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Steve Bannon: Thank you very much Benjamin, and I appreciate you guys including us in this. We’re speaking from Los Angeles today, right across the street from our headquarters in Los Angeles. Um. I want to talk about wealth creation and what wealth creation really can achieve and maybe take it in a slightly different direction, because I believe the world, and particularly the Judeo-Christian West, is in a crisis. And it’s really the organising principle of how we built Breitbart News to really be a platform to bring news and information to people throughout the world. Principally in the West, but we’re expanding internationally to let people understand the depths of this crisis, and it is a crisis both of capitalism but really of the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West in our beliefs.
It’s ironic, I think, that we’re talking today at exactly, tomorrow, 100 years ago, at the exact moment we’re talking, the assassination took place in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that led to the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the bloodiest century in mankind’s history. Just to put it in perspective, with the assassination that took place 100 years ago tomorrow in Sarajevo, the world was at total peace. There was trade, there was globalisation, there was technological transfer, the High Church of England and the Catholic Church and the Christian faith was predominant throughout Europe of practicing Christians. Seven weeks later, I think there were 5 million men in uniform and within 30 days there were over a million casualties.
That war triggered a century of barbaric — unparalleled in mankind’s history — virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we’re children of that: We’re children of that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age.
But the thing that got us out of it, the organising principle that met this, was not just the heroism of our people — whether it was French resistance fighters, whether it was the Polish resistance fighters, or it’s the young men from Kansas City or the Midwest who stormed the beaches of Normandy, commandos in England that fought with the Royal Air Force, that fought this great war, really the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right? The underlying principle is an enlightened form of capitalism, that capitalism really gave us the wherewithal. It kind of organised and built the materials needed to support, whether it’s the Soviet Union, England, the United States, and eventually to take back continental Europe and to beat back a barbaric empire in the Far East.
That capitalism really generated tremendous wealth. And that wealth was really distributed among a middle class, a rising middle class, people who come from really working-class environments and created what we really call a Pax Americana. It was many, many years and decades of peace. And I believe we’ve come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we’re starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism.
And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.
Now, what I mean by that specifically: I think that you’re seeing three kinds of converging tendencies: One is a form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief.
I see that every day. I’m a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialised in media, in investing in media companies, and it’s a very, very tough environment. And you’ve had a fairly good track record. So I don’t want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, “Let’s all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around capitalism.”
But there’s a strand of capitalism today — two strands of it, that are very disturbing. One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that’s the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it’s what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn’t spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century.
The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I’m a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that’s a very big part of the conservative movement — whether it’s the UKIP movement in England, it’s many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States.
However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the “enlightened capitalism” of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost — as many of the precepts of Marx — and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they’re really finding quite attractive. And if they don’t see another alternative, it’s going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of “personal freedom.”
The other tendency is an immense secularisation of the West. And I know we’ve talked about secularisation for a long time, but if you look at younger people, especially millennials under 30, the overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularise this rising iteration.
Now that call converges with something we have to face, and it’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasising far quicker than governments can handle it.
If you look at what’s happening in ISIS, which is the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, that is now currently forming the caliphate that is having a military drive on Baghdad, if you look at the sophistication of which they’ve taken the tools of capitalism. If you look at what they’ve done with Twitter and Facebook and modern ways to fundraise, and to use crowdsourcing to fund, besides all the access to weapons, over the last couple days they have had a radical program of taking kids and trying to turn them into bombers. They have driven 50,000 Christians out of a town near the Kurdish border. We have video that we’re putting up later today on Breitbart where they’ve took 50 hostages and thrown them off a cliff in Iraq.
That war is expanding and it’s metastasising to sub-Saharan Africa. We have Boko Haram and other groups that will eventually partner with ISIS in this global war, and it is, unfortunately, something that we’re going to have to face, and we’re going to have to face very quickly.
So I think the discussion of, should we put a cap on wealth creation and distribution? It’s something that should be at the heart of every Christian that is a capitalist — “What is the purpose of whatever I’m doing with this wealth? What is the purpose of what I’m doing with the ability that God has given us, that divine providence has given us to actually be a creator of jobs and a creator of wealth?”
I think it really behooves all of us to really take a hard look and make sure that we are reinvesting that back into positive things. But also to make sure that we understand that we’re at the very beginning stages of a global conflict, and if we do not bind together as partners with others in other countries that this conflict is only going to metastasise.
They have a Twitter account up today, ISIS does, about turning the United States into a “river of blood” if it comes in and tries to defend the city of Baghdad. And trust me, that is going to come to Europe. That is going to come to Central Europe, it’s going to come to Western Europe, it’s going to come to the United Kingdom. And so I think we are in a crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism, and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism.
Benjamin Harnwell, Human Dignity Institute: Thank you, Steve. That was a fascinating, fascinating overview. I am particularly struck by your argument, then, that in fact, capitalism would spread around the world based on the Judeo-Christian foundation is, in fact, something that can create peace through peoples rather than antagonism, which is often a point not sufficiently appreciated. Before I turn behind me to take a question —
Bannon: One thing I want to make sure of, if you look at the leaders of capitalism at that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West. They were either active participants in the Jewish faith, they were active participants in the Christians’ faith, and they took their beliefs, and the underpinnings of their beliefs was manifested in the work they did. And I think that’s incredibly important and something that would really become unmoored. I can see this on Wall Street today — I can see this with the securitisation of everything is that, everything is looked at as a securitisation opportunity. People are looked at as commodities. I don’t believe that our forefathers had that same belief.
Harnwell: Over the course of this conference we’ve heard from various points of view regarding alleviation of poverty. We’ve heard from the center-left perspective, we’ve heard from the socialist perspective, we’ve heard from the Christian democrat, if you will, perspective. What particularly interests me about your point of view Steve, to talk specifically about your work, Breitbart is very close to the tea party movement. So I’m just wondering whether you could tell me about if in the current flow of contemporary politics — first tell us a little bit about Breitbart, what the mission is, and then tell me about the reach that you have and then could you say a little bit about the current dynamic of what’s going on at the moment in the States.
Bannon: Outside of Fox News and the Drudge Report, we’re the third-largest conservative news site and, quite frankly, we have a bigger global reach than even Fox. And that’s why we’re expanding so much internationally.
Look, we believe — strongly — that there is a global tea party movement. We’ve seen that. We were the first group to get in and start reporting on things like UKIP and Front National and other center right. With all the baggage that those groups bring — and trust me, a lot of them bring a lot of baggage, both ethnically and racially — but we think that will all be worked through with time.
The central thing that binds that all together is a center-right populist movement of really the middle class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos. A group of kind of — we’re not conspiracy-theory guys, but there’s certainly — and I could see this when I worked at Goldman Sachs — there are people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to people in Kansas and in Colorado, and they have more of this elite mentality that they’re going to dictate to everybody how the world’s going to be run.
I will tell you that the working men and women of Europe and Asia and the United States and Latin America don’t believe that. They believe they know what’s best for how they will comport their lives. They think they know best about how to raise their families and how to educate their families. So I think you’re seeing a global reaction to centralised government, whether that government is in Beijing or that government is in Washington, DC, or that government is in Brussels. So we are the platform for the voice of that.
Now, with that, we are strong capitalists. And we believe in the benefits of capitalism. And, particularly, the harder-nosed the capitalism, the better. However, like I said, there’s two strands of capitalism that we’re quite concerned about.
One is crony capitalism, or what we call state-controlled capitalism, and that’s the big thing the tea party is fighting in the United States, and really the tea party’s biggest fight is not with the left, because we’re not there yet. The biggest fight the tea party has today is just like UKIP. UKIP’s biggest fight is with the Conservative Party.
The tea party in the United States’ biggest fight is with the the Republican establishment, which is really a collection of crony capitalists that feel that they have a different set of rules of how they’re going to comport themselves and how they’re going to run things. And, quite frankly, it’s the reason that the United States’ financial situation is so dire, particularly our balance sheet. We have virtually a hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities. That is all because you’ve had this kind of crony capitalism in Washington, DC. The rise of Breitbart is directly tied to being the voice of that center-right opposition. And, quite frankly, we’re winning many, many victories.
On the social conservative side, we’re the voice of the anti-abortion movement, the voice of the traditional marriage movement, and I can tell you we’re winning victory after victory after victory. Things are turning around as people have a voice and have a platform of which they can use.
Harnwell: The third-largest conservative news website is something to be extremely impressed by. Can you tell for the people here who aren’t within the Anglosphere and they might not follow American domestic politics at the moment — there seems to be a substantial sea change going on at the moment in Middle America. And the leader of the majority party, Eric Cantor, was deselected a couple of weeks ago by a tea party candidate. What does that mean for the state of domestic politics in America at the moment?
Bannon: For everybody in your audience, this is one of the most monumental — first off, it’s the biggest election upset in the history of the American republic. Eric Cantor was the House majority leader and raised $10 million. He spent, between himself and outside groups, $8 million to hold a congressional district. He ran against a professor who was an evangelical Christian and a libertarian economist. He ran against a professor who raised in total $175,000. In fact, the bills from Eric Cantor’s campaign at a elite steak house in Washington, DC, was over $200,000. So they spent more than $200,000 over the course of the campaign wining and dining fat cats at a steak house in Washington than the entire opposition had to run.
Now, Eric Cantor, it was a landslide. He lost 57–43, and not one — outside of Breitbart, we covered this for six months, day in and day out — not one news site — not Fox News, not Politico, no sites picked this up. And the reason that this guy won is quite simple: Middle-class people and working-class people are tired of people like Eric Cantor who say they’re conservative selling out their interests every day to crony capitalists.
And you’re seeing that whether that was UKIP and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, whether it’s these groups in the Low Countries in Europe, whether it’s in France, there’s a new tea party in Germany. The theme is all the same. And the theme is middle-class and working-class people — they’re saying, “Hey, I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked. I’m getting less benefits than I’m ever getting through this, I’m incurring less wealth myself, and I’m seeing a system of fat cats who say they’re conservative and say they back capitalist principles, but all they’re doing is binding with corporatists.” Right? Corporatists, to garner all the benefits for themselves.
And that center-right revolt is really a global revolt. I think you’re going to see it in Latin America, I think you’re going to see it in Asia, I think you’ve already seen it in India. Modi’s great victory was very much based on these Reaganesque principles, so I think this is a global revolt, and we are very fortunate and proud to be the news site that is reporting that throughout the world.
Harnwell: I think it’s important to understand the distinction that you’re drawing here between what can be understood as authentic, free-market capitalism as a means of promoting wealth that [unintelligible] involves everybody with a form of crony capitalism which simply benefits a certain class. And we’ve watched over the course of our conference, we’ve watched two video segments produced by the Acton Institute about how development aid is spent internationally and how that can be driven away from — it damages people on the ground but it also perpetuates a governing class. And the point that you’re mentioning here, that I think that you’re saying has driven almost a revolution movement in America, is the same phenomenon of what’s going on in the developing world, which is a concept of government which is no longer doing what it is morally bound to do but has become corrupt and self-serving. So it’s effectively the sa—
Bannon: It’s exactly the same. Currently, if you read The Economist, you read the Financial Times this week, you’ll see there’s a relatively obscure agency in the federal government that is engaged in a huge fight that may lead to a government shutdown. It’s called the Export-Import Bank. And for years, it was a bank that helped finance things that other banks wouldn’t do. And what’s happening over time is that it’s metastasised to be a cheap form of financing to General Electric and to Boeing and to other large corporations. You get this financing from other places if they wanted to, but they’re putting this onto the middle-class taxpayers to support this.
And the tea party is using this as an example of the cronyism. General Electric and these major corporations that are in bed with the federal government are not what we’d consider free-enterprise capitalists. We’re backers of entrepreneurial capitalists. They’re not. They’re what we call corporatist. They want to have more and more monopolistic power and they’re doing that kind of convergence with big government. And so the fight here — and that’s why the media’s been very late to this party — but the fight you’re seeing is between entrepreneur capitalism, and the Acton Institute is a tremendous supporter of, and the people like the corporatists that are closer to the people like we think in Beijing and Moscow than they are to the entrepreneurial capitalist spirit of the United States.
Harnwell: Thanks, Steve. I’m going to turn around now, as I’m sure we have some great questions from the floor. Who has the first question then?
Bannon: First of all, Benjamin, I can tell you I could hardly recognise you, you’re so cleaned up you are for the conference.
[Laughter]
Questioner: Hello, my name is Deborah Lubov. I’m a Vatican correspondent for Zenit news agency, for their English edition. I have some experience working in New York — I was working for Pricewaterhouse-Coopers auditing investment banks, one of which was Goldman Sachs. And considering this conference is on poverty, I’m curious — from your point of view especially, your experience in the investment banking world — what concrete measures do you think they should be doing to combat, prevent this phenomenon? We know that various sums of money are used in all sorts of ways and they do have different initiatives, but in order to concretely counter this epidemic now, what are your thoughts?
Bannon: That’s a great question. The 2008 crisis, I think the financial crisis — which, by the way, I don’t think we’ve come through — is really driven I believe by the greed, much of it driven by the greed of the investment banks. My old firm, Goldman Sachs — traditionally the best banks are leveraged 8:1. When we had the financial crisis in 2008, the investment banks were leveraged 35:1. Those rules had specifically been changed by a guy named Hank Paulson. He was secretary of Treasury. As chairman of Goldman Sachs, he had gone to Washington years before and asked for those changes. That made the banks not really investment banks, but made them hedge funds — and highly susceptible to changes in liquidity. And so the crisis of 2008 was, quite frankly, really never recovered from in the United States. It’s one of the reasons last quarter you saw 2.9% negative growth in a quarter. So the United States economy is in very, very tough shape.
And one of the reasons is that we’ve never really gone and dug down and sorted through the problems of 2008. Particularly the fact — think about it — not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis. And in fact, it gets worse. No bonuses and none of their equity was taken. So part of the prime drivers of the wealth that they took in the 15 years leading up to the crisis was not hit at all, and I think that’s one of the fuels of this populist revolt that we’re seeing as the tea party. So I think there are many, many measures, particularly about getting the banks on better footing, making them address all the liquid assets they have. I think you need a real clean-up of the banks’ balance sheets.
In addition, I think you really need to go back and make banks do what they do: Commercial banks lend money, and investment banks invest in entrepreneurs and to get away from this trading — you know, the hedge fund securitisation, which they’ve all become basically trading operations and securitisations and not put capital back and really grow businesses and to grow the economy. So I think it’s a whole area that just — and I will tell you, the underpinning of this populist revolt is the financial crisis of 2008. That revolt, the way that it was dealt with, the way that the people who ran the banks and ran the hedge funds have never really been held accountable for what they did, has fuelled much of the anger in the tea party movement in the United States.
Questioner: Thank you.
Bannon: Great question.
Questioner: Hello, Mr. Bannon. I’m Mario Fantini, a Vermonter living in Vienna, Austria. You began describing some of the trends you’re seeing worldwide, very dangerous trends, worry trends. Another movement that I’ve been seeing grow and spread in Europe, unfortunately, is what can only be described as tribalist or neo-nativist movement — they call themselves Identitarians. These are mostly young, working-class, populist groups, and they’re teaching self-defense classes, but also they are arguing against — and quite effectively, I might add — against capitalism and global financial institutions, etc. How do we counteract this stuff? Because they’re appealing to a lot of young people at a very visceral level, especially with the ethnic and racial stuff.
Bannon: I didn’t hear the whole question, about the tribalist?
Questioner: Very simply put, there’s a growing movement among young people here in Europe, in France and in Austria and elsewhere, and they’re arguing very effectively against Wall Street institutions and they’re also appealing to people on an ethnic and racial level. And I was just wondering what you would recommend to counteract these movements, which are growing.
Bannon: One of the reasons that you can understand how they’re being fuelled is that they’re not seeing the benefits of capitalism. I mean particularly — and I think it’s particularly more advanced in Europe than it is in the United States, but in the United States it’s getting pretty advanced — is that when you have this kind of crony capitalism, you have a different set of rules for the people that make the rules. It’s this partnership of big government and corporatists. I think it starts to fuel, particularly as you start to see negative job creation. If you go back, in fact, and look at the United States’ GDP, you look at a bunch of Europe. If you take out government spending, you know, we’ve had negative growth on a real basis for over a decade.
And that all trickles down to the man in the street. If you look at people’s lives, and particularly millennials, look at people under 30 — people under 30, there’s 50% really underemployment of people in the United States, which is probably the most advanced economy in the West, and it gets worse in Europe.
I think in Spain it’s something like 50 or 60% of the youth under 30 are underemployed. And that means the decade of their twenties, which is where you have to learn a skill, where you have to learn a craft, where you really start to get comfortable in your profession, you’re taking that away from the entire generation. That’s only going to fuel tribalism, that’s only going to fuel [unintelligible]… That’s why to me, it’s incumbent upon freedom-loving people to make sure that we sort out these governments and make sure that we sort out particularly this crony capitalism so that the benefits become more of this entrepreneurial spirit and that can flow back to working-class and middle-class people. Because if not, we’re going to pay a huge price for this. You can already start to see it.
Questioner:I have a question, because you worked on Wall Street. What is the opinion there on whether they think bank bailouts are justified? Is there a Christian-centered [unintelligible] that they think should be bailed out? The crisis starts earlier than 2008. What was the precedent then? What was the feeling on Wall Street when they bailed out the banks? How should Christians feel about advocating or being against that?
Bannon: I think one is about responsibility. For Christians, and particularly for those who believe in the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West, I don’t believe that we should have a bailout. I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong. And I think, you look in hindsight, it was a lot of misinformation that was presented about the bailouts of the banks in the West.
And look at the [unintelligible] it. Middle-class taxpayers, people that are working-class people, right, people making incomes under $50,000 and $60,000, it was the burden of those taxpayers, right, that bailed out the elites. And let’s think about it for a second. Here’s how capitalism metastasised, is that all the burdens put on the working-class people who get none of the upside. All of the upside goes to the crony capitalists.
The bailouts were absolutely outrageous, and here’s why: It bailed out a group of shareholders and executives who were specifically accountable. The shareholders were accountable for one simple reason: They allowed this to go wrong without changing management. And the management team of this. And we know this now from congressional investigations, we know it from independent investigations, this is not some secret conspiracy. This is kind of in plain sight.
In fact, one of the committees in Congress said to the Justice Department 35 executives, I believe, that they should have criminal indictments against — not one of those has ever been followed up on. Because even with the Democrats, right, in power, there’s a sense between the law firms, and the accounting firms, and the investment banks, and their stooges on Capitol Hill, they looked the other way.
So you can understand why middle-class people having a tough go of it making $50 or $60 thousand a year and see their taxes go up, and they see that their taxes are going to pay for government sponsored bailouts, what you’ve created is really a free option. You say to this investment banking, create a free option for bad behaviour. In otherwise all the upside goes to the hedge funds and the investment bank, and to the crony capitalist with stock increases and bonus increases. And their downside is limited, because middle-class people are going to come and bail them out with tax dollars. And that’s what I think is fuelling this populist revolt. Whether that revolt is in the Midlands of England, or whether it’s in Middle America. And I think people are fed up with it.
And I think that’s why you’re seeing — when you read the media says, “tea party is losing, losing elections,” that is all BS. The elections we don’t win, we’re forcing those crony capitalists to come and admit that they’re not going to do this again. The whole narrative in Washington has been changed by this populist revolt that we call the grassroots of the tea party movement.
And it’s specifically because those bailouts were completely and totally unfair. It didn’t make those financial institutions any stronger, and it bailed out a bunch of people — by the way, and these are people that have all gone to Yale, and Harvard, they went to the finest institutions in the West. They should have known better.
And by the way: It’s all the institutions of the accounting firms, the law firms, the investment banks, the consulting firms, the elite of the elite, the educated elite, they understood what they were getting into, forcibly took all the benefits from it and then look to the government, went hat in hand to the government to be bailed out. And they’ve never been held accountable today. Trust me — they are going to be held accountable. You’re seeing this populist movement called the tea party in the United States.
Harnwell: Okay, I think we’ve got time for just one or two more questions for Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of Breitbart Media, third-largest news organisation in the States. I know you’re a very, very busy man, so we’re very grateful for the time that you’ve agreed to put aside for this, to close this conference.
Bannon: I’m never too busy to share with a group that can do as much good as you guys can.
Questioner: What do you think is the major threat today, to the Judeo-Christian Civilisation? Secularism, or the Muslim world? In my humble opinion, they’re just trying to defend themselves from our cultural invasion. Thank you.
[Question restated by Harnwell]
Bannon:It’s a great question. I certainly think secularism has sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals, right?
If you go back to your home countries and you’re a proponent of the defence of the Judeo-Christian West and its tenets, oftentimes, particularly when you deal with the elites, you’re looked at as someone who is quite odd. So it has kind of sapped the strength.
But I strongly believe that whatever the causes of the current drive to the caliphate was — and we can debate them, and people can try to deconstruct them — we have to face a very unpleasant fact. And that unpleasant fact is that there is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global. It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act [unintelligible].
Questioner: Thank you very much. I’m [unintelligible]. I come from Slovakia. This is actually the source of my two very quick questions. Thank you very much for the work that you do to promote the Judeo-Christian values in the world. I really appreciate it, and I also feel that the danger is very high. I have two minor questions, because you have mentioned, in terms of UKIP and Front National [unintelligible]. From the European perspective, listening to the language which has become more and more radical from these two parties, especially before the European Parliament elections, I’m just wondering what are your plans on how to help these partners from Europe to maybe focus on the value issues and not with populist? And also it goes in terms — you have mentioned the involvement of state in capitalism as one of the big dangers. But these two parties you’ve mentioned, they actually have close ties with Putin, who is the promoter of this big danger, so I’d like to know your thoughts about this and how you’re going to deal with it.
Bannon: Could you summarise that for me?
Harnwell: The first question was, you’d reference the Front National and UKIP as having elements that are tinged with the racial aspect amidst their voter profile, and the questioner was asking how you intend to deal with that aspect.
Bannon: I don’t believe I said UKIP in that. I was really talking about the parties on the continent, Front National and other European parties.
I’m not an expert in this, but it seems that they have had some aspects that may be anti-Semitic or racial. By the way, even in the tea party, we have a broad movement like this, and we’ve been criticised, and they try to make the tea party as being racist, etc., which it’s not. But there’s always elements who turn up at these things, whether it’s militia guys or whatever. Some that are fringe organisations. My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? People understand what pulls them together, and the people on the margins I think get marginalised more and more.
I believe that you’ll see this in the center-right populist movement in continental Europe. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with UKIP, and I can say to you that I’ve never seen anything at all with UKIP that even comes close to that. I think they’ve done a very good job of policing themselves to really make sure that people including the British National Front and others were not included in the party, and I think you’ve seen that also with tea party groups, where some people would show up and were kind of marginal members of the tea party, and the tea party did a great job of policing themselves early on. And I think that’s why when you hear charges of racism against the tea party, it doesn’t stick with the American people, because they really understand.
I think when you look at any kind of revolution — and this is a revolution — you always have some groups that are disparate. I think that will all burn away over time and you’ll see more of a mainstream center-right populist movement.
Question: Obviously, before the European elections the two parties had a clear link to Putin. If one of the representatives of the dangers of capitalism is the state involvement in capitalism, so, I see there, also Marine Le Pen campaigning in Moscow with Putin, and also UKIP strongly defending Russian positions in geopolitical terms.
[Harnwell restates, but unintelligible]
Harnwell: These two parties have both been cultivating President Putin [unintelligible].
Bannon: I think it’s a little bit more complicated. When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he’s got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasised into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that.
One of the reasons is that they believe that at least Putin is standing up for traditional institutions, and he’s trying to do it in a form of nationalism — and I think that people, particularly in certain countries, want to see the sovereignty for their country, they want to see nationalism for their country. They don’t believe in this kind of pan-European Union or they don’t believe in the centralised government in the United States. They’d rather see more of a states-based entity that the founders originally set up where freedoms were controlled at the local level.
I’m not justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist of kleptocracy. However, we the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism — and I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and a strong thing. I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States, and I think it’s what can see us forward.
You know, Putin’s been quite an interesting character. He’s also very, very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States where he’s playing very strongly to social conservatives about his message about more traditional values, so I think it’s something that we have to be very much on guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand. However, I really believe that in this current environment, where you’re facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive that is really a situation — I’m not saying we can put it on a back burner — but I think we have to deal with first things first.
Questioner: One of my questions has to do with how the West should be responding to radical Islam. How, specifically, should we as the West respond to jihadism without losing our own soul? Because we can win the war and lose ourselves at the same time. How should the West respond to radical Islam and not lose itself in the process?
Bannon: From a perspective — this may be a little more militant than others. I think definitely you’re going to need an aspect that is [unintelligible]. I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam. And I realise there are other aspects that are not as militant and not as aggressive and that’s fine.
If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing. I think they kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places… It bequeathed to use the great institution that is the church of the West.
And I would ask everybody in the audience today, because you really are the movers and drivers and shakers and thought leaders in the Catholic Church today, is to think, when people 500 years from now are going to think about today, think about the actions you’ve taken — and I believe everyone associated with the church and associated with the Judeo-Christian West that believes in the underpinnings of that and believes in the precepts of that and want to see that bequeathed to other generations down the road as it was bequeathed to us, particularly as you’re in a city like Rome, and in a place like the Vatican, see what’s been bequeathed to us — ask yourself, 500 years from today, what are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about what I did at the beginning stages of this crisis?
Because it is a crisis, and it’s not going away. You don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the news every day, see what’s coming up, see what they’re putting on Twitter, what they’re putting on Facebook, see what’s on CNN, what’s on BBC. See what’s happening, and you will see we’re in a war of immense proportions. It’s very easy to play to our baser instincts, and we can’t do that. But our forefathers didn’t do it either. And they were able to stave this off, and they were able to defeat it, and they were able to bequeath to us a church and a civilisation that really is the flower of mankind, so I think it’s incumbent on all of us to do what I call a gut check, to really think about what our role is in this battle that’s before us.
How [The Kike's] 'La La Land' Misleads on Race, Romance and Jazz
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
[The Kike's] Hollywood Reporter
The musical is "daring and deserving," writes the NBA legend and culture critic, but the "bigoted message" of a black man selling out and the "childish notion" of ambition before love disappoints.
A recent [KIKE] Saturday Night Live skit depicts two street-tough cops yelling at a handcuffed man they just arrested because he didn't think La La Land was great. "It dragged in the middle," he complains. "You sick son of a bitch!" one cop barks. "You disgust me!" This pretty much distills the rift in American [KIKE] pop culture that is nearly as contentious as the rift in American [KIKE] politics. As someone who finds La La Land bold, daring and deserving of all its critical and financial success, I can also admit that there are a few elements that warrant closer examination, particularly regarding its portrayal of jazz, romance and people of color. In fact, the better a work of art is, the more we must dissect it, because now we're not just measuring Rotten Tomatoes popularity or boffo box office, we're assessing its proper place in our [KIKE] cultural canon.
No, I don't think the film needs more black people. Writer-director Damien Chazelle should tell the story as he sees fits with whatever ethnic arrangement he desires. However, it is fair to question his color wheel when it involves certain historical elements — such as jazz. As an aficionado with over 5,000 jazz albums and having had my own jazz label, Cranberry Records, I'm happy whenever jazz takes center stage in a story, as it did in Miles Ahead, Bird, Round Midnight and Mo' Better Blues. Jazz is [NOT] a uniquely African-American music form born in New Orleans and [NOT] raised in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Sure, I would have loved to see a film like La La Land years ago starring singer-dancer Gregory Hines, the master of improvisational tap dance whose tapping could sound like a jazz drummer. Having said that, I'm still delighted to see Ryan Gosling play a man (Sebastian) devoted to the artistry of traditional jazz. But I'm also disturbed to see the one major black character, Keith (John Legend), portrayed as the musical sellout who, as Sebastian sees it, has corrupted jazz into a diluted pop pablum.
Wait just a minute!
The white guy wants to preserve the black roots of jazz while the black guy is the sellout? This could be a deliberate ironic twist, but if it is, it's a distasteful one for African-Americans. One legitimate complaint that marginalised [POZ-POD-]people (women, people of color, Muslims, the LGBT community, etc.) have had about [KIKE] Hollywood in the past is that when they were portrayed, it was done in a negative way. The ditzy blonde, the Muslim terrorist, the gay predator are all familiar stereotypes from years of TV and movies. So much has been done in recent years to overcome those debasing images, but we still have to be careful. It's not that a black man can't be the sellout or the drug dealer, it's just that they shouldn't be if they're the only prominent black character in the story. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, that sends a bigoted message rippling through our society.
READ MORE
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Black Celebrities Must "Be Fearless and Relentless in Speaking Up" Against Trump (Guest Column)
I'm equally interested in how the film portrays romance, because [KIKE] pop culture (movies, TV, books, music) is the major source of information about romantic relationships for our youth. That's where they learn about what to look for in a mate, what a relationship should look like, how to treat each other. So when we throw a beloved film like La La Land on the self-help shelf of love, we need to understand just what the film is saying and whether that's accurate or even healthy. At first, the story follows the traditional heterosexual romantic-comedy formula of boy-meets-girl, and they fall in love. This is followed by boy-loses-girl, due to either ego (self-absorption) or a corrupt relative or official (meddling parent, jealous friend, hostile boss). The third part is that the lovers prove they are worthy of love by overcoming their ego and relative issues to come together in the end. But La La Land ends with the self-absorbed egos having irrevocably wedged the lovers apart, and neither is mature enough to overcome it. That's pretty realistic, since so many relationships crash and burn there.
The problem comes when we romanticize the crash and burn. Then the drama of the breakup seems more fulfilling than the prospect of actual romance, which can then seem mundane in the long run. Now a continual series of melodramatic breakups makes a person seem more tragically edgy and becomes justification for why they can't find real love.
Why do Sebastian and Mia break up? Because they are both obsessed with their careers and prefer pursuing those to pursuing each other. This is a similar theme to that in Chazelle's brilliant previous film, Whiplash, in which Andrew (Miles Teller) dumps his supportive girlfriend in order to fully immerse himself in his jazz drumming. Clearly, the only love interest he has is his abusive but equally obsessive teacher (J.K. Simmons). By the end, we realize Andrew is on the path to being a great drummer, but a life that is just as alienated — and alienating — as his teacher's. Onscreen, their final scene in which they perform to the upper heights of their art seems heroically cool, but after the show, all they have is a hot plate and cable TV.
Both films might be cautionary tales to warn against the single-minded pursuit of self-aggrandizing dreams. After all, Mia gets her movie star career, but seems locked in a perfectly pleasant but passionless marriage. Sebastian gets his jazz club, but is alone and regretful about what might have been with Mia. At the end, they smile wistfully at each other and the lives they might have had. Is the film encouraging us to weigh the value of our dreams against the reality of love? Is it saying that, although the sacrifice of a relationship or two is sad, it's a small price to pay to follow our dreams? Seems to be. In the song "The Audition (The Fools Who Dream)," Mia sings of her artist aunt who inspires her: "A bit of madness is key / To give us to color to see / Who knows where it will lead us? / And that's why they need us." The problem with that is it implies we can't have both: We can't follow our dreams and have a decent relationship. The fire of one consumes the other. [WOW! THIS NIGGER IS A REAL COFFEE-HOUSE PHILOSOPHER!]
As Sportin' Life from Porgy and Bess would say, "It ain't necessarily so."
That's where the romanticizing comes in. The whole childish doomed-romance genre celebrates personal achievement with only an obligatory sad nod toward the consequences. Mia also sings this about her aunt: "She lives in her liquor / And died with a flicker / I'll always remember the flame." Sure, you'll remember the flame because you're too blinded by your own ambition to see the real moral: She died with a flicker because she was an alcoholic burnout! Even Sebastian wonders about how accurately he sees things in "City of Stars": "City of stars / There's so much that I can't see." Starlight romanticizes whatever it illuminates.
A few weeks ago at the SAG Awards while receiving the Life Achievement Award, Lily Tomlin shared a regret, saying that when she was younger she had been "ambitious about the wrong things." In other words, just because you have a dream, it doesn't make that a sacred calling. The artist as Christ-like figure sacrificing herself to give her art to the people is a childish notion that is just bedazzling one's self-promotion. As Mr. Antolini says in [KIKE JD Salinger's] The Catcher in the Rye: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Had Mia and Sebastian chosen to live humbly, they might have had their success — or not — and been happy together. [HMMM...YOU DON'T SAY...]
I'm glad we have a shining star like La La Land to add to our movie firmament. The characters are delightful and charming, the musical numbers are imaginative, the soundtrack is addicting. I know I'll be watching it again and again over the years, just as I'll be listening to the wonderful soundtrack. But every time I do, along with the immense joy, I'll have a tiny nagging feeling of, "What if [I WEREN'T A DUMB NIGGER]?"
CONGRESSIONAL HOPEFUL PUSHES LATINO-ISRAEL TIES
Democrat Ruben Gallego eyes Arizona’s 7th District
By Yair Rosenberg, The Tablet, April 14, 2014
In 2012, a poll commissioned by the Israel Project found that while American Latinos supported Israel by a 21 to 8 percent margin, a whopping 46 percent answered “don’t know” or that the United States should stay neutral on the Jewish state. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Congress in Arizona’s 7th District, is not one of those people.
As someone raised in an immigrant family and who spent significant time in Mexico, Gallego finds much in common with the Israeli story. “It’s natural,” he told me, in large part because “the Latino experience is very similar to the immigrants who have made Israel.”
Hailing from a Chicago Catholic family, Gallego was first introduced to Jewish life by his wife Kate, an Albuquerque native from a Reform home, who brought him to high holidays services at Harvard Hillel. It was an event “probably known best for Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, falling asleep during the services,” she recalled. “Nonetheless, it was a good start for Ruben.”
Both now hold public office–Kate as a Phoenix city councilwoman, and Ruben as an Arizona state representative, where he is assistant minority leader for the Democratic caucus. The couple married in 2010, after Ruben proposed on the floor of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Each has spent time in Israel. “Ruben and I always joke that he actually has the better personality for doing business in Israel,” Kate said. “He’s known for being very direct and will tell you what he’s thinking, and so it works out perfectly in Israel–he fits in very easily.”
For his part, having been on the front lines of America’s heated debates over immigration, Ruben was particularly moved by his conversations with Ethiopians in Israel. “They were talking to me about their experiences, and how they were able to integrate into Israeli society through programs that Israel has,” he recounted. “It really is similar to what I think we need in this country.
“Israel has a better appreciation, I think, for immigrants and what they bring to the country,” he continued, “and we’re starting to lose that here in the United States, especially in Arizona, and we need to start changing Arizonans more to the Israeli mindset of immigrants as an asset.”
Boxer Pacquiao denounces transgender lifestyle as 'fraud' in response to US Marine murderer
RT, 14 Feb, 2017
Multiple boxing world champion Manny Pacquiao has alleged cross-dressing by those identifying as transgender could “deceive” others and may be used to commit fraud.
The Filipino five-weight world champion made the comments in relation to the murder of 26-year-oldFilipina[Filipino] transgender sex worker Jennifer Laude, who was strangled to death by US Marine James Scott Pemberton upon discoveringher[his] gender.
Laude was found dead in the Celzone Lodge hotel withher[his] head in a toilet bowl after meeting Pemberton, 19, in a nightclub in Olongapo City.
Pemberton was later found guilty of murder and sentenced to 6 to 12 years in a Philippines prison.
Commenting on the incident, Pacquiao said that Pemberton had been “deceived” by Laude, who was a “guy who dressed up like a woman,” and suggested that transgender could be used to “commit fraud".
“Even in the Bible, we read that the woman should wear women’s; and the man, for men’s wear. That’s what I believe,” Pacquiao said, quoting the Bible in support of his argument.
It is not the first time Pacquiao has openly expressed his religious beliefs, as he regularly posts Bible scriptures to his social media accounts and prays in the ring before and after bouts. His wife, Jinkee, is former vice governor of Sarangani, in Mindanao, Philippines.
The 38-year-old has also been heavily involved in politics throughout his career, serving as Senator of the Philippines and briefly quitting boxing in 2016 to pursue a career in Congress.
Ironically, Pacquiao was elected in the same 2016 elections in which Geraldine Roman became the first openly transgenderwoman[man] to join the Congress of the Philippines, and who is also religious.
Pacquiao caused a storm last year when he made derogatory comments about homosexuals, stating that he believed gays are “worse than animals,” and attributed his viewpoint to his religion. “It’s just common sense. Do you see any animals of the same sex mating? Animals are better off, they can distinguish between male and female. Now if men are mating with men and women with women, then they are worse than animals,” Pacquiao told TV5, but later apologized.
US broadcaster HBO, the station which broadcasts Pacquiao’s fights, subsequently released a statement distancing themselves from Pacquiao’s comments. Sporting giant Nike went one step further and terminated their relationship with the fighter.
https://www.rt.com/sport/377333-pacquiao-transgender-fraud-murder/
More French riots despite 12 years of trying nothing
By Ramin Mazaheri, February 14, 2017
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009
As Communist hero and the “African Che Guevara”, Thomas Sankara, famously said: “A soldier without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal.”
France’s police have an ideology, because everyone has one: Only the truly apathetic or the most indoctrinated claim to not have one.
I’ll be honest: I have not attended France’s police academy nor read their training manuals so I can’t say for sure, but the ideology used to indoctrinate France’s police is clearly “White nationalism”.
The proof is not hearsay or just my 2nd-hand reporting from France: 52% of cops and soldiers voted for the National Front in 2015.
Estimates say 60% of active police will vote for Marine Le Pen this spring, more than double the current presidential polls.
This is totally outside the norm for French society, and it demands explanation.
For those who don’t know, the National Front is a “far-right” party. I would call them “Nazi”, because they are indeed “nationalist” culturally and “socialist” economically. It is really too bad that we cannot use the term “Nazi” anymore unless we are talking about history – we are just obscuring our shared reality by refusing to use quite simple political definitions.
Anyway, in a normal society, if a government would learn that 3/5ths of the police support far-right fascists they would respond immediately.
They would dilute such an extremist force with a huge influx of differently-minded government workers. They would immediately change the training procedures, manuals, workplace culture and lead a public campaign which says: “Mea culpa – we’ve got a major problem with our cops”.
France doesn’t do that, and won’t, we need to ask why: I say it’s because White Nationalism is the very bedrock of French society.
White Nationalism is also the socio-political foundation of the imperialist nations of the United States and England.
This is not to say there aren’t other important ideologies at play in these three countries, but it’s clear that socialism is not the basis, democracy is not the basis, religion is not the basis, libertarianism is not the basis…only White Nationalism fits, because true capitalists only care about the color of money.
White Nationalism was clearly the underlying philosophy that supported and was spread during centuries of colonialism, two World Wars and even in today’s neo-colonialism.
I am not exaggerating or being a namby-pamby leftist: the Blacks were enslaved and the Indians decimated due to the cleansing power of “White Nationalism”.
Trump is, for all his non-mainstream credentials, at heart a White Nationalist: “America first” – and they mean White America.
You know it’s true, and I am not blaming anybody for historical realities. Non-whites around the world know this is true as well.
But France flew under the radar for a bit
The world did not really know that the French inside France were White Nationalists until the nationwide 2005 rebellion (your “riot” is someone else’s “rebellion”).
That really shook up the world’s view of France and this is no exaggeration as well – France’s image suffered a major blow.
“But they believe in ‘liberty, equality and fraternity,’ right?” Nobody bought that line after 2005 and they sure don’t buy it now.
The 2005 rebellion exposed the fact that France has a huge non-White underclass which had totally blocked futures due to institutional racism.
It’s important to know why France’s White Nationalism was such a global surprise. After all, we knew about Apartheid, Jim Crow, Indian/Aboriginal reservations, etc.
The quick answer for that is: until the mid-1970s France had no real non-White minorities to systemically oppress.
Prior to that what France had was mostly a mass of foreign workers – single men with skills. Some married and integrated, sure.
But French society really changed – with the prodding of big business, and possibly for the actual humanitarian values they claimed – with the passing of the “Family Relocation Act”. This allowed mainly wives and children to immigrate to France to join their legally-working husbands. This created a major shift because it brought “whole villages” over to France.
It also happened amid a global recession, and then 30+ years of neoliberalism which gutted the standard of living of every French worker.
And while it certainly was the right thing to allow families to be together, it put the French model to the test as regards to tolerance and their model of assimilation instead of integration.
Considering France’s treatment of non-Whites outside of France…betting on France being tolerant wasn’t a very heady wager.
The French model’s inherent racism – which was so undeniably evident in its foreign colonies – lasted 1 single generation when it became applied at home: In 30 years, the time it takes one adult to reach total maturity, the system exploded under the weight of racism, hypocrisy and capitalist oppression.
You had the 2005 rebellion, and steam was let off, but the racism, blocked futures and police brutality have remained the same.
Or let’s blame the victim with the 10-cm tear in his rectum.
Pretty terrible. Needed major emergency surgery – could be in the hospital for 2 months. Could have permanent problems of incontinence.
What kind of a cop rapes someone with their baton? [A queer pozzed cop.] Ugh.
What kind of cops stand around and watches? Well, they were also spitting on him, calling him racist names and beating him in the genital area.
I was talking to a 50-year old Arab friend here and I said offhandedly, “That guy could have been one of your sons.”
He immediately looked down in – I don’t know…horror, shame, worry – and said, “Yes”.
That guy is a 22-year old Black man named Theo.
Cops said they were responding to calls of drug-dealing in the area: Theo works with youth groups and has a spotless record.
Cops said they stopped him because they thought he was an illegal alien: Theo is French.
Racial profiling is legal in France. It was the only campaign promise Hollande made the Muslim, Black and immigrant communities – another backtracking by Hollande, and he dropped his half-hearted effort last July.
The great news is that France is one of those awesome, perfect systems called a “Western democracy”, and so there are checks and balances to prevent such racism from being formalized and entrenched!
Too bad the judges are racist too: the Constitutional Council said last month that racial profiling is a legal tactic.
You knew Theo had a case when Hollande came to visit him in the hospital. That was kind of a mea culpa.
But then the investigation of the policemen’s actions concluded that Theo’s pants “slipped down on their own” and that he was sodomized “by accident”.
They really did…they really, actually did state that publicly. [Wow, like, wow...I can't even...]
That’s when the riots got worse.
It’s bad enough people are getting raped with a police baton, but then to be forced to accept such a lie? To be forced to realize the system will do nothing, can do nothing, wants to do nothing?
That’s when people rage for accountability of some sort.
That reminded me of the 2005 “riots”: When did they really hit that high gear? When cops felt it necessary to fire tear gas into a mosque…during Ramadan. Again, adding insult to injury.
(Note: Right-wing rag Le Figaro is apparently now trying to whitewashing this fact of history by calling it a “rumor”, even though former Interior Minister [KIKE] Sarkozy admitted it at the time: “Et la rumeur voulait également qu’une grenade lacrymogène ait explosé au sein de la mosquée de Clichy-sous-Bois, lancée par la police. En plein ramadan…”)
I don’t know if we are going to see another 2005? But it’s been almost every night for a week, and they are spreading outside Paris now.
In 2005 it was sparked by the death of 2 teenagers at the hands of police harassment [FALSE] – this situation is different, but pretty brutal and reprehensible.
In my work for [The Islamic Republic of Iran's] Press TV I called up the “Anti-Negrophobia Brigade” for an interview. I do not see that any French media has done the same. Hey, Iranians let all the Blacks and women go when they took the American embassy in Tehran – call us at Press TV biased in favor of the oppressed.
I first met their spokesperson, Franco Lollia, at a demonstration in support of a Roma who was badly beaten up. Franco is Black and French, but his name is Latin for “French”, the Roma are not Black.
Anyway, Franco knows the score. So he was, rightfully, totally uncompromising in his analysis. He was also not angry, nor surprised. Why should he be? Is any of what he said not accurate or new (The same type of rape happened last October, too.):
“This is a massive humiliation…attempt to degrade all non-Whites…to take away our dignity, self-respect and charisma…this happens all the time…daily harassment…he was lucky not to have been like so many others – killed…showing Whites are in control…the definition of ‘neo-colonialism’…massive police machine…White supremacy…never believe this is a country of human rights.”
The best one was this, which I used for Press TV: “French society today is not even close to admitting that their real goal is to send the message that: ‘We Whites are in total control’.”
2005 is 12 years ago, per my calendar
France is, indeed, not close to making such an admission. Not…even…close.
Let’s turn to the other extreme: France also cannot say that they have no idea such an issue existed.
Maybe in 2005 that was somewhat plausible? This is a predominantly rural country [20% Rural (World Bank, 2015)], and yeah there’s a kebab shop in every village but we can believe that some French people were genuinely surprised at the impoverished, marginalized condition of non-Whites in Paris or Marseilles.
But in 2017 they all have been made aware. The whole world knows.
And what has changed since 2005?
Well, it should be quite obvious that you had the 2005 riots, then the response of hardline White Nationalism, the open denigration of “ghetto” culture, the mainstreaming of [Kike-invented] Islamophobia and…then arrival of home-grown terrorism in 2012, the arrival foreign terrorism in 2015, the arrival of France being the #6 national supplier of terrorists in Syria.
Some of you don’t want to go there, I can tell…you can’t see the pattern and make the simple connections….
Fine, let’s talk certainties: After 2005 it certainly became a huge political winner to kick the tar out of non-Whites – Islamophobia became mainstream.
[Kike] Sarkozy rose to power on it, Hollande did too and now Le Pen or Fillon is going to win by doing it.
It was – I’d say – in 2012, when the “Socialist” Hollande was running on Islamophobia…that’s when it became acceptable to openly support the National Front. Prior to that many voters were afraid to admit it.
Maybe I am being too harsh? Maybe 12 years isn’t enough time for the government – i.e. society – to fix this cultural problem of racism?
Certainly, enacting anti-burka laws, anti-burqini laws, ministers calling hejab-wearing women “niggers who support slavery”…none of this was aimed at rectifying the cultural problem. It was all more White Nationalism, after all, so it could only increase the lack of unity.
Maybe 12 years isn’t enough time for the government – i.e. society – to fix the socio-economic problems that non-Whites were so angry about?
Since austerity took control in 2009 it’s the non-Whites who lose first. I mean…c’mon, this is not cynicism; this is politics (Western, democratic, capitalist).
I could hyperlink dozens of reports detailing specific instances of the ever-worsening condition of the heavily-immigrant Parisian suburbs, but just use your favorite search engine if you are interested.
What’s in a name, socio-economically?
Here’s a personal story for you: A study came out in which sent resumes to job openings. Some resumes had White French names, and then another set had Mohammed and Samira.
Well…you can guess…Mo and Mimi were less likely to get called for an actual interview. Mohammed was a whopping 4 times less likely to get even a chance to interview for a job (much less win)!
I have a French friend named Mohammad – at the time he had been unemployed for 2 years.
Well he had a job, but it was a bad one – spending 20-30 hours a week sending resumes on-line. I assume he spent 10-15 hours per week fighting off depression from all the rejections, because we all know being unemployed is just terrible.
Thinking I would make Mohammed happy, I told him about this study over lunch. “Great news! You don’t suck, it’s the racism!”
I wish I had never told him.
The next hour was painful to watch: Mohammed went through about 10 different stages of sadness, anger, resignation, resistance, apathy, laughter, cynicism, racism, hope, resentment, etc.
Why? Because the guy wants a job! He likes food, he likes paying for the occasional night out, he likes heat in his apartment! You might be surprised that none of this listed explicitly in the Koran, but that’s just the way this silly citizen is.
He was frustrated as hell, already, and then to hear that because his name was Mohammed he had so much more going against him?
Like I said, ignorance was bliss, and his emotional response should be totally understandable.
I feel bad about telling him, but I foolishly took the advice to tell him from a White French friend of mine! I had my doubts, so I asked him and he said, “Yeah, sure, tell him, it lets him off the hook.”
Despite this interesting study, Mohammad remained quite on the hook for his unpaid bills. Mohammed felt abused, insulted, oppressed.
And then some young, good kid gets raped by a police baton and might have to defecate in a bag his whole life…and so many White French can’t understand the outpouring of anger, rocks at cops, torched cars, etc.?
Well…man…you’re not dumb or ignorant or unfeeling…you just don’t seem to know any non-Whites!
Do you have a story like this you can share? Stories of you when you were stationed in Indochina, Algeria or some other foreign country do not really count, LOL.
Tell Mohammad about Tommy – Commie can you hear me?
Back to Thomas Sankara, and true leftists need to return again and again to Sankara, because Communists need to examine what worked in order to win again.
Sankara is the type of role model these Black youth should be learning about in French school, as he was probably THE prototypical modern leader…and he did it in French.
Sankara led the Communist Revolution in Burkina Faso in 1983. Debt repudiation, refusing foreign loans, education programs, land redistribution, health programs, feminism – hey, this is what communists do when they get a chance.
The dude also played guitar in a jazz fusion band, gave Burkina Faso its current name (it means “[Father-]Land of the Upright People” [Burkina: Mossi for "honest men"; Faso: Dyula for "father's house"]) and visited Harlem, where he gave such a speech that you can still buy T-shirts of Sankara across 110th Street today.
[Commie "Che" Sankara]
He was poised to take the mantle of pan-African leader from [Kike] Ghadaffi. Instead he died at 37…with $350 in his account, a couple guitars and a small house he was still making payments on.
France won’t declassify their archives, but the French [Libyans and Liberians and his own army] had him assassinated, by his best friend no less, Blaise Compaoré [Kikedaffy's friend]. After 27 years of pro-French dictatorship, and overturning Burkina Faso’s communist advances, Compaoré was finally overthrown. He’s being harbored in Ivory Coast, the capital of neo-colonial Françafrique.
[Blaise Compaoré & Muammar Kikedaffy]
But Thomas Sankara is not something French teachers like to teach about. They want to talk about colonialists, military men and all those 18th century statues paid for by unpaid slave wages…people who were nearly all White Nationalists.
Cry about “Political Correctness” and “victim of their times” all you want, but you can’t change that fact.
The foot soldiers of White Nationalism
The Politically Correct Revolution has helped to undermine petty nationalism, and that’s a real success, but one thing today’s Western leftists are simply terrible at doing is courageously rejecting their domestic militarism.
White nationalism requires constant militarism, after all: Militarism and vigilance against cultural contamination, intermarriage, religious impurities, etc.
It’s not just the soldiers: Nobody would call MSNBC shill Rachel Maddow a real leftist, but in the US she passes for one. Yet Al-Jazeera pointed out her book is filled with paeans to the US army. You simply must “support the troops” in places like the US.
In France, it’s not just the justice system which never convicts an officer of a crime if the victim is Brown; criticism of them is just as unheard of as in the US.
Journalists here actually reported that the absurd claim that the rape was “an accident” without irony! Without question! When these are the journalists, just imagine how the politicians are lining up in the ranks!
French leftists – but not just leftists, of course – need to demand major reform of a French police force which is clearly supportive of fascism, filled with racists and which acts above the law.
Support France’s cops and you are, as the 60% figure proves, supporting White Nationalists.
I do NOT support France’s cops one bit, because they are fighting this brutal war at home. France’s police are soldiers; let’s agree on that – they are a “home army”.
If you have never seen them up close, I can attest that their police are armed to the teeth and covered in American football pads.
There are always 4 of them. Why? “In case they want to play cards,” runs the joke! The real reason is for their safety – because 10- kilos of guns and ammo just isn’t enough – but a real outcome is increased intimidation, police groupthink and dedication to the police omerta code of silence.
The riot police – carrying shields, using tear gas, deploying water cannons, searching everybody and their bags – are clearly tolerant lovers of free speech, and they are happy to arrest you for trying to use it during the ongoing state of emergency even if you are a white hippie and not a Brown.
France’s police are not called “Revolutionary Guards”, like in Cuba or Iran, because there is no revolution for them to guard.
We must be quite clear on what is being guarded by France’s cops: It is an 18th century, capitalist, anti-feminist, slave-owning revolt against monarchy which explicitly said human rights are only for the landed.
That stopped being revolutionary in 1848. France was ahead of the nationalist curve, so let’s all agree that by 1917 the whole world had moved on to more progressive issues.
But not France – 1789 Salafism is still the fundamentalist way here.
Reject Communism in 2017 – a real left devoid of racism and capitalism – and what are you left with? You have a center proven to be totally phony and devoid of both heart and brain, and a right wing which, in Western nations, is the same-old White Nationalism from even before 1789.
Shoot, things are so bad in the West that real leftists are hoping the Trumps and Marine Le Pens do come to power, do throw a couple monkey wrenches in to the There Is No Alternative neoliberalism which has been reigning for 30 years, and do create enough ethnic divisions that people FINALLY see that only the real left can or should be in power.
In communism the police are indoctrinated – fine, I’ll admit it, and I’ve seen it in Cuba.
But it’s with the idea that class, not color, is what matters; with the idea that what part of the country you come from is not important, what’s important is that we are all united in struggle; with the idea that inequality is dangerous and wrong: with the ideas that racism, nationalism and capitalism are backwards, reactionary, dangerous, counter-productive, immoral.
Oh those terrible Communist police! We certainly must make them more like France’s, right?
The “Age of Enlightenment” but denying White Nationalism means you’re living in the past, and there’s a price to be paid for confusion. Unfortunately that price is mostly paid by non-Whites.
The lights in France each night are torched cars and garbage bins which have been lit by their oppressed underclass, their under-race.
Sounds like revolution..and it’s against White Nationalism.
The White Trash Revolution (WTR) will beat back this latest ethnic demand for more rights, just as it has won in Brexit and with Trump…but the WTR will, one day, progress into just a plain old Trash Revolution (TR).
And that’s when we’ll really have something.
WELSHMEN AND BUDGETS.
To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—Having been a diligent reader of your paper for many many years, I was astonished to find your columns on December 3rd open to the bald and abusive contribution of your correspondent Dr. Rouse, of Perse School House, Cambridge. I ask, Sir, what sane purpose can possibly be served by thus wantonly insulting a whole people ; for I write not to defend Mr. Lloyd George and his controversial methods,—he, I know, can well take care of himself. It would appear as if Dr. Rouse, from his prejudice and bigotry, had confined his reading entirely to Andrew Borde and his obscure contemporaries. Well, Sir, let Dr. Rouse note that gallant little Wales, I am glad to say, again worthily assumes her proud position in the van of all the forces of progress, and nobly reminds the denser-minded—if stronger-sinewed—Saxons that the inborn love of freedom that hurled all their power back from our bills for seven hundred years is as living and as strong as ever; and this should persuade even Dr. Rouse that a Welshman can " labour and delve and dig " on behalf of what he deems a righteous cause. Indeed, it needs no prophetic eye to see signs many which show that the future of our great Empire belongs to the Celt : not to what they foolishly call the domination of Redmond and his dollars, but the force of united Celtia governing by reason of its greater and brighter intellect over the duller and denser and less imaginative mind of Saxondom. Why, even in the past, to go back to Andrew Borde and his period, it was only this learning of the older races that enabled England to emerge from her once stagnant and obscure state to her position of greatness among the nations of the world ; for it was the Welsh house of Tudor that was the greatest single factor in that grand uprising of England ; and later still, when her destinies were all but wrecked by the feeble and nerveless Stuarts, nothing but the genius of Milton and Cromwell —both nearly full-blooded Welshmen—saved her from utter extinction and ruin. Yet, Sir, shame on them, say I, there are some men to-day, who from their positions ought to be above such puny methods, who have the impudence, assiduously aided by fitting descendants of pedlar Jews, to point the finger of scorn at Mr. Lloyd George and any one else who is not an "Englishman" ! Why I confess, in my laudable indignation, I should like to kick the whole nasty crew of the latter back into the Continental dens they originally crawled from : the chiefest service they have done England is to corrupt her Press to a deplorable extent with their spurious Imperialism ! Well, perhaps the purpose of their existence is at last revealed, for, faith, may they not furnish Dr. Rouse of Cambridge with a galaxy of congenial friends !
—I am, Sir, &c., DOUGLAS LEWIS.
Stoke-under-Ham, Somerset.
[We are no Anti-Semites, and detest the unjust and insulting language in which our correspondent writes. We publish his letter to show how untrue is the allegation that we do not publish letters with which we disagree.—ED. Spectator.]
"CHERCHEZ LE JUIF."
To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—Having read the grotesque outburst of Anti-Semitism with which your correspondent Douglas Lewis sullies the pages of your last issue in his letter headed "Welshmen and Budgets," I feel tempted to remonstrate with you in precisely the same language as that employed by Mr. Lewis in his offensive defence of Mr. Lloyd George. The words in italics are the only amendments called for to make the cap fit. My letter would therefore run as follows :—
"Having been a diligent reader of your paper for many, many years, I was astonished to find your columns on December 24th open to the bald and abusive contribution of your correspondent Mr. Douglas Lewis, of Stoke-under-Ham, Somerset. I ask, Sir, what sane purpose can possibly be served by thus wantonly insulting a whole people ? It would appear as if Mr. Lewis, from his prejudice and bigotry, had confined his reading entirely to Drumont, Stocker, and their obscure contemporaries," &c., &c.
It is the old stupid cry of Cherchez le Juif,—he is at the bottom of all evil, the scapegoat of all climes and all times.
—I am, Sir, &c., ERNEST LESSER.
23 Portland Place, Brighton.
[We fully sympathise with Mr. Lesser's indignation, but the Jew is not the only scapegoat and bogy. The Freemason and the Jesuit share his liability to be considered at the bottom of all evil. As a rule these prejudices are held singly. We once, however, encountered a man who held them all simultaneously. He solemnly declared that his country (Italy) was being ruined by the Jews, the Jesuits, and the Freemasons.—ED. Spectator.]
General Reshetnikov: Return to the Empire
An interview with Lieutenant-General Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov
(Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov (b. February 6, 1947, Potsdam, Germany) — Soviet and Russian historian, Director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (29 April 2009 to 4 January 2017), and Lieutenant-General and chief of the Information-Analytical department of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation.)
Donbass is now suffering under horrific artillery fire. The Ukrainian forces are firing like maniacs at Donetsk, Yasinovataya, Makeevka and other cities, with MLSR and howitzers. There are many wounded; civilians are being killed, houses, schools and hospitals destroyed. This bloody spectacle is organized by the Kiev junta, which ignores all calls to stop this war, instead purposefully committing genocide of the population of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics.
When and how will this horror end? What is the meaning of this all? What are the prospects of LPR/DPR and/or Novorossiya? And, finally, is there a way to rebuild the Great Russian Empire? We addressed these questions to the former head of the Analytic Division of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, then the Director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, a currently the President of the society “Two-Headed Eagle” – Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov.
Q: Donetsk and other cities of Novorossiya are under fire as we speak; the Ukrainian military are attempting to breach the front at multiple points. Why now and what is the cause of this escalation of the conflict?
A: This is a planned operation. The goal of the Kiev regime is to complicate the relations between Russia and the US. Currently, the relationship between the leadership of Russia and the new leadership of the USA is generally favorable for us. Kiev is scared; it is afraid that Ukraine will no longer be of interest to the United States and personally to Trump. For that reason, everything was planned in a way that the official visit of Poroshenko to Germany had to be interrupted because of the situation in Donbass aggravated by the Ukrainian side. We cannot exclude that Merkel was a co-conspirator in this; possibly, she herself initiated that action to undermine the Russian-American negotiations. The fear of Europe is no less than the fear of Ukraine. If the relations between Russia and US improve – Europe would be left out in the cold. Thus, on the initiative of some European politicians the Kiev criminals are murdering the civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in order to attain their chimeric foreign policy goals. They are attempting by such means to save their regime, to prove their usefulness. However, they are unlikely to succeed in preventing the improvement in the relations between Russia and the US.
The Kiev scum – Poroshenko, Parubiy and others – have built such a reputations for themselves on the war against their own people that they will certainly come to a sticky end. The best option – to flee abroad, otherwise they will pay dearly. I believe the Kremlin understands perfectly that the Kiev authorities are not partners but criminals that usurped power, and no negotiations with them are possible. I want to emphasize: the Kiev regime is doomed, and no provocations, no amount of artillery fire at Donetsk and other cities, no attempts at offensives will accomplish anything for Poroshenko and Co, except yet another brand mark on the foreheads of these scoundrels.
Q: Leonid Petrovich, you were for a long time the Head of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies. The Institute essentially laid the theoretical groundwork for the “Project Novorossiya”, which today the authorities in Russia and Donbass republics prefer not to mention. At the same time, the ordinary Donbass people became convinced that Novorossiya will not happen, and they will end up with nothing but a territorial fragment like the two Donbass Republics. In such case – without reunification with Russia via referendum – our future looks bleak . . .
Novorossiya was not created as some theoretical project; it was born through an explosion of the Russian historic self-awareness; an explosion unexpected for all – including Moscow, the Kremlin, the Russian public. Something that is hidden in the sub-consciousness in all of us – the yearning for the recreation of the Orthodox Russian Empire. Many have not yet realized what is Novorossiya, why it created such an enthusiasm in the society and why so many people went to defend it even at the cost of their own lives. That is because the idea of the Russian unity has survived under the layer of the dead ideology of the last hundred years. Why, then, the “project Novorossiya” wound down? I believe the reason is not only that some high ranking officials disapprove of it and closed it down (although that happened, too), but the main reason is that such project cannot be based on the Red Star: then that would not be Novorossiya, the resurrection of Russia, but an imitation of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, many in the political leadership and expert community returned to the Soviet paradigms of 1970-1980s of the last century. Those paradigms have shown their ineffectiveness long ago, and attempts to reuse them now could lead to the collapse of everything. Old Soviet schemes aren’t viable but the new ones – not Soviet, but liberal – have not been taken on by the majority, so for now there is no ideological foundation for Novorossiya . . .
History is moving along a spiral; repeats are possible only on a new basis. So, at the present turn of the historic development, the spirit of Novorossiya that broke through the ideological layers had to retreat temporarily. The politicians as well as ordinary people had insufficient understanding of what NOVOROSSIYA is, where are its historical roots and what is its true spiritual meaning. I do not agree that the project is dead; it is alive and will yet return. But! Only on one condition: if we ourselves realize what path our country has travelled on for the past hundred years.
Q: The return of LPR/DPR to Ukraine with the special status, isn’t it done for the purpose, as many suppose, to transform Ukraine from the inside, to convert it into a pro-Russian entity? What do you think the near future holds for the Republics? People that are surviving for the third years under the fire of the Ukrainian military are demanding a clear answer to this question . . .
There are different opinions in the Kremlin, but no definitive decision: to surrender Donbass to Ukraine. Yes, there are people that indeed think this way and want to do this. However, there are others that believe we should not leave people of Ukraine that have not accepted the Nazi regime to the mercy of Kiev. My personal impression: our President does not want to unconditionally surrender to Ukraine the people that lived through a war, privations and suffering, so that these people would be subjected to severe repressions, which is inevitable if Donbass is returned to Ukraine.
The problem is that Kiev shows no real changes in its treatment of Donbass or relations to the Russian Federation, and I do not see any prospects in the near future for any changes favorable to us. That regime, in spite of its rotten nature, will be persisting for some time, because there are still enough people that worked for decades to bring about such a regime; they are bound by blood; they took power and have no intentions of relinquishing it. The resistance to the regime is disorganized, lack the nationalistic Idea, not specifically Ukrainian but common for our entire huge country, our specific civilization. During the Soviet period the people were brainwashed in a special way. Everything was done to make people believe that Ukraine is an independent country.
I lived and studied in Kharkov and remember how it was. At the local level, all the time the Soviet authorities were instilling the idea: although we live in one country, but Moscow, the central Russia is somewhere far away, and we are separate, we have our own history and our own heroes. The people were taught that way – what do we expect now? It is natural that in Donbass, Odessa, Crimea and other regions Russian spirit still remains – during the 70 Soviet years and 25 years of independence the transformation has not entirely succeeded. The Russian historic self-awareness persisted, as did the feeling of belonging to the same civilization of all people that lived on the territory of the Russian Empire. All this is still there, particularly in the Eastern Ukraine. That is why the Ukrainian nationalists failed to fully accomplish their project.
Starting from 1921, forced Ukrainization of the Russian regions was taking place, specifically, of the territory of the Great Don Cossack Army and Slobozhanshchina, incorporated by the order of Lenin and Stalin into Ukraine. At some point, the town with the “romantic” name Mines (earlier Alersandrovsk-Grushevsky) and Taganrog were also given to Ukraine. Later, however, the common sense prevailed, and the towns were returned to Russia. I don’t even want to remind about Crimea gifted to Ukraine by our restless Nikita Khrushchev. Nobody really wants to remember that or think about it; everybody starts the count from 1991. My dear friends, come on! The groundwork for the breakdown of the Soviet Union was laid in 1917 and later in 1920-30s. During the Soviet time, governments, flags, hymns, national heroes were invented; monuments to open Russophobes were built. Hence the explosion. The 1991 was the result of the Soviet policies, remember that, comrades with the red stars on their cap that I have seen in LPR . . . Your ancestors, your leaders that you revere created the conditions for the breakdown of the united country. What kind of Novorossiya could you create if you do not learn lessons from history?
Q: Leonid Petrovich, at present there two peoples in Ukraine: the first is completely anti-Russian, totally different from us in its mentality, and the second – Russian, even if the representatives of this group call themselves Ukrainians, due to upbringing and stereotypes. In reality, they are essentially deeply Russian people. The division is along the civilization-mentality lines, the same as between Serbs and Croats. Nevertheless, in the Kremlin as well as in the Moscow expert community the dominant view is that the majority of the Ukrainian population is just temporarily misled, brainwashed by the propaganda. That is to say, we will use political technologies to break the spell; they will again recall that they are Russians – and everything will be peaceful like it was before. But at least half of the Ukrainian population has long time ago turned into a different nation. What do we do with them, how do we reconcile irreconcilable differences?
As a former (until 1974) resident of Ukraine, I generally agree with your opinion. That division existed even then: when you cross Dnepr river, on the other bank not everyone, but the majority looked like a different nation. The wife of my elder brother from the Poltava region and speaking the Malorossian dialect [the Poltava region, a part of historic Malorossiya, is on the left bank of the Dnepr neighboring the Kharkov and Dneptopetrovsk regions; Malorossiya (Poltava, Chernigov, Kirovograd), or Small Russia, together with Novorossiya (Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Donbass) or New Russia, and Sloboshanshchina (Kharkov region), are historic names for territories of the Eastern Ukraine; in the Soviet period, the Poltava dialect was taken as a foundation for the development of the standard Ukrainian language] sed to say about the speech of the people from the trans-Dnepr region: ”I do not understand their nice language. . . “ She is saying the same thing now. I agree that the inhabitants of the Western Ukraine were strongly influenced mentally and religiously by the Uniate and Catholic religions. Apparently, the fact that genetically the Western Ukrainians are linked to the leftovers of the Khazar Khanate also plays a significant role. Their mentality has a complex origin, and indeed today they are largely a different nation, although among them there are still people close to us in spirit. After all, the Russianness is not determined by the blood but by the mindset. Possibly, in the future there will be two different territories, two different states for these two peoples.
In his time, the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire Khvostov wrote to the Tsar that Galicia should not be included into the Empire, since it was a completely alien element. Thus, the awareness of the deep difference was present then, and that difference should be taken into account in the future. It seems, they are a different nation. Croats and Serbs come to mind: there is little difference between the Serbian and Croatian languages – 100-200 words and slightly different pronunciation of a few sounds, which means this is essentially the same language. However, the mental differences make them two different nations, as do the difference in religion – Catholics and Orthodox – and in the origin and development of these nations.
That is why it is important to realize that we will not be able to rid them from the illusions – they are a different nation. Although some do, I repeat, harbor delusions in that regard – Kremlin is large, there are people with diverse opinions there, but there are also people who understand perfectly that two distinct nations inhabit the present day Ukraine.
We have to understand that the problem cannot be solved in one or two-three years; this is a long-term problem. The opportunities for working with the population of the Western Ukraine, the southern regions of Malorossiya are extensive. I am convinced that the “project Novorossiya” will be revived – this is our historic, spiritual project. In order to prevent that project from developing further, an unexpected weapon is currently employed – an imitation of the Soviet project.
Q: You mean the idea embraced by some political analysts that “we in the end will return the whole of Ukraine”?
No, I speak about Novorossya proper, the eight South-Eastern regions of the present day Ukraine. Whatever idea someone embraces – it’s his business. In the leadership of our country and in the government there are enough people who understand that realistically we could only think about the project Novorossiya. To return the entire Ukraine – this is a fairy tale. Such idea shows either a total lack of understanding of the real processes or a disinclination to work towards a realistic goal justifying the inaction by the assertion that some day we will accomplish a much grander task of getting back the whole of Ukraine.
People that have still failed to understand what was happening with us during 73 years should not feel offended. These are all the rudiments of the Soviet style of thinking when the national factor was neglected, and as a result we got outbreaks of nationalism/separatism all over the territory of our civilization. I remember two main Soviet postulates. In 1988, when I was a junior official, I was delivering a talk to the leadership of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the Chief of the Service Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryutchkov said to me: “The Baltic countries will never get away from us, because . . . “. And then he talked about the World Economic Forum, economic connections, sausage factories, fishing ports and such. But we, the young employees of the Service, captains and majors, were sitting there and wondering: “My God, where are we going? Doesn’t he realize that sausage factories or fishing ports do not matter now at all; completely different things are important that are beyond the material concept of history, beyond the Marxist-Leninist concept”. An Idea is what always wins, and if we do not offer an Idea but are offering just material values instead, we will only achieve temporary solutions that are essentially failures. The same is now: Ukraine will go nowhere, we are giving it money, selling gas; we’ll turn off the gas – and that will be it . . .
Forgive me for the comparison, but it is the same as if Hitler was saying: Leningrad will go nowhere; the army of the Wehrmacht will blockade it, and the city will fall within a month. And what happened? The people mobilized, resisted, and won. But we have to understand that an Idea can also mobilize an enemy.
Attempts at resolving the conflicts among the nations or the states using exclusively economic methods are doomed, that’s is why we are losing. Instead of proposing and the idea of the unification of the Russian world, of the resurrection of the Russian orthodox civilization that would ensure the development and prosperity of all nations included in it, we very often hear spiritual surrogates that oppose the 73 Soviet years to 1000 years of the Russian history. The Great Patriotic War? Yes, we won. But is that to say that we have never fought and won in patriotic wars before? Have we not once expelled the occupiers from Kremlin (a reference to the expulsion from Moscow of the Polish invaders by the People’s Militia led by Minin and Prince Pozharsky in 1612 during the Time of Troubles – translator’s note)? Similar distortions happen with other subjects.
Q: As far as we can judge based on the statements of the Russian politicians, a decision has been made to keep Ukraine as is for the foreseeable future. Regardless whether the Donbass Republics receive “the special status” or remains frozen in the status of unrecognized states, we (the Donbass Republics – translator’s note) unwillingly act as a factor of consolidation and support for the Ukrainian society, sort of like a “graphite moderator” for the nuclear reactor that prevents the nuclear reaction from getting out of control. The claimed existence of “terrorists”, “separatists”, “Russian mercenaries” provides the Kiev regime with the enemy image and allows to structure the Ukrainian society in such a way, so that in less than a generation it could be transformed into totally anti-Russian. This way, we will lose forever the opportunity to retain it in our Russian civilization fold. If the Republics join the Russian Federation, this “graphite moderator” would be withdrawn from the reactor, which could trigger the processes of disintegration of Ukraine. This and not the economic pressure or the war would allow for the informational and diplomatic changes in our favor to take place and for the project Novorossiya to be realized. What do you think about the possibility of conducting a referendum in the Donbass Republics about joining Russia?
I, as a Russian patriot, consider such an outcome the most desirable: a referendum and reunification with Russia not only of Donbass, but also of Transnistria. However, there is one big ‘but”. We do not exist in an isolation, and currently Russia – many have not a slightest idea about that – is living through a very hard period being under a powerful attack by the globalist forces. Savvy people likely noticed that there was a period in October-November of last year when we were a step away from a military conflict with the United States. The President of our country is acting based on the information we are not privy to, and thus, sees the situation differently from how it appears to us. When I served as a head of the Analytical Division of the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) – I knew what the President was reading, but I knew only the part that was the responsibility of the FIS. Believe me, the situation is very complex . . .
The reunification of Crimea with Russia – this, of course, is an achievement of our President and of all those actively involved in the operation. However, without the will of God that could have not have happened. As a religious person, I consider this a miracle. As far as LPR/DPR are concerned, from my own viewpoint it seems to me that it would be right to conduct a referendum of them joining the Russian Federation. However, people at the top have access to all the information, and, apparently, have reasons to doubt that such a decision would be wise at this time. Would Russians be able to cope?
Q: We have nothing to lose as far as sanctions or diplomatic pressure on Russia are concerned – everything that could be done has been done. What do you think is the main reason that does not let Russia allow the Republics to join? What prevents this?
What prevented the DPR from taking Mariupol in 2014?
Q: An agreement with the oligarchs . . .
I do not know – perhaps. There was, however, a firm position of the West. Are we truly independent financially? Obviously, we are not. It is risky for the US and globalists to hit us in that area – it could backfire, but they still could employ such ultimate measures. The results would be a lot more painful for us than for them. I want to emphasize the activity of Vladimir Putin: all these years he is slowly step by step restoring Russia’s true independence.
Let us consider recent history. Industrialization, which the Stalinists are so proud of, was accomplished with enormous – material, technological, financial, and credit support of the US. Thanks to that support, Dnepr Hydroelectric Station, Magnitka (Magnitogorsk Metal Producing Plant, built in 1932, one of the largest in the USSR, the largest in Russia – translator’s note), Gorky Automotive Plant and thousands of other enterprises were built. When the Great Patriotic was nearing its end, Joseph Stalin was counting on $6 billion promised by Roosevelt and was prepared to comply with the demands of the USA: to keep the eastern European countries democratic, retain the multi-party system or monarchies (where they existed), refrain from strict collectivization, and to leave the church alone. Only after the Fulton speech and the establishment of the “Iron Curtain”, the Soviet Union altered its foreign policy. However, the dependence remained, since the whole world existed inside the financial-economic system dominated by the US, and we were being incorporated into it more and more, as the socialist system created by us was not working.
I can make a statement surprising for some and outrageous for others: after 1917 we were never completely independent. It was not for nothing that the West invested so much energy and resources in order to use the “Red project” (the division of the Empire into 15 national republics) for the destruction of the Eastern-Slavic civilization.
I remember how in 1984 or 1985 I read the telegram of the Russian ambassador in FRG Yuliy Krivitsky about his conversation with the Vice-Chancellor of the Western Germany, leader of the Bavarian party Christian-Democratic Union, Joseph Straus. The latter said directly, even at that time: “Your country, Mister Ambassador, is facing difficult times. You placed a bomb under it: 15 Republics – 15 governments, Parliaments, hymns, flags. All this will blow up, and the Soviet Union will break down . . . “ Krivitsky objected saying that FRG also had various lands – Saxony, Bavaria, Bremen, Hesse, etc., local governments, to which the Vice-Chancellor responded: “Our states are based on territories, but yours – on nations”. The West understood very well, as opposed to our leadership, the main problem of the Soviet Union and purposefully aggravated it. As a result, the Western Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, and other nations remembered their national roots, whereas only the Russian and, partially, Belorussians were transformed into the “Soviet people” having taken to heart the myth about internationalism and lost their historic memory.
Remember Serbs and Croats – we have the same problem in Russia. As Joseph Broz Tito cut down the Serbian – that of the state-defining nation – territories, the same way Joseph Stalin and his co-conspirators cut down the Russian territories. In particular, the Russian Novorossiya was given to the artificially created Ukraine, Ossetia – to Georgia, the Northern and Eastern Kazakhstan populated by Russians – to Kazakhstan. It that sense, all us Russians are somewhat circumcised, if you pardon the expression . . .
That is why the current efforts of our President, his heroic deeds, will not be fully appreciated any time soon. His mission – to extricate the country every year millimeter by millimeter from the national, financial, economical and other types of traps we got caught in since 1917. Any sudden movement, such as a referendum about incorporation of LPR/DPR could have unintended consequences.
Q: This is a complex and very painful questions for all Russians. Russia is by definition a Eurasian state; it is multinational. So, how do we ensure that the defense of the interests of ethnic Russians would not become the instrument of the destruction of the country under the slogans like “Stop feeding the Caucasus!”, “Siberia – is not Moscow” and so forth. How do we find the optimal formula, when the imperial component does not oppress but stimulates the development of the Russian nation? It is worth remembering that the Declaration of Independence of the Russian Federation was issued on June 12th, 1991, which predetermined the Belovezhsk conspiracy on December 8th, 1991, and the breakup of the USSR . . . How do we manage not to repeat our historic mistakes?
The country could not have avoided the breakdown, since we have divided it into the national republics. Recently we have had a conversation with the Dagestanis-Muslims, and I recalled another conversations with a Chechen – Major-General of the FSB and his words: “You know, Leonid Petrovich, if they had been a White Tzar above us and Allah – we would have all united. We love Russia, but fighting for it we do not fight for the territories as such but for the White Tzar . . . “ This is the main factor uniting all nations. The Dagestanis also agreed; they are also in favor of the Empire; they understand the value of the vertical of power. There is no difference in this issue between the Orthodoxy and Islam, and if the Empire happens, Islam will work for it. Remember that during the Civil War the Chechen, Ingushs, and other Caucasus people fought in the White Army.
Q: An Empire is impossible without absolute monarchy . . .
Yes. However, it is too early to propose the restoration of monarchy now. It would be a premature move. It is necessary to clear up our minds, our memory of myths. The history of our Motherland in the Soviet period was studied starting from 1935 – why was that? Because it was necessary to re-write it completely, but before that new faculty had to be trained. Then the guys from the Institute of the Red Professors invented our history for us out of nothing under the title “The short history course of the All Russia Communist Party of Bolsheviks” of Joseph Vissarionovich [Stalin].
Q: Let us summarize. In order for the Russian nation to prosper and maintain good relations with other nations, we need to restore our independent state that could only be the Russian Eurasian Empire. The Empire could only be restored as a monarchy, but to accomplish that we need to change our mentality and to free ourselves from the Soviet stereotypes. But here is the problem: most Russian citizens still see in the Soviet epoch the Great Project, the Idea of Justice, the Joy of unprecedented Victories . . . How do we alter the people’s mentality without alienating that majority, how do we merge the best achievements of the Soviet time with the achievements of the Tzarist period?
Middle-aged people or older cannot be changed; we need to work with the youth. This is hard. Let me give you an example: my eldest grand-daughter once said to me: “Grandpa, our teacher in class asked us why Michael Romanov was elected as a Tsar [Michael Romanov, the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, was elected in 1613 after the Time of Troubles, which started following the death of the son of Ivan the Terrible, the last representative of the Rurik dynasty, in 1598; during that period, many events took place including the appearance of Pseudo-Dmitri claiming to be the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, Dmitri supposedly was killed in childhood, his ascension to the throne in Moscow, the intervention of the Polish Army, and the final defeat of the Poles], and I replied that, first, all estates voted for him, because all wanted to have a Tsar in the country after a horrible period of the Time of Troubles. Second, the Russian Orthodox Church supported him, and the church had a strong influence. And third, since he was very young, he was not involved in any of the treasons of the Time of Troubles when the nobles switched sides in support of the Poles or Pseudo-Dmitri.” I praised her answer but my granddaughter said that the teacher considered her response incorrect. The response should have been as written in the textbook, which only had one sentence about this stating that the nobles wanted to have a young Tsar so that they could control him. That is how contempt towards the Russian history is imprinted onto the mind of our children. When children grow up, they will have hard time letting go of the false concepts and accept the idea of the monarchy. Many will be torn between the two projects imposed on us by the West – liberal and communist.
Recall how communists and liberals (they are of the same stock) go into hysterics when someone mentions the Third Way – a special historic role of Russia. If you simply mention, without any epithets, the name of the last Emperor Nicolas the Second – immediately atheists, liberals, homosexuals and other trash unite and start yelling that he was a weak Tsar, that he “sold and destroyed Russia”. What does that say? That we are on the right track. We do not intend to change the regime; our job is to help people understand the lessons of the past, and when that happens, then the desire to restore the Empire and Monarchy will become natural to them. The new Constitution will be adopted, and the real revival of Russia will begin. But for those who consider themselves monarchists, for all orthodox Russian people, a Tsar has always existed, exists and will exist, and his name is Jesus Christ.
http://politikus.ru/articles/90244-general-reshetnikov-vozvraschenie-k-imperii.html
Writing in 1914, the sociologist Edward A. Ross believed that liberal im- migration policy was exclusively a Jewish issue. Ross quotes the prominent author and Zionist pioneer Israel Zangwill who articulated the idea that the United States is an ideal place to achieve Jewish interests.
"America has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale [i.e., the Pale of Settlement, home to most of Russia’s Jews]; any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution." (Israel Zangwill, in Ross 1914, 144)
Jews therefore have a powerful interest in immigration policy:
"Hence the endeavor of the Jews to control the immigration policy of the United States. Although theirs is but a seventh of our net immigration, they led the fight on the Immigration Commission’s bill. The power of the million Jews in the Metropolis lined up the Congressional delegation from New York in solid opposition to the literacy test. The systematic campaign in newspapers and magazines to break down all arguments for restriction and to calm nativist fears is waged by and for one race. Hebrew money is behind the National Liberal Immigration League and its numerous publications. From the paper before the commercial body or the scientific association to the heavy treatise produced with the aid of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the literature that proves the blessings of immigration to all classes in America emanates from subtle Hebrew brains." (Ross 1914, 144–145)
Ross (1914, 150) also reported that immigration officials had “become very sore over the incessant fire of false accusations to which they are subjected by the Jewish press and societies. United States senators complain that during the close of the struggle over the immigration bill they were overwhelmed with a torrent of crooked statistics and misrepresentations of Hebrews fighting the literacy test.”
Zangwill’s views were well known to restrictionists in the debates over the 1924 immigration law (see below). In an address reprinted in The American Hebrew (Oct. 19, 1923, 582), Zangwill noted, “There is only one way to World Peace, and that is the absolute abolition of passports, visas, frontiers, custom houses, and all other devices that make of the population of our planet not a co-operating civilization but a mutual irritation society.” His famous play, The Melting Pot (1908), was dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt and depicts Jewish immigrants as eager to assimilate and intermarry. The lead character describes the United States as a crucible in which all the races, including the “black and yellow” races, are being melted together. However, Zangwill’s views on Jewish-gentile intermarriage were ambiguous at best (Biale 1998, 22–24) and he detested Christian proselytism to Jews.
Zangwill was an ardent Zionist and an admirer of his father’s religious orthodoxy as a model for the preservation of Judaism. He believed Jews were a morally superior race whose moral vision had shaped Christian and Muslim societies and would eventually shape the world, although Christianity remained morally inferior to Judaism (see Leftwich 1957, 162ff).
Cinema-goers turn their backs on French films
The Local
Cinema fans in France are turning their backs on French films. The French film industry may be renowned world-wide but ‘Made in France’ films are no longer drawing the audiences they used to. Audience figures for the 1980s showed that despite the fact that France made half the number of films it does today, they were seen by more people domestically. A French film now draws in 35 percent less cinema audiences than 30 years ago. France’s Ministry of Culture and the Centre National du Cinema (CNC) however, has dismissed concerns about the number of French films being made, claiming it is necessary to allow the emergence of new talent. French TV stations are required to air at least 40-percent home-produced content while another 20 percent must come from Europe. Cinema-goers pay a levy on each ticket to help fund the French film industry, which many believe could not survive without such support.
Must-see French movies of the millennium
Chances are you've seen The Artist and Amélie, but here other cinematic experiences from the land of Truffaut and Godard, all made this millennium, that are well worth your time.
Entre Les Murs (The Class, 2008) : A teacher guides a group of ethnically-diverse and troubled pupils through French literature.
Martyrs (2008): ‘Martyrs’ has the female friendship of ‘Heavenly Creatures,’ mixed with the gore of ‘Hostel’ and the creepiness of Roman Polanski’s ‘The Apartment.’ But what appears on the surface to be just an ultra-violent and gruesome revenge fantasy gone wrong, is actually a deeply-moving parable about guilt, friendship, and the human condition. Only in France.
Polisse (2011): The men and women of the Paris police department’s Child Protection Unit separate immigrant families and interview abused toddlers.
Un Prophète (2009): An illiterate Arab is sent to prison for six-years, for assaulting the police. He is taken under the wing (and the iron fist) of a Corsican mob boss in a French prison. When he connects with the Muslim community in jail, things get complicated, as he slowly learns about his Muslim heritage.
Des Hommes et des Dieux (Men and Gods, 2010): Nine Trappist monks live in the monastery of Tibhirine cheek-by-jowl with the predominantly Muslim Algerians. The narrative is based on the real-time assassination of seven monks who were killed in 1996.
Les Intouchables (2011): Friendship blossoms between an unlikely duo: a quadriplegic white millionaire and his ex-criminal Black Algerian caretaker.
La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour, 2013): French director Abdellatif Kechiche explores sexuality and freedom of expression. Adele finds her imagination and desires catalyzed into rampant activity by blue-haired young artist Emma, with whom she falls in love.
Le Passé (The Past, 2013): An Iranian, Ahmad, played by Ali Mosaffa, comes back to France to finalise his divorce. Tensions are heightened between his ex-wife and their daughter as a result of a new relationship that the daughter disapproves of. Iranian Asghar Farhadi wrote and directed the film.
L’inconnu Du Lac (Stranger by the Lake, 2013): A gripping psychological thriller infused with a generous helping of homoeroticism. An eerie psychological thriller replete with explicit homoerotic shenanigans and murderous intrigue.
Tom à la Ferme (Tom at the Farm, 2013): A young advertising copywriter finds himself embroiled in a perverted game with the family of his recently deceased boyfriend, Guillaume.
Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days One Night, 2014): Sandra faces redundancy following a long leave of absence due to her depression. The must convince her erstwhile co-workers to vote for her to stay rather than take a large bonus. The strains of a capitalist society alienate individuals from their fellow beings.
Dozens of books claiming the Holocaust was a HOAX are available on Amazon for as little as 99p
Amazon is selling books that promote the notion that the Holocaust was a 'hoax'
Dozens of titles are available for purchase on both the Kindle and paperback
Some of the books were available in countries where Holocaust denial is illegal
One E-book, The Myth of the Extermination of the Jews, is priced at just 99p
By Simon Holmes For Mailonline, 12 February 2017
Retail giant Amazon has been criticised for selling books that promote the notion that the Holocaust was a 'hoax.'
There are dozens of books and pamphlets available to buy on the internet store's UK site that claim the genocide was exaggerated or even completely fabricated.
Titles listed include The Myth of the Extermination of the Jews by Carlo Mattogno, which is available as a Kindle download for 99 pence, and The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry by academic Arthur Butz.
The latter can be instantly downloaded for the Kindle and bought on Amazon's Prime membership as a paperback.
An independent Amazon seller is advertising the notorious Holocaust denial pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die? which was written by in 1974 by a member of the far-right party the National Front.
In the book The Six Million: Fact or Fiction Paperback the author, Peter Winter, accuses Holocaust survivors of 'outright lies and forgery'.
Winter's book and other similar titles were listed for sale in Germany, France and Italy where Holocaust denial is a crime.
After being contacted by The Sunday Times last week Amazon promptly decommissioned the books for sale from the aforementioned countries.
However the works are still available to UK customers as denying what is considered to be the deadliest genocide in history is not illegal.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, labelled Amazon's decision to allow the purchase of such books as 'shocking and wrong'.
She said: The Holocaust was one of the most well documented and researched periods in history, yet even in 2017, over 70 years later, there are still those who deliberately deny, denigrate and belittle the memory of the Holocaust.
'Holocaust denial is highly offensive and the intent is anti- semitism, pure and simple. To have this offensive material widely accessible via any retailer is shocking and wrong.'
Although some Amazon reviewers have left scathing comments on the website others have applauded the authors for their work.
One review said that The Six Million: Fact or Fiction Paperback was an 'excellent source of information' while another claimed The Six Million: Fact or Fiction is a 'must read in these times of long accepted facts.'
Historical records and extensive research concur that six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators in a number of concentration camps in German occupied territories.
A further five million non-Jewish people were murdered in such camps bringing the total up to 11 million deaths.
The comments below have been moderated in advance.
White_and_endangered, Bristol, United Kingdom: They sell a lot of stupid or untrue books. Please don't think we should sensor it. People are allowed to read what they want. Remember, Nazis called for burning of books!
Sydney Ruffdiamond, Khyber Pass, United Kingdom: Why is denial a crime? People can think what they like
dan theman, watford, United Kingdom: "To find out who rules over you simply see who you're not allowed to criticize"
Chris, Tamworth, United Kingdom: The books present checkable facts and reasoning. It's called free speech. If you don't like it, move to North Korea.
MrWhiffy, Glasgow, United Kingdom: Is it an indication of a civilised country that they have laws that can make it a crime to claim that the holocaust did not happen? I find this unbelievable - I'm not stating that the holocaust did not happen. I actually think it probably did - I wasn't there so can't be 100% - but I just can't understand how such a law can be put into place. I suggest that the human race is deconstructing itself by idiots in authority who should never be let out of the house in the morning.
Alice Rosemary, Thousand Oaks, United States: So? There are books by a mentally ill author called Gail Chord Schuler which claim she's married to Jesus, Brent Spiner and Vladimir Putin. She also says they all live on an intergalactic spaceship which is persecuted by Jesuits.
DAZZY68, KABUL, Afghanistan: The holocaust was one of the worst attrocities in modern history and these books are for degenerates, I am sure that no sane person whith an ounce of common sense would read them, however, we cannot ban them, we should not ban them, whats next, burning them? Sound familiar
harry toole, london, United Kingdom: even if you dont like it, it shouldn't be censored
Lekie, Bradford, United Kingdom: We may not like it, or we may disagree with it, but alternatives arguments have a right to be heard. If you regulate what can and can't be said we are no better than a communist state, and not a democracy.
The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4216568/Dozens-books-claiming-Holocaust-hoax-Amazon-buy.html
For years I’ve seen too many comments along the lines of “SJWs will get out in the real world and they won’t be able to handle it! They’re dumb but they’re in for a rude awakening.”
No, they are not. SJWism is the logical result of neoliberalism. As such, they will reinforce the globalist, imperialist Empire. The power of the meritocratic society gives our untitled aristocrats a belief in the rightness of their rule through the power of the resume and college credentialing. It’s kind of like being Born Again, except there’s not even the ghost of a belief in Sin to keep them in check. And there’s nothing like Confession, except making a list of grievances.
There’s a reason they’ve attached themselves to identity politics and gender ideology as opposed to climate change. They can jet to Southeast Asia for a semester, volunteer in South America for a year, travel to Turkey twice a year, and never think twice about their carbon footprint. They dine out more than any generation ever has, but they vote the right away and never think about warehouses or trucking lines. One fights climate change through the government, not through one’s personal choices.
SJWs are consolidating power. They’re the children of neoliberal boomers and they stand to inherit their parent’s and grandparent’s wealth & power. They criticize the faces of that power while embracing the underlying premises. Now it will be Science & Rationality that will rule, not Protestant Capitalists, and so they are justified.
It’s an enormous mistake to think they are going to grow up and accept things. I know too many of them who are all grown up, and they pride themselves on being “allies” even if they are not out smashing things. They are the Obama bureaucrats still in their jobs, the lawyers in California mid-level institutions, the doctors, the foreign correspondents. They are revolutionaries, but the revolution strangely keeps all wealthy urbanites like themselves in their Real Simple lifestyles. It’s a revolution forced upon the lower classes that gets corporations to signal their alliance and promises a future of material abundance for those willing to partake in the dream of creating a plastic humanity. The colleges are at the center of this revolution for a reason: they give the credentials. If the SJWs ever start rejecting the college system, then we’ll know something has changed.
The good news is that if you never liked Empire, you get to keep the moral high ground by opposing the boujee SJWs. Their self-righteousness is a farce. This is the toxic rot of meritocracy: we are watching the scions of the upper middle class and wealthy justify their rule to themselves, and us, through a progressive, statist politics which leaves the poor rotting on drugs, jobless, hopeless, fatherless. They don’t even know the consequences of the policies they promote because they only know these stories on paper, or while gentrifying a neighborhood.
It almost makes you long for an aristocracy where the power was an accident of birth, where there were reciprocal obligations. Interesting that the gap between the rich and the poor has never been greater than in the global meritocracy. They believe they actually have earned the right to tell the lower middle class why they were replaceable, or the poor why they should be grateful to be forced to stay in their failing schools. I, too, fear where this will lead.
[Original Headline:] Kushner and Israel: A Personal Bond
[Revised Headline:] For Kushner, Israel Policy May Be Shaped by the Personal
By [Kike] Jodi Kantor, [The Kike's] New York Times, February 11, 2017
When Jared Kushner was 17 years old, he stood where a million Jews had been murdered and listened to Israel’s prime minister stress the country’s importance.
“The Holocaust could have been prevented. We know it could not have taken place had the Jewish state been established a few years earlier,” the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1998, standing amid the ruins of an Auschwitz-Birkenau crematory. He had just led Mr. Kushner and thousands of other teenagers waving Israeli flags in a procession through the camp’s gates and past the barracks. As part of the commemoration, the group would soon leave Poland and fly to Israel, to complete the journey from slaughter to Zionist rebirth.
Back then, Mr. Kushner was a high school basketball player, a Billy Joel fan, a quiz team manager and no one’s guess to become a negotiating partner with Mr. Netanyahu. But unlike other students on the trip, he knew the prime minister, who was friendly with his father, a real estate developer and donor to Israeli causes. Mr. Netanyahu had even stayed at the Kushners’ home in New Jersey, sleeping in Jared’s bedroom. (The teenager moved to the basement that night.)
On Wednesday, when the Israeli prime minister visits the White House, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Kushner will reunite on far different terms from before — and yet their meeting will be imbued with some of the shared ideas of those old encounters. Mr. Netanyahu is on his second stint as prime minister; Mr. Kushner, now 36, is President Trump’s son-in-law and a leading adviser on Middle Eastern affairs with a daunting assignment. Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Kushner will try to “do peace,” which the president has called “the ultimate deal.”
Mr. Kushner, on something of a crash course in diplomacy, has been speaking with Arab leaders in recent weeks. But he is a mystery to most Middle Eastern officials. He has no experience in government or international affairs. His up-close exposure to the Arab world amounts to little more than trips to a handful of Persian Gulf countries and a star-studded jaunt to Jordan.
Though Mr. Kushner has visited Israel since childhood, and more recently to do business, he is little known there. He holds strong views about the state of Israel, but he has not been outspoken about them, save for editorials in The New York Observer, the newspaper he owned. His thinking on matters like settlements is not well understood.
“Israel wasn’t a political discussion for him; it was his family, his life, his people,” said Hirschy Zarchi, rabbi at the Chabad House at Harvard, where Mr. Kushner was an undergraduate.
Rather than diplomatic experience, Mr. Kushner has ties to Israel that are personal and religious. His visit to Auschwitz was stark, but its themes were not new to him. His grandmother survived the Holocaust by crawling through a homemade tunnel in Poland. His grandfather escaped the massacres by hiding in a hole for years. An Orthodox Jew, Mr. Kushner was instructed to protect Israel, remember the genocide and assure the survival of the Jewish people, those close to him say.
He was educated at Jewish schools where second graders were expected to draw maps of Israel from memory and the West Bank was often referred to by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria, a practice that emphasizes Jewish claims to the land. His family used its real estate fortune to donate millions of dollars to American Jewish and Israeli hospitals, schools and other institutions, including a few in settlements, according to public records. In his classes, Palestinians were regarded at a distance, in part as security threats who committed acts of terrorism — including one that killed a sister of a classmate of Mr. Kushner’s.
When Mr. Trump ran for president, his son-in-law’s stances on Israel helped shape the campaign. Mr. Kushner helped script a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and consulted with Netanyahu officials behind the scenes. When he brought the candidate and the prime minister together for a meeting, his father, Charles Kushner, was invited to join them.
Thanks in part to the younger Mr. Kushner, Mr. Netanyahu will arrive at a White House that has already adopted many of the prime minister’s perspectives on the region. Now Mr. Kushner is helping Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu craft a strategy to recruit Sunni Muslim countries that oppose Iran to help foster an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The approach is a long shot: Negotiations are dead. The Israeli right is pushing for more settlement in the West Bank as talk among Palestinians turns to a single state in which they have equal rights.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who was involved in peace talks both with Israelis and internally, said Palestinians were skeptical of Mr. Kushner, and Mr. Trump’s team generally, seeing them as close only to the Israeli side. As part of its philanthropy, Mr. Kushner’s family has made donations to the Beit El settlement, which Mr. Barghouti finds particularly worrisome.
“We need somebody who is really impartial,” Mr. Bargouti said, pointing out that it is unclear whether Mr. Kushner has ever visited a Palestinian area (the White House would not say). “There is no indication he is interested in hearing from the other side.”
Through a White House spokeswoman, Mr. Kushner declined to respond or be interviewed. But others said his life had given him cause to believe in the improbable. His grandparents survived against all odds, then came to America and made the kind of money of which most people can only dream. Mr. Kushner plunged into his father-in-law’s presidential campaign with no experience and helped him win.
“This is a region that has resisted solutions from people with vast résumés,” said Ken Kurson, editor of The New York Observer, suggesting that his former boss may do better. “For 60-plus years we’ve been sending the best diplomats in the world, and it’s yielded zero results.”
Faith and Family
Mr. Kushner’s religious upbringing may have been intense, but his high school yearbook message was laid-back, with an ode to his broken-in sneakers. He was a “6 ft. 2 inch basketball and hockey player who just loves to be comfortable,” the message said, noting that he also liked to deliver frozen yogurt and Slurpees to his siblings.
There was little mention of Jewish identity beyond his Hebrew name, Yoel Chaim. But that was Mr. Kushner, classmates said in recent interviews: easygoing and polite, a decent student but not a standout, not particularly engaged in religious questions or the urgent political matters of the day. He did not participate in the high school club devoted to criticizing coverage of Israel in The New York Times. Many of his peers spent a year after graduation studying religious texts in Israel; he did not.
But his family was busy building a world to replace the one it had lost: schools, organizations, synagogues, campuses. The Kushners’ Judaism and support of Israel were one and the same, friends said: about ensuring survival.
The major Jewish institutions of Mr. Kushner’s life — school and synagogue — emphasized the connection between religion and Zionism. “In the modern Orthodox community, the state of Israel has an important place in identity, as a religious ideal, not only a political reality,” said Elie Weinstock, rabbi at Kehilath Jeshurun, the Manhattan synagogue Mr. Kushner joined.
At his elementary school, the Hebrew Youth Academy in Livingston, N.J., it was impossible to walk the halls “without seeing the flags of Israel and Israeli historical figures and how the kids celebrate Israeli holidays,” said Stephen Flatow, whose daughter Ilana was in Mr. Kushner’s grade.
In eighth grade, their class was stunned by the killing of Ilana’s older sister, Alisa, in a bus bombing in the Gaza Strip. The school community “couldn’t fathom how a young man can load himself up with dynamite and blow himself up in a van and have his parents celebrating his death,” Mr. Flatow said. A few years later, the school was renamed for Jared Kushner’s grandfather, Joseph, and when a new building opened, the family dedicated the flagpole that flies the Israeli flag to Alisa’s memory.
During high school at the Frisch School in northern New Jersey, where Mr. Kushner spent long days attending mandatory prayers (morning and afternoon) and studying in English, Hebrew and Aramaic (the language of the Talmud), every year of his education was interwoven with events in Israel. In 1995, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, teachers and students mourned together. In 1996, a recent graduate named Sara Dukerwas killed in another bus bombing, sending shock waves through the school again. In 1997, about the time Mr. Kushner was on a six-week summer trip to Israel, a double suicide bomb in the main Jerusalem market killed more than a dozen people.
But classmates say the environment Mr. Kushner lived in could feel apolitical, because most everyone shared similar views, and Palestinian perspectives were barely considered. Some teachers told students that “Palestinian” was a made-up identity, a label adopted for political reasons. There was little discussion of what it was like to live under occupation, several classmates of Mr. Kushner’s recalled. Many rabbis and teachers seemed comfortable with settlements, and some students said they never learned that Israel’s borders were a highly contested topic.
“There was such an assumption that Jews deserve to have this place, that it was theirs for thousands of years by biblical fiat,” said Eli Schleifer, who graduated the year before Mr. Kushner. “There was such a strange blindness to the complexity of the situation.”
In 1999, Mr. Kushner left New Jersey for Harvard, where he no longer wore a skullcap to classes, but continued to follow rules of Orthodox Jewish life. Jordan Reid Strauch, a friend of Mr. Kushner’s, could not recall his mentioning Israel. Soon the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, was setting off criticism of Israel on campus and then responses from students who defended the country, but Mr. Kushner kept his head down.
Instead he spent time at the Chabad House, where Rabbi Zarchi was struck by how Mr. Kushner “never felt the need to apologize for his differences, his religious commitments,” he said.
Mr. Kushner sometimes expressed his views during long Sabbath meals at the house. “He certainly believed that a strong and secure Israel was in America and the world’s best interest,” Rabbi Zarchi said. He didn’t believe that Israel needed “the approval of Europe, the United Nations or even Washington or London,” the rabbi continued.
While Mr. Kushner was at Harvard, Mr. Netanyahu once again visited his father, speaking at his office, kicking a soccer ball at one of the schools that carried the family name and sitting down for a tabbouleh lunch with students, including Jared’s younger brother, Joshua.
Mr. Netanyahu’s visits helped lead to an unexpected outcome: Charles Kushner’s brother, Murray, sued him for misusing the family company’s funds by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees to the Israeli leader, among other high-profile figures. The suit was eventually settled, but it set off investigations and misdeeds by Charles Kushner that eventually led to a two-year prison sentence for tax evasion, witness-tampering and making illegal campaign donations.
A few years later, Charles Kushner and Mr. Netanyahu still seemed close: When the Israeli media obtained Mr. Netanyahu’s partly handwritten list of wealthy Americans most likely to fund his party’s primary elections, Mr. Kushner was near the top.
A Formidable Task
Last June in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, received an unexpected request from his friend Thomas Barrack Jr., a Lebanese-American businessman and Trump fund-raiser: Would he meet with Jared Kushner?
“What struck me in our first meeting is that he asked a lot of questions and listened,” Mr. Otaiba said. Since then, the two have been in touch, with Mr. Kushner playing the student, asking Mr. Otaiba for his impressions of shifting forces in the Middle East, Syria, Iran, extremism, relationships.
Mr. Kushner had become a force in his family’s real estate business, and a member of a synagogue known for a brand of religious Zionism similar to the one he was raised with. He took out loans for the real estate business from Israel’s Bank Hapoalim and almost bought a major Israeli insurance company called Phoenix.
Though he had been raised a Democrat, Mr. Kushner endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race, in part because of disappointment with President Barack Obama on Israel. “Rather than strengthen the nation’s relationship with Israel as the Arab world imploded, Mr. Obama treated Jerusalem as less a friend than a burden,” the Observer endorsement read, using language similar to what Mr. Trump would eventually say.
Now Mr. Kushner has given up his life in New York for a government ID card and a groaning portfolio. Many foreign policy experts wait their entire careers for a White House job, but Mr. Kushner is fielding inquiries from foreign leaders even as he is still learning to navigate the subject. He is far from the first American Jew with strong ties to Israel to wade into Middle Eastern diplomacy — Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, is the son of a former Jewish paramilitary fighter — but the others were Washington professionals or seasoned negotiators.
In his first weeks in the White House, Mr. Kushner has had exchanges with officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and elsewhere, and greeted King Abdullah II of Jordan, whom he met several years ago on a trip to that country that included the actors Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.
It is unclear what shape Mr. Kushner’s role will take, especially as figures like Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and others in the foreign policy apparatus become engaged in Middle Eastern diplomacy. Some observers see Mr. Kushner as a welcome counter to an unpredictable president and to firebrands like Stephen K. Bannon, the White House strategist, and David M. Friedman, the ambassador designate to Israel.
Mr. Kushner “could be a moderate voice,” said Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, who got to know Mr. Kushner in New York. “The strange thing is, that 36-year-old kid may end up being the grown-up in the room.”
Many years after his teenage encounters with Mr. Netanyahu, he may also be in a position to help the Israeli leader, who is facing multiple corruption investigations and ever-stronger challenges from the right.
But Mr. Kushner’s task is formidable. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump want to set in motion a chain of events that could block Iran, redefine Israel’s relationship with the Arab world and create Israeli-Palestinian peace — “the deal that can’t be made,” as Mr. Trump has said.
“The prime minister is coming into the meeting with the hope to forge a common policy with the president, and Jared’s role is critical in that,” said Ron Dermer, the ambassador of Israel, with whom Mr. Kushner has been in close contact. “He’s someone who, in my interactions with him, has really been able to deliver.”
(Ian Fisher and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on February 12, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Kushner and Israel: A Personal Bond.)
A Jewish Exodus to a New Nation
By Joseph Berger, The New York Times, October 27, 2016
IF such events can be said to have an upside, the Inquisition had one for Spanish and Portuguese Jews: It propelled them to the Americas, where they largely found the tolerance and opportunities denied them in Europe.
The story of the havens Jews established in the New World is the focus of an exhibition opening on Friday at the New-York Historical Society. With rare manuscripts, Bibles, prayer books, paintings, maps and ritual objects, “The First Jewish Americans: Freedom and Culture in the New World,” chronicles how Jews, expelled from Spain and Portugal after being driven out in earlier centuries from England and France, established thriving communities in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Newport and, even earlier, on Caribbean islands and in South America.
In the United States, they, like their fellow Americans, were tossed about in history’s currents, finding themselves on both sides during the American Revolution, the movement to abolish slavery and the Civil War. And their welcome was sometimes short-lived or illusory.
The exhibition’s most arresting artifact is a threadbare 4-inch-by-3-inch, 180-page memoir and prayer book handwritten by Luis de Carvajal the Younger in colonial Mexico in 1595, where the Inquisition had extended its sinister reach of torture and execution.
De Carvajal was a [FAKE] converso, forced [SIC] to adopt Catholicism but [CORRECTLY] suspected of clandestinely practicing Jewish rituals. At trial, he was pressured to denounce 120 Jews who secretly followed their faith, including his relatives. Then he was burned at the stake.
“They broke him down,” said Debra Schmidt Bach, a curator of the show.
The de Carvajal book mysteriously disappeared from Mexico’s national archives in the 1930s. Not long ago, however, Leonard L. Milberg, an American businessman with a major Judaica collection, learned that the document was for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in Manhattan, and he arranged to have it returned to Mexico. It is on loan for the show.
The exhibition features documents chronicling the vagaries of early Jewish settlements: an edict expelling Jews from France’s American colonies; a rabbinical paper certifying as kosher food shipped to Barbados; an 18th-century service for the biblically mandated circumcision of slaves and a list of circumcisers in Curaçao and Suriname; and a Christian missionary’s treatise speculating that Native Americans were the Lost Tribes of Israel. There are two nostalgic paintings of Caribbean scenes by Camille Pissarro, the French Impressionist who was born on St. Thomas to a Jewish mother. Seventy-two of the 170 items in the show are from Mr. Milberg’s collection.
Though the Dutch colony in New Amsterdam, now New York, became a significant haven, its embrace of Jews was stinting. The outpost’s flinty governor, Peter Stuyvesant, recoiled when 23 refugees from Portuguese-ruled Brazil arrived in 1654. But the Dutch West Indies Company told Stuyvesant that business was business and Jews should remain as long as they could contribute to the outpost’s commercial well-being.
Those Jews established the first North American congregation, Shearith Israel — Remnant of Israel — and built a synagogue in 1730 on what is now South William Street in Lower Manhattan. The congregation endures on Central Park West, where it moved in 1897.
Shearith Israel lent the exhibition a charred Torah scroll rescued from a fire set by British soldiers in 1776 and a pair of exquisitely crafted silver rimonim — belled ornaments for a Torah scroll — fashioned by the esteemed silversmith Myer Myers. There is also a ketubah — a marriage contract — illustrated with a bride and groom under a chuppah.
Abigaill Levy Franks, a prominent woman of old New York, is saluted with a portrait. Her letters, the exhibition text informs visitors, confided her upset at her daughter’s marriage to a Christian, Oliver Delancey. Interestingly, he was a scion of the family for whom Delancey Street was named; the street later became the spine of the Lower East Side’s Jewish quarter.
Like other colonists, Jews were conflicted about ending British rule. Haym Salomon, a Polish immigrant, helped finance the Revolution. But Abraham Gomez and 15 other Jews were among 932 signers of allegiance to King George III.
Other documents chronicle the tug of war over slavery. Account books record the purchase of five slaves by Matthias Lopez in 1787, while Jacob Levy Jr. is mentioned in an abolitionist society’s papers as having freed four slaves in 1817.
There are also sections of the exhibition devoted to the communities in Philadelphia; New Orleans; Charleston, S.C.; and Newport, R.I. The show does not have George Washington’s famous letter to the Newport congregation expressing the hope that everyone “shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree.” But it has letters from congregations in Newport and Savannah, Ga., thanking the new president for being so welcoming.
Alexander Hamilton, the lionized founding father of today’s Broadway, makes an appearance too. The show tells us that his mother had been married to a Jew and that he was fluent in Hebrew and maintained close professional ties with Jews.
[I'VE BEEN CALLING HAMILTON A KIKE FOR YEARS. I'M ALSO SURE THAT HIS RABBI WAS ALSO HIS BIOLOGICAL FATHER. NOW THE KIKE SEEMS CONTENT FOR HIM TO BE IDENTIFIED AS A KIKE.]
Several documents establish that it was at Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston where the American version of Reform Judaism took root in 1824 through young mavericks who “wanted to modernize Judaism so it wouldn’t die,” said Dale Rosengarten, director of the Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston. Ms. Rosengarten was a curator of a similar exhibition at Princeton.
“It didn’t spring out of whole cloth but sprang out of our native soil,” she said.
Jews made important contributions to 19th-century science and culture, along with other fields, but as the exhibition says, “despite the nation’s ostensible commitment to religious tolerance, stereotypes of Jews persisted on the American stage.” One gallery has a portrait and the sword and scabbard of Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, a naval hero of the War of 1812, and paintings by Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who accompanied John C. Frémont, the explorer, on a cross-country expedition.
Inevitably, said Louise Mirrer, the New-York Historical Society’s president, the story of the New World’s Jews has resonance for immigrants, refugees and religious minorities today. “Seeds had been planted early on for a place where you could practice your religion,” Ms. Mirrer said, because the New World had drawn Europeans like the Puritans seeking religious freedom.
But at times, she added, there were anomalies: “In the exhibit, we see the kind of religious fervor that promotes a kind of violence against certain groups.”
(“The First Jewish Americans” runs through Feb. 26 at the New-York Historical Society. A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2016, on Page C21 of the New York edition with the headline: An Exodus to a New Nation.
"We are part of the Canadian people" now, frostbitten refugee on road to recovery says
Razak Iyal, 35, and Seidu Mohammed, 24, walked into Manitoba from North Dakota on Christmas Eve
CBC News, Feb 02, 2017; Updated: Feb 09, 2017
After all his fingers were removed because of severe frostbite, a Ghanaian refugee who walked into Canada seeking asylum on Christmas Eve says he's healing well though the pain still bothers him.
"It's going to be like that till it gets healed, so I'm used to it," said Seidu Mohammed, 24. "I think everything's going to be OK."
Doctors could have used some of the Ghanaian refugee's toes to replace his fingers, but he said no. He wanted to be able to play soccer.
In December, Mohammed crossed the border into Manitoba from North Dakota on foot and waited several hours on the highway in the cold before a driver picked him up.
He made the journey with another Ghanaian refugee, Razak Iyal, 35. The pair had never met before their paths crossed on the way to Canada.
Iyal was also badly frostbitten. All his fingers were amputated except for his thumbs, but he said it was worth it for the chance to live in Canada.
"The president of the Ghana community [in Winnipeg], she has been coming every day, every day.… She brings us food, everything we need," Iyal said.
"She's been helping us, and most of the Canadian people, too … when they see us they have been good to us. Now I think we are part of the Canadian people."
On March 27, Iyal will have his hearing to determine whether he can stay in Canada. Mohammed will have his hearing on March 23. Both refugees will be represented by Winnipeg immigration and refugee lawyer Bashir Khan.
In the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial 120-day ban on refugees, Iyal said he thinks more people will seek asylum in Canada.
"For now, I think, because of what's going on in the States now, I think more people will decide that 'Let's come to Canada and try our best,'" he said. "Because most of the people are in the situation that when they go back to their home country, some of them [are] going to suffer of torture, some of them are going to go to prison for all of their lives, some of them are thinking they are going to [be] killed.
"Most people like us, we don't want to go back because of what is going on there."
Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council officials said they opened 10 new files for refugee claimants on Monday. Eight of them had walked over the border.
Council workers have met with more than 80 applicants wanting to open refugee files in the last three months. Typically, the council receives 50 to 60 in an entire year.
If they're allowed to stay, Iyal and Mohammed hope to find a place to live together.
"We are strong now. We are young and we are strong," said Mohammed. "We are going to make it through life."
Related Stories:
- Ghanaian community comes together to support frostbitten refugee claimants
- More asylum seekers coming, refugee says
- 'We saw what happened in the airports': Asylum seekers from U.S. surge into Manitoba
- Families separated, students stranded: The impact of Trump's immigration ban
- Trump's refugee ban throws lives into uncertainty
- 'They almost froze to death': Refugees frostbitten after walking to Manitoba border
Asylum seekers fleeing US for Canada brave snow, extreme cold
AFP, February 11, 2017
[Photo: Farhan Ahmed, a 36-year-old refugee claimant, pictured in a Winnipeg hotel on February 9, 2017 after arriving with a group of other migrants over the US-Canada border to seek asylum in Canada]
Emerson (Canada) (AFP) - Farhan Ahmed hoped to find refuge in the United States after fleeing death threats in Somalia, but fear over a US crackdown on immigration sent him on another perilous journey -- to Canada.
The 36-year-old was among nearly two dozen asylum seekers who braved bone-chilling cold on a February weekend to walk across the border, trudging through snow-covered prairies in the dead of night to make a claim in this country.
It was a record number of arrivals for a single weekend in the small border town of Emerson, and Canadian officials said Thursday they are bracing for more.
US President Donald Trump's controversial ban on refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority nations has prompted many who had hoped for a new life in the US to flee north.
While the ban is currently on hold due to two successive defeats in federal court, Trump has warned he is weighing a new immigration order.
Among the first wave of immigrants to Canada in the wake of Trump's measure was a two-year-old boy who reportedly begged his mother to let him to die in the snow because he could walk no further.
Two others lost their fingers to frostbite in -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) temperatures when they made the same trip in December.
Wayne Pfiel works at the Emerson hotel steps from the boundary. Asylum seekers, he said, often stop here for a moment of respite after walking up to 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the United States, coming in to ask if they have reached Canada.
Others have called police for help, and are taken to the closest border outpost, where they can file an asylum claim.
"They usually call us if they're cold or lost, and we find them on the side of the highway," said RCMP Corporal Paul Manaigre.
- Risky desperation -
An agreement with the US prevents asylum seekers from lodging claims in Canada if they first landed stateside, but it only applies to arrivals at border checkpoints, airports and train stations.
Rita Chahal, executive director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, described a "big surge coming across the border."
According to Canada's Border Services Agency, numbers have roughly doubled in each of the last four years to 321 cases in fiscal 2015-2016. Since April, there have been 403 cases.
People often come from Djibouti, Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia, said Chahal, whose agency works out of a building designed by a top Canadian architect who was once himself a refugee.
The numbers are high, but the risky routes asylum seekers take are also alarming.
"They're crossing through farmers' fields. Many of them are getting lost," Chahal said.
The recent arrivals, she said, tell a common story: "'We're afraid of what's happening in the United States, we're not sure what's going to happen if I get sent back to my country.'"
Samatar Adam, 30, from Djibouti, arrived last month. Asked why he did not file a refugee claim in the US, he replied: "Donald Trump."
He left soon after the inauguration.
"It saddens me to see refugees flee not only their country but also a safe, democratic country like the United States," said the Immigration Partnership Winnipeg's Hani Al-Ubeady, himself an Iraqi refugee who now helps resettle others.
"They have to take another risky journey to make it to another safe place -- Canada."
- 'Walk north' -
Last weekend, Brenda Piett, an Emerson volunteer emergency coordinator who also publishes the local newspaper, received a call from border agents asking for help with the overflow of asylum seekers.
Piett said she arranged to feed and house the cold, exhausted group members -- many wearing wet socks -- overnight at the Emerson curling rink.
The next day, they took a taxi an hour north to Winnipeg, where aid agencies helped them find shelter and legal counsel.
Ahmed of Somalia said it was a much warmer welcome than the one he received in Texas in 2014.
In the lobby of a gloomy downtown hotel where he now shares a small room with three others, he described being handcuffed and detained until his US asylum bid was heard.
New arrivals received blankets, food and housing while their cases are ongoing, according to Ahmed. The next day, he expected to be given a date for his hearing.
Ahmed told the Americans he had witnessed his father being slaughtered by a rival tribe in his hometown, and as the oldest son, he feared he would be next.
He left behind his wife and three children -- the youngest born only months earlier -- and traveled through nine countries before reaching the US.
A US panel rejected his claim, but he was released under supervision and allowed to work as a truck driver until his deportation could be arranged.
After Trump announced his ban, which includes Somali nationals, Ahmed said he feared imminent deportation.
"I decided to try my luck in Canada to ask for protection, because if I were deported to Somalia I would surely be killed," he said.
Ahmed took a bus to Minneapolis, where he met a man who dropped him off at the border with instructions to "walk north."
Ahmed said he had seen snow in the United States, "but not like this."
"That night it was very, very cold," he recalled. "My hands were frozen. I couldn't feel my feet."
'Informal' network helping refuge seekers get to Manitoba, U.S. officials say
Would-be refugee claimants using three main routes to cross the border by foot
By Karen Pauls, CBC News, Feb 08, 2017
The rising number of refuge-seekers crossing the U.S. border into Manitoba has not escaped the notice of the Department of Homeland Security.
Officials in the U.S. say that "informal" networks of family members and friends, rather than criminal profiteers, are helping refugee claimants get to the border.
"What we've seen hasn't fit the profile of hardened criminals or organized crime types," says Eric Kuhn, a U.S. border patrol officer in Pembina, N.D.
"It's more informal, almost charity-based, although some of them are charging a fair amount of money to get here … so there's some profit motive there."
Marc Prokosch, an immigration lawyer in Bloomington, Minn., said he has heard about a network of drivers that take refuge seekers from Minneapolis to the border.
He characterized it more as an underground railroad than a human smuggling route. Prokosch said several of his clients have disappeared, only to contact him weeks later from inside Canada.
Kuhn said it's not illegal to drive someone to the border, but it can be "exploitative."
Getting to the border
People get to the border in a variety of ways. For example, some take a bus into Grand Forks, N.D., and hire a cab.
One taxi driver told CBC News he gets requests "all the time" — often right at the Grand Forks bus depot — and has made several trips himself.
He charges up to $200 US per person for the approximately one-hour ride.
"It's like an airplane seat," he explained.
Others are driven in private vehicles from Minneapolis, which is about seven hours away.
Once they get to the border, Kuhn said refuge seekers use one of three main routes to cross over by foot.
Some use railroad tracks, while others hide in the treeline until they can get across, he said.
"They try to use the cover of darkness, they don't like to be seen," said Kuhn. "They want to make their entry before anyone detects them."
Ease of access
Kuhn said the most popular route is a decommissioned border crossing at Noyes, Minn., and Emerson, Man., where people can use a state highway to drive right up to the barricade between the two countries, get out of the vehicle and walk over.
"This is one of the areas where they've found for it to be the best spot for them to cross," said Kuhn, while giving CBC a tour of the area recently.
Many refuge-seekers looking to come into Canada from the U.S. have crossed the border from North Dakota or Minnesota into Manitoba. (CBC)
"I think it's ease of access. We're on a maintained state highway, you're not dealing with gravel roads and township and prairie trails, you're still in town, you're not in the hinterlands, in the wilds and swamps."
While approaching that area is very simple, refuge seekers run a high risk there of being intercepted by U.S. border patrol officers, he said.
To the east, some asylum seekers cross on foot near a set of TransCanada natural gas pipeline pumping stations on either side of the border.
The stretch of the border west between Noyes and Neche, N.D., involves a much longer trek over snowy farmers' fields.
People are told by their drivers and others who have made the journey to walk towards a large cell phone tower and the windmill lights near Halbstadt, Man.
They're less likely to be discovered by border officers, but Kuhn said they risk frostbite or worse if they can't get a cell signal to call 911 or are unable to flag down help quickly once they're on the Canadian side.
That was the case of two Ghanaian men who lost fingers and toes to frostbite after crossing on Christmas Eve.
"The great danger you get into in our area of operations … is the less likely you are to have a cell signal," Kuhn said. "When you do get into trouble and try to call 911, it may not go anywhere.
"We'll move heaven and earth to save people regardless of their legal status ... but we can't help you if we don't know you're there."
'Don't do it, don't do it'
Since last spring, the Canada Border Services Agency says more than 400 people have snuck into the country along this stretch, compared to 68 in 2013.
Refugee claimants are choosing to walk across the border instead of presenting themselves at ports of entry because the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S. means claimants must file for refugee status in the first safe country in which they arrive.
Despite calls to suspend or withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement, Canadian Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has said repeatedly that U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order on immigrants and refugees does not affect the agreement, which will remain in place.
While political uncertainty in the U.S. is creating fear among many of his clients, Prokosch cautions them against making the crossing, particularly in light of stories of refuge seekers nearly freezing to death in the process.
"I'm saying, don't do it, don't do it. Talk to your lawyer first. This is dangerous stuff. You've made it out of a dangerous situation, don't put yourself back into another dangerous situation."
Prokosch said that while the U.S. political situation is tense, "there's always something we can try to keep someone in the United States."
Related:
– 'This is right off the scale': Border town seeks help after spike in refugees
– 'We are part of the Canadian people' now, frostbitten refugee on road to recovery says
Many Somalis in Minnesota 'willing to take the risk' to sneak into Canada
'They left their country and they’re still on the run,' says Somali community leader in Minneapolis
By Karen Pauls, CBC News, Feb 10, 2017
Omar Jamal is dealing with a crisis.
Jamal is the executive director of the Somali Community of Minnesota, and for months now, he has seen people whose U.S. asylum claims have been rejected end up in Minneapolis, home to one of the largest Somali communities in the country.
From there, they make arrangements to sneak into Canada, where they can file refugee claims.
Jamal has become used to this, but today he is fielding non-stop calls about a car full of refuge seekers and their driver who appear to have gone missing after leaving Minneapolis.
The plan was to drive the seven hours north to the Canadian border and cross the border on foot.
But they're nowhere to be found.
"I'm getting calls from family members and I'm meeting relatives and as we speak right now, we are trying to figure out what happened to them and where are they? Are they still alive?" says Jamal.
Jamal's current situation speaks to the heightened desire for people to sneak into Canada, but also the potential perils.
As a community leader, Jamal says he's been "overwhelmed" with calls and meetings about fellow Somalis aiming to cross over the Canadian border illegally.
But he consistently cautions them that "there's a risk involved."
Minnesota's Somali community
Somalis in Minneapolis like to congregate in places such as Karmel Square and Suuqq, a Somali mall where they can eat goat meat and drink sweet tea — and where many have been gathering to negotiate a ride to the Canadian border.
Mohamud Noor, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Communities in Minnesota, says Somalis have the highest rate of asylum rejections and deportation orders in the U.S.
As a result, he says they're undaunted by the prospect of a potentially perilous journey to Canada.
They've already come so far from Africa, "so going through the last leg of their challenge isn't seen as too bad. They're willing to take the risk."
Some would-be refugee claimants organize a taxi ride all the way from Minneapolis to Manitoba, while others take a bus from Minneapolis to Grand Forks, N.D. and from there hire a cab to drive them the last 130 or so kilometres to the border.
There is clearly demand for rides north. And there are also people with free time, a vehicle and a willingness to make the drive, especially if they can make some money doing it.
Jamal is fully aware that refuge seekers are "using any means available to them to get from point A to point B to make it to the border and then walk on foot in this cold, blizzard winter.
"It's a very sad story and it's happening throughout different locations, different [parts of the] border," he says, while nervously puffing on a cigar at a smoke lounge.
As the day wears on, news starts to trickle in about what happened to the missing car — especially once the driver himself reappears in Minneapolis.
We found him in a tiny Somali café, where he took us down to the basement to tell his tale. We're calling him Ahmed, concealing his identity because he's shaken by what happened.
He has only agreed to tell his story as a warning to others.
"I was helping as a friend," he assures us.
"I didn't charge any money. I know one guy and he asked me to help them so I say, 'Yes, I will help you,'" he says.
"So we drive in North Dakota and it's getting bad, the road condition is really bad, you can't see nothing, it's all freezing and [the passengers] say, 'Just drive… to the border,' and I'm like, 'Come on. If I drop you at the border, you gonna die.'
"They say, 'No, we know what we're doing. We do the research. We know the corner, here, there, there.' So finally they say just drop me there."
Ahmed ended up leaving them at a gas station in Pembina, N.D., which is about eight kilometres from Manitoba. After doing so, Ahmed says he drove towards to the border, just to get a lay of the land.
But soon, he found himself at the border crossing at Emerson, Man., talking to a Canadian Border Services Agency officer.
A run-in with CBSA
The CBSA officer asked Ahmed why there was so much food and juice in his car, and then inquired whether he had just dropped off some people who were planning to walk across.
Ahmed wasn't sure what to say. The CBSA ended up detaining him.
He says the Canadian border officers were "really, really nice" and made it clear that because he's a U.S. citizen, they didn't want anything from him.
[Photo: This man, who we're calling Ahmed to protect his identity, told CBC News about driving Somalis from Minnesota to the Canadian border so they could sneak into Canada.]
But the reason he got in trouble is because the officers were worried about the survival of the refuge seekers.
Ahmed says one of them told him, "'It's negative twenty-something and I don't think they can survive. You are criminal, guilty guy. You and those guys who leave them here are killing innocent people because you just drop innocent people [off] and they're deep-freezing.'
"And I say, 'That's what they wanted, because they want to come to Canada. They see there's no life in America no more because of Trump.'"
Ahmed says he was kept in a holding room for 12 to 15 hours.
"I feel guilty and I'm freaking out. I'm not even worried about myself. In my mind, I'm worried about these people. If I hire a lawyer, if I go to court, I may have a chance, but if somebody dies by deep-freezing, they don't have a chance," Ahmed says.
"I decided to tell the truth that hey, I dropped people [off]. I don't know if [the CBSA went to] go get them."
Ahmed has advice for anyone contemplating a run for the border.
"Don't do it. Even if you want to do it, please do it in the summertime, not the winter, because summertime at least you can survive. If you get thirsty, you can deal with it," he says. "But freezing? We don't even have snow in Africa."
'They're really worried'
Twenty-four hours later, there's relief in Jamal's voice. All of the missing refuge seekers have been accounted for.
They're making their way back to Minneapolis.
As a result of their attempted crossing, they've been flagged as a flight risk by U.S. immigration authorities.
"They're really worried, they're scared," says Jamal.
"The thing is, when they came [to the U.S.], they psychologically believed that they left everything behind, the bad things. But actually the place they've got here now doesn't look much different than the place they came from.
"It's a continuation of crisis and suffering and not being settled… That saga is still ongoing," he says. "They left their country and they're still on the run."
Before too long, Jamal has moved on to the next phone call, the next request for help.
He knows this flood of asylum seekers won't stop any time soon, and he has a message for his neighbours to the north.
"Canadians are historically known as a society to be very hospitable and welcoming, and I think they should open up more now than ever. I really, in a sense of urgency, urge the Canadian government to take bold steps to address this issue," he says.
"The time is now, the need is there."
Related:
- 'Everything was hurting so bad': How one Muslim man snuck across the U.S. border into Canada
- 'I want to die,' 2-year-old refugee said during hours-long walk to Manitoba from U.S.
'We're willing to step up,' says Emerson reeve after emergency meeting
RCMP promise to allocate more resources near Manitoba border town after influx of refugees
CBC News, Feb 09, 2017
The reeve of Emerson, Man., says an emergency meeting Thursday with members of the Canada Border Services Agency and Mounties has relieved concerns he had after a recent surge of refugees into the border town.
"Now we know the protocol if we get an influx of people," said Greg Janzen. "The governments have been very supportive in this whole issue."
According to the Canada Border Services Agency, 403 people entered Canada near the town in nine months last year, up from 340 in the 2015-16 fiscal year and 68 in 2013-14.
Last weekend, 22 people made the journey — 19 on Saturday and three on Sunday — according to the RCMP.
There was confusion in the community of 671 people about the protocol when a large group of refugees jumps the border, he said. Last weekend Emerson utilized emergency measures and opened its community hall to house the unexpected surge of newcomers.
"We didn't know where we stood as a municipality," said Janzen. "Was there a safety risk for us?"
Emerson member of the legislature Cliff Graydon echoed the concerns and said constituents have also reached out to him with safety worries.
"They're very, very concerned about the refugees [INVADERS] coming at this time of year and walking across the field when it's –35 with the wind chill, and are they dressed properly and so on and so forth," he said.
A pair of Ghanaian refugees who made the journey on foot in December lost most of their fingers to frostbite.
"They don't want to find anybody froze to death out there," Graydon said. "That's the big concern to the local people."
Janzen said his concerns were allayed when RCMP told him they screen refugee claimants.
"We never talked risk factor to our people, but now we understand how the process is being done so that makes it more reassuring," Janzen said.
If a large group of refugees cross the border again, the CBSA will rent Emerson's community hall to house them, he added.
"If we're needed we're willing [to] step up.… We're not turning them away," said Janzen.
Leaving U.S. not criminal: RCMP
RCMP say they are adding resources along the border near Emerson, but it's not the responsibility of the police to stop border jumpers.
"People leaving the United States is not a criminal act," said RCMP media relations officer Tara Seel.
[Photo: Some refugees [INVADERS] walk to this disused border crossing between Manitoba and North Dakota.
Some refugees walk to this disused border crossing between Manitoba and North Dakota.]
It is, however, the RCMP's responsibility to screen individuals caught after they have crossed the border, she said.
Police rely on patrols, 911 reports and surveillance technology to catch border jumpers, including asylum seekers, she said. Those who claim refugee status are taken to the Canada Border Services Agency for further processing.
"We have no concerns whatsoever," said Seel. "We are well-prepared to handle any threats at the border."
Rita Chahal, executive director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, also met with Emerson officials along with members of the CBSA and RCMP Thursday. The council runs Welcome Place, a home for refugees in Winnipeg.
She brought the town 10 care packages containing bedding and toiletries for refugees who may enter the town in the future.
Author:卍心の智
