Once again, peel back the layers of a leftist-inspired backlash against President Donald Trump — and it’s George Soros you’ll see.
George Soros, a friend of Barack Obama’s, has been nothing but a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump.
The group behind a New York City protest against Trump’s travel ban is funded by none other than Soros. Which group? The New York Immigration Coaltion, Breitbart found.
The protest gathered about 200 anti-Trumpers in Union Square in New York City.
The well-orchestrated protest drew about 200 anti-Trump activists like Sharia Linda Sarsour, along with social justice advocate Letitia James, as NY1 reported. Protesters held glossy signs, reading “No ban, no walls, no raids,” demanding an open borders approach to national security issues.
Many local media reports did not question the organized nature of the action, nor its primary funders.
For example, Policy Director of the Impact Center for Public Interest Law at New York Law School Andrew Scherer, who has also worked closely with Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Another funder of the New York Immigration Coalition is Kay Murray, a New York City lawyer who has also deep ties to the Soros organization.
Trump’s travel ban was partially reinstated for 90 days while the Supreme Court awaits a final ruling on the executive order, which shuts down refugee resettlement and travel from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The travel ban was previously shot down by lower courts, with judges using Trump’s campaign trail statements to block the measure.
The travel ban was billed by leftists and lower courts as a ban on Muslims, based on Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.
But that characterization has little to do with the actual text of the order, which simply states that those from six different nations — all of which are tied to terror — cannot enter the United States for a period of 90 days, unless they meet certain exemptions tied to family reasons. Similarly, refugees are banned from coming into the United States, for a period of 120 days.
The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration against the G20 summit in Hamburg has led to a violent confrontation between police and protesters on the streets of the German city.
The march started off relatively peacefully as activists marched through the streets, chanting slogans and holding banners. It’s not clear who or what exactly triggered the fighting, but several loud bangs were heard, followed by bottles being thrown in the direction of riot police which had assembled nearby.
According to RT’s correspondent on the scene, Peter Oliver, one of the protesters grievances was that they received no clear directives from the police as to where they were allowed to march and so found themselves kettled by officers in riot gear once they took a few steps.
“They are macing everyone,” one witness at the scene told RT. “As far as I could tell, they were attacking the demonstration with no reason.”“I’m from Hamburg, [and] I’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve had fights about squatted houses and all that, [but] I’ve never seen anything like that. The aggression, as far as I could tell, the purposelessness… my face hurts, I’ve got mace and everything, this is unbelievable.”
After just 150 metres of its intended nine kilometre route the Welcome to Hell protest has been blocked by police, Tagesspiegel reports.
.@alexrossiSKY has the latest in Hamburg, where riot police are clashing with protesters ahead of the #G20Summit #SNT pic.twitter.com/eeofQ6u6ck— Sky News Tonight (@SkyNewsTonight) July 6, 2017
Police have used four water cannon vehicles to stop the march progressing any further. Marchers are being told by organizers to form human chains and start a sit in.
Vatican police have broken up a gay orgy at the home of the secretary to one of Pope Francis’s key advisers, it has been claimed.
The flat belonged to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or Holy Office, which is in charge of tackling sexual abuse amongst the clergy.
Reports in Italy claim the occupant of the apartment is the secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio - a key aide to the 80-year-old Pope.
Coccopalmerio heads the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and was said to have once recommended his secretary for a promotion to bishop.
The claims about the police raid last month were made in the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.
The flat involved is a short distance from the Vatican itself.
According to the paper, neighbours became suspicious before complaining about irregular behaviour of those coming and going at the flat.
When police showed up, they reportedly found drugs and a group of men engaged in sexual activity.
It is the latest scandal to hit the Vatican and comes after its finance chief Cardinal George Pell was charged with historical sexual offences.
Pell has protested his innocence and said he was looking forward to having his day in court after a two-year investigation.
Police have not revealed details of the charges against the 76-year-old, citing the need to preserve the ‘integrity of the judicial process’.
Pell, appointed to clean up the Vatican’s murky finances, has taken a leave of absence to defend himself against the sex abuse charges in Australia.
In March the Vatican was hit with a wave of lurid accusations of misbehaving priests across Italy with scandals involving orgies, prostitution and porn videos.
The claims were embarrassing to the Vatican, which under Pope Francis has attempted to demand high standards of the clergy.
Francis has tried to clamp down on unethical behaviour ever since being made Pope in 2013 and has often spoken out against the pitfalls of ‘temptation’.
Would you allow a government official into your bedroom on your honeymoon? Or let your mother-in-law hear and record every conversation that takes place in your home or car – especially disagreements with your husband or wife? Would you let a stranger sit in on your children’s playdates so that he could better understand how to entice them with candy or a doll?
Guess what? If you bring your phone with you everywhere, or engage with a whole-house robo helper such as Alexa or Echo or Siri or Google, you’re opening up every aspect of your life to government officials, snooping (possibly criminal) hackers, and advertisers targeting you, your spouse and your children.
The following is not a screed against technology. But it is a plea to consider what we’re giving up when we hand over privacy, wholesale, to people whom we can neither see nor hear… people whose motives we cannot fathom.
Privacy is the first thing that a totalitarian state attempts to destroy.
Ask anyone who lived behind the Berlin Wall or in Stalinist Russia. If you know what parents are teaching their children, you can intervene and destroy the family, a primary goal of totalitarianism. If you know someone’s secrets or vulnerabilities, you can manipulate him. Knowledge truly is power, especially if you are a big state wanting to control people.
As a child, I was a huge fan of figure skating, and in particular of the great, then-East German champion Katarina Witt. In an interview a few years ago, she revealed her shock that the Stasi collected thousands of records of all her comings and goings and private conversations. The spies even noted when she had been intimate with her boyfriend. When the government knows all, no one is immune, and everyone can be controlled.
And just think, they were documenting Miss Witt’s activities and conversations by hand, back in the 1970s and ‘80s. Now, nearly every single aspect of our lives is being recorded in real time. Every email, every text, every phone conversation. Every time you allow your phone to know where you are, your whereabouts are noted. Soon, that Internet of Things — IoT — which already connects 50 billion “things” through an internet of its own, will be coming to your refrigerator, your dishwasher, your coffeemaker. Happy Alexa and GE “smart fridge” commercials are airing as we speak.
And not only are we letting all of this happen, we’re welcoming it. Twenty years ago, it was Miss Witt’s friends who recorded her personal conversations, and strangers who spied on her. But as she has noted, these days, we give a lot of our privacy away of our own free will. If someone were parked outside your house, surveilling you day and night, it would be unnerving, no? But we’re fine keeping our phones on us 24/7, and telling Facebook personal details about ourselves.
We do this because of the convenience, which will be increasing in scope as quickly as do the various surveillance mechanisms. Will it be convenient when your fridge tells your phone that you’re running low on orange juice (as the bottle will have a sensor, too)? Perhaps.
But will it be convenient when that same fridge tells your health insurance company that you’ve got ice cream in the freezer? And when your rates go up because of it?
Worse – will it be convenient when that fridge listens to your kitchen conversations and tells the government that you’ll be organizing a political discussion group on Tuesday? Or when it tells that bizarre man you went on one date with, who hacked your system, that your daughter has a recital this Friday night?
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is an extrapolation of what happens when people who crave power gain access to vast amounts of personal information.
The more you tell Facebook, or Siri, or Google, or FourSquare, or your phone, or your washing machine, then the more of your own personal power and privacy you’re giving up. (And the more photos you post of your young children, the more of their power you’re relinquishing. So, parents — stop. Now.)
Bottom line: Once the state (or a company) knows your weaknesses, they can exploit them. They can go after you in myriad ways. And I don’t just mean to “punish” you… I mean to manipulate you.
If a politician has access to your personal proclivities, then he can easily craft, via Artificial Intelligence, a targeted campaign that caters to exactly what the data tell him you want to hear. In the future, he could even warp news stories, video and even audio in real time to appeal to you for gain.
If a potential employer is considering you for a job, then she can (already) access every YouTube video you’ve ever watched, every public post you’ve ever made, and, soon, everything else you’ve put online. In the future, she might be able to access everything you’ve ever said in your home or in your car, or every video of you taken by your television when you think it’s off.
Those conversations and images will be sold as commodities. “Data” = “money” and “power.” Companies will soon specialize in mining all that personal data; they’ll be paid to flag “inappropriate” conversations, texts or images. Think about it.
A private banker I spoke to in Asia is proud of the fact that his bank is working in concert with FinTech to develop Know Your Customer technology on steroids: It will find every single email, text message, photo, post, and even online search that you’ve ever done so that it can (and this sounds so innocuous) “paint a holistic and predictive picture of client needs.”
That predictive part is critical. Not only do data tell those who hold them where you’ve been, but AI and Big Data analysis can predict where you’re going (both physically and psychologically)… and here’s the really scary part… before you know it.
That gives the data holders real powers of manipulation. The winners of a battle are nearly always the ones with the advanced information, the ones who can launch the surprise attack.
Technology can lead to convenience, but it can also lead to abuses of power. In its extreme, that is called totalitarianism.
In the end, we must take precautions if we’re to have anything close to liberty. Some of you have, no doubt, read Jonah Goldberg’s excellent book from 2007, Liberal Fascism, the hardcover of which features a smiley face graphic with a Hitler mustache. In the introduction, Mr. Goldberg quotes a segment from a Bill Maher show in which George Carlin says, in essence, (and I’m paraphrasing) that “when fascism comes to America it will be wearing a smiley face.”
2 comments:
I think we have reached a point that we know longer want to live in this world but we will all be united in prayer for the quick return of Christ. And if what im posting and this site is being surveillanced i hope it awakens them in search of the risen christ while there is time
good points - I agree....Any persecution we suffer will result in eternal rewards - just as the prophets who came before us...Its all good :)
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