Tag: SAUDI ARABIA

GOOGLE REFUSES TO REMOVE APP LETTING SAUDI MEN CONTROL WIVES’ TRAVEL

Google Refuses to Remove App Letting Saudi Men Control Wives’ Travel

App allows Saudi men to grant, rescind travel permission, lets them know when women leave country

Chris White | Daily Caller News Foundation – MARCH 4, 2019

Google is reportedly refusing to remove a feature in the company’s app store allowing Saudi men to track the whereabouts of women, according to online outlet Insider.

Google reviewed the Absher app and concluded it does not violate the company’s agreements, the report noted Saturday. Google communicated its decision to Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier, who is demanding the company ding the feature. Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan joined their California colleague to ask Apple and Google to remove the app.

Saudis can use the app to interact with the state — but it also allows Saudi men to grant and rescind travel permission for women, and pings men when women leave the country. Neither Apple nor Google have responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about whether either company is preparing to change policies to disallow similar apps in the future.

“The responses received so far from Apple and Google are deeply unsatisfactory,” Speier told reporters. “As of today, the Absher app remains available in both the Apple App store and the Google Play Store even though they can easily remove it.”

Allowing people continued access to the app only perpetuates more harm to women trying to flee brutal regimes, she said.

Speier added: “Facilitating the detention of women seeking asylum and fleeing abuse and control unequivocally causes harm. I will be following up on this issue with my colleagues.”

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New of the Absher app comes less than three months after reports showed Google launched an application in November 2018 allowing citizens to report what they consider instances of blasphemy to the Indonesian government. People found guilty of such laws face a maximum of five years in prison.

The so-called Smart Pakem app was created through the Google Play platform and allows users to report “deviant” religious ideas directly to Indonesian authorities. The country’s anti-blasphemy laws target “those who disgrace a religion” or who otherwise express “hostility” to religion.

Dozens of Google employees signed a letter in November 2018 calling on the company to scrap involvement in a controversial program called Project Dragonfly, a Chinese search product that enables the government to censor search results in real-time. They also called for whistleblowers to receive more protections.

 

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‘Absher’ app tracks & controls Saudi women

Apple and Google have drawn criticism from human rights groups around the world for hosting an app that allows Saudi Arabian men to track women and keep them from leaving the country. It also allows them to track the use of women’s passports and restrict their travel. Critics say the app facilitates human rights abuse and enforce gender apartheid. RT America’s Ashlee Banks reports.

CAP

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GENERAL World Hijab Day vs. No Hijab Day

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Today is World Hijab Day ánd No Hijab Day. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, there was a pro-hijab manifestation. Quite embarassing for the women behind the No Hijab-movement…

At Rotterdam Blaak Station in The Netherlands people could experience what it is like to wear the islamic headscarf. “We want to remove the prejudices about the headscarf”, said Sobia Laghari, one of the activists, on Radio Rijnmond. “We also want to introduce people to their own tradition, as wearing a headscarf was also done in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages.”

Sobia does realize that these are not easy discussions. “Many of the prejudices state that headscarves would be oppressive, that there is no question of freedom, we want to show today that it is different.”

In the tent women could experience what it’s like to wear a headscarf. “We think that a headscarf gives us freedom”,  Sobia said. “We do not have to comply with an ideal picture of what a woman should look like.”

Oppressive, that’s exactly how women on the other side of the spectrum think about the hijab. The No Hijab Movement started as a counter-protest to World Hijab Day, which is supported by 180 countries.

Yasmine Mohammed tells that wearing a hijab was never a choice for her growing up.

And so just a few days before World Hijab Day she announced that she was going to be burning a hijab and wanted people to join her in protest of this idea that the hijab is this completely innocuous piece of cloth. She wanted to stand in solidarity with the women who can be harassed and abused and imprisoned and even killed for not wearing it. Because that’s what we should talk about.

On social media the hashtag #FreeFromHijab was used for pictures from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, Canada, Sweden, France – all over the world. Some women are in hijab, some are posting before and after pictures of hijab that they used to wear and the fact that they are now free from hijab. It gave women a chance to celebrate not only the mental constraints from the ideology behind wearing a hijab, but the physical constraint of wearing a cloth over their heads.

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‘Fake news’ filter NewsGuard grilled for having links to PR firm that peddled Saudi propaganda

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A new app claiming to serve as a bulwark against “disinformation” by adding “trust rankings” to news websites has links to a PR firm that received nearly $15 million to push pro-Saudi spin in US media, Breitbart reports.

NewsGuard and its shady advisory board – consisting of truth-lovers such as Tom Ridge, the first-ever homeland security chief, and former CIA director Michael Hayden – came under scrutiny after Microsoft announced that the app would be built into its mobile browsers. A closer examination of the company’s publicly listed investors, however, has revealed new reasons to be suspicious of this self-declared crusader against propaganda. As Breitbart discovered, NewsGuard’s third-largest investor, Publicis Groupe, owns a PR firm that has repeatedly airbrushed Saudi Arabia.

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Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Riyadh enlisted Qorvis Group, a Publicis subsidiary, in the hope of countering accusations that the kingdom turned a blind eye to – or even promoted – terrorism. Between March and September 2002, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia reportedly paid Qorvis $14.7 million to run a PR blitz targeting American media consumers. As part of the campaign, Qorvis employed a litany of dubious tactics, including running pro-Saudi ads under the name of an activist group, Alliance for Peace and Justice. Tellingly, the FBI raided the company’s offices in 2004, after Qorvis was suspected of running afoul of foreign lobbying laws.

Between 2010 and 2015, Qorvis is believed to have received millions of dollars to continue to whitewash the kingdom’s image in the United States. The accelerated airbrushing came just as the Saudis launched its devastating war against Yemen. In fact, Qorvis created an entire website – operationrenewalofhope.com – to promote the Saudi-led war in Yemen, according to the Intercept.

The firm has also successfully planted Riyadh-friendly stories in major US publications, including a 2016 op-ed by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, which was published by Newsweek. The headline bravely bellowed: “The Saudis are fighting terrorism, don’t believe otherwise.”

All of this is rather extraordinary, considering that NewsGuard bills itself as an app that helps news consumers determine “if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”

Social media users quickly seized on the story, pointing out the multiple levels of irony and humor.

“I wondered why their slogan was ‘behead those who we say peddle fake news,'” one Twitter user joked.

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Still, NewsGuard’s co-founder Steven Brill has insisted that Qorvis and its parent company have no control over the app.

“Publicis has nothing to do with the content or operations of NewsGuard and has a small stake in the company,” Brill told Breitbart.

If guiding the app is a responsibility reserved solely for the advisory board, NewsGuard likely won’t fare much better: One of its board members, Richard Stengel, is a former managing editor of Time magazine and an ex-State Department official who was dubbed the “chief propagandist” of the US government.

True to form, Stengel openly admitted during a panel discussion last year that “I’m not against propaganda,” and “Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

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“This is Islam”: BBC interviews Muslim cleric who claims he has the right to marry a 9-year-old girl

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At least 25% of all girls in Niger are married by the age of 15 – and 76% by the age of 18. It is the highest rate of child marriage in the world.

Under Islamic Law (Sharia) girls can marry at any age, as long as they are “mature enough”.
In Muslim countries like Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Sudan girls are considered “adults” and being sold into forced marriages with grown men by their families. There are even some cases of child marriages in Western countries since immigrants brought this tradition into the West.
Look at this BBC interview. It is from 2014, but nothing has changed since then.
The term “Islamophobia” was created by the Muslim Brotherhood to silence any possible debate about the problems Islamism has got with modernity.
The left uses it to portray anyone who criticises Islam as a “racist”. They ignore the fact that Islam is an ideology that has nothing to do with race.
There even is an attempt in the West to impose a sharia-blasphemy law to criminalise criticism of Islam. It started when Saudi Arabia and Muslim countries tried to pass a UN resolution to force Western states to criminalise criticism of Islam.
The Parliament in Canada passed “Motion M-103” to condemn the so-called “Islamophobia” (fear of Islam) in a preparation for a blasphemy law in Canada.
According to the sharia blasphemy law anyone who criticises Islam or the Prophet Muhammad should be killed. In Saudi Arabia and Iran Muslims are executed if they are accused of blasphemy. In Pakistan, where the situation is even worse, radical Muslims use the blasphemy law to persecute the Christian minority.
Is this the law the left wants to adopt?
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Rand Paul: ‘The Deep State is Trying to Run Congress’

By Chris Menahan

Senator Rand Paul slammed CIA director Gina Haspel on Tuesday for blocking members of the Senate from from a briefing on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

“Do you want to know what the deep state is?” Rand tweeted. “The CIA Director is coming to the US Senate and only briefing a select few members of the Senate.”

“Why shouldn’t every senator know what is going on? The deep state wants to keep everyone in the dark. This is just ridiculous!”

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Some highlights of his interview via Zero Hedge:

“To my mind this is the very definition of the deep state…”

“The deep state is that the intelligence agencies do things, conclude things, make conclusions but then the elected officials are prevented from knowing about this.”

“If we aren’t told about this and I’m not allowed to know about these conclusions, then I can’t have oversight,” he said.

“And so then state grows, the intelligence, the deep state grows and has more and more power.”

“I’ve read in the media that the CIA has said with high confidence that the crown prince was involved with killing Khashoggi,” Paul continued.

“I have not seen that intelligence nor have I even seen the conclusions. And today there’s yet another briefing and I’m being excluded. So really, this is the deep state at work … that your representatives don’t know what is going on in the intelligence agencies.”

I’d say for all intents and purposes, the deep state is running congress. They’ve also sabotaged our president.

I couldn’t help but notice Trump sent out another tweet saying how he doesn’t actually like the US spending a “crazy” $716 billion on defense.

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Trump also said last week — in an article that was totally buried — that he’d like to pull out of the Middle East entirely but Israel is “one reason” to remain. He didn’t give a second reason.

Trump also said he’s standing by the Saudis because they provide a “counterbalance to Iran” and “without them, Israel would be in a lot more trouble.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also gave a speech yesterday saying the US is building a “new liberal order” to block Russia, China, Iran.

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It really seems like the deep state is just bossing him around.

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In Eastern Europe we don’t want to see our Christian values lost, the West has lost its soul – Polish MP

By VOICE OF EUROPE

We had the privilege of talking with Member of Parliament Dominik Tarczyński of Poland’s Law and Justice party. He is also the Vice President of the European Conservatives in Council of Europe, Chairman of the subcommittee on TTIP, a lawyer and a former film-maker.

Do you feel the censorship is an attempt to silence conservatives?

Do your Facebook, do your Twitter, do your blog whatever. We have to fight against it. You have to understand we are fighting against a huge machine which has been built for years.

What can you tell me about the difference between Western Europe and Eastern Europe? How and when did this difference originate?

Values. A nation which are losing their values are losing their soul. This is what is happening now in Poland. Our soul is alive, the west’s soul is dead. In Eastern Europe we don’t want to see our Christian values lost. The West has lost its soul. Poland’s soul is still alive.

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You have been very forthright about your views on Islam. Poland has been against taking migrants since the start, why is it such an important issue for Poland?

During the campaign we went to the people of Poland and talked with them. We asked them what to them is most important. We are doing what they want. The issue of illegal immigrants and our safety was the most important.

What is your hope for the future of Poland?

Well first of all we are going to change the Europe. That’s the most important thing. We’re going to reorganise the European Union. And we’re going to get back to hold Europe to the roots of the European Union and Europe.

We’re going to get Europe back to the Christianity. This is who we are. This is what it is about our continent. This is what it is about our way of thinking.

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If the politicians would decide to become Muslims, I don’t mind. You know Poland and Europe, most of the Europe states are democratic and anyone can believe whatever he wants to believe, but in Poland I will fight for Christianity for what my ancestors were fighting for. It’s what my grandpa fought for and that’s it, it’s very simple.

I want to be a European. And European doesn’t mean diverse, European means Christian European this is what it is for our continent. Unless, well, Saudi Arabia will decide to be diverse and they will let us build the Cathedral there.

I can pay for it, I don’t mind. I’m serious if they want to have mosques in Warsaw they will have to let me pay for the Cathedral in Saudi Arabia. I will pay for it.

The Polish government have put together a brilliant video of the history of Poland and as Dominik says, this is why they people of Poland will never allow their country to be overtaken by Islam. It is a compelling and moving video that I highly recommend.

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“Every single country has a history and heroes and beautiful stories. It’s not about your history itself, it’s about what you DO with your history. Do you care about your history and the future? We care about our future”

-Dominik Tarczyński-

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