Society's Child
Amid the day-to-day distraction of life and politics, it is easy to forget this biggest event of our time. All pale into insignificance besides the story of the loss by Europeans of the only place we had to call home.
Whenever this country does have a debate about immigration it is minuscule. It tends to focus on Calais. The British public sees footage of people sitting in makeshift tents or hurling missiles into the roads to slow the trucks down so they can board them and break into Britain.

Bill C-25 would force businesses to open their diversity policies to shareholders or explain why they don’t.
The Liberals are looking at an amendment to diversity-themed Bill C-25 that would force businesses to open their diversity policies to shareholders or explain why they don't ("comply or explain"). At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, "Companies should have a formal policy on gender diversity and make the recruitment of women candidates a priority."
Earnest leftie that he is, Trudeau attributes women's imbalance on business boards - at present they are at 14 per cent, up from 11 per cent in 2015 - to bias alone, therefore a problem requiring state intervention to redress.
Trudeau should watch the now infamous interview (more than six million views at last count, three of them mine) between Jordan Peterson and BBC's Channel 4 reporter Cathy Newman, another earnest leftie, who can't get her head around the notion that bias isn't tenable as a unitary explanation for gender disparity at corporate summits.
The interview with Peterson is less than 6 minutes long, yet even in that short period of time, the Vice reporter manages to expose his own ignorance while Peterson conveys the depth of his thinking on the issues of the #metoo movement, sexual harassment in the workplace and 'political correctness' in general.
The Vice reporter gets straight to the point when he suggests that political correctness in universities is confined to university campuses and that it is not "veering towards apocalypse". Peterson points out that "it's spreading into corporations throughout the US via HR departments". Which is true. The reporter counters with "yes, but in what ways that are not 'hey, how about you not grab the ass of your coworker..."

Israeli security stands around the wreckage of an F-16 that crashed in northern Israel on Saturday. The Israeli military shot down an Iranian drone it said infiltrated the country before launching attacks on at least a dozen Iranian and Syrian targets inside Syria.
The shooting down by Syria of an Israeli F-16 shortly after Israel carried out an air strike on Syrian territory has provoked world headlines, as well as a mixture of consternation and threats from Israel.
There is much about this incident which is unclear, but the central fact about it is that an Israeli F-16 has been shot down by the Syrian military, and that its wreckage fell on Israeli territory.
The Israeli claim is that this happened after an Israeli air strike on an Iranian drone trailer near Palmyra, which the Israelis say they carried out in response to an intrusion of an Iranian drone from Syria into their airspace.
Comment: How will Israel react when it finally realizes it can't bully its neigbors any more? Even if Netanyahu runs to the US begging for the latest war toys, the US is so far behind Russia (and possibly Iran) technically that anything the US can offer up will be useless. Then what?
Syria Shoots Down Israeli Jet - It's About Time
Carole Dabak spent 40 years living in San Jose and now she's part of the mass exodus that is showing no signs of slowing down.
The retired engineer's packing up and calling it quits about to move to the state of Tennessee.
"I loved it here when I first got here. I really loved it here. But it's just not the same," Dabak said.
Of course people come and go from the Bay Area all the time, but for the first time in a long time, more people are leaving the Bay Area than are coming in. And the number one place in the country for out-migration is now, right here.
Comment: Besides the high cost of housing and the politics, it's also sitting on newly discovered fault lines which don't bode well for the area.
This attack strategy is directly descended from the paranoia of the cold war era, when civil rights supporters, socialists, and opponents of war were maligned as Russian agents. It's been normalized through incessant media propaganda, where images of Russian spies and trolls have been drilled into the national psyche. Its effect is that anyone with an online following who criticizes the Democratic Party establishment, promotes independent journalism, or speaks out against the Russia and Syria war campaigns will almost certainly be accused of being a Kremlin troll. "In its capacity to exclude dissent," writes Jackson Lears about the new McCarthyism, "it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s."

Kurdish Peshmerga forces detain Islamic State militants southwest of Kirkuk, Iraq.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a lengthy report on Friday, suggesting that Kurdish security forces, or Asayish, had executed dozens of alleged Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) members. Belkis Wille, the group's researcher in Iraq, told RT the investigation into alleged mass killings was launched after footage of purported mass execution sites began emerging on social media.
The report, which cites a former Kurdish security force member and a number of local eyewitnesses, says the Asayish last year executed dozens of Islamic State fighters in their detention and disposed of their bodies in a mass grave northwest of Mosul.
"Summarily executing of detainees is a very serious violation of the laws of war. In fact, it amounts to a war crime," Wille told RT. "As we understand, the orders to execute these men came from senior members of the Asayish security forces."
Comment: Radicals and recognized militias, involved in such complicated arenas as those of Iraq and Syria, have not unilaterally signed onto any one specific and encompassing creed spelling out the 'laws of war'. The gross inhumanity of one man to another, in the context of current warfronts, sadly happens every day.
Please note: "Soros-financed Human Rights Watch has played a major role in falsely portraying ISIS and Al Qaeda civilian bombings and other atrocities as the work of the Assad regime, building support for military action from the US and EU." ~ William Engdahl

Jordan Peterson giving a lecture at the University of Toronto last year. Peterson is the author of bestselling self-help book 12 Rules for Life.
It's the dream of many writers - to make it onto the New York Times bestsellers list. There's prestige attached. And increased book sales.
But for the University of Toronto's controversy-courting professor Jordan Peterson, it just might be the impossible dream.
Since it was published on Jan. 23, Peterson's 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has soared to the top of the charts. This week it tops the Star's non-fiction list and other lists across Canada.
Readers in the United States seem to like him, too. It's the No. 4 best-selling book in the U.S. overall, according to Publishers Weekly. It's No. 1 on Amazon. It's No. 2 on the Washington Post's non-fiction list. It's No. 4 on USA Today's overall list.
But it didn't seem to cast even a shadow on the New York Times' prestigious list. Why would that be?
Comment: Though the author of this article asks some good questions, she may also be a bit too forgiving. The US is right now in the middle of a raging culture war; a war of ideas, perceptions and lies versus truths. Mr. Peterson has drawn a line in the sand and stood up articulately and unequivocally for the side of truth as few have in recent years - and for that, it can be safely assumed, some would like to see his point of view and rationale utterly squelched, twisted and undermined:
- Jordan Peterson's Vice News Interview: Another Cathy Newman Moment
- Why Communists Can't Stand Jordan Peterson
- Jordan Peterson in the Netherlands: Immigrants, Culture and Identity Politics
- Jordan Peterson is helping disillusioned boys become men - Here's why liberals hate that
- Jordan Peterson: An antidote against the pitfalls of postmodernism?
- Why the American left fears and hates Dr. Jordan Peterson
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the US plans to boost its military presence in the East Pacific with rotating deployment of Marine Expeditionary Units, or MEUs. An MEU is a group of about 2,200 Marines who operate from amphibious assault ships and have their own aircraft, tanks, heavy weapons, and other resources. A typical deployment lasts for seven months and may involve missions on the shore like patrols or military-to-military training.
The report, citing military officials, does not say how many MEUs will be sent to the region. The US already has about 50,000 service members in Japan, almost 30,000 in South Korea, and 7,000 more in Guam.
In a related move, the Pentagon will expand the number of Marines deployed in Darwin, Australia. At the moment, 1,250 troops are stationed there in rotating training assignments lasting six months each year. The WSJ said it was not yet clear how large the number of additional troops in Australia will be.
The deployments will be made at the expense of the US military presence in the Middle East, and are in line with the new National Defense Strategy published earlier by the Trump administration, which sets countering Russia and China as a priority for the military. According to the report, the MEUs in East Asia will help the US "persuade Pacific nations to stand with the US."

A Palestinian demonstrator reacts during clashes with Israeli troops, near the border with Israel in the southern Gaza Strip February 9, 2018
Massive clashes have once again erupted across the occupied West Bank and Gaza following Friday prayers. Israeli security forces moved in to put down the unrest using volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and in many cases live ammunition - while the Palestinians hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli soldiers. At least 57 people were injured in the clashes, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.










Comment: It's true many are economic migrants, however the West's illegal wars in the Middle East and irrational immigration and failed 'multicultural' policies have amplified the problem to catastrophic levels, and a backlash is bubbling:
- Where European populism is going in 2018
- Cycles of History: 2018 brings echoes of Europe's nationalist rebellions of 1848
- An Eccentric Tradition: The Paradox of 'Western Values'
- While Western countries freak out at prospect of integrating tiny Muslim minorities, Islam thrives in Putin's Russia
- Why Russia grants temporary status to refugees
- Russia: The last keeper of European culture, Christian values and truly European civilisation
Also check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Weapons of Mass Migration: Interview with Michael Springmann on Europe's Migrant Crisis