Thursday, January 26, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Germany's New 'Ministry of Truth' or Achtung!! Ve Have Vays Of Making You Not To Talk!
- It seems that all ideas suspected of being "populist" -- or simply those ideas without the blessing of the elites -- will now be banned in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism of the government (especially regarding immigration and energy policies), of the EU, of Islam, of government officials and of the media.
- As in communist dictatorships, the more obvious the failings of the government, the more aggressively the establishment attacks those who speak out about them.
- Large companies such as Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), BMW, Mercedes-Benz and the supermarket chain REWE obeyed straightaway and promised to place Breitbart on the blacklist immediately, and never to advertise there again.
- A plucky little pizza delivery service responded to the blacklisting demand by declaring that it was "not the morality police". The company was denounced by Der Spiegel as "inept", and after "protests from customers", it ended up capitulating, as the newspaper reported with much satisfaction.
Toward the end of last year, Germany experienced a previously unheard-of boycott campaign – funded by the German government, no less -- against several websites, such as the popular "Axis of Good" ("Achse des Guten"). The website, critical of the government, was suddenly accused of "right-wing populism".
The German government's efforts at thought control seem to have begun with the victory of Donald J. Trump in the US presidential election -- that seems to set the "establishment" off. Germany's foreign minister and the probable future federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier -- one of the first to travel to Iran after the removal of sanctions there to kowtow to the Ayatollahs -- called America's future president a "hate preacher".
Germany's newspapers were suddenly littered with apocalyptic predictions and anti-American fulminations.
For hard-core Trump-haters, however, a witch hunt by itself is insufficient; they want activism! Since November, Germany's left-wing parties have had a strong increase in membership, as reported by Der Spiegel. At the same time, the federal government evidently decided, at least regarding the federal elections taking place in 2017, that it would no longer count on journalists' self-censorship. The German government, instead of merely hoping that newspapers would voluntarily -- or under pressure from the Press Council -- refrain from criticising the government's immigration policies, decided that it, itself, would inaugurate censorship.
The Federal Government's "Ministry of Truth"
To this effect, as reported by Der Spiegel, the Federal Interior Ministry, intends to set up a "Defense Center against Disinformation ("Abwehrzentrum gegen Desinformation") in the fight against "fake news on social networks". "Abwehr" -- the name of Nazi Germany's military intelligence agency -- is apparently meant to demonstrate the government's seriousness regarding the matter.
"It sounds like the Ministry of Truth, 'Minitrue,' from George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984", wrote even the left-leaning daily, Frankfurter Rundschau.
Frank Überall, national head of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), bluntly stated: "This smells like censorship."
It seems that all ideas suspected of being "populist" -- or simply those ideas without the blessing of the elites – will now be banned in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism of the government (especially regarding immigration and energy policies), of the EU, of Islam, of government officials and of the media.
The Federal Agency for Political Education -- the information agency of...
Meet Linda Sarsour: The Organizer Of The Woman's Rights March...
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| Aashiq Hammad, AKA Esteban Santiago The Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooter. |
Silicon Valley billionaires buy underground bunkers preparing for the apocalypse
Fearful that artificial intelligence will displace so many jobs that there will be a revolt against those responsible for the technology, the are entrepreneurs readying themselves for doomsday like scenarios.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of the professional social network, LinkedIn, told The New Yorker that he believes more than 50 per cent of billionaires in the Californian tech hub are preparing for the worst.
“I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time,” he said.
Others are investing in bunkers and large swathes of land. Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook product manager, recently purchased five acres on an island in the America's Pacific Northwest. His island home features generators, solar panels, and...
Michigan Man Whose Drug Sentence Commuted By Obama Is Shot Dead
Two men wearing masks went into Bannum Place in Saginaw on Monday night with plans to kill 31-year-old Damarlon Thomas, a former Saginaw gang member. Lt. David Kaiser said Thomas was shot several times by one of the men as some of the roughly two dozen people at the home were held at gunpoint.
“One person watched over a group of them while another subject located the victim and executed him,” Kaiser told The Saginaw News. “They were looking for this person.”
Thomas was pronounced dead at the scene, WSGW-AM reported. No one else was injured and no one was immediately taken into custody.
“This was a very targeted individual, for whatever reason,” said Kaiser. “The people that shot this man knew who they were looking for and wanted him deceased.”
Thomas had been sentenced to 19 years in prison in 2008 on a cocaine charge, but with the commutation the sentence was to expire in March. He was arrested as part of “Operation Sunset,” a federal investigation that effectively dismantled the “Sunny Side Gang” in Saginaw.
Thomas’ commutation, which was among a group of 79 announced Nov. 22, was part of Obama’s second-term effort to try to...
I Knew Chelsea Manning in Basic Combat Training. Here’s the Story You Haven’t Heard
January 2017 – as one of his final acts in office, President Obama yesterday commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning down to just four years with a scheduled release date of 17 May 2017. For supporters, it must have been an unbelievable victory, and for her critics, an outrage. For those that have known her, there’s an added dimension of anecdotes, personal interactions, and concrete memories of her conduct, all of which color the quality of that commutation. She is a hero to some, a traitor to others. Either she was an idealistic do-gooder who was intent on revealing state-sponsored human rights violations while exposing the darkest corners of the U.S. Government, or she was a coward suffering delusions of grandeur who invented enemies to blame, lashed out at her own country, and revealed nothing but her own self-sponsored narcissism. Which one is accurate? Let me tell you a story.
In the Manning saga, the debate has always been over her state of mind leading up to and during the theft and dissemination of that classified information. There is no debate regarding the basic facts of what she did and what was done with her. During her 2009-2010 deployment to Iraq, she stole diplomatic cables, daily intelligence reports, and combat footage; she fed that information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, then separately admitted to as much to a grey-hat hacker named Adrian Lamo, who in-turn contacted U.S. Army Counterintelligence. She was convicted in 2013 on 17 original charges and four more amended charges, including violating the Espionage Act, for her role in illegally disclosing over 700,000 pages of classified documents. To date, Manning has been tried, convicted, imprisoned, and as of yesterday, scheduled for release.
As such, Manning has been a specter in the background of the Obama presidency and a central figure in national debates about everything from Iraq War policy, to the security practices of the Intelligence Community, to the weaponization of information, all the way to conversations about how the LGBTQ community is treated both in and outside the military. Likely few-to-none would have predicted such an unassuming person would be at the center of so much controversy. That is, unless you met her when she first joined the Army and she started down a trajectory toward infamy. In hindsight, maybe it was obvious.
Chelsea Manning and I enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Surge in the fall of 2007 and attended the same U.S. Army Basic Combat Training (BCT) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. As new recruits, we were assigned to Charlie Company, 82d Chemical Battalion, 3d Chemical Brigade. Training began 12 OCT and for me, it ended 14 DEC. For Manning, however, graduation from Charlie Company never came. Her problems began the moment she arrived on station.
Every recruit had the same packing list with the same items in that green duffel bag. They all weighed the same amount. Whether you were 6’4” or 5’4”, male or female, all recruits had to carry their own weight. Understand, that no one breezes through this exercise – everybody hurts, everyone drops their bag at least once, and everyone pays the price for it, including myself. During this exercise, Manning’s problem wasn’t that she was too small or not strong enough. The problem was, she quit. As the rest of the platoon faced one way, gritting their teeth and baring it, whispering words of encouragement to each other, she stood at an about-face the opposite direction, and said she simply could not pick up her own bag.
After the first day, lights came on promptly at 04:20AM every morning, accompanied by the booming voice of a Drill Sergeant blasting through the intercom system, announcing the uniform of the day. By 04:30 we were expected to have bunks made, personal hygiene conducted (clean shaven, teeth brushed, pit stick applied, etc.), wall lockers secured, and already be outside, in formation, waiting for the Drill Sergeants to initiate Accountability Report and then Physical Training (PT).
No one could accomplish all of those tasks in ten minutes. Therefore as a matter of custom everyone woke up at 04:00AM and silently conducted their business in the dark. At 04:20 when the uniform of the day was put out, half the company would...
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