Brussels Officials Ordered to Avoid Public Park After Slew of Migrant Attacks
By Dan Lyman
Government employees have been ordered to avoid walking near a Brussels park during their work commute after a slew of robberies and attacks by migrants in recent weeks, according to local media.
Since October 1st, at least seven public workers have been ambushed while passing through Maximilian Park en route from a nearby transit station to the Flemish Administrative Center, Der Standaard reports.
“Given the current social context and the dark days, it is best for your safety to avoid the Maximilian Park and to focus on well-lit main roads,” civil servants were advised, according to SCEPTR.
Government employees union ACOD has instructed members to either make the journey via a provided shuttle bus service, or take a taxi, asserting that prior warnings about the increasing danger have drawn ridicule.
“We were painted as ridiculous before,” says AOCD representative Jan Van Wesemael. “But these new incidents show that we were right and that the environment is dangerous. I hope that officials will use that shuttle bus as much as possible.”
SCEPTR journalist Tom Lallemand recently posted a video of the park and its inhabitants on social media, writing, “Hundreds of illegal immigrants sleep or wander around in Maximilian Park Brussels, harrowing.”
Monique De Ceuster, 57, was a recent victim, suffering a cracked elbow during a gang robbery.
“I was on my way to the station on Tuesday evening when I was attacked from behind,” De Ceuster told Der Standaard. “Three men pulled off my handbag and backpack and pushed me to the ground.”
Press TV reported that some 500 mostly-African migrants were living in Maximilian Park as of March, noting that the majority were not even applying for asylum “for fear of being deported.”
Angela Merkel: In This Day and Age States Must Be Ready to Give Up Sovereignty – Nationalist Countries are Not Patriotic
By Jim Hoft
Germany, a country of 82 million, welcomed from 800,000 to over one million migrants and unvetted “refugees” in 2015.
Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed close over 280,000 migrants in 2016.
In April 2017 after several Islamist terror attacks and after Islamists tried to blow up a bus carrying a top German soccer team, Merkel told reporters that “there is no doubt” that some refugees pose a security threat.
A new tradition started in Germany this Christmas season.
This year the popular Berlin Christmas market is surrounded by a metal fence reinforced by giant sand bags.
The Diversity barriers are back.
Via Vlad Tepes:
But Angela Merkel has not learned from her suicidal politics.
This week Merkel lectured countries to be ready to give up their sovereignty. She went on to say that nationalistic politics are selfish and not patriotic.
The Express reported:
Mrs Merkel, who last month announced she was controversially stepping down as leader of her party but not as Chancellor of Germany despite previously saying the two roles go hand in glove, said ceding power to a superstate is a better form of patriotism.
She told the event, titled ‘Parliamentarianism Between Globalisation and National Sovereignty’: “In this day nation states must today – should today, I say – be ready to give up sovereignty.
“But of course in an orderly procedure.”
Mrs Merkel said that countries who think “they can solve everything on their own” are simply nationalistic and not patriotic because they “only think about themselves.”
She said: “Either you are one of those who believe they can solve everything on their own and only have to think about themselves. That is nationalism in its purest form.
“This is not patriotism. Because patriotism is if you include others in the German interest and accept win-win situations.”
CARAVAN MIGRANTS OVERWHELM TIJUANA SHELTER
Shelter now resembles a refugee camp
Will Racke | Daily Caller News Foundation – NOVEMBER 23, 2018
Officials in Tijuana have declared a humanitarian crisis in response to thousands of mostly Central American migrants who have arrived in recent weeks and overwhelmed temporary shelters in the Mexican border city.
As of Thursday night, at least 5,000 recent arrivals were camped in Tijuana, which is serving as a staging ground for the migrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. City officials estimate as many as 1,200 migrants arrived from the nearby city of Mexicali in less than 24 hours between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, straining temporary shelters that were already operating at capacity.
At least 2,000 more migrants are traveling in a second caravan currently moving north through the central Mexican states of Jalisco and Queretaro — most are expected to end up in Tijuana in the coming weeks. In response to the influx, Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum declared an international humanitarian crisis and blasted the federal government for allowing the migrants to concentrate in the city.
“They have categorically omitted and not complied with their legal obligations,” Gastelum said Thursday at a news conference, according to the Arizona Republic. “So we’re now asking them and international humanitarian aid groups to bring in and carry out humanitarian assistance.”
The Tijuana municipal government says it is spending about $27,000 per day to house and provide care to the caravan migrants in the city. Gastelum, who has drawn criticism for his tough rhetoric about the caravan, warned that he would not authorize more spending as additional migrants arrive.
“I will not compromise public services,” Gastelum said. “I will not spend Tijuanans’ money, I will not bring Tijuana into debt now, in the same way we haven’t done so these past two years.
Tijuana, a sprawling border city of about 1.6 million, has long been a waypoint for migrants of all stripes seeking to cross the southwest border. But it has never had to accommodate the sudden arrival of so many homeless Central Americans, who are now waiting indefinitely to apply for asylum at the U.S. ports of entry.
Nearly all of the caravan migrants are being sheltered in Tijuana’s Benito Juarez sports center. Officials say the center, which is already over capacity, cannot hold any more migrants while still maintaining even minimal safety and sanitary conditions.
As the temporary shelter has come to resemble a refugee camp, Tijuana officials say a lack of coordination with the federal government has hindered the on-the-ground response to the caravan.
“We were faced with the federal government and state government and municipal government all unclear on who would be in charge, and no one wanted to take care of this thing,” Vega said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “As the municipal government, we have to take care of these people, and we have to take care of our community.”
HUNDREDS OF MIGRANTS PUSH ON TO US-MEXICO BORDER BRIDGE
Trump on Thursday threatened to close the border altogether
By AFP
Tijuana (Mexico) (AFP) – Tension mounted as hundreds of Central American migrants massed at a Mexican border town headed on Thursday for a bridge crossing to the United States as President Donald Trump renewed his threats to repel them.
With US helicopters hovering overhead, a group made up mostly of men headed just after midday from the shelter they have been staying at since last week to the El Chaparral bridge around a kilometer (half a mile) away in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, California.
Trump on Thursday threatened to close the border altogether, having previously deployed nearly 6,000 troops to erect concrete barriers and razor-wire fences to deter what he has called an “invasion.”
“If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control,” Trump told reporters, before firing a warning to Mexico.
“The whole border. I mean the whole border,” he said, adding that “Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States.”
Tensions rose at the border when a local official and a human rights activist tried to convince the migrants both of the benefits of remaining in Mexico, and to submit their US asylum requests through official channels.
“We don’t want to!” shouted the migrants before continuing on to the bridge.
“Let us cross now, we’re already desperate, we’ve left family in Honduras, we need to work,” said a man called Wilson.
Authorities in Tijuana set up a job fair in an attempt to recruit skilled workers amongst the migrants for the benefit of local companies, while Mexico’s migration agency has offered them temporary residency papers.
Some have taken advantage of the offers but others are simply determined to reach the US.
Since setting out more than a month ago, mostly from from Honduras, thousands of migrants — including many women and children — have covered about 4,400 kilometers (2,700 miles), either walking or hitchhiking, before the first groups began reaching Tijuana at the end of last week.
But there have been tensions since they started arriving at the border town, particularly in the shelter housing around 4,500 Central Americans.
The migrants are mostly fleeing poverty and unrest in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where gang violence has fueled some of the highest murder rates in the world.
Soros foundation takes aim at Facebook, calls for congressional oversight
The head of billionaire George Soros’ foundation called for congressional oversight of Facebook, after the social media giant finally took some responsibility for hiring a PR firm to smear its critics as agents of Soros.
“So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model. Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight,” Open Society Foundations head Patrick Gaspard tweeted on Wednesday night.
Gaspard was responding to an admission by Facebook’s outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage, who owned up top hiring a PR firm – Washington, DC-based Definers – to attack Facebook’s critics and label them agents of Soros, a billionaire and prominent liberal donor.
In a blog post, Schrage admitted that he tasked Definers with pushing the Soros angle, namely that the billionaire was funding the activist group ‘Freedom from Facebook.’
After learning that Soros did in fact fund some of the group’s members, Schrage said Definers “prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement.” Schrage maintained that Facebook did not ask Definers to create ‘fake news,’ despite a former employee telling NBC that Definers had its own “in-house fake news shop” to spread its message.
The relationship was revealed in an explosive New York Times report last week that accused Facebook’s senior leadership of mismanaging a multitude of scandals, from ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election to the Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle earlier this year.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg both denied any knowledge of the company’s hiring of Definers, despite an official statement describing the relationship between Facebook and Definers as “well known in the media.”
Soros’ associates have been relentless in calling for change at Facebook, even since before the New York Times’ story broke. In January, Soros himself called Facebook and other Silicon Valley tech “monopolies” a “menace” to society whose “days are numbered.” Last week, Michael Vachon, an adviser to the chair at Soros Fund Management, called on Facebook to undertake an audit of all of its lobbying and PR relationships.
Nor were they buying Zuckerberg’s protestations of innocence.
“I find it hard to believe that one would go after someone like George Soros…without some clearance at the highest levels,” Gaspard told CNN on Tuesday night.
Zuckerberg appears to be holding firm, though. In his own interview with CNN on Tuesday, the 34-year-old CEO issued his trademark style of meandering, deflective denial when host Laurie Segall asked if he knew anything about the affair.
“Well…uhh…I learned about this when I read the report as well…I don’t think this point was about a specific PR firm, it was about how we act. That’s why I think it’s not just important what we’re doing with this one firm, but that we go through and look at all of the different PR firms and folks we work with,” Zuckerberg replied.
After spending much of the year apologizing for one privacy screw-up after another, Zuckerberg is once again back in the spotlight. Despite falling stock prices, shareholder moves to oust him, and now Soros’ wealth and influence pushing against him, Zuckerberg was defiant.
Asked whether he’d ever step down as Facebook’s chairman – Zuckerberg is both chairman and CEO of the company – he replied “that’s not the plan.”
“There are certainly going to be issues that we need to work through over time,” Zuckerberg continued. “But I think that while we are doing that, we can’t lose sight of all of the really positive things that are happening here as well.”
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SOCIALISM . . .
THIS IS ACCURATE!
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY WITHDRAWS PUNISHMENT FOR PROFESSOR WHO SAID HE “HATES WHITE PEOPLE”
History prof who went on “little Caucasian assholes” rant absolved of blame
NOVEMBER 20, 2018
Rutgers University has withdrawn its punishment for a history professor who said he “officially hates white people,” absolving him of blame for violating the institution’s discrimination and harassment policy.
Back in May, James Livingston posted on Facebook and Twitter that he “officially hates white people” following a visit to a café where he encountered “little Caucasian assholes who know their parents will approve of anything they do.”
Livingston subsequently asserted that he would “resign from” his race, writing, “Do what you want, nobody here is gonna restrict your right to be white. I hereby resign from my race. Fuck these people. Yeah, I know it’s about access to my dinner. Fuck you, too.”
After the university was alerted to “numerous complaints about the purported racist content of the posts,” its investigation concluded that Livingston had damaged the institution’s reputation, releasing a statement which said, “Given Professor Livingston’s insistence on making disparaging racial comments, a reasonable student may have concerns that he or she would be stigmatized in his classes because of his or her race.”
However, following an appeal by Livingston, who was represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a civil liberties advocacy group, Rutgers reversed the decision.
“FIRE is pleased that Rutgers did the right thing and reversed the charge of racial discrimination against Professor Livingston,” said FIRE’s Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon. “Any other result would have undermined the free speech and academic freedom rights of all Rutgers faculty members.”
One wonders whether the outcome would have been the same if a professor had said he “hates black people.”
Would Rutgers have done nothing, or fired him on the spot?
It seems as though free speech without consequences only applies when the target of racism is white people.
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