TBR News April 4, 2018
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 4, 2018:” American officials confirmed on Monday that American President Donald Trump has very strongly indicated that he “fully supported” the projected rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem
The first Temple, built by King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians and the second, by Herod Agrippa, was destroyed by the Romans after the collapse of the revolt of 67 AD.
“The Temple Mount will first have to be cleared off to make way for the new construction,” Jakob Weissberg of the Temple Commission said earlier today, “and the beginning of the new edifice can then commence.”
Plans for the new Temple have already been approved and construction is expected as soon as all the existing buildings on the site of the former Temples have been demolished and the site prepared.
Geological reports on the condition of the underlying stone have long been completed and all that was remaining for work to commence was the right political atmosphere and the moral support of the United States.
President Trump has personally expressed his satisfaction with this culturally and religiously significant project and indicated that he would be “deeply honored” to attend services when the new Temple was completed.
Mr.Trump has long been seen as a strong and active supporter of Israel and a firm friend of Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu.
Weissberg has stated that construction is expected not to exceed seven months.
Table of Contents
- Can Trump Weasel His Way Out of This Giuliani Mess?
- Trump says lawyers have advised him against Mueller talks
- Donald Trump doesn’t take Britain, France or Germany seriously
- What are the odds on Donald Trump coming out as gay?
- Are LA hospitals really dumping homeless patients on the streets?
- British Neo-Nazis Are on the Rise — and They’re Becoming More Organized and Violent
- When a Neocon Cries ‘Racism’
- House chaplain nearly ousted by Paul Ryan rescinds resignation
- The Social Network Follies
Can Trump Weasel His Way Out of This Giuliani Mess?
The former mayor’s comments raised a number of questions about possible campaign finance law violations
May 3, 2018
by Ryan Bort
Rolling Stone
If you weren’t aware that Rudy Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team late last month, you are now. After not even two weeks on the job, the Trump confidant and former New York City mayor spoke to Sean Hannity Wednesday night about several of the president’s ongoing legal issues. It was an eventful few minutes, to say the least. Giuliani likened the FBI agents who raided Michael Cohen’s hotel and office to “stormtroopers,” called James Comey a “disgraceful liar” and “perverted,” and, most notably, claimed that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the controversial $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Not only does this contradict Trump’s claim that he had no knowledge of the payment, it raises a number of questions about possible campaign finance law violations.
The bombshell set in motion a furious 12 hours of backtracking from Trump and company, highlighted by – what else – a string of Thursday morning tweets from the President of the United States.
The hole in Trump’s argument here is that if the payments to Cohen were simply part of Cohen’s retainer, it’s hard to believe Giuliani would characterize this as a reimbursement for the Daniels payment. Nevertheless, Giuliani used the same logic when speaking with the New York Times Wednesday night, claiming that the payment came out of a $35,000-per-month reimbursement fund that was set up for Cohen out of Trump’s personal account, and that these payments included money for “incidental expenses” relating to Trump. He also told the Times that he didn’t think Trump knew about the Daniels payment “until now.” In a similarly scattershot interview with Fox & Friends last week, Trump specifically cited the Daniels case as an example of the kind of legal work Cohen did for him.
Back on Fox News yet again Thursday morning, Giuliani obfuscated by implying that October of 2016 was a long time ago, that he doesn’t really remember all the details, and that in the end, the money used to pay Daniels was “pretty close” to “pocket change.”
He also seemed to accidentally (or purposely – who knows at this point) imply that the payment was related to the campaign, which is at the core of the argument that it did indeed constitute a violation of campaign finance law.
Giuliani – who was enlisted to help bring Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to an end, not to work on the Daniels case – broached the topic of the payment himself Wednesday night, insisting to Hannity that because campaign funds were not used to make it, it was perfectly legal.
“That money was not campaign money, sorry,” he said. “I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation.”
Giuliani then confirmed to Hannity that the money was “funneled it through a law firm,” adding that “the president repaid it.”
“Oh… I didn’t know… He did?” replied Hannity, clearly disarmed. When asked if Trump knew about the payment, Giuliani said that though he may not have known about the specifics, he “did know about the general arrangement that [Cohen] would take care of things like this.”
This doesn’t exactly jibe with the narrative the administration has pushed thus far.
On March 7th, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, “There was no knowledge of any payment from the president and he’s denied all of these allegations.” Close to a month later, on April 5th, a reporter on Air Force One asked the president directly if he knew about the payment. “No,” Trump responded before directing further questions to Cohen, who has maintained that he made the payment with his own money and wasn’t paid back by Trump.
Giuliani also told multiple outlets that his comments about the payment were premeditated, and that he spoke with Trump before the appearance about what he would say. This, as many have pointed out, including a few Fox News personalities, is an odd move, as it’s only drawn added attention to questionable legality of the payment. Trump’s team seems convinced that because the money didn’t come directly from campaign funds that they didn’t violate any campaign finance laws, but it isn’t quite that simple, and several people have pointed out the legal issues raised by Giuliani’s comments.
But sans testimony from Cohen that Trump knew about the payment, it’s not guaranteed the president will experience any legal ramifications as a result of Giuliani’s comments. It’s hard to deny, though, that this is one of the clearest instances yet of Trump being caught lying to the American people. Trump’s team doesn’t seem very concerned the president will suffer any ramifications from this either. When Giuliani was asked by the Wall Street Journal about the apparent contradiction, he simply replied that it was “not [an] issue.”
If the past 15 months are any indication, he could be right.
Trump says lawyers have advised him against Mueller talks
May 4, 2018
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his lawyers had advised him against talking to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, even though he would like to speak with him as part of the Russia probe.
“I would love to speak. I would love to. Nobody wants to speak more than me … because we’ve done nothing wrong,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “But I have to find a way to be treated fairly.”
“If I thought it was fair, I would override my lawyer,” he added.
Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum
Donald Trump doesn’t take Britain, France or Germany seriously
May 4, 2018
by Bryan MacDonald
RT
Like any successful wheeler and dealer, Donald Trump knows how to make his clients feel valued. But, as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron discovered last week, there’s a considerable difference between sincerity and salesmanship.
PARIS – Barack Obama wasn’t very interested in Europe. Something which was made clear in 2010, when he didn’t even show up for an EU-US summit in Madrid. Instead, at least in the early part of his presidency, Obama focused on Asia. Leaving the old continent to dwell on its diminished importance in Washington.
Yet, despite this snub, Obama generally went through the motions and treated its leaders with respect. Indeed, he belatedly realized that the likes of Angela Merkel and David Cameron were liberal bedfellows useful for his issues-driven presidency. Nevertheless, there’s a lingering feeling that the Democrat darling never really got Europe.
By contrast, his successor Trump, with his family roots in Germany and Scotland, arguably understands the place better than any US president since John F. Kennedy. He’s married into both Czechia and Slovenia and spent decades crisscrossing the continent, pursing business deals from County Clare in Ireland to the Russian capital of Moscow.
And it’s clear all this experience has taught him not to take any of America’s NATO partners seriously. Because, make no mistake, Trump doesn’t see them as allies. Instead, he views them as client states who are subject to Washington’s orders.
Bad Strategy
Of course, the West European “big three” only have themselves to blame for this situation, as they never heeded the old maxim: “United we stand, divided we fall.” And rather than pooling resources to create the sort of “common European home” once proposed by figures as diverse as Mikhail Gorbachev and Charles de Gaulle, they’ve jostled for American favor. Which makes them appear weak and easily manipulated.
The contemporary roots of this self-defeating competition go back to 2003, when then British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke ranks with his EU partners to support George Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Blair partially justified his unpopular gambit by making constant references to a supposed “special relationship” between London and Washington. Meanwhile, Bush, desperate for partners to help legitimize his aggression, went along with the rhetoric.
However, Berlin and Paris were not amused. Especially the latter which had to endure the ignominy of becoming America’s most-hated country du jour. During this hysteria, the French were labeled “cheese eating surrender monkeys,” French Fries were renamed “Freedom Fries” and even Woody Allen appealed for calm as he was tired of “freedom kissing” his wife.
Thus, when Nicolas Sarkozy replaced Jacques Chirac in the Elysee in 2007, he made it his mission to usurp London’s perceived golden child status in Washington. But then the financial crisis intervened, ultimately rendering Germany the most powerful of the trio, and Angela Merkel’s personal rapport with Obama eventually meant Berlin was in pole position by the end of his second term.
New Order
Under Trump this has all changed. The Republican hates Merkel’s liberal values and has spent the first sixteen months of his presidency lambasting Germany with a fervor US leaders usually reserve for “rogue states.” And this has left the door open for Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron to vie for his affections. Of course Trump, being a canny operator, is letting them demean themselves because, just as Bush used Blair to create an illusion of permissibility, he’s using the current British and French leaders to make it appear that he is well-regarded and respected abroad.
We saw this again last week when Macron and Merkel both, separately, visited the US capital. Sure, Trump said nice things, particularly about the former, and rolled out the red carpet. But he didn’t listen to what they came to say.
On the contrary, while Macron played to his own constituency, delivering a confident speech to Congress, Trump’s superciliousness was clear in his public exchanges with his young counterpart. And, despite the smiles for the cameras, this treatment must have hurt Macron, who sees himself as an equal to his American equivalent, as well as other heavy hitters like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Meanwhile, Trump’s methods surely felt humbling for Merkel, who has always been regarded as a formidable operator in Moscow and Beijing. And was treated well by Obama, who made a point of visiting her in Berlin on his November 2016 “farewell tour.”
The problem for the West Europeans, whose own lack of unity has left them in this weak situation, is that they are completely reliant on Washington when it comes to foreign policy and security, particularly on Russia, China and the Middle East. Something which was completely exposed last year when British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson had to cancel a visit to Moscow because he needed to wait for former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to travel first and set out the US position, which London is obliged to follow.
Divided Weakness
This incredible state of affairs has long been referenced by Vladimir Putin, who has described NATO members as vassals, rather than allies, of the US. And Joe Biden backed up the Russian leader’s contention when he admitted that he personally railroaded reluctant EU members into imposing sanctions on Moscow. Measures which damaged some European economies, but hardly hurt the US. And examples like this leave Moscow and Beijing, and other powers, aghast.
Obviously, a potential solution is unified EU action, independent of Washington, but, even if the bloc could find common ground, Britain’s impending exit means the competition for a “special relationship” will probably intensify. At the same time, here in Paris, most folk seem to realize that their country’s status as supplicant to the US is both embarrassing and self-defeating. And you often hear the same thing in Berlin, and to a lesser extent, London.
Concurrently, in Moscow, the largest city entirely in Europe, diplomats, politicians and foreign policy analysts simply can’t understand how the EU, which boasts a larger economy than the US, and a 50 percent higher population has allowed itself to effectively become a political and military colony of a power based on different continent.
Sadly, while most smart thinkers recognize the problem, nobody has managed to find a workable solution. And as long as this situation pertains, none of the leading global troika is going to take Macron, May or Merkel seriously.
But while Putin and Xi at least show deference publicly, Donald Trump doesn’t even bother.
What are the odds on Donald Trump coming out as gay?
August 19, 2017
The Spectator
Trump stake
Paddy Power appointed a ‘Head of Trump betting’ due to unprecedented interest in wagers on the US President. Some of the odds currently offered:
A sex tape to be leaked online 14/1
To deny the existence of God 20/1
To convert to Scientology 25/1
To meet with KKK leader 33/1
To convert to Islam 50/1
To deport Madonna 80/1
To commission his own face to be added to Mount Rushmore 100/1
To come out as gay 100/1
To paint the White House gold 500/1
Are LA hospitals really dumping homeless patients on the streets?
With homelessness rising and shelter beds scarce, healthcare facilities are accused of abandoning people in Skid Row following treatment
May 4, 2018
by Carla Green in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Two days before Valentine’s Day, Santiago Tarver collapsed at a homeless women’s center in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. He lay on the ground convulsing as staff members called an ambulance, which took Tarver to a public hospital about three miles away.
“I didn’t expect to see him for a couple days,” said Spencer Coats, a medical social worker at the women’s center.
But just a couple of hours later, Tarver, a transgender 27-year-old, was back. Although he was still disoriented from the medication he’d been given, Tarver said the hospital had given him bus tokens and sent him home to his tent amid feces, discarded syringes and trash.
Homelessness is surging in many parts of the US, including by more than one-fifth in Los Angeles last year, and hospitals are struggling to shoulder the burden. In some cases, like Tarver’s, advocates complain of what they call “patient dumping” – when homeless patients are discharged not to shelters or temporary housing but to the streets, where it can be impossible to follow a treatment plan and there is a higher likelihood that they’ll fall ill again.
In 2017, a widely publicized video showed a patient being dumped from her wheelchair at a Washington DC bus stop and left on the ground. An executive at a Baltimore hospital apologized earlier this year after a patient was found on a street in mid-winter in only a hospital gown and socks. And a state psychiatric hospital in Nevada was alleged to have bussed hundreds of patients around the country.
In Skid Row, social workers say they have seen mothers dropped at shelters holding newborns.
Homelessness undoubtedly poses challenges to hospitals: Americans living in poverty are among their most common patients. A 2014 study found that 74 homeless “super users” visited one US emergency room more than 800 times over the course of one year. A survey at the LAC+USC medical center, where Tarver was treated, found that more than 20 people essentially lived on the hospital grounds.
GoFundMe figures reveal thousands rely on site to avoid homelessness
“Hospitals are being used for meeting basic needs,” said Kalpana Ramiah, director of Essential Hospitals Institute, a hospitals’ association. “I don’t think hospitals see it as a burden – I think they’re looking at what role they can play.”
Even so, because many homeless patients have minimal health insurance, there’s no financial incentive to keep them hospitalized and do the kind of expensive tests more monied patients might undergo.
“The vibe is almost: ‘Let’s get rid of this patient who we’re not making money off of,’” said Coats. “Which isn’t their fault – they have to keep the lights on.”
Tarver was just three pounds when he was born, said his foster mother, Susan Simpson. “I kind of made a deal with God,” Simpson said. “I said, ‘whatever you do, don’t let one die on me. I won’t be able to handle that.’”
Tarver was in and out of the hospital as a baby, fighting to gain weight, and his epilepsy went long misdiagnosed. Doctors put him on a powerful medication that made him practically catatonic at school.
British Neo-Nazis Are on the Rise — and They’re Becoming More Organized and Violent
May 3 2018
by Ryan Gallagher
The Intercept
The town of Banff on the northeastern coast of Scotland is a peaceful place, with just 4,000 residents and a picturesque bay that flows into the open sea. Fifty miles from the nearest big city, the air is fresh and the pace of life is slow. But for one young man, the town’s seaside location offered no contentment. He was stockpiling weapons and planning an act of terrorism.
Connor Ward lived in a gray, semi-detached apartment building a short walk from Banff’s marina, where dozens of small boats are docked and fishermen depart each day on a hunt for mackerel or sea trout. Inside his home, 25-year-old Ward was plugged into a different kind of world. He was reading neo-Nazi propaganda on the internet about an imminent race war.
Ward began preparing for the conflict. He purchased knives, swastika flags, knuckle-dusters, batons, a stun gun, and a cellphone signal jammer. He obtained deactivated bullets and scoured Google for information about how to reactivate them. From his Banff home, he purchased hundreds of steel ball bearings and researched bomb-making methods. He wrote a note addressed to Muslims that stated: “You will all soon suffer your demise.” Then he compiled a map showing the locations of mosques in the nearest city – Aberdeen – that he appeared intent on attacking.
In April, a judge sentenced Ward to life in prison after concluding that he had been planning a “catastrophic” terrorist attack and was “deeply committed to neo-Nazi ideology.” During his week-long trial in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city, it emerged that police had uncovered his plot by chance, after receiving a tip that he was trying to import weapons from the United States. Officers searched his home – and the home of his mother – and discovered his large armory, as well as a stash of 131 documents about Nazism, terrorism, and manufacturing explosives.
Ward is just one individual, but his actions reflect a broader trend. British authorities say they are currently facing a growing terrorist threat from right-wing extremists, whose numbers have increased in recent years. Rooted in the notion that white European people are facing extinction, the extremists’ ideas have gained currency following a spate of Islamist attacks in Europe and a refugee crisis that has seen millions of migrants travel to the continent from war-torn Afghanistan and Syria.
In Austria, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Sweden, Hungary, and the Netherlands, far-right ideas have also surged in popularity. The same is true in the United States, where Donald Trump’s presidency has energized white supremacists. Far-right politicians and activists have successfully tapped into concerns about economic uncertainty, unemployment, and globalization. But they have built most of their support base around the issues of immigration and terrorism.
In June 2016, an act of brutal violence highlighted the burgeoning danger in the United Kingdom. In broad daylight in a small village in the north of England, 52-year-old white supremacist Thomas Mair pulled out a homemade rifle and shot dead Jo Cox, a member of Parliament. Mair saw Cox as a “traitor” to white people due to her pro-immigration politics. Six months later, for the first time in U.K. history, a far-right group was banned as a terrorist organization, alongside the likes of Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab. Since then, the problem has continued to spiral.
British police say they have thwarted four far-right terrorist plots in the last year. In a speech in London in late February, the U.K.’s counter-terrorism police chief, Mark Rowley, cautioned that far-right groups were “reaching into our communities through sophisticated propaganda and subversive strategies, creating and exploiting vulnerabilities that can ultimately lead to acts of violence and terrorism.” Police were monitoring far-right extremists among a group of some 3,000 “subjects of interest,” Rowley said, adding: “The threat is considerable at this time.”
Far-right extremists have been active in the U.K. for most of the last century. In the 1930s, Oswald Mosley took inspiration from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and launched the British Fascist Union, otherwise known as the Blackshirts. In bombastic speeches to audiences across England, Mosley ranted about “the organized corruption of press, cinema, and Parliament,” which he blamed on “alien Jewish finance.” Mosley campaigned against the U.K. going to war with Adolf Hitler on the grounds that “Jewish interests” were pushing for the conflict; instead, he advocated isolationist, “Britain first” policies. During the same period, groups such as the Nordic League and the Imperial Fascist League overtly supported Nazism. Like Mosley, they were anti-Semitic, but they went further, embracing Adolf Hitler’s concept of an “Aryan race.” The Nordic League rallied against what it called a “Jewish reign of terror.” The Fascist League’s emblem was the British Union Jack flag with a black swastika in the center.
The defeat of Hitler, however, did not mark the end for the U.K.’s extreme right. Through the 1950s and 1960s, groups like the White Defence League and the Racial Preservation Society continued to espouse a bigoted ideology, spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and demanding the curtailment of immigration. Between the 1970s and 1990s, the National Front and the British National Party carried on the trend, organizing demonstrations and campaigns that championed the idea that all non-white immigrants should be deported from the U.K.
Among the British National Party’s members was David Copeland, who worked as an engineer’s assistant on the London Underground. Copeland had grown up fantasizing about being a Nazi officer. By the time he was 22, he was teaching himself to design bombs. In April 1999, Copeland launched a series of attacks in London, placing sports bags packed with explosives and four-inch nails in three areas of the city where there were black, Asian, and gay communities. The devices caused carnage, killing three and injuring 140. Copeland later told police that he had intended to “spread fear, resentment, and hatred throughout this country; it was to cause a racial war.”
Today, the National Front and the British National Party still exist as political entities. But like most older far-right groups, they do not wield the influence they once did. Their membership has diminished, mostly due to a lack of leadership and internal conflict. Now a newer band of far-right extremists is replacing them. These newcomers share many of the same values as their predecessors, but a desire for violence is more widespread among them, which worries British police and intelligence agencies.
The group that was banned in 2016 as a terrorist organization – National Action – has advocated murdering politicians. In October 2017, an unnamed member of the organization was accused of plotting to assassinate Rosie Cooper, a 67-year-old Labour member of Parliament. The planned execution was allegedly sanctioned by National Action’s leader, 31-year-old Christopher Lythgoe. Two years earlier, in January 2015, one of National Action’s supporters attempted to behead an Asian man in a supermarket in the north of Wales, shouting “white power” during a frenzied assault with a machete.
Because National Action is now outlawed as a terrorist group, being a member of the organization is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. At least 14 people in the U.K. have so far faced terrorism charges connected to their alleged association with the group. Among them are two British Army soldiers, including 33-year-old Lance Corporal Mikko Vehvilainen, who was accused of being a National Action recruiter. Prosecutors said Vehvilainen commented regularly on a white supremacist internet forum where, under the name “NicoChristian,” he railed against black people, whom he referred to as “beasts.” In online posts reviewed by The Intercept, NicoChristian wrote that white people “shouldn’t even be on the same planet” as black people, and added: “The sooner they’re eliminated, the better.”
When police searched Vehvilainen’s quarters at an army camp in Wales in September 2017, they found Nazi flags, body armor, and a stash of weapons, including a shotgun, a rifle, a crossbow, arrows, knuckle-dusters, machetes, and daggers. The soldier also had a copy of the manifesto written by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, who in July 2011 murdered 77 people in Norway. When police turned up at Vehvilainen’s home to take him into custody, he reportedly told his wife: “I’m being arrested for being a patriot.”
Last month, a jury at a court in Birmingham found Vehvilainen not guilty of stirring up racial hatred and possessing a terrorism manual. But he received an eight-year prison sentence for a separate offense: illegally possessing tear gas.
At the extreme ends of the political spectrum, there is always a violent fringe. However, “there is clearly an increase in activity on the extreme right wing and you can see that from anecdotal evidence – the sort of incidents we’ve seen take place,” says Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “It has always existed in the U.K. … but it’s always tended to be scattered and disorganized. What is worrying recently is we have seen it get more organized.”
The British government operates a counterterrorism program called Prevent, one strand of which identifies people deemed to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism, usually because they have been reported to police for expressing extremist views. Since 2007, according to police and government statistics about the program, the number of people at risk of becoming involved in right-wing terrorism has increased each year. In the five years between 2007 and 2012, concerns were raised about 177 people on the far-right spectrum. Between 2012 and 2017, 2,489 individuals were added to the list. The spike in far-right extremism paralleled a surge in Islamist extremism. Between 2007 and 2012, 1,560 people were identified as vulnerable to becoming drawn into Islamist terrorism, according to police and government reports. Between 2012 and 2017, that number increased to 11,624.
It is unclear whether all of the people the Prevent program identifies pose a real threat, but the numbers do seem to reflect a broader phenomenon. “There is a sense that a culture war is happening,” says Pantucci. “We are seeing greater polarization in our public debate … We are seeing xenophobic views become mainstream. And that means the unacceptable edge, the violent edge, is getting pulled toward the center as well.”
Since 2013, the rise of the Islamic State – paired with a wave of predominantly Muslim refugees traveling to Europe and North America due to the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan – has galvanized the far right. In the U.K., ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks exacerbated ethnic divisions within communities and led to more reported cases of Islamophobic verbal and physical assaults. And when the U.K. voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union – in part due to concerns about immigration – that decision further emboldened the far right and triggered an upsurge in racially tinged hate crimes. All of these factors combined have created a fertile environment in which extremism has thrived.
For ISIS, the internet proved to be a vital recruiting tool. It helped the group spread its extremist messages to a global audience and enabled its supporters to connect with one another, even if they were thousands of miles apart. The same has been true for the far-right. The internet has fueled a new breed of “self-radicalizers” – people with no real-world connection to any extremist group, who instead consume online propaganda and decide to carry out a terrorist plot on their own.
“It is easier than ever before for people to access far-right content that ranges from moderate to the very radicalizing, extreme end,” says Joe Mulhall, a senior researcher with the London-based group Hope Not Hate, which studies the far-right. “The days of having to be involved in an organization to find the information are long gone. You can get it now with a few clicks wherever you are in the world.”
The extremist narratives peddled in terrorist propaganda are particularly potent for people who have experienced emotional trauma and substance abuse, research indicates. The case of Connor Ward, the young man from Banff in Scotland, is a possible illustration of that.
Ward was diagnosed with a personality disorder and he had a troubled family life. His father, Alexander Ward, is a convicted sex offender who impregnated Connor’s ex-girlfriend, according to court records. Ward despised his father for this and, in 2012, tried to build a bomb to kill him. Ward’s plot was discovered by his mother, who reported him to police. He was sent to jail for three years, but was released after about 18 months. During the same period, he developed an infatuation with Nazism and began planning his mosque attacks. His terrorism plan appears to have been driven at least in part by the far-right race war theories he discovered online.
Other cases bear similar hallmarks. Last year, 48-year-old Darren Osborne became radicalized after he watched a television program about a Pakistani child sex trafficking gang that had operated in the north of England. Within a few weeks, according to Sarah Andrews, Osborne’s former girlfriend, he became “obsessed with Muslims, accusing them all of being rapists and being part of pedophile gangs.” Andrews said Osborne began reading the social media posts of Tommy Robinson, a prominent figure on the British far right, who campaigns against what he calls the “Islamization” of the U.K. On June 19, 2017, Osborne hired a white Citroën van and drove it 150 miles from his home in Cardiff to Finsbury Park mosque in north London. He waited until local worshipers left the mosque after an evening prayer, then rammed his van into the crowd, killing 51-year-old Makram Ali and wounding 10 others. He left a note in his van that decried “feral inbred, raping Muslim men, hunting in packs, preying on our children.” According to Osborne’s sister, he was taking antidepressants at the time and had tried to kill himself weeks earlier.
A few days after Osborne’s attack, Ethan Stables, an unemployed 20-year-old from a small town in the north of England, was preparing to launch his own atrocity at an LGBT club night. Stables posted comments on a far-right Facebook group saying that he was planning to “slaughter every single one of the gay bastards.” Stables’s comments were reported to police, and when they searched his home they found a machete, an axe, and a bomb-making manual. He was convicted of plotting a terrorist attack. It emerged during his trial that Stables had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome as a child, and in September 2016, had become obsessed with Nazism. He used the internet to communicate with other extremists and researched how to prepare for a race war. He was unemployed and blamed immigrants for his problems. “My country is being raped,” he wrote in one WhatsApp message. “I might just become a skinhead and kill people.”
Tommy Robinson, whose online posts were read by the London mosque attacker, was recently banned from Twitter for breaching its “hateful conduct policies,” but he remains on Facebook and YouTube, where he reaches a combined audience of more than 900,000 people. Robinson rose to prominence as the leader of a group called the English Defence League, a far-right organization that said it was concerned about “how non-Muslims are being marginalized” in British society.
In 2013, Robinson stepped down as the English Defence League’s leader, saying that he was concerned about the “dangers of far-right extremism.” However, he has since continued to campaign on the same issues as a solo operator. His Twitter page, before it was suspended, offered a steady stream of posts that presented Muslims and Islam as existential threats to British and European society.
Rowley, the U.K.’s counterterrorism police chief, said Robinson was guilty of spreading “dangerous disinformation and propaganda” and claimed he was the right-wing equivalent of a British Islamist preacher named Anjem Choudary, who was jailed in 2016 for encouraging support for ISIS. During his February speech in London, Rowley said that Robinson was using his platform to “attack the whole religion of Islam by conflating acts of terrorism with the faith.”
Robinson did not respond to a request for comment; he has previously refuted allegations that his rhetoric could inspire right-wing terrorism.
In recent months, Robinson has established an informal alliance with a new group calling itself Generation Identity, which is actively trying to recruit members in the U.K. Generation Identity, a far-right youth movement that originated in France, campaigns against what it calls the “great replacement” – a theory that white European countries are going to be taken over by Muslim migrants. According to the group, “Islamic parallel societies” and mass immigration will lead to “the almost complete destruction of European societies within just a few decades if no countermeasures are taken.”
The image-conscious group has a slick website, publishes professionally produced videos, runs military-style training camps, and instructs its supporters that they must have a “well-groomed appearance.” Those who sign up to participate in its activities are personally vetted, and must fill out an application form that asks them to explain their political background and five favorite social media personalities. Prospective members of the secretive organization must sign a disclaimer stating that they are “not a journalist, activist, or informant meaning to record audio/video.”
The group insists that it is not extremist or racist. Instead, it claims it merely wants to preserve European national identity and calls itself “identitarian.” But beyond the glossy branding and semantics, Generation Identity is ideologically aligned with the far right. Its belief that migrants are going to extinguish white Europeans – unless white Europeans fight back – is reminiscent of the far right’s longstanding narrative about an impending race war. Unlike older far-right groups, however, which targeted Jews and black people, Generation Identity focuses its ire predominantly on Muslims.
“The ideology of Generation Identity is actually very extreme,” says Mulhall, the Hope Not Hate researcher. “They have been very clever in terms of their lexicon and language; they are trying to package extreme ideas in ways that are appealing to young people. So far, it is a strategy that has been successful for them, and that is worrying.”
Martin Sellner is the 29-year-old European spokesperson for Generation Identity. An Austrian who studies law at the University of Vienna, Sellner told The Intercept that “a combination of massive immigration, a low birth rate, and the politics of multiculturalism” were endangering European democracies. “The Muslim population will change the legislation, it will change the culture, and in the end will destroy the identity and the freedom we have in Europe,” Sellner said. He denied that he was a white supremacist, a racist, or an extremist, and said he disavowed violence. “I am just delivering a message,” he said. “I am just saying publicly what most people are afraid to say.”
On March 9, Sellner tried to enter the U.K. to give a speech in London, where a small group of Generation Identity members have been attempting to recruit. When Sellner arrived at England’s Luton Airport, however, he and his traveling companion, the American right-wing internet personality Brittany Pettibone, were not permitted to enter the country. Sellner was detained under the U.K.’s Terrorism Act and deported back to Vienna. Police told Sellner that his presence in the U.K. was “not conducive to the public good” because his planned public appearance would incite community divisions.
A week later, in the northeastern corner of Hyde Park in central London, about 400 people gathered for a demonstration. Robinson, the former English Defence League leader, had announced that he would give the speech that Sellner had been prevented from delivering. Among the crowd were men and women aged between their early 20s and late 50s, some of whom were rowdy and carrying Union Jack flags and placards with slogans like “Censor Islam Not Free Speech” and “I Will Hate What I Want.”
Robinson arrived in a white van, flanked by several burly men wearing black jackets with “SECURITY” emblazoned on the back. The crowd began chanting Robinson’s name as he moved toward the park through a crush of bodies, a short distance from London’s famous Marble Arch.
Within a couple of minutes, there were screams and a flurry of pushing and shoving. A group of protesters – some of them shouting “Allahu akbar” – had faced off with Robinson’s supporters, and fighting broke out. Amid the melee, a police officer was struck in the face, either with a fist or an object. Blood streamed down his cheek. Barely able to maintain his balance and looking dazed, the officer was hauled out of the throng of bodies by one of his colleagues and placed into the back of a silver police van, where he slouched against a seat and held a thick white bandage across his face to soak up the blood.
Before Robinson was able to speak, a middle-aged man wearing a dark green hat and a white shirt attempted to stand on a box to declare his opposition to the former English Defence League leader. The crowd, which moments earlier had been chanting “free speech,” hurled abuse at the man, launched cans of beer at him, and pulled his hat from his head. There were shouts of “shut your face!” and “fuck off!” while the man, looking flustered, was pushed off the box and shoved back into the crowd.
Robinson, wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, handed out paper copies of his speech and then began reading it aloud. “No to Islamization!” he shouted to cheers. “No to mass immigration and the great replacement!”
“Tyranny has locked you in since the days of your childhood,” he said. “I ask you, I command you: Break free! Patriots of the U.K., come out of the closet. Make your dissent visible by acts of resistance that inspire others!”
Robinson concluded with a warning for the British government, saying that it could “ban the speaker but it cannot ban the speech.” By blocking Sellner and other far-right activists from entering the country, he said, the government had “relit the fire and the fight of the British people.”
Robinson pushed his way through the crowd, back to the sanctuary of his white van. Some of his supporters stayed behind at Speakers’ Corner. Generation Identity activists handed out leaflets that explained their support for the “preservation of the ethno-cultural identity.” Near a fence at the perimeter of the park, several young Arab men gathered behind a small stall, where they were giving out information about the Quran. A group of men who had attended Robinson’s speech approached them.
“That so many crimes have been committed by Muslims is proof that you are causing disproportionate harm to our society,” shouted one of the men, a 26-year-old named Jamie, who was wearing black-framed glasses, a black jacket, and blue jeans. “Your religion is not good for Britain.”
“Well, we’re still here and we’re not going nowhere,” replied Asem, a 29-year-old Muslim man, who said he’d been born and brought up in north London. He had a trimmed beard and was wearing a gray tracksuit and a green baseball cap. “So what are you going to do about me? I haven’t got anything on my [criminal] record,” he said. “For you to generalize [about] us as a religion is bullshit.”
The argument continued for about 10 minutes until neither side had anything left to say.
“I don’t have no time for this,” said Asem. He turned and walked away, followed by a group of about six of his friends.
“Yeah, go home!” said one of the young Robinson supporters, who walked off in the opposite direction.
The scene was a portrait of the deep divisions that exist in this disunited kingdom. As the sun went down over Hyde Park, snow began to fall. The crowds dispersed, trampling over the broken glass and discarded placards strewn across the ground.
When a Neocon Cries ‘Racism’
May 4, 2018
by Tommy Raskin
AntiWar
Inveterate bomb-’em-all neoconservatives are now consorting openly with liberal establishment types, even parroting their new chums’ criticisms of Donald Trump’s political incorrectness. What’s going on here? It seems that the neoconservatives are finally acknowledging that they are indeed cut from the same cloth as the neoliberal foreign policy intelligentsia, that their occasional disagreements do not negate the fact that, at the end of the day, neocons and neolibs share a fundamental commitment to keeping the United States military leviathan alive and well.
Just like that, then, old animosities have faded in service of a greater cause – nay, a crusade! – to be spearheaded by a mishmash of political professionalists who, God willing, will wrest U.S. political discourse from our provincial president’s tiny hands and return it to the vaunted realm of “reason.” In the comfy kingdom of reason, see, it is perfectly fine to debate how many sanctions to place on Russia, how many Islamists to arm in Syria, and how many troops to deploy to Afghanistan. But to suggest, as Trump has, that the U.S. should actually start to leave the Middle East and pursue peace with Russia? Why, that’s crazy talk! That’s isolationism or appeasement or treachery or something! That cannot be tolerated!
In their distaste for our president’s heresy, the neocons and neolibs have mobilized to take down The Donald by tying him to such profound societal ills as racism. In an illustrative turnaround, even the American exceptionalist Max Boot admits that “Trump’s victory has revealed that racism and xenophobia are more widespread than I had previously realized.” Jennifer Rubin, a foreign policy commentator of like mind, condemns the “enablers” of our “racist president.” George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Madeleine Albright have all invoked the specter of racism as well, the apparent plan being to drag Trump’s name through the mud until our country replaces him with someone more to the liking of the neocon-neolib phalanx.
Of course, there is much to despise about Trump’s behavior, and the militarists have even identified some of it. His birtherism was sheer malevolence; his “shithole” (or was it “shithouse”?) comments were repulsive; his “Muslim ban” is pure garbage. Our now-president has been a purveyor of racial bigotry since the beginning, and it is absolutely necessary to push back against it.
The issue is that the neocons and neolibs, while flaunting their radical chicness by calling Trump a racist meanie-bo-beanie, expect us to ignore the fact that their ideal paradigm is not and never was liberatory in the slightest. In their nostalgia for those halcyon days of “polite” politics, they pine for a culture that punishes impertinent upstarts like Trump for defying imperial dogma, for arguing that the U.S. spends too much on NATO, for example, for advocating a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and for doubting the wisdom of “protecting” South Korea. They may be shrouding it in the lingo of “#TheResistance” now, and maybe they have even convinced themselves that they actually take offense at our president’s prejudice. But their raison d’etre, part and parcel of their commitment to political correctness generally, is to shield Washington’s imperial project from the sort of perilous scrutiny that an unhinged Trump is wont to dish out.
Were it coming from almost anyone other than the habitual interventionists, this charade would not be so preposterous. Virtue signaling is annoying, but it is an inevitable and generally venial offense, the sort of low-level irritation that one simply accepts as part of public discourse. It is the militarists’ race-baiting, rubbed in our faces without so much as a hint of irony, that is simply too outrageous to ignore.
See, some of us actually remember the hell that these “resisters,” these budding champions of “inclusive and energized democracy,” unleashed upon brown people when the interventionist consensus was still virtually unquestioned in Washington. It was the “anti-fascist” Albright and co., not Trump, who starved Iraq with sanctions in the 1990s, provoking accusations of genocide from the country’s United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator. It was they, the neolibs, who signed off on a U.S. troop surge to support the pedophilic Afghan military in 2009; who dismembered Libya in 2011; who bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in 2015; whose pathetic prostration before Tel Aviv hardliners enabled decades of violence against civilian Arabs; whose rule, generally speaking, ushered in ever more tumult, ever more desolation, ever more heartbreak behind the veneer of U.S. “assistance” and “order” and “leadership” in the world. Before the judges of history, that will be theirs, not Trump’s, to defend.
Meanwhile, the neocons have acted like neolibs, only more so. Politics would be no fun without all of the carping and grandstanding, so the neocons’ permanent role is to trash those weak-willed Clintonistas for not being bellicose enough. Deposing Muammar Gaddafi was insufficient, say they; we should have stayed in Libya longer! And sure, deploying 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was noble of the Obama administration, but what was with that subsequent decision to withdraw troops? Silly Barack! Was he never taught? ‘Murica doesn’t end wars – we start them.
That was all nitpicking, though. Whatever their sins in the neocons’ eyes, Obama, Clinton, Rice, and the other neolibs at least played in-bounds, never much questioning the necessity of our costly “alliances” or the essential goodness of the U.S. war state.
Trump is different: crass, contemptuous, and occasionally brutally honest about the folly of U.S. imperialism. If he feels like it, he’ll rail against the “disastrous” Iraq War, call NATO “obsolete,” announce a military withdrawal from Syria, and imply a moral equivalence between U.S. and Russian depravity. Such iconoclasm infuriates the neocons and neolibs, who believe that peddlers of approved platitudes – about multiculturalism, U.S. military power, and everything else – should run the world forever.
Unfortunately, the anti-interventionist instinct that has gotten Trump into so much trouble hasn’t actually yielded much practical change. The U.S. is still in Afghanistan, still in the Levant, still bolstering dictatorships – in short, still sowing discord in other countries, not least in brown countries, the destruction of which we would expect our new “anti-racist” crusaders to condemn consistently (if they were honest). Instead, in the same breath that they call Trump an apologist for racism, the neocons and neolibs lambast him for his dereliction of imperial duty, for pulling punches against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, for example, and for offering to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. However ironic this approach may seem, it is perfectly sensible in Bush-Clinton-Obama land, where racial slurs are verboten but incinerating Pakistani children is not.
So a bunch of P.C. warmongers are out to destroy an irreverent one. What’s a peacenik to do? Call out the sanctimonious interventionists for their phony “anti-racism” – which serves largely to pretty up the oppressive U.S. imperial giant – and then push our wobbly president to become the military “isolationist” of neocon-neolib nightmares. And when the going gets tough, as it inevitably will, keep the long game in mind. If their recent writhing is any indication, even career interventionists are beginning to realize that the empire is mortal.
House chaplain nearly ousted by Paul Ryan rescinds resignation
Paul Ryan responded by saying he accepted the decision by the Rev Patrick Conroy following an effort to oust him in April
May 3, 2018
by Ben Jacobs in Washington
The Guardian
The chaplain of the House of Representatives, the Rev Patrick Conroy, revoked his resignation on Thursday, forcing the House speaker, Paul Ryan, to back down from an effort to oust him.
In a letter, the Jesuit priest said that a top Ryan aide told him “maybe it’s time that we had a chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic” while asking for his resignation. Conroy also said that the Ryan aide, Jonathan Burks, mentioned a prayer that Conroy gave in November 2017 that the tax bill have no “winners or losers” as well as an interview he gave to National Journal.
Conroy’s ousting in April provoked a political crisis for Ryan after it was reported that the House chaplain was not leaving of his own volition but instead was being forced out. Ryan told lawmakers last week that Conroy was pushed out because he was not meeting the “pastoral needs” of members.
However, Conroy insisted to the New York Times that Ryan told him after the 2017 prayer: “Padre, you’ve got to stay out of politics.” Conroy insisted that the prayer didn’t “sound political to him” and added: “If you are hospital chaplain, you are going to pray about health. If you are a chaplain of Congress, you are going to pray about what Congress is doing.”
In his letter, Conroy pushed back against Ryan’s statements about the quality of his “pastoral services” and “spiritual counseling”. He wrote: “This is not the reason that Mr Burks gave me when asking for my ‘resignation’.” Conroy went on to state vehemently: “In fact, no such criticism has ever been levelled against me during my tenure as a House chaplain. At the very least, if it were, I could have attempted to correct such ‘faults’. In retracting my resignation I wish to do just that.”
Ryan responded in a statement saying that “I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as chaplain of the House”. The Wisconsin Republican insisted “my original decision was made in what I believed to be the best interest of this institution. To be clear, that decision was based on my duty to ensure that the House has the kind of pastoral services that it deserves. It is my job as speaker to do what is best for this body, and I know that this body is not well served by a protracted fight over such an important post.”
Burks also denied Conroy’s allegations in his own statement. “I strongly disagree with Father Conroy’s recollection of our conversation,” said the Republican staffer. “I am disappointed by the misunderstanding, but wish him the best as he continues to serve the House.”
This decision avoids what would have been an unprecedented showdown between the House chaplain and speaker. Congress elects the position every two years although it has traditionally been uncontested. Conroy was elected to his position in May 2011 after his predecessor the Rev Daniel Coughlin retired. Coughlin was the first House chaplain to be a Roman Catholic.
The Social Network Follies
May 4, 2018
by Christian Jürs
The Internet has an enormous storehouse of information and nearly any desired material can be located and downloaded. That is the positive aspect of the Internet. The negative side is that the Internet supplies an enormous flood of false, misleading and useless information, almost all of invented out of whole cloth by the same types that also have rushed to join, and use, what is known as the Social Network.
The Social Networks are a handy means for persons to express their personal views on almost any subject and to communicate with others of a like mind. The problem that one notes from reading their postings is the same one observes in reading the comments appended to serious articles on major newspapers. In reading both of these areas, one is at once struck by the utter stupidity of the writers, their total lack of English, their constant bad grammar and terrible spelling and, most important, their desire not to express a thoughtful view but to parade their insignificance and ignorance to a wide audience.
Another negative aspect of the Social Network is that, at least in the United States, all of the networks of any size are working closely with such official governmental agencies as the DHS and the FBI, to spy on their members at no cost or effort to themselves. In these cases, the mindless babblings and boastings of the dim of wit load federal surveillance files with moronic chatters from which the authorities can easily build a criminal case.
We did some research on the social networks and discovered that they have attracted more members than the government can keep up with, redolent of the thousands of hungry flies congregating in a cow pen.
750,000,000 – Monthly Visitors
250,000,000 – Monthly Visitors
110,000,000 – Monthly Visitors
85,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
MySpace
70,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
Google +
65,000,000 – Monthly Visitors
DeviantArt
25,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
Live Journal
20,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
Tagged
19,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
Orkuit
17,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
CafeMom
12,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
Ning
12,000,000 – Monthly Visitors
Meetup
7,500,000 – Monthly Visitors
MyLife
5,400,000 – Monthly Visitors
Ask.fm
4,300,000 – Monthly Visitors
Bebo
117,000,000 Yearly Visitors
BlackPlanet (Black Americans)
20,000,000 Yearly Visitors
Blauk Anyone who wants to tell something about a stranger or acquaintance.
1,081,215 Yearly Visitors .
Formspring social Q&A website
290,000,000 Yearly Visitors
Habbo For teens. Chat room and user profiles.
268,000,000 Yearly Visitors
Itsmy Mobile community worldwide, blogging, friends, personal TV shows
2,500,000 Yearly Visitors
Kiwibox General.
2,400,000 Yearly Visitors