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In this mailing:
by Soeren Kern
• February 1, 2017 at 5:00 am
- The policy
positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually
identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the EU,
maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing
multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
- Regardless of
who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections
during the next four years.
- Schulz has
already called for tax increases on the wealthy and for fighting the
AfD party. He has also threatened financial consequences for
European countries that refuse to take in more migrants.
- "The
chancellor's office is worried." – Der Spiegel.
Time for a changing of the guard?
Pictured: Then European Parliament President Martin Schulz meets with
German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels, January 30, 2012. (Image
source: European Parliament)
Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, has
been chosen to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany's general
election on September 24.
The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are
virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the
European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing
multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
Polls show Merkel, who heads the center-right Christian Democratic
Union (CDU), slightly ahead of Schulz, the new leader of the center-left
Social Democratic Party (SPD). Regardless of who wins, Germany is
unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years.
by Philip Carl Salzman
• February 1, 2017 at 4:30 am
- Diversity
becomes a moral end in itself. If all variations of human beings are
not present at an event or in an organization, it is seen as
prejudiced and discriminating. But this does not apply to members of
the majority, who are increasingly not welcome.
- The University
of Pennsylvania removed a portrait of Shakespeare, on the grounds
that Shakespeare is not sufficiently diverse, and replaced it with a
portrait of the black lesbian poet, Audre Lorde.
- As capitalism
is recognized as a cause of inequality, and thus oppression, it must
be replaced. These days, progressives do not usually specify what
capitalism is to be replaced by, but presumably they are impressed
with [irony alert] the great benefits socialism brought to the
people of the USSR, Mao's China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,
North Korea, and Cuba.
- Hurt feelings
are the "social justice" criteria for what is and what is
not allowed. You may not say anything that would hurt someone's
feelings; if you do, you must be punished.
- Finally,
diversity of opinion in the social justice university is
forbidden: opposition to social justice is never reasonable opinion,
but evil. Disagreement with the principles of social justice
identifies such critics as sexist, racist, homo-lesbo-transphobes,
xenophobes, and fascists.
Universities used to be fonts of knowledge, charged with
disseminating the known and seeking new knowledge. But progressives have
brought great progress to the university: progressives know all the
answers, and that the problem is not to understand the world, but to
change it.
Welcome to the "social justice" university. Its
orientation is expressed by the School of Social Work, at Ryerson
University in Toronto:
School of Social Work is a leader in critical education, research
and practice with culturally and socially diverse students and
communities in the advancement of anti-oppression/anti-racism, anti-Black
racism, anti- colonialism/ decolonization, Aboriginal reconciliation,
feminism, anti-capitalism, queer and trans liberation struggles, issues
in disability and Madness, among other social justice struggles.
by Uzay Bulut
• February 1, 2017 at 4:00 am
- According to a
recent public statement by the HDP, 1478 Kurdish politicians --
including 78 democratically-elected mayors -- have been arrested
since July 2016.
- The co-heads of
the HDP party, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksektas, are also in
jail. Prosecutors seek up to 142 years in jail for Demirtas and up
to 83 years in jail for Yuksekdag. One of the charges directed to
Demirtas is "managing a terrorist organization."
- According to a
recent report by Turkey's Platform for Independent Journalism (P24),
151 individuals are in prison for being journalists or for being
employed in the news media. Dozens of TV stations, news agencies,
newspapers, magazines, and radio stations have been closed down by
the Turkish government.
- In Turkey, it
seems, ISIS members are freer than journalists and peaceful,
democratically-elected Kurdish politicians.
The co-heads of the Peoples' Democratic Party of
Turkey, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksektas, have been jailed in
Turkey, on trumped-up charges. Pictured: EU foreign policy chief Federica
Mogherini meets Demirtas, August 31, 2015. (Image source: European Union)
According to the Turkish ministry of justice, only seven members of
the Islamic State (ISIS) members have been convicted of crimes and jailed
in Turkey in the last year and a half.
The data was made public when Bekir Bozdag, the Turkish justice
minister, was asked in Turkey's parliament the number of ISIS convicts in
Turkish jails.
One of the many ISIS members in Turkey that has been released by
Turkish courts is Abdulsamet C., arrested on September 2 of last year on
charges of being a member of a terrorist organization.
Abdulsamet C. confessed that he had travelled to Syria to join ISIS
in 2014. He added that an Azeri man with the code name "Ammar",
who did ISIS propaganda in a mosque in Istanbul, provided him with the
contact information that enabled him to go to the Turkish city of
Gaziantep through which he entered Syria where he joined ISIS.
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