Author: Papa Giorgio

Islamification of Germany – 2016 Edition

Published by Papa Giorgio

What a great chronological ordering of some of the main immigration woes Germany is facing in their voluntary death, via GATESTONE! (I suggest reading the entire article of which I excerpt from) — Follow Gatestone on TWITTER and Soeren Kern on TWITTER as well:

✦ Mass migration from the Muslim world is fast-tracking the Islamization of Germany, as evidenced by the proliferation of no-go zones, Sharia courts, polygamy and child marriages. Mass migration has also been responsible for a host of social disruptions, including jihadist attacks, a migrant rape epidemic, a public health crisis, rising crime and a rush by German citizens to purchase weapons for self-defense — and even to abandon Germany altogether.

✦ Development Minister Gerd Müller warned that the biggest refugee movements to Europe are still to come. He said that only 10% of the migrants from the chaos in Iraq and Syria have reached Europe so far: “Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way.”

✦ “There are written instructions … today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous.” — Wolfgang Herles, Deutschlandfunk public radio.

✦ The Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet. Critics accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using DITIB mosques to prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into German society.

✦ A Cologne police superintendent revealed that he was ordered to remove the term “rape” from an internal police report about the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. He said that an official at the North-Rhine Westphalia Interior Ministry told him in an angry tone: “This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report.”

✦ The German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, reported that thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards.

✦ A 23-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker wearing a T-shirt with the words “I’m Muslim Don’t Panic” was assaulted by fellow refugees for offending Islam. He was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized.

✦ Half of the three million ethnic Turks living in Germany believe it is more important to follow Islamic Sharia law than German law if the two are in conflict, according to a survey.

✦ A document leaked to Der Spiegel revealed that more than 33,000 migrants who are supposed to be deported are still in Germany, being cared for by German taxpayers. Many of the migrants destroyed their passports and are believed to have lied about their countries of origin to make it impossible for them to be deported.

✦ Migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016, according to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 32.5 crimes each hour, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a migrant suspect has been caught.

✦ Bild, the largest-circulation newspaper in Germany, warned that the country was “capitulating to Islamic law.”

Germany’s Muslim population surpassed six million in 2016 for the first time ever. Germany now vies with France for the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.

The increase in Germany’s Muslim population is being fueled by mass migration. An estimated 300,000 migrants arrived in Germany in 2016, in addition to the more than one million who arrived in 2015. At least 80% (or 800,000 in 2015 and 240,000 in 2016) of the newcomers were Muslim, according to the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.

In addition to the newcomers, the rate of population increase of the Muslim community already living in Germany is around 1.6% per year (or 77,000), according to data extrapolated from a Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.

Based on Pew projections, which were proffered before the current migration crisis, the Muslim population of Germany was to have reached an estimated 5,145,000 by the end of 2015.

Adding the 800,000 Muslim migrants who arrived in Germany in 2015, and the 240,000 who arrived in 2016, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, the Muslim population of Germany jumped by 1,117,000, to reach an estimated 6,262,000 by the end of 2016. This amounts to approximately 7.5% of Germany’s overall population of 82 million.

Mass migration from the Muslim world is fast-tracking the Islamization of Germany, as evidenced by the proliferation of no-go zones, Sharia courts, polygamy and child marriages. Mass migration has also been responsible for a host of social disruptions, including jihadist attacks, a migrant rape epidemic, a public health crisis, rising crime and a rush by German citizens to purchase weapons for self-defense — and even to abandon Germany altogether.

What follows is a chronological round-up of some of the key stories about the Islamization of Germany during 2016.

JANUARY 2016

January 1. Mobs of Muslim men of “Arab or North African” origin sexually assaulted hundreds of women in Cologne and other German cities. Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers called it “a completely new dimension of crime.” The government and mainstream media were accused of trying to cover up the crimes to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiment.

January 1. The Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, rejected public concerns about the “alleged Islamization” of Germany. “How should Muslims, who represent a minority, Islamize our society?” he asked. Germans feel insecure, he said, because “people are afraid of strangers they do not know.”

January 3. Bremen Police Union Chairman Jochen Kopelke said that migrants were attacking city police with increasing frequency: “The tone has become extremely aggressive; sometimes the police must apply massive force to get a situation under control.” Bremen Senator Ulrich Mäurer added: “The excesses of violence against police officers show that these people have no respect for our constitutional order and its representatives.”

January 4. A leaked police report revealed chaos “beyond description” in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Women were forced to “run a gauntlet” of drunken men of a “migrant background” to enter and exit the central train station. Police officers were unable to re-establish order. One migrant reprimanded a police officer: “I am Syrian; you have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me.”

[….]

FEBRUARY 2016

February 2. A total of 91,671 migrants — an average of around 3,000 migrants each day — entered Germany during the month of January 2016.

February 4. German police arrested four members of a cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in Berlin. The ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee shelter in Attendorn with his wife and two children — arrived in Germany posing as an asylum seeker from Syria. He reportedly received military training from the Islamic State.

February 5. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency, revealed that more than 100 Islamic State fighters may be living in Germany as refugees, some of whom are known to have entered the country with fake or stolen passports.

[….]

MARCH 2016

March 1. The Schleswig-Holstein branch of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU announced plans to ensure that pork continues to be available at public canteens, child daycare centers and schools across the north German state. CDU politician Daniel Günther complained that canteens, nurseries and schools are removing pork from their menu in order not to offend Muslims. “The consumption of pork belongs to our culture,” he said. “No one should be obliged to do so. But we also don’t want the majority having to refrain from pork.”

March 3. The Arriba water park in Norderstedt, one of the largest such parks in Germany, announced that males and females would be segregated after two Afghan migrants raped a 14-year-old girl at the facility.

March 4. A court in Düsseldorf sentenced Nils Donath, a 25-year-old German national, to four-and-a-half years in prison for joining the Islamic State. The court heard how Donath, a convert to Islam, received weapons training and learned how to build bombs — and how he volunteered to carry out jihadist attacks in Europe.

[….]

APRIL 2016

April 3. Two migrants from Afghanistan were arrested for forcing a 14-year-old boy to perform sex acts on them at a public swimming pool in Delbrück.

April 10. A 26-year-old Syrian migrant admitted to setting fire to a migrant shelter in Bingen. He also admitted to painting swastikas outside the building in order to make it look as though the fire was set by anti-immigration protesters.

April 11. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency, expressed alarm at the growing number of radical mosques in Germany. “Many mosques are dominated by fundamentalists and are being monitored because of their Salafist orientation,” Maassen said. Many of the mosques are being financed by Saudi Arabia.

[….]

MAY 2016

May 1. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) adopted a manifesto calling for curbs to migration and restrictions on Islam. The document called for a ban on minarets, Muslim calls to prayer and full-face veils.

May 2. Hans-Georg Maassen, the German spy chief, revealed that around 90 “predominately Arabic-speaking” mosques in Germany are under surveillance. He said they involve mostly “backyard mosques” where “self-proclaimed imams and self-proclaimed emirs” are “inciting their followers to jihad.”

May 2. A Cologne police superintendent revealed that he was ordered to remove the term “rape” from an internal police report about the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. He said that an official at the North-Rhine Westphalia Interior Ministry told him: “This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report.” The revelation added to suspicions of a political cover-up to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

May 3. A 20-year-old Afghan migrant sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy in the changing room of a sports hall in Munich. Police said the same migrant had sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at a public swimming pool in 2013.

May 5. An INSA poll found that 60% of the Germans surveyed believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. Nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said they are worried about the “Islamization” of Germany.

[….]

JUNE 2016

June 2. A new statistical survey of Germany showed that ethnic Turks are economically and educationally less successful than other immigrant groups. The report, produced by Destatis, Germany’s official statistics agency, showed that more than one-third (36%) of ethnic Turks live below the poverty line. Only 60% complete secondary school (Hauptschulabschluss), while less than 10% of ethnic Turks between the ages of 17 and 45 earn a Bachelor’s degree. Education is a determinative factor for successful integration, the report said.

June 2. Three Syrian jihadists were arrested for plotting a jihadist attack in Düsseldorf. A fourth individual was arrested in France. The plan involved two suicide bombers who would blow themselves up along the Heinrich-Heine-Allee, a busy street in the city center. Subsequently, other assassins would kill as many passers-by as possible with guns and bombs.

June 3. The head of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, said that budget cuts in the public sector made it impossible to vet all of the migrants coming into Germany. He was responding to demands that all migrants undergo immediate security checks.

[….]

JULY 2016

July 1. A court in Bavaria ruled that a law that prohibits Muslim legal trainees from wearing headscarves is illegal.

July 3. A 24-year-old woman, raped by three migrants in Mannheim in January, admitted to lying about the identity of her attackers. Selin Gören, a Turkish-German woman, initially said that her attackers were German nationals, when in fact they were Muslim migrants. Gören said she lied because she was afraid of fueling racism against migrants.

July 4. The 30 biggest German companies have employed only 54 refugees, including 50 who have been hired as couriers by Deutsche Post, the logistics provider. The data cast doubt on Angela Merkel’s promise to integrate asylum seekers into the German labor market as quickly as possible. Company executives say the main problem is that migrants lack professional qualifications and German language skills.

July 7. The German parliament approved changes to the criminal code to expand the definition of rape. Also known as the “No Means No” (“Nein heißt Nein”) law, any form of non-consensual sex will now be punishable as a crime. Previously, only cases in which victims could show that they physically resisted their attackers were punishable under German law. The changes, which were prompted by the sex attacks in Cologne, were hailed as a “paradigm shift” in German jurisprudence.

[….]

AUGUST 2016

August 2. Amid fears of Islamic terrorism, German officials raised the possibility of deploying the military within German borders for the first time since World War II.

August 11. Muslim patrols enforcing Sharia law were seen operating in the Wandsbek and Dammtor district of Hamburg.

August 16. Asylum seekers in Lower Saxony refused to accept job offers because they were “guests of Angela Merkel.”

[….]

SEPTEMBER 2016

September 3. Only 2,500 people attended a mass rally in Berlin to protest the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The organizers of the rally, including members of the Green Party, and the Left Party, had expected around 10,000 demonstrators to show up.

September 3. The Vice Chairman of the DPolG German Police Union in Hamburg, Freddi Lohse, said that many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behavior. “They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries,” he said. “They have no respect for us.”

September 4. Angela Merkel suffered a major blow when the Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged ahead of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in elections in her home state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. With 20.8% of the vote, the AfD came in second place behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) (30.6%). Merkel’s CDU came in third place, with 19% of the vote, the worst result it has ever had in Meck-Pomm, as the state is called for short. The election in Meck-Pomm was widely seen as a referendum on Merkel’s open-door migration policy.

September 6. Migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016, according to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 32.5 crimes each hour, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a migrant suspect has been caught.

[….]

OCTOBER 2016

October 1. Two migrants raped a 23-year-old woman in Lüneburg as she was walking in a park with her young child. The men, who remain at large, forced the child to watch while they took turns assaulting the woman.

October 2. A 19-year-old migrant raped a 90-year-old woman as she was leaving a church in downtown Düsseldorf. Police initially described the suspect as “a Southern European with North African roots.” It later emerged that the man is a Moroccan with a Spanish passport.

October 2. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called for the development of a “German Islam” to help integrate Muslims in the country.

October 4. The 2016 Munich Oktoberfest recorded its lowest turnout since 2001. Visitors reportedly stayed away due to concerns about terrorism and migrant-related sexual assaults.

[….]

NOVEMBER 2016

November 3. Five Somali migrants went on a rampage after the owner of a pub in Wabern asked them to pay for the alcohol they had consumed. “We are Somalis, we don’t pay,” the men said before smashing up the establishment.

November 11. The Military Intelligence Service (Militärische Abschirmdienst, MAD) reported that more than 20 Islamists are serving in the German armed forces, and another 60 service members are suspected of being Islamists. Some 30 veterans are known to have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq. The report raised concerns that Islamists are joining the German armed forces in order to obtain combat training.

[….]

DECEMBER 2016

December 3. A 17-year-old Afghan migrant was arrested for raping and murdering a 19-year-old medical student in Freiburg. Police said she may have met her killer at the asylum shelter where she was a volunteer. Freiburg Mayor Dieter Salomon warned against making generalizations about migrants because this crime was an “isolated case.”

 

December 6. Eyeing reelection, Angela Merkel called for a burka ban: “The full veil is not appropriate here and it should be forbidden wherever that is legally possible.” In September, Merkel said she was opposed to a burka ban because it would violate “religious freedom.”

December 8. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany’s highest court, ruled that Muslim girls must take part in mixed swimming classes at school, finding against an 11-year-old pupil who had argued that even wearing a burkini, or full-body swimsuit, breached Islamic dress codes. The court rejected an appeal by the girl’s parents that she should be excused from the classes because a burkini did not conform to the Islamic standard of decency.

[….]

(READ IT ALL)

No Certain Doom – Climate Model Failure

Published by Papa Giorgio

(H-T WUWT) Scott Adams, author of the famous Dilbert Cartoon, has challenged readers to find a qualified scientist who thinks climate models do a good job of predicting the future.

Here is Scott’s Tweet:

The following video presentation is by Patrick Frank, a Ph.D. chemist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. He has previously published in Skeptic on the noble savage myth, as well as in Theology and Science on the designer universe myth and in Free Inquiry, with Thomas H. Ray, on the science is philosophy myth. He works [worked?] at Stanford as a Life Science Research Assistant for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. His article the video is based on  is this:

“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.” — John McCarthy

Larry Elder Interviews Thomas Sowell (12-28-2016)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder interviews Thomas Sowell and they discuss many issues, some current some biographical. Doc Sowell sounds great (healthy as a horse), and while he has laid his pen for his columns… he says he is still in the mix via his other avenues of scholarship.

I hope he updates a book or two, and publishes a few more. That man is a giant and needs to continue on his his career for the benefit of conservatism.

The 2nd Amendment Was Only For Muskets (Puckle Update)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The First “Assault” Weapon – 1718

(Via FIREARM BLOG) The Puckle Gun is one of those firearms of which only a couple of expamples exist in the world, but which is covered in a great deal of introductory firearms books, usually in their section on the history of machine guns. This has led many to assume the Puckle Gun was some kind of proto-machine gun, which isn’t exactly the case, although it is a very important historical step on the road to modern rapid-fire weaponry. Some discussion will follow below, but first, Forgotten Weapons released an installment on the partial original Puckle Gun located at Reed Knight’s Institute of Military Technology…

[ the video below is here in the Firearm Blog post ]

What makes the Puckle significant to the development of rapid fire guns? Its features. It is one of the earliest, if not the earliest breechloading guns to my knowledge that incorporates all of the following features necessary for a modern rapid-fire gun:

  • A method of sealing the chamber to prevent gas escape
  • A quick-changeable feeding device for rapid reloading
  • Pre-set, integrated priming to elminate the priming stage of loading and protect the priming compound from the environment

Previous breechloaders did incorporate one or two of these features, but Puckle’s gun combined all three to produce a true rapid-fire weapon….

InPuckle Gun 1718 the “Puckle gun” [above], the first machine gun, appeared. (One could argue that the so-called “assault rifle pre-dated the Second Amendment.) The Colt revolver followed not long after and in the late 1800s the Gatling gun, which fired 200 rounds per minute, appeared on the market. The evolution of firearms was observable during the time that the Constitution was drafted; to argue that the Founding Fathers were unaware of, or not living through, the ever-evolving capabilities of firearms is blatant ignorance of both common sense and fact. Jefferson himself was a noted collector and in letters explained what technological capabilities he favored in pieces over others in his collection. ~ The Dana Show

A transcript of the above CBS 46 presentation can be found HERE.

RED STATE continues on with this thinking:

…Prior to the Civil War, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that first Congress dropped references to “as allowed by Law” that had been in the English Bill of Rights. The Founders intended that Congress was to make no law curtailing the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.

The 2nd Amendment, contrary to much of today’s conversation, has just as much to do with the people protecting themselves from tyranny as it does burglars. That is why there is so little common ground about assault rifles — even charitably ignoring the fact that there really is no such thing. If the 2nd Amendment is to protect the citizenry from even their own government, then the citizenry should be able to be armed.

There are plenty of arguments and bodies to suggest that we might, as a nation, need to rethink this. The Founders gave us that option. We can amend the Constitution.

In doing so, we should keep in mind that in the past 100 years Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, China, and other governments have turned on their people at various times and, in doing so, restricted freedoms starting often with gun ownership. You may think a 30 round magazine is too big. Under the real purpose of the second amendment, a 30 round magazine might be too small.

Regardless, as the President announces how he will curtail the freedoms of the second amendment, we should remember Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943):

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

And the Examiner notes “Pepperbox” and “Volley Guns”

…Put whoever tries to get away with such an unsupportable wild claim on the spot by asking them to explain pepperbox revolvers, multiple barrel handheld firearms based on a concept introduced in the 15th Century, albeit they were initially fired using a match. At the time the Constitution was adopted, pepperboxes had upgraded their technology to flintlock versions, with up to seven barrels rotated by hand.

Then ask them to explain volley guns, first used in 1339.

The Founders experienced first-hand a major technological innovation that yielded a range and accuracy advantage: long guns with rifled barrels, like Kentucky and Pennsylvania rifles, had it all over British standard-issue Brown Bess smooth bore muskets…

The Wild-Wild West:

…How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let’s say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town’s most violent year ever.

As for the traditional Western gunfight as depicted in movies, the inaccuracy of handguns at the time would have made quick-drawing skill irrelevant: It was simply so unlikely you’d hit a guy on the first, second or third shot that it didn’t really matter which guy got out his gun first. The closest history got to high-noon show downs was dueling, where people just stood across from one another with their guns out, aimed and fired until someone got lucky, and someone else was dead. Forget about “fanning,” rapidly cocking a single-action revolver between rounds like Clint Eastwood does in A Fistful of Dollars. You’d be lucky to hit a henchman if the duel took place in a closet.

Why Do We Believe It?

Because famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid wanted you to believe it. If you’ve seen Young Guns on cable, you probably know the guy was gunning somebody down every ten minutes!

Well according to sources who aren’t Billy The Kid, his lifetime kill count was four. Criminals inflated their murder stats for the same reason guys today inflate their sexual experience: It made them look cool. Towns like Deadwood talked up their violent, lawless natures in order to attract adventurous settlers. Books were written about them and movies were made as soon as cameras were invented, and nobody who’d been out west was rushing to correct the misconceptions because, why the hell would they. A century and a half later, we still love that lie…

(6 Ridiculous History Myths ~ You Probably Think Are True)

Miss Malcolm’s Book has some startling examples of a society gone mad!

Malcolm’s book has shown me that I radically underestimated the danger of gun control. Her detailed study of British legislation on the topic shows the real aim of the disarmers. They wish to abolish the right to armed self-defense entirely. The point is not only to block armed resistance to the state, as I had previously thought; in addition, everyone is to be made totally dependent on the state for protection.

Some of Malcolm’s examples are shocking. In England “[m]erely threatening to defend oneself can also prove illegal, as an elderly lady discovered. She succeeded in frightening off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from a toy gun, only to be arrested for the crime of putting someone in fear with an imitation firearm” (p. 184).

Not even if one’s life is in danger can one legally use a weapon. In another case, two men assaulted Eric Butler in a subway, smashing his head and choking him. “In desperation he unsheathed a sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of them. . . . The assailants were charged with unlawful wounding but Butler was also tried, and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon” (p. 185).

You can imagine the legal position if someone goes so far as to use a real gun to defend himself. As British law now stands, you cannot even use a gun in your own home to defend yourself against burglars. In a 1999 incident, Tony Martin surprised a professional burglar and his accomplice while they robbed his home. He fired, killing one of them.

Did the government commend Martin for his bravery in confronting the burglars? Quite the contrary, they tried and convicted him for murder. “Thus an English farmer, living alone, has been sentenced to life in prison for killing one professional burglar and ten years for wounding another when the two broke into his home at night” (p. 216). Fortunately, our story has a “happy” ending: the court of appeals reduced his sentence to five years, on grounds of “diminished capacity.”

[….]

Gun control advocates, faced with these facts, will at once begin to yammer uncontrollably, “a correlation is not a cause.” Indeed it is not; but in this instance, a strong correlation holds in two ways: when guns increase in number, violent crimes decrease, and when guns decrease, violent crimes increase. Further, a plausible causal story explains the correlation: the prospect of armed resistance deters criminals. This is about as good as an inductive argument gets. But I do not anticipate that those who wish to take away the right to self-defense will alter their position. They aim to make everyone totally dependent on the all-powerful state….

(Guns and Violence: The English Experience, Joyce Lee Malcolm)

John & Ken Discuss CalPERS Ponzi Scheme (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

California Boondoggles

The pension crisis in California is the worst in the country, and it will continue to get worse as Jerry Brown and the environmentalists strap this state with regulations that choke businesses to death — see:

✦ California Regression – Eco Craziness
✦ Cow-Farts in London – Jerry Brown

IBD has this article on the issue:

Pensions: California, which is known for its earthquakes, just had a major one. Didn’t feel it? You will. This quake isn’t the earthshaking kind, but rather the state’s decision to recognize reality when it comes to its insolvent public-employee pension fund.

Last week, the 85-year-old California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, slashed its official investment forecast going forward, meaning that state and local governments, police and sheriffs departments, and even school districts will have to spend billions of dollars more to CalPERS to support their future retirees. And, no doubt, it will mean higher taxes for all.

Sadly, this move won’t be enough. For years, the state has projected steady investment returns of 7.5% for CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the nation. But returns have been below that. So now CalPERS is trimming its return to 7% per year. But, given the pension fund’s mismanagement and poor performance, even that may be too high. Today the fund is a little over 60% fully funded, meaning it will have to raise billions of dollars more to be solvent. That means higher contributions for government workers, and higher taxes for average citizens.

It’s no accident. “CalPERS has … steered billions of dollars into politically connected firms,” wrote Steve Malanga in City Journal, back in 2013. “And it has ventured into ‘socially responsible’ investment strategies, making bad bets that have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Such dubious practices have piled up a crushing amount of pension debt, which California residents — and their children — will somehow have to repay.”

That’s happening now. California’s famous Highway Patrol, for instance, has grossly underfunded its pensions. So it got the state to agree to a $10 hike in car registration fees to help make up the shortfall. No doubt, it will be asking for more soon.

It’s not just California. Across the country, pension funds have been underfunded, mismanaged and in some cases looted by managers. Today, according to the Fed, pension funds across the country are $2 trillion in the red — after being overfunded as recently as the year 2000. That means tax hikes are coming, like it or not…..

Professor Wants “White Genocide” For Christmas (UPDATE by SARGON)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Remember, Sargon is an atheist (just a memo):

The bottom line seems to be that white-people are not welcomed at Drexel University — OR — not have white alumni donate money:

THE DAILY CALLER discusses the above Tweet by George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia,

Drexel University associate professor of political science George Ciccariello-Maher has a long history of espousing racist views towards white people on Twitter and has at times supported genocide.

Cicariello-Maher, a white man who specializes in race and racism among other topics, has been the subject of criticism from media outlets and social media users after he tweeted on Saturday, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He subsequently deleted the tweet and brushed it off as a joke, saying that “White isn’t a race.” (RELATED: University Professor: I Want ‘White Genocide’ For Christmas)

However, Cicariello-Maher’s view that “white isn’t a race” doesn’t match up with his past tweets. On Sunday, Ciccariello-Maher said that the massacre of whites during the Haitian Revolution was a “good thing.” During the Haitian massacre in 1804 as many as 4,000 whites were killed.

Ciccariello-Maher’s anti-white tweets, however, did not start this weekend. On Feb 3, 2013, the Drexel professor said that “Yacub made a lot of white folks.” According to Nation of Islam theology, Yacub is a black scientist who created the white race to be a “race of devils.”

Then on June 8, 2015, Ciccariello-Maher said, “Abolish the White Race.” A little over a week later, the Drexel professor said that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof “simply put into practice what many white Americans already think.”

Ciccariello-Maher also tweeted in Sept. 2016 a purported exchange between him and his son: “Son: If I was a slave, I’d bake a cake & put a potion in it & the white people would steal it Me: What would the potion do? Him: Kill them,” the Drexel University professor wrote.

Just this past week, in response to a viral video claiming to show two men kicked off a plane for speaking Arabic, Ciccariello-Maher wrote, “#Gulag these Racist Crackers.”

Ciccariello-Maher, who describes himself as a communist, joined Drexel University in 2010. Drexel University said in a statement Sunday afternoon: “While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, Professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University.”….

Speaking of “Class Warfare,” e.g., cultural Marxism…

“One Of The Worst Foreign-Policy Presidents Ever” ~ Dershowitz

Published by Papa Giorgio

 

HOTAIR h-t

DERSHOWITZ: What he did was so nasty, he pulled a bait and switch. He told the American public this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank. And yet, he allowed he representative to the U.N. to abstain –which is really a vote for– a resolution that says the Jews can’t pray at the Western Wall, Jews can’t live in the Jewish Quarter [of Jerusalem] where they have lived for thousands of years. And he’s going to say, ‘Whoops! I didn’t mean that!’ Well read the resolution! You’re a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law School.

It’s nothing more than a petulant swipe at Benjamin Netanyahu, and as Dershowitz explains, it’s going to backfire — badly:

DERSHOWITZ: This will make peace much more difficult to achieve because the Palestinians will now say ‘we can get a state through the UN, we can get a state through the BDS movement,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We can get a state through the International Criminal Court,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We don’t have to negotiate, we don’t have to make painful compromises.’ He will go down in history, President Obama, as one of the worst foreign-policy presidents ever.

Declaring War on Judeo-Christian Civilization

Published by Papa Giorgio

See other Prager University insights:

The officials said that business with the embassies of those countries — Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal and New Zealand — will be suspended… (CNN)

Here is an excellent article by GATESTONE on the issue of the United Nations trying to undermine the Judeo-Christian West:

✦ How is it that Western jurisprudence, created after the Second World War to prevent more crimes against humanity, is now being used to perpetuate more crimes and against democracies?

✦ It is a dreadful manipulation to try erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. That is what a jihad looks like. It is not just orange jumpsuits, beheadings and slavery. If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future.

✦ If Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault, argued UN expert Dubravka Simonovic with a straight face.

✦ Last month, the President of the UN General Assembly sported the famous keffiyah scarf, a symbol of the “Palestinian resistance” (read terrorism). This is simply the continuation of the cultural obliteration of Israel, which is supposed to justify next its physical obliteration.

✦ The UN’s war on the Israel’s Jews is, at heart, a war against the West. The UN and its backers are briskly paving the way for the European Caliphate.

2016 has been a sumptuous year for the anti-Semites at the United Nations. The UN Security Council just targeted the only democracy in the Middle East: the State of Israel. The outgoing Obama Administration reportedly orchestrated what even Haaretz called a “hit and run” campaign in UN to denigrate the Jewish State and leave it to a fate where only conflict and hate loom. This is a cultural genocide that is no less dangerous than terror attacks. It is based on anti-Semitic lies and creates the atmosphere not for achieving “peace”, as disingenuously claimed, but for perpetuating war.

UNSC Resolution 2334 is the culmination of a dizzyingly fruitful year for anti-Semites. Last November, committees of the UN General Assembly in a single day adopted 10 resolutions against Israel, the only open society in the Middle East. How many resolutions have been approved against Syria? One. How many against the rogue state of North Korea? One. How many against Russia when it annexed Crimea? One.

Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, observed:

“Even as Syrian president Bashar Assad is preparing for the final massacre of his own people in Aleppo, the U.N. adopted a resolution — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — which falsely condemns Israel for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens on the Golan Heights. It’s obscene.”

Not a single resolution was approved for those states which really abuse human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China or Cuba, not to mention many virtual tyrannies throughout Africa. Only one resolution was approved for the “Palestinian refugee properties”, but not even a single mention for the property of the Iraqi Christians in Mosul.

Another resolution in this racist banquet of the United Nations concerned the “application of the Geneva Convention in the occupied territories”. There are hundreds of territorial disputes in the world, from Tibet to Cyprus, but only Israel deserves to be called out?

According to the liars at the United Nations, the most evil country in the world is Israel. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad, and Jordan’s Prince Zeid al Hussein are sponsoring even now a “blacklist” of international companies that have ties with Israeli companies in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to facilitate boycotting Israel in the evident hope of economically exterminating the only democracy and pluralistic nation in the region: the Jewish State.

The UN Envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui of Algeria, suggested also including the Israeli army in the blacklist of countries and groups that regularly cause harm to children, along with Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and countries such as the Congo and the Central African Republic, infamous for their child-soldiers — but of course not the Palestinians, who continue to promote using children as combatants and children as “martyrs“. How is it that Western jurisprudence, created after the Second World War to prevent more crimes against humanity, is now being used to perpetuate more crimes and against democracies?

The UN women’s rights commission condemned Israel as the world’s only violator of women’s rights. Not Syria, where Assad’s forces use rape as a tactic of war, or the Islamic State, which enslaves women from religious minorities. Not Saudi Arabia, where women are punished if they do not wear the Islamic full-covering clothing in scorching temperatures, or drive a car or even leave the house. Not Iran, where “adultery” (which can include being raped) is punishable by being stoned to death. And if Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault, argued UN expert Dubravka Simonovic with a straight face.

The UN’s World Health Organization also singled out Israel as the only violator in the world of “mental, physical and environmental health”, despite Israel being the only state in the world actually to give medical care to its enemies (ask Hamas leaders’ children).

Canadian law professor Michael Lynk was then appointed as the UN’s “impartial” investigator of alleged Israeli human rights violations despite his long record of anti-Israel lobbying, including his board membership on many pro-Palestinian organizations, including Friends of Sabeel and the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.

Last October, the UN cultural agency, UNESCO — by magically declaring ancient Biblical Jewish sites “Islamic”, even though Islam did not historically exist until the seventh century, hundreds of years later — pretended, with the villainous complicity of the West, to erase the Jewish-Christian roots of Jerusalem.

It is a dreadful manipulation to try erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. It is a jihad. That is what a jihad looks like. It is not just orange jumpsuits, beheadings and slavery. If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future. If you do not know where you are coming from, what values will you defend or fight for?….

(read it all)

94% Of New Jobs Created During Obama’s Era Were Temporary Positions

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes from YOUNG CONSERVATIVES:

From Investing:

A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.

The study shows that the jobs were temporary, contract positions, or part-time “gig” jobs in a variety of fields.

Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.

The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%.

Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was surprised by the finding.

Some NBC/SPLC Trump Hate Hoaxes

Published by Papa Giorgio

There are a few issues involved in this video via NBC and the victim mentality of the left, but first the video:

(Jump To: Hijab Arsonists | Online Survey | More)

Firstly, many supposed “Trump” related “hate-crimes” have been shown to be false. We see headlines and stories like the following (published immediately by the Southern Poverty Law Center):

  • A female Muslim student at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette claimed she was minding her own business when two white men, one wearing a “Trump” hat, tore off her hijab, assaulted her and took her wallet.
  • Police announced on Thursday that a Muslim woman, 18-year-old Yasmin Seweid, lied when she claimed three white men assaulted her on a New York City subway while yelling Trump’s name because she was wearing a traditional Islamic head scarf.
  • An unidentified 20-year-old man filed a criminal complaint in November claiming that he was confronted and accosted by at least two white men when he exited an MBTA bus in Malden, MA.
  • In November, a Bowling Green University student claimed she was “walking down the street” when a group of white men wearing Trump shirts started shouting profanities and throwing rocks at her for no reason.
  • Earlier in December, someone went on a “racist,” pro-Trump graffiti spree. Some of the messages scrawled around Philadelphia were “Trump rules” and “Black B***h.”
  • A woman’s mailbox was marked with “KKK” and “Trump,” a brick was thrown through her car window, the back seat of the car was soaked in gasoline and set on fire.
  • a black female student claimed that she was knocked down by a group of white men screaming “Trump.”
  • An openly bisexual senior at North Park University claimed she was the recipient of a homophobic note and hateful emails following Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election.
  • In a widely-shared Facebook post, an Asian student at the University of Minnesota claimed she was harassed by a white male as she was walking across a bridge in Minneapolis. The man told her to “go back to Asia,” Kathy Mirah Tu said in the post. She ignored him and kept walking across the bridge, but says he followed her and added: “Don’t you know it’s disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are talking to you?” He then allegedly grabbed her wrist, and she responded by punching him in the throat.
  • In another viral Facebook post, a black woman claims she was harassed by a group of white male Trump supporters at a gas station in Rehoboth Beach, Del. “Just experienced one of the WORST THINGS in my entire life,” Ashley Boyer wrote in the post, saying four white men pulled up beside her while she was pumping gas and jumped out of the car. The white men “proceeded to talk about the election and how they’re glad they won’t have to deal with n—–s much longer,” she wrote, adding that one approached her and said: “How scared are u, u black bitch??? I should kill you right now. You’re a waste of air.” Another pulled out a weapon and said: “You’re lucky there’s witnesses or else I’d shoot you right here.”
  • Chris Ball, a gay Canadian filmmaker alleged he was assaulted by Trump supporters on election night in Santa Monica, Calif. The Trump supporters hurled gay slurs at him while he was watching the results come in at a bar, he claims, then followed him out of the bar at the end of the night and assaulted him in an alleyway. Ball posted a photo of himself covered in blood in an Emergency Room as evidence, saying the attackers smashed a beer bottle on his head. “We got a new president you fucking faggots,” they told him, according to Ball.

ON-and-ON… (IJR – DAILY CALLER [2015] – DAILY CALLER – DAILY CALLER – DAILY CALLER – REASON – CBS – RPT – RPT…)

I tend to agree with a comment posted at the PHILLY VOICE, 

  • How come every bit of hate, post-election, is coming from the tolerant, open-minded left? And how come, more often than not, these accounts end up being either hoaxes or flat-out lies? Progressivism is a mental illness, nothing more.

HIJAB ARSONISTS

But in that NBC video I want to deal with two topics. One being the case of a female Muslim (Muslima) student at the University of Michigan. She claimed last month that a man had threatened to set her on fire unless she removed her hijab.

Horrible! . . . if it were true.

HOTAIR notes that “naturally, the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] connected the alleged incident to President-elect Trump.” Continuing with a quote from [the terror supporting Islamic organization] CAIR…

  • “’Our nation’s leaders, and particularly President-elect Donald Trump, need to speak out forcefully against the wave of anti-Muslim incidents sweeping the country after Tuesday’s election,’ CAIR Michigan’s executive director Dawud Walid said at the time.”

About the video above HOTAIR also relates that “A few weeks ago NBC News put together this report featuring a Muslim woman on the University of Michigan campus talking about her response to the election of Donald Trump. The video highlights the claim (now shown to be a hoax) about a woman on campus being threatened for wearing a hijab.” CREEPING SHARIA asks:

  • Why isn’t her name and photograph being released? Why isn’t she being charged with a hate crime against white men? Her attention to detail suggests it was premeditated, as HotAir notes in Another hijab hoax.

ONLINE SURVEY

ANOTHER issue with the NBC FAKE NEWS video is when they reference the 10,000 teacher survey:

The SPLC withheld some vital information in order to make the “narrative” fit better for the uninitiated public. The NEW YORK POST expands on this:

…The takeaway was that Trump-supporting white kids have been harassing minorities at the nation’s schools. And SPLC’s schools report, along with a broader report on alleged Trump-inspired hate crimes — “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election” — sparked breathless coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major media.

The reports also triggered a statement Friday from the US Commission on Civil Rights, which expressed “deep concern” that “prejudice has reared its ugly head in public elementary and secondary schools.” The panel called for more federal funding to prosecute “hate crimes.”

But the SPLC didn’t present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators — whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”

Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information “from the researchers.” Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that “about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question.”

Bokenkamp did not provide an explanation for the absence of such a substantial metric — at least 2,000 bias-related incidents against white students — from the report, which focuses instead on “anti-immigrant sentiment,” “anti-Muslim sentiment” and “slurs about students of color” related to the election.

“They left that result out because it would not fit their ideological narrative,” former Education Department civil rights attorney Hans Bader said. “It was deemed an inconvenient truth.”…

The CANADIAN FREE PRESS goes on to state that this “New Hate Category” is very lucrative:

At least some manufacturing industries haven’t moved offshore.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and “other civil rights groups” have scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning (Nov. 29) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The troublemaking leftists plan to call on President-elect Donald Trump “to immediately and forcefully publicly denounce racism and bigotry and to call on Americans to stop all acts of hate.”

At the press conference “the SPLC will release . . . [r]esults of a new survey, answered by more than 10,000 teachers across the country detailing the negative effect the election has had on school climates” dubbed “The Trump Effect”

[….]

Like every other activity the SPLC engages in, the point isn’t to actually disavow prejudice but to monetize it, and monetizing hate in the Trump Age requires Trump-style branding.  It’s media gold whenever Trump reiterates for the umpteenth time his “forceful disavowal” of racism.  Outlets from MSNBC to NPR then take to the airwaves to disavow Trump’s disavowal, and another entire news cycle becomes about ‘speaking truth to power’ regarding Trump’s supposedly persistent racism problem.

Thus: the Trump Effect.  The SPLC claims to have stumbled upon the Trump Effect phenomenon after innocently polling 2,000 of the nation’s schoolteachers who spend their spare time trolling the SPLC website searching for confirmation that they’re living in Rachel Maddow’s Nightmare on Trump Street.

Unsurprisingly, after taking SPLC’s online poll, these 2,000 schoolteachers simultaneously arrived at the alarming conclusion that Trump has singlehandedly affected their school’s “climate,” and not for the better like global warming, which keeps the sidewalks free from snow.

In case anyone misses the point that Trump (and not teachers who rant about Trump to their second graders) is a social problem akin to the Black Plague, the Trump Effect report is decorated with a grainy close-up photo of Trump’s open mouth….

Greg Gutfeld agrees (12-2013):

MORE

A recent purported “hate crime” was a burning of a black church with “vote Trump” spray painted on the side. Here is how SNOPES ended their post on the matter:

Greenville is a predominantly African-American community where the mayor described race relations as “fairly good.” However, attacks on churches is not a new development: it was used as a tactic of intimidation by white supremacists during the Civil Rights era. As noted by the fire marshal, a motive has yet to be determined. The fire broke out one week before the 8 November 2016 presidential election.

And the Mayor of Greenville called the burning of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville a “hateful and cowardly act,” Mayor Errick Simmons said this was “an attack on the black community.” “It appears to be a race crime,” Simmons said. “It happened in the ’50s. It happened in the ’60s. It shouldn’t happen in 2016.”

But as with most of these incidents in the past decade… they are hoaxes.

A black man has been arrested and charged with burning an African-American church in Greenville, Miss. last month and defacing its outer walls with “Vote Trump” graffiti.

The Mississippi state police arrested Andrew McClinton, 45, on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree arson of a place of worship, Warren Strain, a spokesman with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety told The Daily Caller.

McClinton allegedly set first to Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, where he is a member, on Nov. 1, a week before the election. The fire destroyed 80 percent of the church. A GoFundMe account raised more than $240,000 to repair the facility….

(From DAILY CALLER; see also BREITBART)

While in the past these churches have been burned by members of racist organization, nowadays it is a fostering of a grievance demographic via awards of victim-hood that has caused a significant increase in the hate-hoaxes. Magically however, this crime went from a hate-crime to just a regular crime — with the snap of a finger.

Two more VERY recent HATE-HOAXES

The first one Delta Airlines confirmed it kicked off the passenger for being rude and disruptinve, NOT for speaking Arabic….

In 2014, Adam Saleh published a video showing an NYPD officer profiling and harassing Muslims. It was sensational, it was shocking, it was clear evidence of NYPD “Islamophobia.” It went viral and made international news. There was just one catch: it was a hoax. Saleh had staged the whole thing. The incident was so embarrassing that even Ibrahim Hooper of Hamas-linked CAIR, a veteran purveyor of fake hate crimes against Muslims, demanded that Saleh apologize.

Now, coincidence of coincidences, Saleh claims that he was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight for speaking Arabic. Even aside from Saleh’s history as a hate crime hoaxer, his story just doesn’t ring true.

(JIHAD WATCH – DAILY WIRE)

MOONBATTERY reports that “it looks like the worst is over for the victims of a phony hate incident at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts:”

  • Babson College has cleared two students of any disciplinary violations stemming from their controversial drive through Wellesley College to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory the day after the presidential election, their lawyers said Monday.

It turned out to be fabricated… but not before being…

…put through hell for a while and were kicked out of their fraternity, but despite doing nothing wrong they pleaded for forgiveness on Fakebook, so the college apparently figured they had been punished enough for indulging in thought-crime.

Even thinking certain ways is dangerous nowadays — apparently