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Black Magic

Best of the Web: Hystericizing Westerners against Muslims: 'Mass sex assaults by refugees' in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve... never happened


RT
Wed, 15 Feb 2017 11:42 UTC
polish magazine rapefugees
Fake news: An example of the 'reporting' done by media outlets across Europe in the wake of 'mass rapefugee-gate' in Germany on New Year's Eve 2015.
Reports of mass sexual assaults on women in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve allegedly committed by dozens of drunken refugees, and which initially appeared in Germany's Bild newspaper, were made up and are "completely baseless," police said.

The story about mass sexual assaults by refugees in the Fressgass Street area in downtown Frankfurt was reported by Bild earlier in February. The article has since been taken down.

One of the victims, Irina A., 27, told Bild: "They [the migrants] grabbed me under the skirt, between my legs, my breasts, everywhere....More and more of these guys came. Their hands were everywhere," the Express said, quoting the original report.

Her words were supported by Jan Mai, a local pub owner, who said that a mob of Arabs was "highly aggressive, there was shouting and hand gestures."

"When I came in, the whole place was full with a group of around 50 Arabs. They did not speak German, drank our guests' drinks and danced towards them. The women asked me for help because they were being attacked. The mood changed completely," he told Bild, as cited by the Express.

It was claimed the migrants came from a refugee center in Hesse state, where Frankfurt is located, the Local said, citing the original report.

Comment: That first round of 'mass rape-fugee' in 2015 was likely also fake news:

Fact Check: Daily Express Publishes Fake Cologne Assault Video

Cologne sex assaults: Muslim rape myths fit a neo-Nazi agenda

The Truth About The New Years Eve Refugee Attacks On Women In Germany

Fake photos flood Internet after sexual assaults in Germany

Yes, assaults took place... and they've been taking place on an increasing basis in cities across the West for years. These assaults are being carried out NOT primarily by newly-arrived immigrants, but by nationals and longer-term residents of European countries (ie, by people already living in Europe's ghettos before the waves of arrivals after NATO destroyed Libya and Syria) - a fact that has everything to do with the West's internal economic, political and moral collapse, and little to do with 'outsiders coming for our wimmins'.

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Take 2

Best of the Web: Ukraine on Fire: The Oliver Stone documentary the US Empire doesn't want you to see

James DiEugenio
Consortium News
Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:37 UTC
ukraine on fire
Ukraine on Fire, a new documentary about the Ukraine crisis, might change how people in the West perceive the conflict, but it's unlikely to get much distribution since it contests the prevailing narrative, writes James DiEugenio.

It is not very often that a documentary film can set a new paradigm about a recent event, let alone, one that is still in progress. But the new film Ukraine on Fire has the potential to do so - assuming that many people get to see it.

Usually, documentaries — even good ones — repackage familiar information in a different aesthetic form. If that form is skillfully done, then the information can move us in a different way than just reading about it.

A good example of this would be Peter Davis's powerful documentary about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. By 1974, most Americans understood just how bad the Vietnam War was, but through the combination of sounds and images, which could only have been done through film, that documentary created a sensation, which removed the last obstacles to America leaving Indochina.

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Books

Best of the Web: Could Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam solve the Libyan crisis? Yes, he can

Hanne Nabintu Herland
Foreign Policy Journal
Fri, 10 Feb 2017 20:37 UTC
Saif al-Islam
US President Donald Trump has a unique chance to fix the mess in Libya by backing Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam as head of state.

Libya remains a dysfunctional state largely due to failed American policy. The 2011 Obama/Clinton support to Al Qaida affiliated groups in order to oust Muammar Gaddafi heavily backfired, with ISIS now profiting from the massive wave of immigration, which also destabilizes Europe.

President Trump has a unique chance to fix this terrible mess by backing the appointment of the leader of the Libyan national reconciliation, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, as head of state, the only man able to reunite the tribal nightmare in Libya, and to form a proper democracy, exterminate ISIS, and solve the immigrant crisis.

Millions marched in Libya July 1st, 2011 in support of the government of Muammar Gaddafi, and pleaded for NATO to stop the destruction of the country. At that time, the massive support for Gaddafi was not reported in the mainstream media, yet it was well known that Gaddafi had many supporters. Libya was Africa's richest country, a socialist, welfare state with lavish benefits, free education, and good living standards. Since 2003, Libya had opened up towards the West in a liberalization process largely led by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who was instrumental in resolving the Lockerbie-bombing issue and paying damages to the victim's families, deescalated the military, removing its nuclear arms and privatized the economy.

It was Saif al-Islam who freed the Bulgarian nurses in Benghazi, led the large scale Benghazi housing projects, created the Charity Gaddafi Association which helped poor countries in Africa, as well as worked diligently to democratize Libya. He called for a free press and hoped to issue a Constitution of the state. It was also Saif al-Islam who led the Reconciliation Project in 2006 between the government and the opposition, and the peaceful release of political prisoners, like Abdelhakim Belhadj and Khaled Sharef, most of whom joined the rebels and are controlling Tripoli now.

Comment: Herland is 100% correct. The Tribes fully support Saif al-Islam. And they're willing to work with Trump to eradicate radical Islam in their country. The ball is in Trump's court. Will he take the opportunity?

See also:

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Eagle

Best of the Web: Iran hawks have taken the White House: Flynn's anti-Iran, anti-Islam worldview is pure NeoCon

Philip Giraldi
The American Conservative
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
Michael Flynn
© Department of DefenseMichael Flynn.
The United States is adding new sanctions on Iran over that country's alleged misdeeds, and nearly all of those allegations are either out-and-out lies or half-truths. It has a familiar ring to it, as demonizing Tehran has been rather more the norm than not since 1979, a phenomenon that has included fabricated claims that the Iranians killed American soldiers after the U.S.'s armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This time around, the administration focused on the perfectly legal Iranian test of a non-nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile and the reported attack on what was initially claimed to be a U.S. warship by allegedly Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi fighters. The ship was later revealed to be a Saudi frigate.

Donald Trump's national-security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, "officially" put Iran "on notice" while declaring that "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Iran's provocations that threaten our interests. The days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over."

Ignoring the fact that Iran cannot actually threaten the United States or any genuine vital national interests, the warning and follow-up action from the White House also contradict Donald Trump's campaign pledge to avoid yet another war in the Middle East, which appears to have escaped Flynn's notice. The increase in tension and the lack of any diplomatic dialogue mean that an actual shooting war might now be a "false flag," false intelligence report, or accidental naval encounter away.

Comment: "Hopefully some adults in the White House..."

It's a thought millions if not billions of people around the world - including most Americans - have had for some time now.

The American people hoped that that adult might be Trump. But the 'business restructuring' he'd need to do is likely beyond the scope of even his considerable ego. We shall see...

‌Iran's proven oil reserves of 157 billion barrels are the world's third largest, while its gas reserves are the largest. Taken together, the country owns the biggest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. Now you see why the US wants it (or at least controlling influence over how those resources are used). Same goes for Israel, which has no problems at all with having an actual Islamic neighbor that is "the source and lynchpin of the massive disorder prevailing in the Middle East, with tentacles reaching throughout the region and beyond" via its promotion of radical Wahhabi Islam and head-chopper terrorists... Saudi Arabia.

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USA

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: Will Trump embody the Bannon doctrine?

Pepe Escobar
Sputnik News
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 18:39 UTC
Steve Bannon
© AP Photo/Evan VucciBannon's demotion coincided with Trump's total abandonment of his principles.
Amidst the deep recesses of Trumpology - the new discipline crammed with "experts" trying to decode the new American presidency - it has become fashionable to deride Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon as a Jurassic Park-style sociopathic swamp creature, a "quasi-fascist" comparable to Islamofascists.

(Even though Bannon only metaphorically qualifies as a head-chopper.)

Dismissing Bannon as a sort of 21st century remixed Machiavelli/Richelieu in cargo pants and dodgy ties amounts to a juvenile cheap shot. Kelyanne Conway may be a "knife fighter with words"; Jared Kushner may have taken the D-train from Manhattan real estate deals to shadow Secretary of State sitting in the situation room. But the man to study in excruciating detail has got to be Bannon, who eats history and political theory essays for breakfast. Dismiss him at one's own peril.

The post-truth Machiavelli behind the most powerful of Princes sees our current geopolitical juncture as the ultimate battle between Good and Evil (no, Nietzsche's verdict, for him, does not apply.) "Good" in our case is Christian civilization and its history of two millennia - with a possible place of honor for the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

In contraposition, "evil" portends a cast of "existential threat" characters - from technocrats/post-modernity elites/ secularists (the enemy within) to Islam (the enemy at large). Even China, due to atheist Confucianism, might be portrayed as "evil".

So the stakes are clear-cut. Nuance is for traitors. And the only path to victory, according to the Bannon doctrine, is a devastating Shock and Awe against the "system". I have previously referred to Bannon's Leninist approach on how to capture and maintain power and destroy the old order. Yet what's coming is more like Lenin meets Apocalypse Now.
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Take 2

Best of the Web: 16 Fake News Stories Mainstream Media Has Run Since Trump's Election

Daniel Payne
The Federalist
Mon, 06 Feb 2017 22:52 UTC
trump
Since at least Donald Trump's election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis. Despite Trump's constant railing against the American press, there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of fake news. There is no better word to describe it than "epidemic," insofar as it fits the epidemiological model from the Centers for Disease Control: this phenomenon occurs when "an agent and susceptible hosts are present in adequate numbers, and the agent can be effectively conveyed from a source to the susceptible hosts."

The "agent" in this case is hysteria over Trump's presidency, and the "susceptible hosts" are a slipshod, reckless, and breathtakingly gullible media class that spread the hysteria around like—well, like a virus.

It is difficult to adequately sum up the breadth of this epidemic, chiefly because it keeps growing: day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel.
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Eye 2

Best of the Web: Hidden in plain sight: Do psychopaths run the world?

Nick Parkins
New Dawn
Sat, 21 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
wolf sheep
© America Out Loud
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.
- John Lennon (1940-1980), English singer and songwriter

Lennon and others externalise the apparent paranoia that wells up inside us. "The world has gone mad!" More often than not we partition this voice off, content to view the world as others prescribe it. But who are these others, and what do they want?

The term psychopath is often criminally misjudged, thanks largely to unhelpful portrayals of sick, twisted and violent psycho-character types in the popular media. This has led, by way of public ignorance, to the common belief that the psychopath has no function, role or place in open society. A swift offload that allows us, the apparent sane majority, to circumvent our worst fears.

Any notion that the psychopath is incapable of functioning in open society is, according to M.E. Thomas1 - a self-confessed sociopath - flawed. The question is not the capacity to function, but rather what capacity or form that function takes. As Thomas says, psychopaths and sociopaths share an intertwined clinical history; both can function, they just do so differently. And though we are left to muse on what mask that function may take, in many social situations they excel.

Comment: It is most interesting that Mr. Parkins skirts around the work of master researcher Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski. His book, Political Ponerology, is the most comprehensive analysis of the destructive effects of psychopathy on the fabric of society.

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Blue Planet

Best of the Web: Anti-Empire Report: Russophobia, Fake News, and Trump

William Blum
WilliamBlum.org
Sat, 04 Feb 2017 23:55 UTC
US imperialism Empire
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland
Since Yalta, we have a long list of times we've tried to engage positively with Russia. We have a relatively short list of successes in that regard. - General James Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense1
If anyone knows where to find this long list please send me a copy.

This delusion is repeated periodically by American military officials. A year ago, following the release of Russia's new national security document, naming as threats both the United States and the expansion of the NATO alliance, a Pentagon spokesman declared: "They have no reason to consider us a threat. We are not looking for conflict with Russia."2

Meanwhile, in early January, the United States embarked upon its biggest military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War - 3,500 American soldiers landed, unloading three shiploads, with 2,500 tanks, trucks and other combat vehicles. The troops were to be deployed in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and across the Baltics. Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe, said, "Three years after the last American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back."

The measures, General Hodges declared, were a "response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. This does not mean that there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is preparing for the possibility." (See previous paragraph.)
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Info

Best of the Web: Russia's rejected draft Syrian constitution wasn't serious proposal, but it still worked as intended

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:16 UTC
astana talks
© REUTERS/ Mukhtar KholdorbekovTerrorists in suits.
The 'draft constitution' Russia presented to the parties at the Astana conference is not a blueprint for Syria's future and the Russians did not intend it in that way. It was a diplomatic play to get the parties talking about other issues than the sterile issue of the future of President Assad, which has prevented progress in all the negotiations up to now. In that it appears to have been successful.

Since shortly after the Syrian peace talks began in the Kazakh capital Astana, rumors have circulated that Russia proposed at the conference a 'draft constitution' for Syria.

Rumors about the contents of this 'draft constitution' have spread widely, with concern widely expressed that Russia might be seeking to impose its ideas on the Syrian people in quasi-colonial fashion, and that Russia is overreaching itself.

There have also been serious concerns that the 'draft constitution' threatens the integrity of the Syrian state by enforcing its federalization and by granting autonomy to the Kurds, and that Syria's traditional system of government with a strong executive President is being threatened, thereby making the country ungovernable and unable to meet external or internal threats.


Comment: And that's what the document, as written, implies, as Andrew Korybko points out in another piece for The Duran:
  • 4-2 giving the Kurds equal use of their language alongside Arabic within their "cultural autonomy";
  • 4-3 suggesting that it can be used in schools, though not stipulating whether or not this is limited to the "cultural autonomy" zone or nationwide;
  • 4-4 creating the pretext for "locally held referendum" to be conducted in potentially expanding this zone and allowing other copy-cat formats;
  • 10-5 says that "performing military or militarized activity outside the domain of state power is prohibited", but the conditional clause is "outside the domain of state power", so if the PYD reaches an agreement with Damascus, then it could potentially be allowed to "police" the "Kurdish cultural autonomy" as "self-defense forces";
  • 15-3 forcing Syrians to accept "decentralization";
  • 15-4 mandating the establishment of the "Kurdish Cultural Autonomy";
  • 24-3 curiously speaking about "federal law";
  • 45-2 allowing undefined "territorial units" to propose legislation, thus hinting that the "Kuridsh Cultural Autonomy" would have this right;
  • 46-2 speaking for the first and only time about a mysterious "Territories Assembly" which appears nowhere else in the text and might be a shell body for facilitating de-facto "federalization" after the Russian-written "draft constitution" is promulgated.

Comment: Maybe it's always 'supposed to have been' Russia in the role of 'world policeman', and the last 150 or so years has been something of an aberration?

An observation regarding the setting for these peace talks: Astana, modern capital of Kazakhstan, is the birthplace of the Eurasian Union, the 'center of Eurasia', and key in China's plans for building great transport links between Europe, the Middle East and eastern Asia.

It's no coincidence that Western expansion came to a halt in Syria, then that mess is being cleaned up by Eastern actors.

Update: Lavrov has essentially proven Mercouris's point:
Confirmation that this is indeed the purpose of the 'draft constitution' and that it has no other purpose has been provided by the most authoritative source possible, which is Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov himself. Here is how TASS describes him explaining the purpose of the 'draft constitution' in a telephone conversation Friday 3rd February 2017 with the French Foreign Minister
The Russian top diplomat provided comments on the Russia-proposed Syrian draft constitution, saying "it is an invitation for a conversation," an attempt to find common ground in approaches of the Syrian government and the opposition with an aim of creating conditions for the Syrians to decide about the future of their country in compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 (bold italics added)
In other words the 'draft constitution' is not a blueprint for Syria's future, or a discussion document, or even a position paper. It is - just as I said - a standard mediator's ploy to get all the Syrian parties "talking about something other than the future of President Assad, whilst highlighting areas for future discussion".

My clear impression is that the Russians are baffled and somewhat embarrassed by the attention the 'draft constitution' has attracted. Now that it has served its purpose of breaking the deadlock I doubt we will hear much more of it when the Astana talks resume, which they are due to do on Monday.


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Blackbox

Best of the Web: What They Won't Tell Us About Quebec Mosque Attack (VIDEO)

Faith Goldy
TheRebel.media
Tue, 31 Jan 2017 23:28 UTC
quebec faith goldy mosque
Six men slaughtered. Killed in cold blood while peacefully praying inside their local mosque. This week's mass murder in Quebec City sent shockwaves, not just across Canada, but the whole world.

Irrespective of political stripe or profession of faith, there is a categorical acceptance of the fact that this attack ought to be investigated, prosecuted, punished, and condemned.

For many, there is a certain satisfaction in knowing the sole suspect, Alexandre Bissonnette, is behind bars, facing eleven charges of first degree, and attempted murder.

But for others, questions remain.


Comment: Updates from TheRebel.media:





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