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Jordan Peterson: No evidence Islam would be compatible with democracy


Sputnik
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 18:35 UTC
jordan peterson
© jordan.b.peterson/instagram
Peterson rose to fame in 2016 as a critic of identity politics, particularly a Canadian bill that would require citizens to address trans-people with pronouns that reflected the gender they identified with. Over the years, he's emerged as a popular public speaker covering a variety of topics, from climate change to religion.

Canadian clinical psychologist and public thinker Jordan Peterson has cast doubt on Islam's compatibility with democratic society.

"It is not clear to me that Islam would be compatible with democracy," he said in an interview with Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet. "We have no evidence that it would be."

He said he'd failed to observe a "positive example of a successful, independent Muslim democracy", also invoking Muslim countries' generally weak record on freedom and corruption in international rankings.

"So there is a fundamental problem that is unfortunately not allowed to be discussed," Jordan Peterson was quoted as saying.
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Megaphone

Photos of Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison Leaked by Fellow Inmate

Cassandra Fairbanks
The Gateway Pundit
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:52 UTC
assange belmarch prison
© Ruptly and @JULIANA42636234
Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison
The Gateway Pundit has obtained exclusive testimony, as well as photos, from a fellow inmate of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside London's highest security prison.

The inmate, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent multiple photos of Assange from inside Belmarsh maximum security prison and spoke to The Gateway Pundit about the WikiLeaks founder's situation using a contraband phone he has inside.

Assange is imprisoned in the United Kingdom and faces eighteen charges under the Espionage Act in the United States for his publication of the Iraq and Afghan War Logs. If extradited and convicted, he could be face a maximum sentence of 175 years for the "crime" of publishing material that the US government did not want the population to know.

Comment: How to write to Mr. Assange at HMP Belmarsh: Write To Julian

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Bulb

'No way!': Russia's Health Ministry vocally decries calls to ban abortions


RT
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:59 UTC
abortion rally
© AFP / Alexey Sazonov
Outlawing abortions won't increase the population, but will cause a spike in maternal deaths, Russia's deputy health minister has warned. The Orthodox Church has recently been pushing for a ban.

"We won't solve the problem with restrictive measures, but only make it worse," Deputy Health Minister Tatyana Yakovleva said, adding that she was a pediatrician herself and knew the issue from the inside.

Making abortions illegal "will only lead to increased maternal and infant mortality as well as criminalization of the situation. No way!" she warned the guests of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
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Evil Rays

US trade row not cramping Huawei's progress: Launching pilot 5G project with major Russian telecom company


RT
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:36 UTC
chinese students 5G huawei
© Reuters / Jason Lee
Blacklisted in the US and a number of Western countries, Chinese tech giant Huawei has announced an agreement with one of Russia's leading internet and mobile providers to develop 5G networks in Russia.

Huawei will assist Russian telecom company MTS in "the pilot launch of fifth-generation networks in 2019 and 2020," MTS said in a statement. The parties signed an agreement at the Kremlin on Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, also attended the ceremony, as the latter is in Russia on an official three-day visit.

Huawei's deputy chairman, Guo Ping, said the company was "very happy" to seal a deal "in such a strategically important area like 5G."

Comment: Government ideology is cutting many US businesses off from lucrative business relationships with China. They will rue it in the long run.

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Arrow Down

American rabbi says Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay pride parade


RT
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:25 UTC
katrina hurricane
© Reuters / Reuters Photographer
A man and a woman walk through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi
Arriving 14 years too late for the Hurricane Katrina conspiracy theories, an American rabbi has claimed that the devastating storm was divine punishment for a gay pride parade, and was "a foretaste of God's anger."

As the LGBT community (and corporations keen for the diversity dollar) deck themselves up in rainbows for Pride Month celebrations, one New Jersey rabbi is fighting back against the "homosexualization of society," calling on Jews in the religious community of Lakewood, New Jersey, to boycott an upcoming gay pride celebration hosted by the Lakewood BlueClaws, a Minor League Baseball team.

"This is something that affects the entire country and the entire society," the rabbi ranted, in a YouTube video published Monday that, among other things, lamented "the pushing of foreign values down our throats." The religious leader went on to slam the local library and various community groups for "corrupting" Jewish youth with LGBT pride events.

In a flyer distributed around Lakewood at the same time, the rabbi issued a "dire warning."
Hurricane Katrina which occurred in 2005 on Southern Decadence Day when a gay pride parade was supposed to be held but was stopped when the dams burst. Homosexual conduct is the worst form of sinful behavior.
The hurricane, which killed more than 1,800 people and dealt catastrophic damage to New Orleans and the surrounding areas, was "a foretaste of God's anger," ahead of "its final outpouring on the day of judgment."

Comment: It's hard to tell which is more American: gay pride parades, or religious leaders of Rabbi Levin's calibre. Whatever the case may be, the rabbi can probably rest assured that his YouTube channel will remain safe, because 'intersectionality'.

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Handcuffs

Arrests at US southern border skyrocketing: 144,000 apprehensions in May

Claire Hansen
US News & World Report
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:16 UTC
border patrol california
© Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
U.S. Border Patrol agents patrol the border near Tecate, California, Feb. 14, 2017.
The flow of migrants at the southern border surged in May as authorities last month took into custody more than 144,000 migrants, according to numbers released Wednesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The tally is a 32 percent jump from April and includes the highest number of apprehensions in a month on the southern border in 13 years.

More than 55,000 migrant children were among those taken into custody while the number of families and unaccompanied migrant children encountered at the border skyrockets, officials told reporters.

The volume of migrants has taxed immigration facilities beyond their breaking point. CBP is currently housing some 19,000 migrant detainees, more than three times beyond what authorities consider a crisis level, officials said.

"We are in a full-blown emergency. I cannot say this stronger: the system is broken," acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders said.

Comment: Faced with such a situation, is it any wonder that private citizen groups, especially those living in the areas in question, are taking matters into their own hands?

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People 2

Mark Cuban: Workers paid by the hour are 'always going to fall behind,' making wealth inequality worse

Catherine Clifford
CNBC
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:22 UTC
Mark Cuban
© Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mark Cuban, chairman and chief executive officer of Axs TV
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban has proposed a solution for income inequality that doesn't involve dismantling capitalism: Business owners should give all their employees equity.

"The biggest issue for entrepreneurs, for capitalists, for those of us who are successful is, if someone is only going to be paid by the hour...they're always going to fall behind," Cuban told Recode Decode with Kara Swisher at the 2019 SALT Conference in Las Vegas. "And income distribution is ... [the] disparity is going to get wider and wider."

So, said Cuban, "We as entrepreneurs have got to make a point to give stock to everybody that works for us. Period. End of story. No exceptions, because that's the only way people are going to get any type of equity appreciation."
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Star of David

How Israeli police manipulated evidence to hide the targeting of Ayman Odeh

Jonathan Ofir
Mondoweiss
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:09 UTC
Ayman Odeh
© Keren Manor/AFP/Getty Images
Head of the Joint List Ayman Odeh, injured by Israeli border police during a demonstration against the demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, outside of Beersheva, Israel, January 18, 2017.
This week, the UK-based Forensic Architecture released an astonishing 30-minute documentary of the ethnic-cleansing operation by Israeli security forces at Umm al-Hiran, a Bedouin village in the southern Naqab (Negev), as part of the preparation for an exclusively Jewish town to be built upon its ruins - Hiran.

The bloody events of January 18th 2017 included two deaths: resident citizen Yaqub Mousa abu al-Qia'an, who was executed by Israeli police, and police 1st Sgt. Erez Levy, who was run down by Abu al-Qia'an's car, after the latter was shot by police in his knee and chest, causing him to lose control of the vehicle and roll down the hill. Al-Qia'an was left to bleed to death for 20 minutes despite the presence of three intensive care units on location. The police and government framed the event as a "terror attack", although it was clear to the Shin Bet security service within a few hours, that this was a police blunder.

Despite evidence that clearly countered the "terror" narrative, it took a month and a half until Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel issued a qualified apology, "if there really was a failure at Umm al-Hiran", yet no policeman was charged and the investigations were closed.

But there was yet another direct victim at Umm al-Hiran, one with a high profile - Palestinian-Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh.

Odeh was first pepper-sprayed at point-blank range, and shortly after, shot with sponge-tip bullets - one to the forehead, and then when he crouched and turned around in response, one to the back. He fell shortly after.
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Arrow Down

Goodbye middle class: The percentage of wealth owned by the top 10% just got even BIGGER

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 17:15 UTC
dollar
The middle class in America is being systematically eviscerated, and it is getting worse with each passing year. As you will see below, one new study has found that 10 percent of Americans now own 70 percent of all the wealth. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but pretty soon we are just going to have the ultra-wealthy and everyone else. Our system has been designed to funnel as much wealth as possible to the very top of the financial pyramid, and that means that most of the rest of us are deeply struggling. And when you are just barely getting by from month to month, all it takes is one bad break to knock you completely out of the middle class and into poverty.

I have been chronicling the demise of the middle class for many years, but I didn't know that the numbers had gotten this bad. According to a study that was recently conducted by the Federal Reserve, the percentage of wealth controlled by the top 10 percent of U.S. households has shot up from 60 percent in 1989 to 70 percent today...
Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk says that the distribution of household wealth in America has become even more disproportionate over the past decade, with the richest 10% of U.S. households representing 70% of all U.S. wealth in 2018, compared with 60% in 1989, according to a recent study by researchers at the Federal Reserve.

The study finds that the share of wealth among the richest 1% increased to 32% from 23% over the same period.
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Magic Wand

Oakland becomes second city in US to legalize psilocybin a/k/a "magic mushrooms"

Caitlin O'Kane
CBS News
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
magic mushrooms
Oakland decriminalized "magic mushrooms" on Tuesday, becoming the second city in the U.S. to do so. The Oakland City Council voted unanimously to decriminalize adult use and possession of "magic mushrooms" and other psychoactive plants and fungi, The Associated Press reported.

The vote makes the investigation and arrest of adults who grow, possess and use the substances as one of the lowest priorities for police.

Last month, Denver voters approved the legalization of psychedelic mushrooms in the city. It was an unprecedented move in the U.S., which came to fruition after the Denver Psilocybin Mushroom Decriminalization Initiative gathered enough signatures for the question to be added to the election ballot. A similar organization, Decriminalize Nature Oakland, campaigned for the measure to be passed in their city.

A string of people testified in Oakland on Tuesday, sharing how the psychedelics helped them overcome depression, PTSD and even drug addiction, the AP reported. One man said the use of plants saved his life. "I don't how to describe it other than miraculous," said the Oakland resident, who described himself as a heroine addict.

Comment: See also:

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