Society's Child
Klaus-Juergen Schmid, a judge in the Bavarian town of Miesbach, has ordered a crucifix to be removed from the courtroom during the trial of a 21-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker accused of making death threats to another Afghan who converted to Christianity.
Initially reported last week, the story received wider coverage later with people on social media weighing in. Shortly after the case was made public, Schmid began receiving "angry emails" accusing him of removing a symbol of Germany's "cultural and religious sovereignty."
"The blood shed by the hands of the defendant will be partly due to you," the judge quoted one of the comments as saying. This is despite the judge's claim that he imposed the maximum penalty on the defendant.
In a new Harvard-Harris poll, nearly 80 percent of Americans said they believe "immigration priority for those coming to the U.S. should be based on a person's ability to contribute to America as measured by their education and skills-and not based on a person having relatives in the U.S."
Currently, the legal immigration system to the U.S. prioritizes foreign nationals who have foreign relatives already living in the country. This process is commonly referred to as "chain migration." As Breitbart News reported, chain migration has imported more than nine million foreign nationals to the U.S. since 2005 and is on-track to bring at least eight million new foreign voters to the U.S. in the next two decades.
Since its inception, there have been numerous reasons to laugh at 'Russia Insider' (henceforth RI). There's the way it brazenly steals content from professional news outlets and repackages it, with a twist. Not to mention the pseudo-messianic zeal of its founders, displayed in its initial fundraising videos. But it's definitely not funny anymore.
In the beginning, RI seemed semi-promising, and many gave it the benefit of the doubt. Because, given the Putin-derangement virus which has infected western media, there are very few outlets these days for journalists and commentators willing to be balanced in their coverage of Russia. Indeed, those perceived as "Russia versteher" (even if that usually means simply realistic and honest in their coverage) are more-or-less blacklisted in the mainstream press. Something I have first-hand experience of.
Jeff Sessions has pretty much surrendered the DOJ to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein thanked Sessions for the exchange of power by appointing Special Counsel Robert Mueller to carry out a coup d'etat.
AG Sessions has the ability to unrecuse himself and end this Mueller witch hunt once and for all but he continues to sit on the sidelines as Americans watch Mueller take scalps.
Compounding the epidemic of opioid usage in the United States, which President Trump has declared a national public health emergency, a year-long probe by a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs investigations subcommittee discovered a gap in the mail service that allows Americans to purchase the drug easily over the internet.
Shipments of opioid fentanyl, which caused more than 20,000 deaths in the US in 2016 due to overdoses, are sent from laboratories in China to individuals who "consume them or to middlemen who dilute them for resale," Reuters reports.
The probe did not mention the names of the suspected labs.
The Arabic-language al-Watan daily quoted General Director of the Syrian Forensic Medicine Zaher Hajo as reporting that based on intelligence 10,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves in Raqqa. He further told al-Watan that 4,000 bodies were buried in one single grave, adding that the discovered graves are located in the regions that are under the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Thursday that the humanitarian situation in Syria's Raqqa was close to a disaster, though everyone was putting the best face on matters.
"The humanitarian situation in Raqqa is awful, but everyone is playing it cool. Our American colleagues leveled the city to the ground as they were fighting ISIL there, and currently the whole city is rigged with explosives, full of corpses of killed people, lacking water, electricity and any medical facilities. Nothing is going on, the city is not being restored, people cannot come back, living in awful unbelievable conditions in refugee camps," the diplomat stressed.
But, according to a recent study by David Ley, Justin Lehmiller and the writer Dan Savage, acting on cuckolding fantasies can be a largely positive experience for many couples, and hardly a sign of weakness.
References to cuckolding appear in literature as early as the 13th century, usually in the form of male characters who fear that their child has been sired by another man during an act of infidelity. Today, however, cuckolding has become fetishized into a powerful sexual fantasy for some men, who get aroused by the idea of their romantic partner engaging in sexual activity with someone else. Women also share this fantasy, but less so than men.
"The Church has supported and will support any positive changes in legislation aimed at maintaining maternity and childhood and, especially, to overcome such a terrible phenomenon as orphanage with living parents," the Patriarch said during an appearance at the Russia Federal Council on Thursday.
According to the Patriarch, it was also "important" to back the calls from families with three or more underage children for "the adoption of a law regulating their status."
Comment: This is a pretty interesting proposition and shows the Patriarch understands the fundamental motivations of feminism toward breaking up the family better than even many of its Western adherents. More than that, he understands the important role families have in the health of a society.
But for NeverTrump conservatives, the list presents a challenge. Many support the actions, like cutting taxes and reducing regulation, on Trump's list. Yet some have also staked their credibility and prestige on declaring Trump's election an unmitigated, historic disaster that will lead to an autocratic, dystopian future. Many want to force Trump out of office, either by impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or, at latest, defeat in 2020.
So how to deal with the current good news?
Comment: Getting rid of Trump will not fix or solve any real problems, but these NeverTrumpers are too blinded by liberal ideological talking points and trivialities to see that they're just pawns in a much bigger game.
The 2018 Italian general election is due to take place on March 4, after the country's Parliament was dissolved by President Sergio Mattarella in late December. The leader of Italy's traditional far-right 'Lega Nord' party hopes that his 'Italians first' slogan will sway enough voters to land him in office. Salvini is betting on Italians' anti-migrant sentiments to bring him to power as part of a center-right alliance led by Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy!).
"In Italy, there are too many illegal immigrants who go around making a mess, I cannot take it anymore," Salvini told the host of Dimartedì political talk show that aired on La7 news channel. "There are those who use the aircraft to bring immigrants to Italy. I would use them to bring them back home."















Comment: In a monogamous, loving relationship, what man would want the woman he loves to be with a different man? And what woman would be on board with doing that? It's only in a disturbed society that this kind of sexual fetishization is normalized and seen as beneficial.