Category Archives: Global Politics

Vice-Chancellor: TTIP trade deal is dead

Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said Sunday that negotiations on a massive trade deal between the European Union and the United States were effectively dead in the water.Original enclosures:

Source: Vice-Chancellor: TTIP trade deal is dead

Police investigate after mosque door is bricked shut – The Local

Police in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have opened an investigation after the 1 metre-high brick work was found in the doorway of the mosque, which is currently under construction, on the morning of August 26th, a police report states.According to broadcaster NDR, police are investigating two charges – one of property damage, the other of incitement of hatred.One of the flyers seen on a Facebook picture posted by the Parchim Refugee Network reads: “You call yourselves believers. We call you invaders.”Another is an alleged quote from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which reads: “The mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the believers our soldiers.”

Source: Police investigate after mosque door is bricked shut – The Local

Erdogan vows to ″destroy terrorists″ as force step up offensive against IS and Syrian Kurds | News | DW.COM | 29.08.2016 aka: Kurdish Genocide is still his only aim!

After months of deadly attacks across the country, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to “destroy terrorists.” In Syria, Turkish forces have ramped up their offensive against “IS” and Kurdish-led forces.

Source: Erdogan vows to ″destroy terrorists″ as force step up offensive against IS and Syrian Kurds | News | DW.COM | 29.08.2016

‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias – The New York Times

Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle — as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier — he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.But an investigation by The New York Times — drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors — uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.That history has taken on fresh relevance with Mr. Trump arguing that black voters should support him over Hillary Clinton, whom he has called a bigot.While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally set the rental policies at his father’s properties, he was on hand while they were in place, working out of a cubicle in Trump Management’s Brooklyn offices as early as the summer of 1968.Then and now, Mr. Trump has steadfastly denied any awareness of any discrimination at Trump properties. While Mr. Trump declined to be interviewed for this article, his general counsel, Alan Garten, said in a statement that there was “no merit to the allegations.” And there has been no suggestion of racial bias toward prospective residents in the luxury housing that Mr. Trump focused on as his career took off in Manhattan in the 1980s.In the past, Mr. Trump has treated the case as a footnote in the narrative of his career. In his memoir “The Art of the Deal,” he dispensed with it in five paragraphs. And while stumping in Ohio, he even singled out his work at one of his father’s properties in Cincinnati, omitting that, at the time, the development was the subject of a separate discrimination lawsuit — one that included claims of racial slurs uttered by a manager whom Mr. Trump had personally praised.

Source: ‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias – The New York Times

‘Mr Brexit’ meets Mr Brexit: Nigel Farage to stump with Trump | US news | The Guardian “Racist Birds” Gather together the same feathers – apologies to birds. LOL

Nigel Farage, the anti-EU British politician and former Ukip leader, will appear with Donald Trump at a rally on Wednesday, a week after the US presidential candidate branded himself “Mr Brexit” and tapped one of the leading American supporters of Brexit to run his campaign.The Trump campaign confirmed that Farage would appear with Trump at an evening rally in Jackson, Mississippi, to tell US voters “the Brexit story” of how he triumphed over the electoral odds. Farage will not endorse Trump.Trump hopes to ride to victory a populist wave of nationalist enthusiasm comparable to the movement behind Britain’s June vote to leave the European Union. As leader at the time of Ukip, Farage was a key promoter of the Brexit.

Source: ‘Mr Brexit’ meets Mr Brexit: Nigel Farage to stump with Trump | US news | The Guardian

Donald Trump Cues Up Another Conspiracy – The New York Times

Mr. Trump did not invent paranoia; he did not create the Republican meme of fraudulent minority voting. He just took it — as he so often does — to an extreme. Senator John McCain made similar warnings in 2008, and murmurings of cheating go back at least to 2000, a close national election, botched in Florida, decided for George W. Bush by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. And long before Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, Republican legislators were busy passing voter ID laws based on the fallacy of widespread fraud.Mr. Trump’s brain is a pincushion for conspiracy theories, so maybe it’s no surprise that he thinks the Clinton campaign will be sending African-Americans and foreigners into booths across the country to fake their votes over and over, millions of times.Now, more than ever, the country needs responsible political leaders and the courts to defend and expand voting rights, rather than sitting silently while Mr. Trump further demolishes public confidence in the foundations of our government.

Source: Donald Trump Cues Up Another Conspiracy – The New York Times

Humans of New York

“I have professors at Columbia who view me as a terrorist for fighting in Iraq. But I believe that America is an example to be emulated, and I went over there to provide those people with basic human freedoms. But when you get over there you realize that you’re fighting kids. Everyone was kids. You see it when they’re dead. These weren’t the guys who were flying into towers. These were kids who grew up poor, stepped into the wrong madrasa, and were manipulated by people with a shit load of money into executing somebody else’s worldview. None of them came out of the womb hating. None of them came out of the womb thinking anything else but holy shit this is a bright beautiful world.”

Source: Humans of New York

Israel erases Palestine-related contents from school books in J’lem – PNN

The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) in Occupied Jerusalem has omitted all texts and pictures that are related to Palestine and the struggle against the occupation from Palestinian school books before its distribution.According to the Hebrew newspaper Iroshalim, the Israeli municipality and the ministry of education deleted Quranic verses, poems and other contents from Palestinian curriculums advocating the Palestinian struggle against the occupation.The IOA recently distributed these books that contained some blank pages and blackened lines to Palestinian schools in the holy city. Among the lines that disappeared from those books are texts talking about the unity of the Muslim nation and the importance of the Aqsa Mosque.The Palestinian map, flag and anthem were also removed from text books. The Israeli municipality justified the measure by claiming that it would not allow the presence of educational books encouraging violence

Source: Israel erases Palestine-related contents from school books in J’lem – PNN

Sadder than sad :>(

https://youtu.be/OZynXM2mgxo

I am breaking with my tradition of posting only one article on weekends so I can spend more time doing stuff other than thinking about the world going to crap. Since I was young and living in Europe I have been a Ferrari fan…..I was living on the island of Mallorca and one day I […]

via This Is Just Wrong! — In Saner Thought

Donald Trump’s achilles heel is that he is truly un-American | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

 

What Trump had done was violate a core American ideal: the notion – not always honoured, admittedly – that no matter where your family came from, if you were born in the US or had come there and subscribed to its founding principles, then you were as American as a direct descendant of those who landed on Plymouth Rock. This was what set the US apart, the belief that national identity did not reside in blood or soil, but in loyalty to the nation’s constitution and its bill of rights.Or consider Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US; it was again attacked by Republicans as well as Democrats because it contradicts America’s founding purpose, to be a haven from religious persecution, a purpose encapsulated in the constitution’s first amendment guaranteeing the “free exercise” of religion. Or reflect on Trump’s little joke this week, suggesting the way to deal with Clinton might be a bullet – at odds with America’s professed determination to resolve its differences through a constitution, the law and elections.The common thread is that all these moves by Trump are not just reactionary or bigoted or dangerous. They contradict the ideals that all Americans are meant to regard as sacred. Perhaps this is the way to attack Trump: as truly un-American. He says he wants to make America great again. The truth is, he would stop America being America.More comment TopicsDonald Trump US constitution and civil liberties Republicans DemocratsShare on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Save for laterReuse this contentAdvertisementMost popular in USHope Solo calls Sweden ‘a bunch of cowards’ after USA falter at Olympics Rio Olympics 2016: women’s football, tennis, athletics and basketball – live! San Jose Mercury News says sorry for ‘insensitive’ Simone Manuel headline Donald Trump: it’s all a joke Have we detected an alien megastructure in space? Keep an open mind | Seth Shostak

Source: Donald Trump’s achilles heel is that he is truly un-American | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian