British Politics Is Utter Bollocks

British Politics Is Utter Bollocks http://www.mintpressnews.com/216004-2/216004/ How The Israel Lobby Manufactured UK Labour Party’s Anti-Semitism Crisis Although Labour’s membership has grown since Jeremy Corbyn’s victory, he has been under constant attack from right-leaning politicians within the party. In an attempt to weaken his position, some of his critics have manufactured a “crisis” about alleged anti-Semitism. By Electronic Intifada | April 29, 2016 Last year, socialist stalwart Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK’s Labour Party by a landslide. Since then, there has been a steady flow of claims by Israel’s supporters that Corbyn has not done enough to combat anti-Semitism. This has only accelerated in the lead-up to a major test for Corbyn, the UK local elections on 5 May. Even as this story was in preparation, two more victims were claimed in the war against his leadership. Lawmaker Naz Shah and the former mayor of London, long-time Palestine campaigner Ken Livingstone, were also suspended from the party – within hours of being accused of anti-Semitism. But an investigation by The Electronic Intifada has found that some of the most prominent stories about anti-Semitism in the party are falsified. The Electronic Intifada can reveal that a key player in Labour’s “anti-Semitism crisis” covered up his involvement in the Israel lobby. Most Labour members so accused are in reality being attacked for expressing opinions in favor of Palestinian human rights and particularly for supporting the boycott of Israel. Labour activists, many of them Jews, have told The Electronic Intifada that false accusations of anti-Semitismare being used as a weapon against Corbyn by the party’s right-wing. Corbyn has been active in the Palestine solidarity movement for more than three decades. In an interview with The Electronic Intifada last year, he endorsed key elements of the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel. For example, he urged an end to weapons trading with Israel. His election represented a radical shift in Labour, a popular revolt at the grassroots membership level. Although Labour’s membership has grown since Corbyn’s victory, he has been under constant attack from right-leaning politicians within the party. In an attempt to weaken his position, some of his critics have manufactured a “crisis” about alleged anti-Semitism. Attacks on Corbyn have escalated in the lead-up to next week’s local elections. Poor results would be seized upon by his enemies within the party. Witch hunt Charley Allan, a Jewish member of the party, and a Morning Star columnist, has described the current atmosphere in the press and Labour Party as a “witch hunt.” It has reached such an absurd volume that any usage of the word “Zionist” is deemed to be anti-Semitic – although tellingly not when used by self-described Zionists. Where real instances of anti-Jewish bigotry have come to light, the leadership and party machine have taken robust action. According to The Spectator, the party’s general secretary Iain McNicol told a recent meeting of Labour lawmakers that everyone who had been reported for anti-Semitism had either been suspended or excluded. Corbyn has responded to the media storm by repeatedly condemning anti-Semitism and saying that anyone making an anti-Semitic remark is “auto-excluded from the party.” John McDonnell, the shadow finance minister and a long-standing Corbyn ally, told The Independent that any party member found by an investigation to be expressing anti-Semitic views should be expelled for life. “If people express these views, full stop they’re out,” McDonnell said. Smears Smears of anti-Semitism against Corbyn started even before he was elected. During his leadership campaign in the summer of 2015, the establishment media worked itself into a frenzy of anti-Corbyn hysteria, led more than any other paper by the liberal Guardian. One of the recurring themes in this campaign was Corbyn’s long-standing support for Palestinian human rights. Because of this, attempts were made to say outright, or to imply, that Corbyn was a secret anti-Semite, or that he associated with, or tolerated “notorious” anti-Semites. Although these hit jobs gained some traction, they were soon debunked, and ultimately seemed to have little impact on the leadership election. This dishonest theme is now being revisited. In February, the slow drip of anti-Semitism scare stories burst into a flood. Oxford An “anti-Semitism scandal” erupted in the Oxford University Labour Club – an association of student supporters of the party. In a public Facebook posting Alex Chalmers, the co-chair of the club, resigned his position over what he claimed was anti-Semitic behavior in “a large proportion” of the student Labour club “and the student left in Oxford more generally.” But as evidence he cited the club’s decision, in a majority vote, to endorse Oxford’s Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual awareness-raising exercise by student groups which support Palestinian rights. This connection was clearly designed to smear Palestine solidarity activists as anti-Semites – a standard tactic of the Israel lobby. In fact, the similarity was no coincidence. The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time evidence that Chalmers himself has been part of the UK’s Israel lobby. Chalmers has worked for BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Funded by the billionaire Poju Zabludowicz, BICOM is a leading pro-Israel group in London. Chalmers once listed an internship with BICOM on his LinkedIn profile, although the page was deleted some time in February. But even were this key fact not known, Chalmers’ accusations were not credible. No one specific was named in his Facebook posting. He claimed that shortening the word Zionist to “Zio” and expressing support for the Palestinian political party and resistance organization Hamas were enough to prove anti-Semitism. Chalmers did not reply to an emailed request for comment. He set his Twitter profile to private the day after the email was sent by The Electronic Intifada. One of his tweets from 2014 sought to smear The Electronic Intifada with “Islamism.” Chalmers has also been accused of disseminating a false allegation that a left-wing Labour student at Oxford had organized people into a group to follow a Jewish student around campus calling her a “filthy Zionist,” and that he had been disciplined as a result. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the accused student said that he had reason to believe Chalmers may have been behind the dissemination of this smear. Paul Di Felice, the current acting principal of the Oxford college in question, confirmed to The Electronic Intifada the authenticity of a statement from its late principal denying all the allegations. “I have found no evidence of any allegations being made to the college about” the student “involving anti-Semitism, or indeed anything else, during his time at the college,” the statement read. The Electronic Intifada put all this to Alex Chalmers in an email, but he failed to reply.   Dirty tricks The Oxford University Labour Club responded with a statement saying it was “horrified” at the accusations and would fully cooperate with an investigation launched by the party organization Labour Students. It did not take long, however, for someone to leak names to the right-wing press. Citing an anonymous “source at the club,” The Telegraph named two left-wingers at Oxford who were supposedly “being investigated over alleged anti-Semitism at Oxford University.” Again, there were no further details. Chalmers’ dubious and obviously politicized accusations were raised in general terms. One of the two, James Elliott, was a vocal advocate at Oxford University of BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, and was photographed in the Telegraph article sitting next to Corbyn. But in an email to a Daily Mail journalist, seen by The Electronic Intifada, Chalmers privately admitted that Elliott wasn’t involved. “I haven’t heard any allegations relating to him,” Chalmers wrote. Both activists named by The Telegraph are part of Momentum, the grouping founded by Labour left-wingers in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s election victory to support his leadership. The Electronic Intifada has seen evidence of a whispering campaign against the activists at Oxford. A dossier of allegations against the student Labour club is said to have been filed with the union’s Jewish society. That society has posted a summary of the dossier on Facebook. Asked in an email if he had been behind the dossier or the press leaks, Chalmers did not reply.   Hit pieces Alex Chalmers’ Facebook post resigning from the Oxford University Labour Club was seized on by anti-Corbyn forces aiming to influence key internal elections to the Labour Party’s youth wing, in which the Momentum pair were both candidates. On 19 February, the Guardian reported that Momentum candidates had swept the board in Young Labour’s elections, conducted by online ballot. The Telegraph published its highly dubious hit piece four days later. At the Young Labour conference the following weekend, several other positions remained to be elected. Elliott stood for the youth representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC). After the smear campaign against him, Momentum candidate Elliott lost to right-wing Labour First candidate Jasmin Beckett – by only a tenth of a percentage point. But Beckett was caught carrying out a dirty tricks campaign against Elliot. As a result, a formal complaint has been submitted calling for her to be disqualified from the NEC. The smear campaign drew on right-wing media insinuations against the Momentum pair at Oxford. Beckett did not reply to an emailed request for comment. “Go hard” As first revealed by Morning Star, Beckett urged supporters to “get a few people tweeting” allegations against Elliot. But because such negative campaigning is against Labour rules, Beckett cautioned supporters to distance themselves from her. She asked her supporters to remove “twibbons” – promotional badges for her election campaign – from their social media accounts before making allegations against Elliot. One supporter, Josh Woolas – son of former Labour MP Phil Woolas – cautioned it “needs to look like a genuine complaint about racism and not a smear campaign!” In a Facebook group chat titled #TeamJB (viewable in full on the Labour blog Left Futures, edited by the chair of Momentum), Beckett encouraged other young Labour members to share unsubstantiated hit pieces on Elliott from right-wing media. She asked “do you actually want an anti-Semite as NEC rep?” She suggested her friends “get a few people tweeting saying ‘shocked my union GMB are supporting James Elliott who is anti-Semitic’ or something.” “Let’s just get it out there,” agreed Labour activist Tom Jennings. “We’ve got a huge opportunity … thus shaving off votes for him at [the Young Labour] conference.” Investigation The complaint against Beckett was subsequently rolled into another investigation into Chalmers’ allegations of anti-Semitism at Oxford, one ultimately taken over by Janet Royall, the Labour leader in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of the UK parliament. Labour Students conducted a hasty investigation into the Oxford allegations. But, Labour activists told The Electronic Intifada, it was so obviously botched that it was not credible. That investigation was led by Michael Rubin, Labour Students’ national chairperson – who happened to be the boyfriend of one of Beckett’s allies, Rachel Holland. Holland was part of Beckett’s dirty tricks campaign, expressing support for it in the #TeamJB group chat. Elliott told The Electronic Intifada he could not comment until the Royall investigation is concluded. That seems unlikely to happen until after the crucial local elections at the earliest, and probably not until the summer, the BBC says, when Beckett is due to take her seat on the NEC. The witch hunt expanded. “Fresh row” In March, Huffington Post talked up a “fresh row over Labour anti-Semitism.” The website referred to how union official Jennie Formby had allegedly pointed out at a meeting of Labour’s NEC that Royall once took part in a sponsored trip to the Middle East organized by Labour Friends of Israel, a pressure group within the party. Formby has successfully pushed at the NEC to have private security firm G4S banned from Labour conferences, due to its supply of equipment to Israeli prisons that practice torture against Palestinians. The Jewish Chronicle claimed Unison’s Jennie Formby was “to be moved from her role partly as a result of her anti-Israel activism.” It cited no evidence. The paper claimed the move represented a demotion by the union, the UK’s largest. But the report was instantly denied by Formby and her union. Formby said she never questioned Royall’s ability to conduct the investigation. In fact, Formby said, she was appointed to the new job long before Chalmers made his allegations on Facebook. The Jewish Chronicle swiftly edited the online text and headline of the article to water down its claims (a copy of the original can still be found online). But the narrative was already out there. Tony Greenstein In March, the witch hunt reached Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist well known in Palestine solidarity circles. Despite supporting other left-wing parties in the past, Greenstein had joined the Labour Party after the election of Corbyn, hoping it would take a new, leftward direction. But on 18 March he received a letter from the party’s Compliance Unit (also known as the Constitutional Unit) saying that his membership had been suspended pending an investigation into a possible breach of party rules. “These allegations relate to comments you are alleged to have made,” wrote John Stolliday, head of the unit. Greenstein asked to see the allegations against him, but his request was denied. Although the party refused to let Greenstein know what he was being accused of, further vague allegations were leaked to the right-wing press. In April, The Telegraph published a story citing Greenstein’s admittance to the party as the “latest anti-Semitism scandal” to hit Labour. Greenstein says he is considering legal action. The Telegraph later added a “clarification” saying it wanted “to make clear that we had not intended to imply that Tony Greenstein is anti-Semitic.” It would, however, be difficult to read the article as intending to do anything else. Ironically, Greenstein has been at the forefront of moves to combat genuine cases of anti-Semitism on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement. “I’m going to fight” For years Greenstein has been perhaps the most vocal foe in the UK of Gilad Atzmon – an Israeli jazz musician based in London who claims to express solidarity with Palestinians, even while opposing the BDS movement and relentlessly attacking activists. Four years ago, Atzmon was criticized by prominent members of the Palestine movement over racism and anti-Semitism in his work. Also in 2012, a Holocaust denier was expelled from the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Greenstein has written that he is the person who had first reported the Holocaust denier to the PSC. The Compliance Unit has also been behind the expulsion of many new Jeremy Corbyn voters accused of being “hard left” or “infiltrators.” In February, John McDonnell, the shadow finance minister, called for the unit to be scrapped. “I’m going to fight it of course,” Greenstein told The Electronic Intifada. He also accused the Compliance Unit itself of being behind the leaks – The Telegraph article cited “evidence compiled” by the unit. Labour’s general secretary wrote to Greenstein denying this. “Corbyn hasn’t got a grip on the [party] machine, that’s part of the problem,” said Greenstein. Israel lobby One of the people at the forefront of the witch hunt has been Jeremy Newmark, now the chairperson of the Jewish Labour Movement. The JLM is affiliated to the UK Labour Party, the Israeli Labor Party and the World Zionist Organization – according to the UN, the latter pumps millions into building in the occupied West Bank through its settlement division. Newmark has for years been active in the Israel lobby’s anti-Palestinian campaigns in the UK. He was previously the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, an anti-Palestinian lobbying group behind numerous attacks on BDS. During his tenure, the group invested huge efforts in an attempt to sue the University and College Union for “anti-Semitism” after some members proposed discussing the academic boycott of Israel. Newmark was left with egg on his face, however, when in 2013 a tribunal judge ruled against the case on all counts. The judge found it was “devoid of any merit” and “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means.” The judge criticized Newmark personally for a “disturbing” attempt to crush free speech in the union. He also found that that Newmark’s evidence to the tribunal was “preposterous” and “untrue.” Given all this, media should treat Newmark’s claims about anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party with caution. Instead they’ve been buying it all. In The Telegraph hit piece on Greenstein, Newmark claimed the affair was a sign of Corbyn being “impotent” over anti-Semitism. He also told BBC Radio 4’s influential Today program this month that the party was not doing enough about anti-Semitism. None of these journalists disclosed Newmark’s long-standing role in the Israel lobby, or his record of lying about anti-Semitism. Right-wing Labour There is a large crossover between right-wing, anti-Corbyn Labour and the pro-Israel lobby within the party. Right-wing Labour MP Wes Streeting has participated in Israeli government efforts to cast Palestine solidarity as “evil.” (The Leadership Foundation/Flickr) One example is Labour lawmaker Wes Streeting, also an Israel lobby stalwart. Streeting appeared on the same radio segment as Newmark. The right-wing Labour MP claimed that “we’ve now got a problem” that people think the party is “apathetic to anti-Semitism.” Streeting has a long history in Progress, a right-wing faction within the party that continues to support former prime minister Tony Blair. One of Progress’ leading supporters has described the group as “an unaccountable faction” dominated by the “secretive billionaire” Lord Sainsbury. In 2009, when he was president of the National Union of Students, Streeting attended an anti-BDS working group in Jerusalem. The visit was organized by the Israeli foreign ministry, which slandered the BDS movement as “evil.” As an MP, Streeting has been consistently hostile to Corbyn. Term of abuse Streeting and Newmark are arguing for tougher action and changes to the party’s rules. The head of Progress proposed rule changes in the Mirror which would put “a modern understanding of anti-Semitism” into the party. “It is not acceptable to use the term ‘Zionism’ as a term of abuse,” the article stated, arguing for people who did so to be expelled. This proposal echoes efforts pushed by Israel lobby groups, including at the University of California, to legislate that opposition to Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – is itself a form of anti-Semitism. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Labour Party staffer told The Electronic Intifada that, even were the rule change to pass, such expulsions would still have to be approved by the NEC. The staffer emphasized that for many within the party, concerns about incidences of anti-Semitism were genuine. But the member of staff said that for the “non-Jewish Zionists” in groups like Progress, “anti-Semitism is just a tool” in “a field of battle” to “smash up Jeremy at all costs.” “Whatever gets agreed will not be good enough” for them, the member of staff said. Streeting did not reply to emails requesting comment. Five cases Labour is a mass membership organization, which now has more than 380,000 full members, according to party figures. The staff member said that, amid all the politicized attacks in recent months, there had been about five actual cases of alleged anti-Semitism within the party. A 2015 survey by Pew found that seven percent of the UK public held “unfavorable” views of Jews. By contrast, about a fifth held negative views of Muslims and almost two-fifths viewed Roma people unfavorably. There’s no evidence to suggest that such views are any more prevalent in the Labour Party – and the tiny number of anti-Semitism complaints suggests they may well be less so in a movement many of whose activists have been in the frontline of anti-racist struggles. The staff member said that in the five or so cases that had come to its attention, the party had taken swift action to expel, or suspend the membership of those alleged to have made anti-Semitic comments. One of the most prominent of these was Vicki Kirby, a Labour Party candidate in Woking who is alleged to have tweeted that Israel is “evil.” She also reacted to Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza by tweeting in August: “Who is the Zionist God? I am starting to think it may be Hitler. #FreePalestine.” That assault resulted in 2,251 dead Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, 551 of whom were children, according to an independent inquiry commissioned by the UN. Kirby’s comments led to her suspension from the Labour Party in 2014. Speaking to the media for the first time, Kirby told The Electronic Intifada that her choice of words had been “awful” and “appalling.” It was “a reaction. I didn’t think it through. I’m not a born politician,” she said. Later, still under the leadership of Corbyn’s predecessor, Kirby’s suspension from the party was lifted. But, after Corbyn became leader, somebody leaked a photo of Kirby posing with Corbyn to the party’s enemies in the media. Doctored tweet The hard-right gossip blogger known as Guido Fawkes, then proceeded to trawl through her entire Twitter backlog. He found a Tweet from 2011, a time when Kirby says she was not even in the Labour Party. Guido Fawkes then doctored a screenshot of the tweet, making it appear as if she had tweeted “What do you know abt Jews? They’ve got big noses and support spurs lol.” The screenshot of the Tweet on Guido’s site hasclearly been cropped. But Kirby says this was one of a series of tweets of quotes from the 2010 comedy film The Infidel. Kirby provided The Electronic Intifada with evidence – a portion of a spreadsheet of her Twitter archive – showing that the original tweet concluded with the hashtag #TheInfidel. twitter archive The writer of the film David Baddiel confirmed this on Twitter at the time, even tweeting this to a Guido Fawkes blogger.     Labour’s Vicki Kirby on Jews “with big noses” and how “Jews… slaughter the oppressed” https://t.co/wAN11xgjzRpic.twitter.com/DFlCc2db9o     — Alex Wickham (@WikiGuido) March 14, 2016 The wider press then ran with the story and started to use Kirby as a stick to beat Corbyn. Kirby says she has received “death threats” to her and “hate email” from around the world, including the wish that “your children get cancer and die.” She says she even had to take legal actions against a constant barrage of journalists door-stepping her and harassing her family. Despite swift party action to suspend Kirby once again, the incident was still weaponized by the right. “Jeremy Corbyn needs to answer some serious questions,” Streeting told the Mirror. Stoking the flames Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Momentum founder Jon Lansman – a key Corbyn ally – said that “my Jewish identity and anti-Semitism are at the core of my left Labour politics and so I welcome an investigation into anti-Semitism at Oxford University.” But Lansman cautioned that “within the Labour Party, some people have factional reasons for stoking the flames.” He acknowledged that “racism, including anti-Semitism” had historically been part of the Labour movement. “It was not until the 1980s that the efforts to eradicate it became serious, and that was thanks in part to Ken Livingstone as leader of the Greater London Council,” Lansman added. During that period, Livingstone, and what the right derided as the “looney left” in local government, became the prime targets of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. But with her party unable to defeat Livingstone at the ballot box, she simply abolished London’s city-wide government altogether. It wasn’t until the Blair years that the capital once again had a London-wide government and Livingstone was elected mayor. It would now seem that with his suspension, the Thatcherite campaign against Livingstone has resumed, but this time from within the Labour Party. Ian Saville, who started the group Jews For Jeremy and then later joined the party, told The Electronic Intifada that “some in the Labour Party, who do not have an understanding of the complexities of the situation, take [the accusations of prejudice] at face value, and quite understandably wish to oppose anti-Semitism.” He said that “unfortunately, this ‘opposition’ to anti-Semitism has support of Israel and Zionism bundled in with it, so it fulfills the double purpose of isolating the left and supporting Israel uncritically.” Greenstein wrote that “false allegations of anti-Semitism are akin to the boy who cried wolf. They immunize people against the real thing. As a Jewish anti-Zionist my main experience of anti-Semitism is from Zionists … I have even been told that it was a pity I didn’t die in Auschwitz.” Back foot In the Tony Blair years, the Labour Party took a major rightward shift. Blair notoriously led the UK into a war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 – which even he later admitted was a major factor in the emergence of Islamic State. Blair is also staunchly pro-Israel. The 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon killed 1,191 Lebanese, “the overwhelming majority of them civilians”according to Amnesty International. But Blair stood strongly behind Israel in that war. He later admitted in his memoir this caused him political damage. “I suffered accordingly,” he wrote. For career-minded, rising Labour MPs, joining Labour Friends of Israel was long seen as the place to be. That has been slowly changing. Under Blair, Jeremy Corbyn was a backbench MP, and a gadfly of the big business and war-friendly clique that had captured Labour’s leadership. He voted against Blair’s party line hundreds of times. The scale of Corbyn’s victory – almost 60 percent of 422,664 voters – last summer put the right on the back foot. So now they are resorting to ever more desperate tactics, blaming alleged anti-Semitism in the party on Corbyn’s leadership. Michael Levy, a Labour member of the House of Lords who was a key fundraiser for the party during the Tony Blair years, is a strong supporter of Israel. He has made a number of media appearances in recent weeksdenouncing Corbyn for supposedly not doing enough against anti-Semitism. Left-wing Jewish activists say that anti-Semitism has become the “weapon of choice” against the left. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a local Labour Party activist and founder of Jews For Boycotting Israeli Goods, told The Electronic Intifada that it has become a “really pernicious … pincer movement” by the Israel lobby and the Labour right. “Maybe the’ve overstepped themselves” this time, she said, before cautioning that what happens would depend on how well activists fought back and educated people on the true nature of anti-Semitism and Zionism. For the moment, the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis shows no sign of abating. The same day Ken Livingstone was suspended from the party, BICOM appealed to the mob, posting a tweet with the words: “save your pitch fork for Corbyn.” It appears the witch hunt will not stop until it is either victorious or is defeated. Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.  This expose originally appeared on the Electronic Intifada. Share this article! http://www.mintpressnews.com/216004-2/216004/ COMMENT Might have to let this be.  It's sending me to sleep. The lesson here might be that there's no party loyalty, especially coming up to the elections? British politics sounds like a bitchy tea-room full of hormonal women:  only the tea room includes academia, baby-politics, politics, and what they refer to as the 'right press', which (bizarrely) is the British press posing as the liberal left press (or is that just The Guardian?).  Whatever.  It's all the same fraud. My god, none of these people should be permitted to steer the government at any level.  Reading this, I think I'd prefer a solid party of one dictatorship, with no pretence whatsoever of 'democracy', to Western style 'democracy' fraud and incompetence, that kowtows to prohibition from criticism/blasphemy, and exploitation of prohibition of criticism/blasphemy, which is, in turn, criticised. How does anything ever get done?

Oligarchy-Owned American Politics | Soros Buys Hillary 2016

Oligarchy-Owned American Politics | Soros Buys Hillary 2016 Politico http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/hillary-clinton-george-soros-218494 George Soros donates $8 million to boost Hillary The billionaire financier had dialed back his political giving after his failed 2004 effort to oust George W. Bush. By Kenneth P. Vogel 01/31/16 07:26 PM EST George Soros in December donated $6 million to the leading super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, marking the return of the billionaire financier as among the biggest givers in all of American politics. The massive check brings to $8 million the Hungarian-born investor's total 2015 giving to pro-Clinton groups. The super PAC that received the $6-million check, Priorities USA Action, raised $25 million in the second half of 2015, according to a report it filed Sunday evening with the Federal Election Commission. The haul brings the PAC’s tally to $41 million for the year, and left it with a strong $36 million in the bank headed into the year. Other major donors in the second half of the year included Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, who combined with his wife Cheryl Saban to donate $3 million, as well as Herb Sandler and Donald Sussman, who donated $1.5 million each. The union-affiliated super PAC Working for Working Americans also donated $1.5 million. But the donation from Soros ― who in the first half of the year also donated $1 million to Priorities USA and $1 million to another Clinton-backing super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century — stands alone, and not just because of the amount. Soros is seen as a bellwether among rich Democrats. He is one of the few liberals who has shown a willingness to drop eight-figures in an election cycle, having donated more than $20 million in 2004 to groups that tried to oust then-President George W. Bush. After the failure of that effort, Soros dialed back his big-money political spending. Despite intense courtship in 2012, Soros gave only $1 million to Priorities USA, which at the time was dedicated to supporting President Obama’s reelection. That year he told a close Clinton ally that he regretted supporting Obama over her in the 2008 primaries and praised Clinton for giving him an open door to discuss policy, according to emails released last month by the State Department. Priorities USA was among the many super PACs assiduously courting him heading into 2016, and his huge check is sure to be interpreted as an encouraging sign headed into an election cycle in which conservative billionaires are expected to donate more than $1 billion to super PACs and other unlimited money groups.  http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/hillary-clinton-george-soros-218494 -------/\/\/ COMMENT How does anyone delude themselves that this is 'democracy'? Bet Czarist Russia was more democratic than this. What a joke.

Filthy Wall Street & London Banker Swindlers in Collusion with Arabs, Knee-Capping Targeted Economies

Filthy Wall Street & London Banker Swindlers in Collusion with Arabs, Knee-Capping Targeted Economies SOURCE http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-western-banks-governments-launch-full-spectrum-assault-russia-part/215761/ Eric Draitser BRICS Under Attack: Western Banks, Governments Launch Full-Spectrum Assault On Russia (Part I) Russia is the target of a multi-faceted, asymmetric campaign of destabilization that has employed economic, political, and psychological forms of warfare -- each of which has been specifically designed to inflict maximum damage on the Kremlin. By Eric Draitser @stopimperialism | April 20, 2016  This article is part of a series on Western meddling to foment unrest and destabilize BRICS nations in an effort to ensure the continuation of Western economic and political control over the Global South. The first two parts, focusing on Brazil and South Africa, can be found here and here. Up next: Part II on the assault on Russia, which focuses on the political, psychological and military aspects that run in tandem with the economic war on Moscow. NEW YORK — The U.S.-NATO Empire, with its centers of power in Washington, on Wall Street, and in the city of London, is on the offensive against the BRICS countries. This assault takes many forms, each tailored to its specific target. The ongoing soft coup in Brazil has recently entered a new stage with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers’ Party. Simultaneously, the destabilization of the ANC-led government in South Africa continues as political forces align to remove President Jacob Zuma. These two situations illustrate clearly the very potent forms of subversion via Western-funded political formations and movements being employed against Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the bloc of emerging economies also known as BRICS.  However, when it comes to a country as large as Russia, with its vast military capabilities, consolidated and wildly popular political leadership, and growing antagonism toward the West, the tools available to the Empire to undermine and destabilize are in some ways more limited. Indeed, in the context of Russia, the popular mobilization pretext does not apply, and so that weapon in the imperial arsenal is blunted considerably. But there are other, equally potent (and equally dangerous) methods to achieve the desired effect.  Russia is the target of a multi-faceted, asymmetric campaign of destabilization that has employed economic, political, and psychological forms of warfare, each of which has been specifically designed to inflict maximum damage on the Kremlin. While the results of this multi-pronged assault have been mixed, and their ultimate effect being the subject of much debate, Moscow is, without a doubt, ground zero in a global assault against the BRICS nations. Economic war: Hitting Russia where it’s vulnerable While Russia is a world class power militarily, it is highly vulnerable economically. For that obvious reason, this area has been a primary focus of the destabilization thrust. Russia has for decades been overly reliant, if not entirely dependent, on revenues from the energy sector to maintain its economic growth and fund its budget. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Russia’s Federal Customs Service, oil and gas sales accounted for 68 percent of Russia’s total export revenues in 2013. With more than two-thirds of total export revenues and roughly 50 percent of the federal budget, not to mention 25 percent of total GDP, coming from oil and gas revenue, Russia’s very economic survival has been as dependent on energy as almost any country in the world. In light of this, it’s no surprise that the drop in oil prices over the 18-month period from April 2014 to January 2016, which saw prices dive from $105 per barrel to under $30 per barrel, has caused tremendous economic instability in Russia. Even many leading Russian officials have conceded that the negative impact to Russia’s economy is substantial, to say the least.  At the World Economic Forum in January, former Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin explained that not only has the drop in oil prices badly hurt the Russian economy, but the worst may be yet to come. Kudrin noted the potential for prices to drop even further, possibly even below $20 per barrel, and he warned that the impact to the economy will be significant. Specifically, it’s not just the loss of revenue, but the negative effect on wages and the currency which have many economic analysts and political figures worried.  According to the Russian Federal Statistics Service, real wages for Russian workers have dropped significantly since the end of 2014, with steep declines throughout 2015 continuing into early 2016. This has been felt by ordinary Russians, whose wages have stagnated while inflation causes prices to shoot upwards and who have had to endure belt-tightening in terms of personal consumption, and at the national level, where the Russian government has been facing a potentially large budget shortfall for 2016. It must be noted, however, that recent months have seen an improvement in the relative performance of the ruble, but the long-term outlook from experts remains gloomy. This has led many Russian analysts and policymakers to advocate yet again for a decreased dependence on energy revenues. They argue that the current climate could force economic restructuring away from the critical energy sector. Aside from Kudrin, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev made the case for potential “structural economic reforms,” as did Vladimir Mau of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.  Writing earlier this year in Vedomosti, Russia’s leading business publication, Mau explained: “The demand for oil as a commodity depends on technological progress…And it’s not obvious that oil as a fuel will be always in demand in times of economic growth. With the change of the technological model, it is not ruled out that oil will become just a stock commodity for the energy and chemical industry.” This last point — how oil is used relative to the market — is the most salient; in other words, it’s the financialization of oil. But the analysis must go a step further and explore how the financialization is, in effect, a weaponization process as oil prices become increasingly the playthings of powerful financial institutions, particularly the major banks on Wall Street and in the city of London. And this is no mere conspiracy theory. How Wall Street targeted Russia using oil In July 2013, Sen. Sherrod Brown, chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, opened a hearing to probe just how connected major Wall Street banks were to the holding of physical oil assets, and the attendant ability of these companies to manipulate oil prices. The findings of the hearing, considered damning by multiple analysts knowledgeable on the subject, prompted an investigation by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, published as “Wall Street Bank Involvement with Physical Commodities.” The report highlighted just one of the big banks, Morgan Stanley, noting:   “One of Morgan Stanley’s primary physical oil activities was to store vast quantities of oil in facilities located within the United States and abroad. According to Morgan Stanley, in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area alone, by 2011, it had leases on oil storage facilities with a total capacity of 8.2 million barrels, increasing to 9.1 million barrels in 2012, and then decreasing to 7.7 million barrels in 2013. Morgan Stanley also had storage facilities in Europe and Asia.  According to the Federal Reserve, by 2012, Morgan Stanley held ‘operating leases on over 100 oil storage tank fields with 58 million barrels of storage capacity globally.’” Pam and Russ Martens of the well-respected financial analysis site WallStreetOnParade.com succinctly noted in their analysis of this issue: “With financial derivatives and 58 million barrels of physical storage capacity, it might not be so hard to manipulate the oil market.” Indeed, the sheer scope of Morgan Stanley’s market influence demonstrates the obvious fact that the major Wall Street banks, and their cousins in the city of London, are able to significantly affect global prices using multiple levers like supply and derivatives, among others. The Senate report’s brazen honesty is likely the main reason the corporate media failed to cover it all.  As noted in the report: “Due to their physical commodity activities, Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley incurred increased financial, operational, and catastrophic event risks, faced accusations of unfair trading advantages, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation, and intensified problems with being too big to manage or regulate, introducing new systemic risks into the U.S. financial system.” But perhaps most jaw-dropping is this January 2014 statement by Norman Bay, director of the Office of Enforcement at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who testified before the Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. He plainly outlined how the big banks manipulate global oil markets: “A fundamental point necessary to understanding many of our manipulation cases is that financial and physical energy markets are interrelated … a manipulator can use physical trades (or other energy transactions that affect physical prices) to move prices in a way that benefits his overall financial position. One useful way of looking at manipulation is that the physical transaction is a ‘tool’ that is used to ‘target’ a physical price.” When one considers how much influence these large banks have on global prices, it’s almost self-evident that they would be able to use oil prices to execute a political and geopolitical agenda. With that in mind, it seems highly suspicious (to say the least) that the collapse of the oil price coincided directly with Russia’s move to annex Crimea and assert its dominance over its sphere of influence, thereby effectively stopping the eastward expansion of NATO in Ukraine. It’s amusing then when one reads The New York Times reporting this month that “simple economics” explains the drop in oil prices. In fact, it’s clear that it’s just the opposite: The collapse of oil is the result of financial manipulation by Wall Street in the service of the broader agenda of the Empire. Indeed, in late 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin implied strongly that the oil plunge had less to do with economic factors than with political decisions. Putin openly theorized: “There’s lots of talk about what’s causing (the lowering of the oil price). Could it be the agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to punish Iran and affect the economies of Russia and Venezuela? It could.” Of course, Putin was not alone in this assessment, as many international observers spread “conspiracy theories” about collusion between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to deliberately depress oil prices by not cutting production despite all market indicators pointing to a needed decrease. With U.S.-Russia relations having reached their nadir at precisely that moment, and with Venezuela and Iran also on the enemies list, it is no surprise that many analysts around the world concluded that Washington and Riyadh were conspiring on oil for political reasons. Of course, the other major impact of the oil plunge on Russia has to do with the burgeoning energy-trade relationship between Russia and China. After the massive oil and gas deals announced between Russia and China in 2014 — deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the next three decades, it seems that Washington calculated that while it could not prevent the deals from moving forward, it could undermine them by fundamentally changing the calculus of the deals by tanking oil prices. In so doing, not only have the contracts been rendered less profitable for Russia, they are now subject to decreasing demand from China, which is experiencing its own economic slowdown.    In short, Russia’s attempt to break free of its dependence on revenue from gas sales to Europe by shifting its focus eastward has left Moscow in a bind. Facing the prospect of significantly less revenue than it anticipated coming from the deals with Beijing, Russia has been forced to adjust its own estimates and outlook for the coming years. Sanctions: The other economic weapon The overall impact of Western sanctions against Russia is a hotly debated subject. Russian media tends to downplay the overall impact of the sanctions, while the Western media paints a picture of imminent collapse. Notably, Paul Krugman, the leading liberal doomsayer, prognosticated in The New York Times in 2014 that “Putin’s Bubble Bursts,” warning that Russia was headed for economic meltdown thanks to the courageous sanctions regime imposed by the fearless leader President Barack Obama.  In reality, the sanctions had little immediate, direct impact on the Russian economy, but the indirect bruising might be significant, particularly over the medium- and long-term. Last year, the International Monetary Fund issued a report, noting: “IMF estimates suggest that sanctions and counter sanctions might have initially reduced real GDP by 1 to 1½ percent. Prolonged sanctions may compound already declining productivity growth. The cumulative output loss could amount to 9 percent of GDP over the medium term. However, the report’s authors underline that these model-driven results are subject to significant uncertainty.” But, looking beyond the raw numbers, one must realize that the policy prescriptions outlined by the IMF and leading economists internationally are perhaps the actual target for the West.  The IMF recommended “reforming the pension system” (read: reduce pensions), reducing energy subsidies, reducing tax exemptions, and other measures, while also suggesting that education, health care, and public investment be safeguarded. However, the subtext of the recommendations is that austerity, which by its very definition starves public programs of much needed funding, is the way to go for Russia. There are likely strategic planners in Washington who recognize that the political subversion model employed in Brazil and South Africa simply won’t work in Russia. If nothing else, the failed “White Revolution” protests of late 2011 led by Russian liberals and various pro-Western political forces, demonstrated unequivocally that the Russian state was prepared to prevent precisely this sort of outcome.  And so it seems that those who play on what former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously called “The Grand Chessboard,” have made their moves in an attempt to corner Russia economically. Whether that strategy has been, or will be, effective likely depends on perspective. While it alone will not bring about the Western pipe dream of regime change in Russia, the Empire’s elites are banking on the collective assault on Russia and the BRICS broadly to do what political subversion alone could not. About the author Eric Draitser Eric Draitser is a geopolitical analyst based in New York and the founder of StopImperialism. More articles by Eric Draitser [MintPress] SOURCE http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-western-banks-governments-launch-full-spectrum-assault-russia-part/215761/ -------/\/\/ Eric Draitser "Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is a regular contributor to RT, Counterpunch, New Eastern Outlook, Press TV, and many other news outlets. Visit StopImperialism.com for all his work."   [RTNews] -------/\/\/ Enemies of the Free World: Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs JP Morgan City of London Wall Street International Monetary Fund The New York Times -------/\/\/ COMMENT Help save Russia & Brics countries from greedy Wall Street & city of London banks.  Call for worldwide privatisation of their foreign assets ... that ought to throw a spanner in the works.  *Not sure I'll remember much of this.

American Oligarchy's Insatiable Greed Courts War

American Oligarchy's Insatiable Greed Courts War Paul Craig Robert via Russia Insider World War III Has Already Begun But how long before the phoney war stage turns hot? Paul Craig Roberts Subscribe to Paul Craig Roberts (Off Guardian) Subscribe to Off Guardian Fri, Apr 29, 2016 Originally appeared at Off Guardian Washington is currently conducting economic and propaganda warfare against four members of the five bloc group of countries known as BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Brazil and South Africa are being destabilized with fabricated political scandals. Both countries are rife with Washington-financed politicians and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Washington concocts a scandal, sends its political agents into action demanding action against the government and its NGOs into the streets in protests.  [Comment:  That must be the South American Maidan agitating.   So this is how it's done.  Wonder if that was Soros shills out there on the streets of California, rioting and harassing Trump, in pursuit of Killary victory?] Washington tried this against China with the orchestrated Hong Kong “student protest.” Washington hoped that the protest would spread into China, but the scheme failed. Washington tried this against Russia with the orchestrated protests against Putin’s reelection and failed again. To destablilze Russia, Washington needs a firmer hold inside Russia. In order to gain a firmer hold, Washington worked with the New York mega-banks and the Saudis to drive down the oil price from over $100 per barrel to $30. This has put pressure on Russian finances and the ruble. In response to Russia’s budgetary needs, Washington’s allies inside Russia are pushing President Putin to privatize important Russian economic sectors in order to raise foreign capital to cover the budget deficit and support the ruble. If Putin gives in, important Russian assets will move from Russian control to Washington’s control. In my opinion, those who are pushing privatization are either traitors or completely stupid. Whichever it is, they are a danger to Russia’s independence. Eric Draitser provides some details of Washington’s assault on Russia here. And of Washington’s attack on South Africa here. And of Washington’s attack on Brazil here. For my column on Washington’s attack on Latin American independence, see here. As I have often pointed out, the neoconservatives have been driven insane by their arrogance and hubris. In their pursuit of American hegemony over the world, they have cast aside all caution in their determination to destabilize Russia and China. By implementing neoliberal economic policies urged on them by their economists trained in the Western neoliberal tradition, the Russian and Chinese governments are setting themselves up for Washington. By swallowing the “globalism” line, using the US dollar, participating in the Western payments system, opening themselves to destabilization by foreign capital inflows and outflows, hosting American banks, and permitting foreign ownership, the Russian and Chinese governments have made themselves ripe for destabilization. If Russia and China do not disengage from the Western system and exile their neoliberal economists, they will have to go to war in order to defend their sovereignty. http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/world-war-iii-had-already-begun/ri14145 -------/\/\/ COMMENT What Washington / Wall Street & their Saudi Arab allies are doing to Russia is criminal.  This is war on the Russian people, just like their decade-long sanctions war on the Iranian people. It's this same crew that's: destroyed a succession of African and Middle Eastern countries; responsible for the ongoing destruction of Europe by mass immigration invasion (and, quite likely also, the creditors that are pulling the strings of sovereign debt enslavement of multiple European countries); punishing the entire population of Russia, which is a poor country (judging by exchange rates for rubles). And all of this is happening so that Washington, Wall Street & Arabs can engineer more global exploitation, economic rape, population enslavement, political upheaval,  and general destruction ... when not otherwise creating conditions for outright war. Arm the Ayatolla, now!   Please nuke them, Russia.

EU Supranational Rape & Extortion

EU Supranational Rape & Extortion Rape of National Sovereignty,  Rape of Democracy & Forced Invasion Program RT News Put up or pay up: EC wants to fine EU members €250,000 per refused refugee Published time: 4 May, 2016 05:12 Edited time: 4 May, 2016 12:11 EU member states could soon be charged hundreds of millions of euros for denying asylum to refugees if the European Commission has its way. The scheme is considered one of the most contentious parts of the revision to the so-called Dublin asylum regulation, which allows northern EU countries to deport refugees to their port of first entry. The €250,000 fine per refugee ($289,659) was reportedly agreed upon during Monday’s meeting. However, the fine is not yet set in stone and could be subject to negotiation. “The size of the contribution may change, but the idea is to make it appear like a sanction,” an official familiar with the proposal told the Financial Times. READ MORE: ‘We cannot shoulder whole world's burden’: Austria adopts tough refugee laws The commission’s goal is to redistribute the weight of the refugee crisis from countries such as Greece by introducing automatic asylum quotas for each EU member state. So far, the commission’s scheme to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers has reportedly not even reached one percent of its target. Some of the countries opposed to the draft plan include Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary. Under the new proposal, a country such as Poland, which has an existing quota of 6,500, would have to pay over 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) if it were to refuse to accept any refugees, according to Financial Times.   Another example is Hungary, which has a quota of 1,294 but has offered no places to asylum seekers so far. Under the new plan, the country would be forced to pay a fine of 323 million euros ($3.7 million).  Following news of the proposal, Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák said the quota plan does not “respect reality.” The worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II is ongoing, with most asylum seekers arriving on the continent from the Middle East and particularly Syria, where around 250,000 people have been killed and more than 12 million displaced since a civil war began there in 2011, according to the latest UN figures. Over one million refugees reached Europe’s shores in 2015. More recent figures from a February report compiled by the International Organization for Migration reveal that more than 100,000 people arrived in Greece and another 7,507 entered Italy since the beginning of 2016. Earlier on Wednesday, the Commission backed a visa-free travel agreement with Turkey after Ankara threatened to back out of a landmark migration deal. Under the agreement, all illegal migrants reaching Greece from Turkey's shores are to be returned. In exchange, the EU agreed to take thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. ‘Counting refugees’ While the European Commission considers imposing stricter refugee laws, EU countries seem more concerned with assessing the number of refugees using their services. For example, bus drivers in northern France were reportedly told to count the number of migrants using the Twisto transport company based out of Caen, according to the France Bleu channel. The company’s bus service has a route that runs from the center of Caen to the Ouistréham ferry terminal, which has become a hot spot for refugees who want to eventually cross over to the UK. Forms have reportedly been distributed that require Twisto drivers to fill in boxes asking for information such as: “Number of migrants inspected” and “Number of migrants booked.” Another document asks the drivers to record where the migrants got off the bus. France Bleu channel suggested that the order to keep track of refugees came from police, but local police chief Laurent Fiscus denied the allegations. However, he added that acquiring such information could be very useful. “Public transport drivers and conductors can provide information whether it’s about migrants or other problems,” Fiscus told the channel. “The national and municipal police need this kind of information.” https://www.rt.com/news/341744-eu-refugees-quotas-fines/   Criminal Quota Scheme NOT EVEN 1% OF TARGET This is a program of INVASION Wake Up, Morons Sane European countries (Poland, Slovakia, Romania & Hungary) need to band together & threaten to pull out together.  Do a deal.  Sign an agreement of opposed solidarity stipulating you will exit the EU.  Better yet, pull out ASAP. The fines on Poland and on Hungary are extortion and rape of European national sovereignty.  Furthermore, they are anti-democratic.  This is supranational body dictatorship, using extortion as a means of violating the wishes of the national inhabitants (who have to live with the consequences of this invasion).  Revolt.  March on Brussels. Better yet, pull out of the EU:  now. Mass movement into Europe from "particularly Syria" has not been the case from what I've read.  Syrian arrivals have been the minority.  The invasion arrivals to Europe have been from all over the place, just as they have been whenever there has been a designated 'crisis' country from which Europe accepts 'refugees' (see Kosovo crisis used by third world arrivals from all over the shop to access Europe and Britain / which would no doubt be a pattern that has repeated itself, particularly in the last decade of US-led hostilities against a string of countries).  Well, Europe, maybe there's something to be said for not funding, training and otherwise supporting destabilisation of other nations, as the US-led Western capitalists have done, destabilising and assaulting Syria (among a string of Middle Eastern / African nations). However, the consequences of this are not Europe's problem. Or they wouldn't be if a bunch of crooks weren't running the European Union dictatorship scam.  Tell these nation-destroyer puppets to go and f*ck themselves.  Tell them:  Noooooooooooooo. European people need to stand up and say 'No!' to the accelerated invasion and destruction of their homelands, in what is a long-standing Western program of facilitating invasion and dismemberment of Europe. C'mon, Europe.  It's now or never. That 'one million' arrivals referred to in the article, you can probably double, as they're not going to be even remotely honest about the horrific figures of this invasion (and an overall program of accelerated invasion that has been ongoing for a decade, if not more). And then you can multiply the arrivals figure (anyone's guess what it may be), by around x8 per person further 'family reunion' foreign arrivals. Then add to that well over replacement level reproduction rates that will endure, in what is a reproductive cycle that will NEVER stop. So, this is not like sheltering a box of puppies.  It is a serious national problem with serious and enduring national consequences. Turkey appears to have blackmailed the EU criminals into giving Turkey's nationals visa-free travel? Got to be kidding.  Say hello to flow of all kinds of undesirable follow-on consequences (like:  terrorists, weapons, drugs, people trafficking, crime and more invaders) from over the Turkish borders (domestic and as transit point). The criminals that run the EU ought to be strung up. Turkey, which has had a hand in destabilisation and destruction of Syria, now has European people take on the human blow-back on behalf of Turkey, Israel, USA and the oligarchs that control European governments.  And the Gulf Arabs. Europe, tell them ALL to get f*cked, you're not destroying your own nations for  to profit European millionaires, or that of USA, Turkey, or Israel.  Oh, and the Saudis and the Qataris, who must be in hysterics over your stupidity (as they're happy to meddle, but they won't be accepting any of the consequences for themselves). And don't believe for one moment that illegal invaders (as opposed to the 'legal' invaders) will be deported.  The vast majority will never be deported.  All invaders need do is destroy their identification and Europe is stuck with them.  But even without having destroyed identification, they're next to impossible to remove due to the 'human rights' conventions that drive the program of invasion and dismemberment of Europe, and the endless legal avenues for blocking deportation.  Furthermore, even if Europe goes to the vast expense and trouble of getting the go-ahead to deport, Europe can still expect to be stuck with invaders earmarked for deportation, when their own countries REFUSE to accept them as deportees (which they do). Any nation that is stupid enough to let invaders onto their soil is stuck with them and the consequences that are inherent in accepting them:  forever.   Do not do it.   Get the EU puppets to get Saudi Arabia to host them.  Oh, wait ... the Saudi's don't want the disruption and terrorism risk.  Exit the EU.  Tell Turkey to f*ck off.  Declare martial law.  Arm everybody that is capable of holding a machine-gun and defend your countries as your ancestors would have done. *Stand by for the next terror attack, when France doesn't even know who is in France (because of open borders) and needs to get bus drivers, FFS, to keep any eye on movements.