Category Archives: Fail!

House passes bill to tighten flow of Syrian refugees over Obama’s objections – The Washington Post {The vote – 289 anti-American cowards to 137.

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed legislation aimed at tightening controls on refugees from Syria and Iraq, in what Republican leaders say is a swift and strong response to last week’s terror attacks in Paris.The vote was 289 to 137.

Source: House passes bill to tighten flow of Syrian refugees over Obama’s objections – The Washington Post

Recalled Products Sold by Home Depot After Recalls Were Announced | CPSC.gov

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Home Depot are warning consumers that 28 different recalled products continued to be sold by Home Depot after they were recalled between 2012 and 2015. This involves about 2,310 units of recalled products, including about 1,300 sold by Home Depot to consumers and 1,010 sent by Home Depot to salvagers or recyclers who could have sold them to consumers. Consumers should stop using the recalled products immediately and contact the recalling firms to receive the remedies listed in the recall, which is either a refund, replacement or repair.

Source: Recalled Products Sold by Home Depot After Recalls Were Announced | CPSC.gov

www.german-foreign-policy.com German media pushing WWIII

The current front of Germany’s major national media, orchestrating domestic public opinion and publicistically habituating the population to a “World War” has been broken by a renowned business magazine. Gabor Steingart, Chief Editor of the German Handelsblatt warns, “the West shares the blame for the hostile climate between the cultures.” “Of the 1.3 million lives that the wars from Afghanistan to Syria have cost, the crusade against Iraq, waged under false pretenses – and therefore in violation of international law – alone, accounts so far for 800,000 dead,” explains Steingart. “The majority of these victims were peaceful Muslims – not terrorists.” “The automatism of severity and mercilessness, the premeditated incomprehension of one’s counterpart, the fiery speeches for the respective populations at home, the rapid take-off of bomber squadrons” have “brought us to where we are today.” “This is not how you stop terrorism; this is how you fan its flames. This is not how you obtain peace; this is how you spawn suicide bombers.” In the future, rather than banking on “combat or capitulation,” we should promote “order, respect, and moderation.” “There are alternatives to military escalation.”[13] Among the leading personalities of the German mainstream media, Steingart stands alone with his warning.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

Larissa Pham: The Architecture of Racism at Yale University – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

This tension is not new. It is a product of the systemic racism built into the institution, as ubiquitous as the architecture that characterizes the place in our shared consciousness. “Everyone who enters Yale is reminded that they’re in an environment that is a product of centuries of classism and racism,” Cynthia Hua, who graduated earlier this year, told me. “You can see it in the buildings. They’re symbols of the way society has been stratified—it’s even in their names.” (One of Yale’s residential colleges is named for the nineteenth-century politician John C. Calhoun, who advocated secession and spoke of slavery as a force for good.) And the problem goes beyond architecture—architecture just happens to be its most potent symbol.This breed of racism isn’t showy or overtly violent, which makes it hard to define, like a kind of low-grade radiation that kills slowly. It’s being the only woman of color in a seminar room, or feeling physically unsafe on campus, or having to endure stereotypical assumptions about one’s race in even the most innocuous of situations. Zack Graham, a black student who graduated in 2013, gave me this anecdote: “I showed up for office hours and the TA asked which sport I played—as though the notion that I was a regular student accepted through regular channels was an impossibility.”

Source: Larissa Pham: The Architecture of Racism at Yale University – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism – The New York Times

It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.From Our AdvertisersSpeaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records. In June, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection of domestic phone data by the government (but not the collection of other data, like emails and the content of Americans’ international phone calls) and requires the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make its most significant rulings available to the public.

Source: Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism – The New York Times

G.O.P. Governors Vow to Close Doors to Syrian Refugees – The New York Times {25 Governors announce they are actively anti-American, bigoted, and cowards!}

Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant. Among the governors were those from Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and other states that have already resettled relatively large numbers of refugees from among the 1,900 Syrians accepted by the United States in the last four years.

Source: G.O.P. Governors Vow to Close Doors to Syrian Refugees – The New York Times

It has now been confirmed that one of the Paris suicide bombers reached Europe disguised as a refugee. Security officials had long felt that such a scenario was unlikely. How big is the risk?

Source: SPIEGEL ONLINE

For information on foreign fighters, German investigators are dependent on intelligence information — indications gleaned by the US from emails, phone conversations or chats, for example, that a certain jihadi may have left Syria. In such instances, however, police work is necessary to find them, particularly if they are traveling on falsified documents. Simply closing Europe’s or Germany’s borders, as has frequently been demanded in recent weeks, wouldn’t offer much protection.

Commentary: Turning our backs on migrant children isn’t solving the immigration issue | Latina Lista

Yes, let’s turn back the thousands of men, women, children and babies floating across the Mediterranean in overcrowded rafts and hiking miles and miles in the open elements, with their worldly possessions strapped to their backs, fleeing certain death and throwing themselves on the mercy and compassion of the rest of the world, because a few of them could turn out to be terrorists.That rationale makes as much sense as continuing to keep asylum-seeking Central American children and their mothers in detention facilities because…they pose a threat to U.S. society?The hard truth is those who are intent to do harm will find a way to either do it themselves or indoctrinate like-minded believers who may already live within a certain country. Yet, those who are in need of a new home or refuge, have no other recourse than to depend on their fellow human beings. That’s especially true of the children. Children are the face of the 21st Century international migration crisis. To think that it’s ok to deny them a safe future in this world is as barbaric an act as any atrocity committed by a terrorist because when these children are turned away, their days can be literally numbered.Reports have surfaced that some of the asylum-seeking Central American children who had been detained and later deported back to their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala were murdered after returning — the reason why they fled their native countries in the first place and asked U.S. authorities for help. Isolationism isn’t a quality of a great nation, nor is fear of what could happen. But what will happen in a country that, not only recognizes the life-threatening reasons forcing children and their families to flee their homes, but actively works to include them in their society, is a whole new generation who won’t just call their adopted country home but be among their most ardent defenders.

Source: Commentary: Turning our backs on migrant children isn’t solving the immigration issue | Latina Lista

NSW police trained to shoot extremists ‘on sight’, rather than negotiate – Australian Broadcasting Corporation {OZ knows how to over-react too!}

“We would be mad to continue to say we will do nothing but contain and negotiate.”However, Mr Kaldas stressed the “shoot on sight” order would not be appropriate in all circumstances.

Source: NSW police trained to shoot extremists ‘on sight’, rather than negotiate – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)