do not understand. To assist Meg in understanding this matter, let us look at the claims made by Generation Sparta.
CLAIM: Will Britons be a minority in the United Kingdom in 2066?
Yes; at least according to Professor of Demography at Oxford, Peter Coleman and the Migration Observatory.
“On current trends, European populations will become more ethnically diverse, with the possibility that today’s majority ethnic groups will no longer comprise a numerical majority.”
This study does refer specifically to the White British, which as we have written about before are a distinct ethnic group; with a distinct culture and set of values. Generation Sparta are correct in saying that British people were not balloted on immigration- frequently they voted for parties that promised to curb immigration and were ignored. Though I have asked many times myself for a reason why Britain will not become a country where the indigenous population is a minority, I have never received a reasoned answer. Without fail, the question is dismissed as implausible. Without fail, this question is treated as evidence of racism.
The police came round, impressively speedy response from @PoliceServiceNI. They took the pamphlet with them and are gonna investigate
— Meg Brad (@MegMog95) April 4, 2018
Until sufficient evidence is produced that disproves the projections of demographic replacement, we must -if we claim to be living in a somewhat evidence-based shared reality- recognize that replacement migration is real. Generation Sparta are entirely correct to make the claim in their leaflet. We know that the UN itself desires this process.
CLAIM: Nothing is done following terrorist attacks in England.
Can any deny that this is true? The bombing of a pop-concert in Manchester is quickly replaced in the narrative by the tragedy of Grenfell; dealing with terrorism is hard. Blaming Britain for poor constructions that incinerate illegal immigrants is easy. We have seen no steps taken in the United Kingdom to even contend with the difficult questions around Islam as a philosophy. We cannot discuss it, not even in the House of Lords.
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We must agree again that Generation Sparta are correct- in so far as nothing positive is done- we see our civil liberties eroded a little more after every Peace-Stabbing or Peace-Bomb.
With emotive language, Generation Sparta lay the blame for this dire future at the feet of their own politicians. Note that well- there is no mention of violence, or hate towards Muslims- or anyone else. The political elites are whom Generation Sparta blame for the enrichment of Ireland; and if the responses to Meg's original tweet are to go by from Alliance Party members, we must again agree with the pamphlet.
I'd definitely pass that to the police. Goes way beyond opinion to incitement. The fact that it's deranged notwithstanding 🙄
— Naomi Long MLA (@naomi_long) April 3, 2018
I know! And there are a significant amount of Muslim people in this area, I'd hate for them to feel unwelcome because of a few hateful people
— Meg Brad (@MegMog95) April 4, 2018
Alliance's policies also indicate a fatal misunderstanding of human population dynamics; buying in entirely to Lockean blank slate ideas, that all humans are fundamentally interchangeable.
Is the cry of RACIST! unfamiliar? As the Journal reports:
South Belfast DUP MP Emma Little Pengelly and MLA Christopher Stalford have condemned the distribution of the leaflets.
“These leaflets, distributed by an unknown and anonymous group, do not speak for the people who live in that area or the vast majority of people across Northern Ireland,” they said.
“We have seen attempts before to incite racism within Northern Ireland and thankfully they have failed on every occasion.
It is absolutely wrong and dangerous to try and stir up racist sentiment by conflating an entire religion with the vile, violent acts of terrorists, who are just masquerading under the cover of religion."
Once again we are treated to the gloriously myopic bleatings from cuckold politicians who claim to know the minds of religious fundamentalists better than the religious fundamentalists themselves. This, from a hardcore Protestant Unionist party who have campaigned in the past to "save Ulster from sodomy" and advocated for creationism in schools. Let us not pretend that this party is one of tolerance and such fancies- but even the DUP cannot bring itself to say; No- we do not want an Islamic Northern Ireland. Strange then, that over a year ago the atheist community in Northern Ireland submitted a letter to the Home Secretary "raising serious concerns about the UK Government’s ‘independent review’ into Sharia courts in Britain."
Strange that in Northern Ireland the godless will go where the God-fearing fear to tread.
CLAIM: The media tar opponents of multiculturalism as racist
Of course! It's racist to point it out. As predicted in their own pamphlet, Generation Sparta are accurate again. Now, one might say- well, of course, the press will say this pamphlet is racist because it is racist! The counter is simple- there is nothing racist in the pamphlet unless we are to believe that Islam is a race- and therefore immune from critique. This is a fundamental point of contention. If you cannot criticize ideas because it is racist to criticize those ideas, you are living under tyranny. You are living under laws that persecute blasphemy.
I will say that it is wrong to use the image of Fusilier Lee Rigby in this manner. There is no need to politicize his death further- he shall not be forgotten, but sympathy must be shown to his family; who have repeatedly requested that his image is not used by activists. That should be respected- and Generation Sparta should know better. This being said, the words accompanying his image are also accurate- these are the sites of terrorist attacks in England. Far more than 1500 English girls have been raped by predominantly Pakistani men. These facts are not in dispute, surely.
You have seen the pamphlet and read the criticism in the press, but I want to show you the depths to which our media outlets will sink in search of a bias-confirming story. Here are the tweets from the press, begging for a comment from the girl who received the pamphlet.
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Hi Meg, I'm from the @IrishTimes - would it be ok for us to use your pics of the leaflet as part of our coverage?
— David Cochrane (@davidcochrane) April 5, 2018
Can you follow for a DM?
— Arthur Strain (@Fronkenstrain) April 4, 2018
Meg, I'm a reporter with https://t.co/aSXrpCFHE9. Would you mind if we were to share this image with full cred to you?
— Kate Demolder (@katedemolder) April 5, 2018
Hi Meg, my name is Michael and I work for the @BelTel - would it be OK to use these images of the leaflet?
— MichaelSheilsMcnamee (@MichaelOnassis) April 5, 2018
In lockstep, these so-called journalists role out the same talking points with the same downstream thinking. We only ever look at the effect, and never the cause. We may even find out that indeed Generation Sparta are racists or such, but that information will never come from the spineless British press. I have reached out to Generation Sparta myself to obtain a comment, and will update this article should i receive one.
And so we see how a crime is manufactured from the truth.
Chief Inspector David Moore of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said:
"We are treating this as a hate incident at present and we are making a number of enquiries.
"The PSNI continues to make it clear that hate crime, in any form, is unacceptable."
That a pamphlet of relatively uncontroversial statements reveals that Ireland, which spent much of the last century witnessing extreme sectarian violence, can now no longer bear criticism of Islam is truly saddening. It is a hate crime, after all, to say “This is Ireland. This land is of the Irish.” Isn’t that what we were looking for, all those troubled years? Are we so deluded that we ignore that the most likely thing to unite a people is a common foe? I am willing to bet that if this group is bringing Protestants and Catholics together, there might actually be something to be learned; if not from the beliefs of Generation Sparta per se, but surely from how sectarian lines may be bridged.
I suppose as she reported the pamphlets to the police, we should leave the last word to Meg herself. Remember; the pamphlet warns against rape gangs. It is, you might say, an anti-rape leaflet.
If you talk to any woman about rape or sexual assault, the chances are that they will have a story about a time they were raped or almost raped or in fear of being raped. I don't think men realise that.
— Meg Brad (@MegMog95) March 28, 2018
May I suggest that the men of Generation Sparta realize that very well?
It is very easy to just be accepting of everything. To imagine that nothing really matters, and history was backward, dirty. Racist. Homophobic. This way of thinking leads us to value nothing, to preserve nothing of ourselves. The very idea that somewhere a religious person might be offended by a leaflet drives a multi-branch crackdown to root out these evil people who have looked at the world as it is, and not as we would wish it to be.
The establishment is terrified. You can see it in the reaction to wrongthink. It is this lack of thought in the response that will ultimately prove Generation Sparta right, and the media, the police, the political establishment and probably-gender-studies-major-Meg, will all be proven wrong. If you cannot think freely, then you will act as a slave.
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The worst part of that reality is that it is so easily preventable; if we steel ourselves, put our shoulders back, and contend with the problems at hand. All we have to do is take responsibility for our own futures.
Is that really so hard?
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uniteordie-usa · 6 years
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Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned
http://uniteordiemedia.com/fake-terror-plots-paid-informants-the-tactics-of-fbi-entrapment-questioned/ http://uniteordiemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Kennedy-right-600x464.png Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned April 27, 1961 speech “that got John F. Kennedy Killed” Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots By Paul Harris David Williams did not have an easy life. He moved to Newburgh, a gritty, impoverished town on...
April 27, 1961 speech “that got John F. Kennedy Killed”
Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots
By Paul Harris
David Williams did not have an easy life. He moved to Newburgh, a gritty, impoverished town on the banks of the Hudson an hour or so north of New York, at just 10 years old. For a young, black American boy with a father in jail, trouble was everywhere.
Williams also made bad choices. He ended up going to jail for dealing drugs. When he came out in 2007 he tried to go straight, but money was tight and his brother, Lord, needed cash for a liver transplant. Life is hard in Newburgh if you are poor, have a drug rap and need cash quickly.
His aunt, Alicia McWilliams, was honest about the tough streets her nephew was dealing with. “Newburgh is a hard place,” she said. So it was perhaps no surprise that in May, 2009, David Williams was arrested again and hit with a 25-year jail sentence. But it was not for drugs offences. Or any other common crime. Instead Williams and three other struggling local men beset by drug, criminal and mental health issues were convicted of an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up Jewish synagogues and shoot down military jets with missiles.
Even more shocking was that the organisation, money, weapons and motivation for this plot did not come from real Islamic terrorists. It came from the FBI, and an informant paid to pose as a terrorist mastermind paying big bucks for help in carrying out an attack. For McWilliams, her own government had actually cajoled and paid her beloved nephew into being a terrorist, created a fake plot and then jailed him for it. “I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone,” she told the Guardian.
Lawyers for the so-called Newburgh Four have now launched an appeal that will be held early next year. Advocates hope the case offers the best chance of exposing the issue of FBI “entrapment” in terror cases. “We have as close to a legal entrapment case as I have ever seen,” said Susanne Brody, who represents another Newburgh defendant, Onta Williams.
Some experts agree. “The target, the motive, the ideology and the plot were all led by the FBI,” said Karen Greenberg, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, who specialises in studying the new FBI tactics.
But the issue is one that stretches far beyond Newburgh. Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America, targeting – to a large extent – the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots. FBI bureaux send informants to trawl through Muslim communities, hang out in mosques and community centres, and talk of radical Islam in order to identify possible targets sympathetic to such ideals. Or they will respond to the most bizarre of tip-offs, including, in one case, a man who claimed to have seen terror chief Ayman al-Zawahiri living in northern California in the late 1990s.
That tipster was quickly hired as a well-paid informant. If suitable suspects are identified, FBI agents then run a sting, often creating a fake terror plot in which it helps supply weapons and targets. Then, dramatic arrests are made, press conferences held and lengthy convictions secured.
But what is not clear is if many real, actual terrorists are involved.
Another “entrapment” case is on the radar too. The Fort Dix Five – accused of plotting to attack a New Jersey army base – have also appealed against their convictions. That case too involved dubious use of paid informants, an apparent over-reach of evidence and a plot that seemed suggested by the government.
Burim Duka, whose three brothers were jailed for life for their part in the scheme, insists they did not know they were part of a terror plot and were just buying guns for shooting holidays in a deal arranged by a friend. The “friend” was an informant who had persuaded another man of a desire to attack Fort Dix.
Duka is convinced his brothers’ appeal has a good chance. “I am hopeful,” he told the Guardian.
But things may not be that easy. At issue is the word “entrapment”, which has two definitions. There is the common usage, where a citizen might see FBI operations as deliberate traps manipulating unwary people who otherwise were unlikely to become terrorists. Then there is the legal definition of entrapment, where the prosecution merely has to show a subject was predisposed to carry out the actions they later are accused of.
Theoretically, a simple expression, like support for jihad, might suffice, and in post-9/11 America neither judges nor juries tend to be nuanced in terror trials. “Legally, you have to use the word entrapment very carefully. It is a very strict legal term,” said Greenberg.
But in its commonly understood usage, FBI entrapment is a widespread tactic. Within days of the 9/11 terror attacks, FBI director Robert Mueller issued a memo on a new policy of “forward leaning – preventative – prosecutions”.
Central to that is a growing informant network. The FBI is not choosy about the people it uses. Some have criminal records, including attempted murder or drug dealing or fraud. They are often paid six-figure sums, which critics say creates a motivation to entrap targets. Some are motivated by the promise of debts forgiven or immigration violations wiped clean. There has also been a relaxing of rules on what criteria the FBI needs to launch an investigation.
Often they just seem to be “fishing expeditions”. In the Newburgh case, the men involved met FBI informant Shahed Hussain simply because he happened to infiltrate their mosque. In southern California, FBI informant Craig Monteilh trawled mosques posing as a Muslim and tried to act as a magnet for potential radicals.
Monteilh, who bugged scores of people, is a convicted felon with serious drug charges to his name. His operation turned up nothing. But Monteilh’s professed terrorist sympathy so unnerved his Muslim targets that they got a restraining order against him and alerted the FBI, not realising Monteilh was actually working on the bureau’s behalf.
Muslim civil rights groups have warned of a feeling of being hounded and threatened by the FBI, triggering a natural fear of the authorities among people that should be a vital defence against real terror attacks. But FBI tactics could now be putting off many people from reporting tip-offs or suspicious individuals.
“They are making mosques suspicious of anybody. They are putting fear into these communities,” said Greenberg. Civil liberties groups are also concerned, seeing some FBI tactics as using terrorism to justify more power. “We are still seeing an expansion of these tools. It is a terrible prospect,” said Mike German, an expert at the American Civil Liberties Union and a former FBI agent who has worked in counter-terrorism.
German said suspects convicted of plotting terror attacks in some recent FBI cases bore little resemblance to the profile of most terrorist cells. “Most of these suspect terrorists had no access to weapons unless the government provided them. I would say that showed they were not the biggest threat to the US,” German said.
“Most terrorists have links to foreign terrorist groups and have trained in terrorism training camps. Perhaps FBI resources should be spent finding those guys.”
Also, some of the most serious terrorist attacks carried out in the US since 9/11 have revolved around “lone wolf” actions, not the sort of conspiracy plots the FBI have been striving to combat. The 2010 Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, only came to light after his car bomb failed to go off properly. The Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik Hasan, who shot dead 13 people on a Texas army base in 2009, was only discovered after he started firing. Both evaded the radar of an FBI expending resources setting up fictional crimes and then prosecuting those involved.
Yet, as advocates for those caught up in “entrapment” cases discover, there is little public or judicial sympathy for them. Even in cases where judges have admitted FBI tactics have raised serious questions, there has been no hesitation in returning guilty verdicts, handing down lengthy sentences and dismissing appeals.
The Liberty City Seven are a case in point. The 2006 case involved an informant, Elie Assaad, with a dubious past (he was once arrested, but not charged, for beating his pregnant wife). Assaad was let loose with another informant on a group of men in Liberty City, a poor, predominantly black, suburb of Miami. The targets were followers of a cult-like group called The Seas of David, led by former Guardian Angel Narseal Batiste.
The group was, perhaps, not even Muslim, as its religious practices involved Bible study and wearing the Star of David. Yet Assaad posed as an Al-Qaida operative, and got members of the group to swear allegiance. Transcripts of the “oath-taking” ceremony are almost farcical. Batiste repeatedly queries the idea and appears bullied into it. In effect, defence lawyers argued, the men were confused, impoverished members of an obscure cult.
Yet targets the group supposedly entertained attacking included the Sears Tower in Chicago, Hollywood movie studios and the Empire State Building. Even zealous prosecutors, painting a picture of dedicated Islamic terrorists, admitted any potential plots were “aspirational”, given the group had no means to carry them out.
Nonetheless, they were charged with seeking to wage war against America, plotting to destroy buildings and supporting terrorism. Five of them got long jail sentences. Assaad, who was recently arrested in Texas for attempting to run over a policeman, was paid $85,000 for his work.
This year the jailed Liberty City men launched an appeal and last week judgment was handed down. They lost, and officially remain Islamic terrorists hell-bent on destroying America. Not that their supporters see it that way.
“Our country is no safer as a result of the prosecution of these seven impoverished young men from Liberty City,” said Batiste’s lawyer, Ana Jhones.
“This prosecution came at great financial cost to our government, and at a terrible emotional cost to these defendants and their families. It is my sincere belief that our country is less safe as a result of the government’s actions in this case.”
FROM: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots
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mdye · 7 years
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WASHINGTON ― When 37 Democrats cast their votes to confirm Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in January, they did so in spite of heavy opposition to the policies he would be tasked to carry out: more deportations, a southern border wall and a travel ban targeting Muslims.
Their hope was that the former Marine general would be a moderating influence on President Donald Trump and a better option than other names floated for the post. Kelly wasn’t known for being a virulent crusader against unauthorized immigration, and he had experience with Central and South America as former head of the U.S. Southern Command. He said in his confirmation hearing that he opposed a registry based on ethnicity or religion, which Trump once floated for Muslims.
Four months later, some of the Senate Democrats who voted for Kelly are exasperated, disappointed and, in some cases, even wondering if they made a mistake. Arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants are up significantly, plans for a border wall are underway, and Kelly has joined Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in framing immigration almost exclusively in terms of crime. He defended the now-blocked ban on refugees and most travelers from several Muslim-majority nations and joked with Trump about using a saber “on the press.”
“I think the secretary has gone above and beyond even what the president’s dictates are and I’m disappointed in the way he’s acted,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who supported Kelly’s confirmation, told HuffPost.
The senator said he wouldn’t vote for Kelly if he had the chance now.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) voted for Kelly as well, but went on to publicly spar with him over the deportation of a Honduran mother and child who had been detained in Pennsylvania. Casey wouldn’t go so far as to say he regretted his vote, remarking instead that he would “try to work with Secretary Kelly and encourage him and the Administration to move in a better direction.”
But the senator acknowledged that he’s frustrated by the administration’s decisions to deport children and families. His “hope that Secretary Kelly would be more evenhanded on enforcement ... hasn’t been borne out.”
“The administration’s approach is not only wrong, but it also doesn’t make our nation safer,” said Casey via email. “When you talk to Secretary Kelly, he says he’s just following order[s] but he was confirmed to lead, not just to go along with some wrongheaded immigration approach that was cooked up during the campaign.”
Kelly, more than most figures in Trump’s orbit, illustrates the stain that the administration’s policies can leave on an individual’s public standing. The secretary has been at the forefront of both the legally contentious travel ban and the highly controversial crackdown on undocumented immigrants. His willingness to defend both has given him a reputation as the kind, respected face of draconian initiatives.
He was confirmed to lead, not just to go along with some wrongheaded immigration approach that was cooked up during the campaign.Sen. Bob Casey
Kelly has chafed at such criticisms. He has argued that if agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection encounter people who are removable from the U.S., they must work to remove them. His officials have said that even people without criminal records and with longstanding ties to the U.S. can fit that category under the law and they won’t be exempt from removal, although they were often passed over under President Barack Obama.
This focus on what the law broadly directs has come up repeatedly, including when Kelly responded to Casey’s call to stop the deportation of the Honduran mother and child.
“I say it over and over again: If the laws are not good laws, then change them,” Kelly declared during a speech in early May. “Don’t call me, or Twitter or tweet, or go to the press with outrageous stories about how we do business or why we’re deporting somebody.”
Homeland Security spokeswoman Joanne Talbot made the same point in a statement to HuffPost: “Secretary Kelly has said that if lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should work to adopt legislation instead of asking DHS to ignore existing law and court orders. The Secretary— like all DHS law enforcement officers— has taken an oath to follow the Constitution.”
Kelly “firmly believes that the policies adopted by the President to secure our borders and combat terrorism and transnational criminal organization are Constitutional,” Talbot said.
Other Democratic senators still support for Kelly and say that some of their hopes for the secretary have been borne out, at least behind the scenes. At a hearing last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted for Kelly’s confirmation, told the secretary that he and many of his colleagues “are so proud that you have agreed to serve in this position, makes us all feel a lot better.”
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) was similarly enthusiastic at that hearing.
“When I voted for your confirmation, Mr. Secretary ― and I would do it again today ― I said you are one of the adults in the room that I am dependent on to make good decisions for this country’s security,” Tester said. “I still believe that.”
Even one of the toughest critics of Trump’s immigration policies suggested that Kelly has been a moderating influence. At the time he voted for Kelly, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he wouldn’t have backed him if the confirmation vote were “a referendum on President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.” Earlier this month, Durbin told HuffPost that behind the scenes, when senators have brought specific cases to Kelly, “he has dealt with them quickly and honestly, and that’s all I can ask.”
Even as the controversies piled up, Durbin was willing to give the secretary a bit more leeway to make his mark.
“I’ve maintained a closer-than-usual relationship with him and frequent conversation, and I think there have been forces within the administration which want to move him into a more radical position,” Durbin said. “Am I happy with everything he’s done? No. But I want to continue to work with him.”
According to Democratic House members, Kelly has insinuated in private meetings that he helped save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows some undocumented young people to stay in the U.S. Trump promised to end the program immediately and yet he still hasn’t. In March, Kelly repeatedly told House Democrats that he was the “best thing that ever happened to DACA folks,” Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) said at the time.
Kelly’s critics say no one should be surprised by the early results of his tenure. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was one of 11 Democrats to vote against his confirmation. Her staff emailed other Democratic senators ahead of the vote to note that at his confirmation hearing, Kelly hadn’t committed to not sharing the personal information of DACA recipients with ICE or to shield them from deportation.
She told HuffPost that those concerns persist today, as do concerns about the travel ban, standards for hiring border patrol agents and Kelly’s “ability to manage the department as it relates to giving clear guidance to the tens of thousands of people that work in that department about the policies of the administration writ large and his policies as the director of that agency.”
Whether surprising or not, Kelly’s actions are disappointing to immigration reform supporters who had been cautiously optimistic about him. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said that Kelly’s experience with Central America should have given him “a better appreciation of the factors pushing refugees to flee the region and factors driving migration in other parts of the world.”
“[B]ut there have been no indications of compassion, expertise, or cooperation coming from the DHS Secretary or his senior staff,” Gutiérrez said in an email. “DHS seems to wish Congress would just go away and stop asking them about what they are doing and why, which is not an option.”
Immigrant rights advocates argue that Kelly is wrong to claim his hands are tied by the law. He has the discretion to avoid deporting certain people and focus on others, as previous homeland security secretaries did, said Clarissa Martínez-de-Castro of the National Council of La Raza. Thus far, she doesn’t think he has used it.
“There was a sense that perhaps given his experience he would bring a more tempered approach to the issue of immigration and immigration enforcement,” Martínez-de-Castro said. “I think that based on what we’ve seen, now the question is whether he is a helpless executioner or a willing one of what are, at the very least, ethically questionable policies.”
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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katiezstorey93 · 7 years
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Anti-Muslim conspiracists escalate campaign to crush Muslim Civil Society organizations
This short article initially appeared on AlterNet.
A brand new effort advanced by right wing Republicans in Congress and apparently supported from the Trump management places National Muslim civil community teams within the government’s crosshairs. Without exactly the same annoyed protests or condemnatory media meetings impressed by Trump’s journey bar targeting guests and twin people from eight Islamic-bulk nations, the reduced-recognized work is targeted at smashing strong Muslim civil community arranging within the Usa, utilizing the construction of the battle on fear.
The effort seeks to state the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist business, a name that used, will probably give a car to get a community of anti-Muslim crusaders to chase unaffiliated, conventional Muslim businesses and possibly criminalize their management.
Your time and effort hails from edge conspiracy advocates who, supported with a well-heeled Islamophobia business that is, espouse the declare that is misguided that the Brotherhood has treated the reaches of the government. These edge numbers cost that notable governmental people, from Abedin to Norquist to Ellison, are working as key providers of the business.
Singh Sethi, teacher and a municipal rights attorney at Law Heart, informed AlterNet this work represents of the Islamic bar and you will be utilized like an automobile to assault and smear Islamic governmental and social businesses within the Usa. The $57 thousand Islamophobia business is going to do something in its capacity to mistakenly and randomly link teams towards the Brotherhood within the Usa. These allegations alone may ruin reputations and tarnish businesses forever.”
This edge concept includes a primary point towards the Whitehouse nowadays.
This Jan, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and Sen. Ted Jones launched the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Situation Work in both congressional chambers. The statement additionally needs the Revolutionary Corps’ name like a terrorist business, a historical objective of professional and neoconservative -Israel components in California.
In a news release championing the regulation, Jones invoked an expected conflict of cultures. “I am happy to reintroduce these expenses that will codify required reforms against revolutionary Islamic terrorism in battle he explained. “This powerful risk to the world has increased underneath the federal government because of the willful blindness of politically proper guidelines that limit our security and security.”
Alongside this legal drive, advisors to Trump are apparently evaluating an executive order to state the Muslim Brotherhood like an international terrorist organization.
Conspiracy-theory supported by Islamophobia business
“One of the business for years’ favourite smear techniques hasbeen to accuse establishments and people of helping the mythological Muslim bogeyman within the U.S.,” stated the rights attorney, Sethi. “If the Brotherhood is specified a terrorist business that is foreign, this business may double-down about the strategy. This name might ignite to what we noticed throughout the red shock a witch-hunt similar. Harmless establishments and impugned and folks might be damaged. Additionally, the federal government might produce extensive substance assistance regulations and find to prosecute people and establishments, forfeiting their assets.”
Sethi underscored this governmental strategy comes even though the Brotherhood doesn’t possess a recognized existence within the Usa.
In a  released in 2011, the Middle for National Development decided that eight fundamentals shelled-out $42.6 million between 2009 and 2001 to consider tanks evolving anti- guidelines that were Islamic. In another research posted in 2015, LIMIT recognized what it named a $57 thousand business that’s based on the scattering of anti-Muslim feeling. This business immediately facilitates tangible plan actions targeting Muslim towns within the Usa, such as the over 100 anti and also the NYPD’s  surveillance program – bills which have been  at their state amount around the world.
The misguided declare that the government has been treated by the Brotherhood performs a vital part within this business and it is espoused by main figureheads. Included in this is Frank Gaffney Jr., who started the Middle for Protection Plan, the think-tank that created the substandard study behind Trump’s strategy promise to bar Muslims. An anti-Islamic capitalist and conspiracy theorist, Gaffney offered being a agent to Cruz’s failed presidential strategy and it is near co-workers with several in Trump’s cupboard, including Steve Bannon.
Gaffney has stated the Brotherhood has treated the government, levying allegations that lots of authorities are agents including Hillary original aide Abedin without creating any proof. In the Traditional Political Action Meeting, Gaffney was briefly banned in 2011 for blaming the best- to be a realtor of the Brotherhood side activist Grover Norquist. Stating the Brotherhood takeover that was intended, McCarthy has been repeatedly required by Gaffney – investigations targeting Muslim Americans. “So persistent now’s the MB’s [Muslim Brotherhood’s] ‘civilization jihad’ inside the U.S. government and municipal establishments that the severe, continual and demanding analysis of the trend from the legal department is so as,” he contended in the Middle for Protection Plan in October 2011.
Somewhat, this isn’t the only real conspiracy concept Gaffney sticks to. He’s additionally asserted that Barackobama is just a key Muslim who had been not created within the Usa which Saddam Hussein was probable behind the Planet Trade Middle and Oklahoma City bombings.
Gaffney isn’t alone. Steven Emerson, a once Islamophobic writer and pundit, has performed a crucial part in perpetuating the idea the federal government was treated from the Muslim Brotherhood. Emerson has spread propaganda for example, the Oklahoma Federal Building have been bombed by Arabic “terrorists.” Occasions later, claiming in 1995, for a long time, the bomber was unveiled as nationalist McVeigh that was bright. 2 decades later, Emerson seemed on Foxnews  to create phony promises concerning the lifestyle of Islamic no go areas within the U.K. Monk was pressured to problem numerous modifications and apologies for Emerson’s claims, which in turn-London Mayor Boris Johnson ignored as “total nonsense.”
Although each Gaffney are specified anti-Islamic extremists from the Law Heart, these within the best echelons of energy have espoused their sights. Ten years before, Bannon suggested a documentary-design film accusing a coalition of generous Jewish teams and Muslim civil rights businesses for posting horror into America, the Washington Post lately unveiled.
Two additional former allies towards Katharine Gorka—have and the bright nationalist publication Gorka lately registered Trump’s cupboard. Their professions fear-mongering has been constructed by the set over Muslims. Gorka, who today acts as national-security helper that was deputy, has formerly asserted the Usa is just a country that was Religious. “We don’t understand where the refugees from battle areas live in the USA,” he explained in a July-15 look on Foxnews. “We’re a country that is Religious; we ought to be altruistic to these in need. But charity isn’t a reason for suicide.” Katharine Gorka has formerly backed far reaching regulation to state the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
“You have these right wing edge advocates who believe every Muslim has links towards the Muslim Brotherhood, and that’s cause to doubt them,” Faiza Patel, denver-representative of the Freedom and National Security Plan for that Brennan Center for Justice at Ny University Law-School, informed AlterNet. “But today they’re in a position to drive conspiracy theories available and near to the middle of energy. This may be truly utilized as a means to clamp-down on Islamic teams in addition to notable activists.”
The founding father of the Authority of Jewish Speech for Serenity, Rosen, informed AlterNet, “As a Jew, I’d state this is actually the of individuals due to identification and their faith. Jews know-all about this. This could be the registry that is Islamic. This could provide the government the chance to transport through officially on which it’s confronted to do.”
Islamic civil society may be the actual goal
In 2014, Rep. Michele Bachmann launched regulation to “impose supports against individuals who purposefully supply substance assistance or assets towards the Muslim Brotherhood or its affiliates, connected teams, or brokers, as well as for additional purposes.” The regulation called crucial Muslim civil community agencies, including ISNA and CAIR.
Fear mongering within the Brotherhood has additionally supplied fodder for targeting humanrights agencies that are Palestinian. “Israel advocacy organizations within the U.S. have now been in the front of initiatives to tag Islamic, Arabic along with other teams that supporter for Palestinian privileges as ‘terrorist’ using the scantest of proof and also the thinnest posts of affiliation,” Dima Khalidi, the representative of Palestine Lawful, informed AlterNet over e-mail. “David Horowitz, for instance, has eliminated after the pupil teams the Muslim Pupils Connection (MSA) and Pupils for Justice in Palestine (SJP) together for supposed affiliation using the Islamic Brotherhood.”
“Notably, Dark Lives Issue, that was seriously assaulted by Israel advocacy teams because of its words of solidarity using the Palestinian independence motion, has additionally been named ‘terrorist,’ with calls to specify it as a terrorist business,” Khalidi extended. “The incline is actually higher and much more slick by having an management that’s a really anti-Islamic and anti-black agenda.”
Despite prior governmental initiatives to specify the Brotherhood a terrorist business, both Barak organizations and the Bush rejected. As correspondent Waqas Mirza lately mentioned, the “British government had additionally rebuked such calls along with a statement posted from the U.K. Home of Commons Foreign Affairs Panel this past year figured the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t participate in ‘terrorism.’”
Yet governments have extended on the Usa to apply strain to enforce the name, included in this Egypt and the UAE. In 2013 dedication the Brotherhood was a terrorist company was used-to warrant a large-scale and chaotic attack including disappearances torture and also the misguided arrests of thousands of individuals. The attack adopted the massacres of more than 2,000 demonstrators within the Cairo suburb of Rabaa.
Human Rights Watch reported this Egyptian precedent in condemning the governmental strategy within the U.S. “If the U.S. government designates the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist team, subsequently not just its people, but anybody possibly within the Usa or abroad assumed of supplying assistance or assets towards the group could be vulnerable to elimination in the U.S. if they’re non citizens and having their belongings freezing,” the business mentioned. “They might also risk unfairly being focused for justice under numerous regulations, including these excluding content assistance for terrorism.”
Arun Kundnani may be the writer of  and an adjunct teacher at New York School. He informed AlterNet, exactly what the character of the business is and “We might have a concerning the Brotherhood, however the recommended name of the Brotherhood like a terrorist firm has nothing related to the Brotherhood. It’s a weird fantasy.”
Impact that was “The is always to criminalize most of the top numbers top the protests against Trump Kundnani extended. “It might effectively criminalize Islamic businesses that represent the primary resistance towards the broader Trump plan, when it comes to rights and the Islamic bar. Mainly, it’d eliminate resistance towards the broader Islamophobic agenda.”
“This is frightening compared to bar that was Islamic,” said Katebi, performer and a coordinator with on National For That People Designers Combined and communications planner for that Detroit section of the Authority -Islamic Relationships. “When you include something and the term ‘terrorist’, the condition has branded you and most people are also scared to assist. Unlike a blanket bar on Muslims that’s simple to determine as incorrect and move assistance against, being named an enemy like an Islamic basically removes you and alienates you from support.”
Where many allies may fall off since this really is “This is specially crucial to become rallying against very important to appear as partners. This is actually the stage where partners is likely to be by what to complete also scared and uncertain. I would like to let you know today: you have to appear and do everything inside your capacity to assistance Muslim organizations who’ll be separated and Muslims and turn off by this name that is racialized. Never allow the condition determine your enemies.”
from network 8 http://www.nsorchidsociety.com/anti-muslim-conspiracists-escalate-campaign-to-crush-muslim-civil-society-organizations/
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the-record-columns · 7 years
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Feb. 8, 2017: Columns
A road trip with Carl White...
By KEN WELBORN
Record Publisher
Some time ago, I took a road trip with Carl White on one of his Life in the Carolinas episodes. 
The stated purpose of this trip was to find an item of television memorabilia for one of Carl's friends, a bluegrass musician from Salisbury, N C named Tom Isenhour. While that may sound like a simple thing to do, the collection Tom houses at his home is simply incredible. 
He has rooms full of bluegrass history with everybody who has ever been anybody well represented, and everything from the outfits they performed in to gold records. Another part of his home houses a collection of television related items which focus on he and his wife's childhood. 
This is area for which we were looking to find something Tom didn't already have—and that was an ambitious project. Carl, being an ambitions man, however, looked forward to the challenge.Well, to make a long story short, we took off one morning in a 1946 Chevrolet courtesy of Rex Brown of Moravian Falls and ended up in Pilot Mountain at an antique store. 
After perusing thousands of square feet of treasures, Carl spotted a child's Davy Crockett outfit from the 1950s in what appeared to be in perfect condition. This is where I came in, to help with the negotiations—those folks were really proud of Davy. So, after a vigorous round of... “If they ask 10, they want 8, they'll take 6, it's worth 4, so you bid 2...”--Carl was the proud owner of Davy Crockett and accessories—and I got a beautiful five gallon embossed water jug while we were at it.On the way to Tom Isenhour's home, we made a detour down to Banks Street in Salisbury and spent the afternoon with another character like no other, Clyde Overcash.
 I had met Clyde several years ago while researching with Jerry Lankford the Otto Wood story, and, after introducing him to Carl, he gave us a tour of the four historic homes he owns and an impromptu lecture on the history of the area and the Civil War prison site just across the railroad tracks. 
This prison was designed to hold 2,000 prisoners but ended up with over 12,000 before the end of the war. 
Again, a step back in time that was wonderfully educational.We made a couple of more stops on the way to Tom Isenhour's house and ended up there about dusk, I do not have room to tell you what a collection Tom has, but suffice it to say it makes The Record's Museum on Main, as we like to call it, look like a picked over yard sale. 
A welcoming host, Tom gave us the two-dollar tour and it was a bargain. He has several of the Nudie suits (named for the man who designed them) who many of us will remember as the type of outfit worn by entertainers like Porter Wagoner. After a while, we ended up I the “TV Room.” At that point, Carl excused himself and went to get Davy Crockett. 
When he returned and presented the outfit to Tom, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He smiled and freely admitted that he didn't have this outfit, but quickly went into the history of the TV show and the outfit about which he was very knowledgeable. One of the most interesting things he reminded us of was the fact that actor Fes Parker played both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on television and in the movies. Then Tom walked over to one of the cabinets and retrieved an old cardboard box wrapped in plastic.
 When he uncovered it, it was the exact box for the outfit Carl had found. Tom gingerly opened the box—and, sure enough, it was empty.Tom pointed out that the boxes were also hard to come by and he had bought this one several years earlier with hopes of finding the outfit another day. 
He was happy. It was as though he had found a piece to a big puzzle he was looking for.
I am going want to talk more about the boxes things come in next week, but for now I just want to remind you that the the road trip piece titled “The Collectors,” will be airing this weekend on Fox 46 in Charlotte which is channel 5 on cable in Wilkes, as well as WFMY in Greensboro and all the other stations which feature Life in the Carolinas. Keep watching for the new episode of Life in the Carolinas which will featuring Wilkes County's own Apple Festival, Carolina in the Fall, and Wilkesboro's “Troutacular” fishing event, and two others about Wilkes are in the making.
The Beatitudes
By LAURA WELBORN
 I am struggling with all the dissention in our world, and find myself at odds and going back to my mediator skills of seeing both sides of every situation along with recognizing that no one person is right just different perspectives on issues.  I recently heard a sermon referencing the “Beatitudes “- that gave my both sides perspective a lift and calming of heart so I thought I would share some of it with you.
“We all see the world from our own lens- however wide or narrow that is.  It’s part of our limitations of being human.  We see it through the lenses of our temperament & our life experience and there’s nothing inherently wrong or evil about that. The trouble is when we think that our perspective is absolute- when lose awareness that we’re human and limited. That’s when we are at risk of making God in our own image, instead of letting it be rightfully the other way around.
Luke’s gospel presents a different version of the Beatitudes and in a way there is contemporary version in a song by Bruce Springsteen.  He wrote these lyrics in a song called “The Land of Hope and Dreams”: From the Album Wrecking Ball released in 2001. 
This train carries saints and sinners

This train carries losers and winners

This train carries lost souls

this train dreams will not be thwarted

This train faith will be rewarded

this train carries broken-hearted

thieves and sweet souls departed

This train carries fools and kings

This train, all aboard
And then he concludes:
Meet me in the land of hope and dreams.  
You don't need no ticket

All you got to do is just get on board
I don't know what Springsteen’s belief system is but I find this to be an incredibly spiritual song. It’s a prayer to rally around our common humanity, and maybe the hardest part about that is having to look into the mirror and make peace with the sinner, the loser, the fool, that we see there. And then allow God to bring our broken hearts and our lost souls into God’s embrace.  That’s the surprise ending- saints and sinners, losers and winners, kings and fools- does not mean us and them…it just means us.
And that’s the surprise ending in the kingdom of Heaven too.  My theology professor used to say there isn’t a single one of us who isn’t going to get to heaven and not be offended by who else got in with us.” Inserted from Ann Dieterle’s sermon, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. 
The True Face of Christendom   
By EARL COX
Special to The Record     
With anti-Semitic incidents on the rise in America and Europe, it is imperative that Israel knows who her true friends are. It’s sad and disturbing that anti-Semitism in the West originated with the early church fathers. How could this be? Jews and Christians share a common heritage: both are people of the Book; both our Scriptures confirm the Jews as G-d’s chosen people, whom He loves, and to whom He promised the land of Israel by everlasting covenant to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their descendants.
Sheep or Goats? The Christian Divide
These foundations of the faith should be no-brainers. Yet a deep divide emerged in Christendom beginning with the First Century church fathers. Its two main issues were the authority and interpretation of the Bible, and God’s love and plan for Israel. It’s an anomaly that the cultural/political church has a history of anti-Semitism—especially mainstream denominations such as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists and others.
Cultural, politicized Christianity has spawned “politically correct” positions that conflict with biblical truth. For example, the false doctrine of replacement theology teaches that the church has “replaced” Judaism, that Jews have no future in G-d’s plan, or sovereignty over Israel and Jerusalem; thus all G-d’s promises and blessings have become the church’s exclusive domain. Nothing could be further than the truth. Replacement theologians squirmed in 1948 when the Lord returned the captivity of Zion and Israel was reborn in a day!
Here’s a sampling of how poisonous anti-Semitism infiltrated the early church: Justin Martyr, who called Gentile believers the “new” Israel, wrote: “The Jewish Scriptures are no longer yours, they are now ours.” Irenaeus: “The Jews are now disinherited from the grace of God.” Tertullian: “God has rejected the Jews in favor of the Christians.” Eusebius: “The promises of the Hebrew Scriptures are now for the Christians and not the Jews—but the curses are for the Jews.” The Emperor Constantine exhorted separation from the “despicable” Jews. Jerome stooped to degrading terms, later borrowed by the Nazis and Muslims.  Augustine’s sermon “Against the Jews” deeply impacted Martin Luther, who advocated setting fire to Jewish synagogues and schools, destroying Jewish homes and prayer books, forbidding rabbis to teach, and confiscating Jews’ cash and treasures. Despite his faith, Luther’s writings inspired the horrors of the Holocaust.
Bitter Roots, Poisonous Trees
Over time, some denominations unabashedly began to subordinate the Bible to political views, as liberal mainstream seminaries taught false doctrines such as replacement and liberation theologies. In the latter, Jesus is seen as liberator of the poor and oppressed. In this worldview, Palestinian suicide bombers blow themselves up only because they’ve been oppressed and historically wronged—remove or restrain their Israeli oppressors and they’ll live in peace—despite being brainwashed from cradle to grave to hate and kill Israelis and other “infidels.”  
Last year, the Presbyterian Church USA called for BDS based on Israel’s “human rights abuses” and “militarized violence” against Palestinians, without condemning Palestinian terrorism. For these leaders, BDS is justified due to Israel’s alleged violation of Palestinian human rights. Yet they fail to address the PA or Hamas’s violation of human rights of their own people, or Israel’s legitimate need for self-defense.
In 2016, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on the United State to end aid to Israel and “enable an independent Palestinian state.” It also adopted a resolution calling for divestment from Israel, so as not to “profit from human rights abuses.” ELCA group Isaiah 58 promotes a book recommending Islamic sharia law as the remedy for Israeli “occupation.”  
Evangelical Support for Israel
Though liberal seminaries are seedbeds for anti-Semitism, most evangelical Christians study the Bible free of political interference. After all, Christian support for Israel is Biblical, not political.
Evangelicals are the largest consistently pro-Israel block in the United States. A Pew Research Center poll found that 82 percent of white evangelicals believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people, compared to less than half as many Jewish or Catholic Americans.
The true face of Christendom is the tens of millions of evangelicals who demonstrate their love for Israel with no hidden agendas, believe G-d gave Israel to the Jewish people, respect and obey the Bible as the ultimate written authority, and know that G-d always keeps His promises. How can any true Christian love Christ but not love His family and His land?
A Tiny Travelers Chapel and a few maybes
By CARL WHITE
Life in the Carolinas 
It was on a visit to Conway, S.C., and an afternoon of exploring the history of the area with local friend Larry Biddle that I become aware of the Travelers Chapel on Hwy 501.
I have known Larry for some time, and he always has something new for me to see and learn about when I visit. That’s just one of the reasons I like Larry and his wife, Jenny. They celebrate life every day, and they also place a high value on an awareness of history.
On this trip, I had a business meeting, and afterward, Larry and his friend, Mike, joined us at Eggs Up Grill near Horry-Georgetown Tec and Coastal Carolina University, I’m a fan of both schools. I remembered meeting Mike and his wife a few years earlier in Murrells Inlet. Larry invited Mike to share information about the history of the Travelers Chapel.    
As the story goes Conway chiropractor Dr. Gaylord Kelly was traveling in Washington state in 1972. It was on that trip that he come across a small chapel and he thought it would be an excellent thing to have the same thing back home for travels and locals alike.
Dr. Kelly returned to Conway with a postcard about the tiny church, and he visited with Rev. Emory Young, and he too liked the idea of building a little travelers Chapel. Before long the idea was shared with others in the community, and it would eventually become a community effort to build what is believed to be the first tiny Travelers Chapel in the Carolinas. Today it is reported to be the second smallest in the nation.
I was fascinated with Mikes telling of the story. However, it was when I had the opportunity to read some of the notes and letters from travelers that I realized just how special the stop on 501 had become for so many people. After eating we followed Mike to the Travelers Chapel to see for ourselves. I was surprised that I had not noticed it before. I am sure I had driven by it many times over the years. I suppose we see things when we are supposed to. It is very well maintained and I would guess about 150 square feet.
The Chapel is always open and free for all. The Chapel and grounds are taken care of by a dedicated group of volunteers who care deeply about the cause. There have been many weddings and even a funeral in the space that can seat up to 12, but for the most part, travelers seem to stop for a time of quiet reflection and meditation.
Many people take the time to write a letter to God. I must admit that I felt a bit odd reading letters that I knew were not addressed to me. However, it was not long before I begin to connect with some of the words emotionally.
Some notes expressed gratefulness, some were to benefit others, some were funny, and some were tearful. Maybe that’s a bit of what it’s all about. Connecting and relating to each other. Maybe that’s what happened to Dr. Kelly when he visited Washington state in 1972, perhaps the words and the purpose of the place got to him, and he just had to tell others about it. Maybe that’s what inspired Rev. Young and the community to come together, and maybe that’s what has inspired the volunteers over the past 45 years.  
Just maybe that’s what happened, and if so I think I understand.  
Thanks Larry for introducing me to yet another great adventure! 
Carl White is the executive producer and host of the award-winning syndicated TV show Carl White’s Life In the Carolinas. The weekly show is now in its eighth year of syndication and can be seen in the Charlotte viewing market on WJZY Fox 46 Saturday’s at 12:00 noon. For more on the show, visit www.lifeinthecarolinas.com, You can email Carl White at [email protected].    
Copyright 2017 Carl White
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Weekend Roundup: A New 'Nationalist International' Challenges The Old Globalization
No sooner did “the party of Davos” ― as top White House aide Stephen Bannon calls the global elite ― end its annual conclave in the Swiss Alps late last week than the “Nationalist International” was born down in the Rhine Valley city of Koblenz, Germany. All the main populist movements from across Europe gathered together there to celebrate the Brexit and Trump victories as a premonition of their own expected success in elections over the coming year. They called on their fellow Europeans to “wake up” like the Americans and British and take back control of their national destinies. 
What animates these movements for national sovereignty, and paradoxically ties them together across borders, is a double antipathy. Their revolt is against both the faceless forces of global integration represented by trade agreements or Brussels “Eurocrats” and the face-to-face presence of immigrants whom they see as despoiling their own national identities.
Scott Malcomson insightfully points out that these movements in Europe see their cultural nationalism not as intolerance of others, but as a defense of diversity in the form of their unique, familiar and cherished way of life they now see as under assault. In their conflated anxieties over Muslim immigrants and terrorism, which they share with President Donald Trump and his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, populists are demonstrating what political scientist Samuel Huntington said after the 9/11 attack by Osama bin Laden about that terrorist leader: “Just as he seeks to rally Muslims by declaring war on the West, he has given back to the West its sense of common identity in defending itself.” 
More so than in the U.S., the European nationalist’s idea of belonging bears some very worrying baggage. As novelist Elif Shafak says in an interview with The WorldPost, “I am far more concerned about the rise of populism across Europe than the rise of populism in the U.S. Here in the old continent, there is almost a visceral fear of diversity and ‘the other.’” She goes on to say that, “we need to bear in mind that this history is still alive in a fractured, fragmented and uneven continent where we do not always encounter the checks and balances that exist in the U.S. Constitution.” Mimicking the cry of the Koblenz meeting, Shafak concludes, “So, yes, it is a ‘wake up’ call. But not for the tribalists. It is a wake-up call for democrats and liberals and cosmopolitans, for anyone and everyone who holds democracy and pluralism dear. It is a wake-up call for us.”
As Nick Visser reports, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing back against the nationalist upsurge. Speaking to church leaders in Germany on Monday, she declared, “We won’t get anywhere by trying to solve problems with polarization and populism. We’ve got to show that we’re committed to the basic principles of our nation.”
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says he thinks it is Germany’s insistence on Europe-wide austerity policies that are at the root of the problem. To defeat the nationalist resurgence he proposes a “New Deal” for Europe that is an alternative to those policies which he sees as a, “gift to today’s coalition of European right-wing parties called the ‘Nationalist International.’” He continues: “Europe can survive neither as a free-for-all nor as an Austerity Union in which some countries … are condemned to permanent depression.” 
President Trump this week also took the first steps toward fulfilling his campaign promise of building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and proposed cuts in federal funding for “sanctuary cities” across the U.S.
On Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto insisted once again that Mexico would not pay for a border wall ― which he said undermined the “respect” of his “sovereign nation”― and cancelled his upcoming trip to Washington. The two have since spoken by phone. 
Former Mexican president and chair of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council, Ernesto Zedillo, goes further. He said to me this week that Trump’s proposals toward his country have “defied legal and economic rationality” from the start and that now, “the time has come to admit that the actions of the new administration have cancelled, at least for the foreseeable future, any agreement stemming from dialogue and negotiation that could satisfy the legitimate interests of both parties.” Labelling the American president’s actions “aggression,” Zedillo joins the rallying cry of his countrymen: “What we reject under any circumstances is any attempt to use a single inch of our territory to build such an abominable structure. It goes without saying that all Mexicans are behind President Peña Nieto when he tells President Trump that we will not pay for his extravagant, offensive and useless project.”
In addition to his directives on Mexico, the American president also delivered on his pledge to limit Muslims entering the U.S., signing a document late Friday whose full details still remain unclear at the time of this article’s publish. Charles Kurzman argues that the the proposed limits are “absurd” and counterproductive. It is the strategy of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, he writes “to take advantage of the West’s hypersensitivity to small scale Islamist attacks.” He continues: “Since 2001, there have been zero fatalities in the U.S. by extremists from the countries on Trump’s list.”
As Trump crosses off executive order after executive order and as Syria talks sideline America yet again, many wonder if the U.S. president will go easy on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders are slated to speak this weekend, but already, Ukrainians are on edge. From Kiev, just days after Trump’s inauguration, Ian Bateson reports that many there fear the special relationship between Putin and Trump could leave Ukraine in the cold. “We have seen the rhetoric. Now we are waiting for performance,” one politician says. 
Back in America, millions of demonstrators took to the streets across the U.S. and elsewhere to protest Trump’s policies even before executive orders had been signed. Turkish journalist Ilgin Yorulmaz, who participated in the Washington march, sees a correspondence with resistance in her home country and other countries across the world. “Women (and men) share the same concerns about gender inequality and sexual harassment,” she writes, “regardless of if they live middle class lives in Manhattan or face discrimination on the subways of Istanbul.” Aykan Erdemir and Merve Tahiroglu score new moves by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to consolidate executive power. “An overly centralized polity, a weak legislature and Erdogan’s authoritarianism have brought Turkey to the brink,” they write. 
Also reflecting on the massive demonstrations, Margaret Levi reviews the experience of how social movements in American history have ultimately shifted the political agenda. These photos document the scope of demonstration that took place last weekend around the world. Hayley Miller reports that despite the Trump administration’s renewed focus on fossil fuels, a new Pew poll says two-thirds of Americans favor a path to a renewable energy future. 
Writing from Hong Kong, Li Jing reports that Chinese officials say they are prepared “to take a leadership role” in defending the Paris climate accord no matter what the new Trump administration decides to do. Following the splash of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s defense of globalization in Davos last week, Minxin Pei sees trouble for him at home as adversaries resist his anti-corruption crackdown and economic reform agenda. “2017 will be a dangerous year for Xi,” he says. In South Africa, in fact, attempts to model government off of China have already created tension among political parties, explain Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden, with one mayor taking a controversial trip to Taiwan, sparking a Trump-esque “one China” policy violation backlash. 
Looking to the far future, Deep Space advocate Mary Lynne Dittmar imagines how a full-fledged effort to settle on Mars can help us in our troubled home planet. “Why Mars?” she asks, “Why not the Moon? Simply put, Mars is the best place to develop a ‘local’ infrastructure enabling us to live on another planet, albeit one millions of miles away. In a very real sense Mars is at the far end of the infrastructure we are preparing to revitalize in this country.” 
Finally, our Singularity series looks at the moral dilemmas posed by new advances in genetic screening that further enable “designer babies” whose characteristics can be selected.
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ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as theAdvisory Council — as well as regular contributors — to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail and Zheng Bijian.
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