Sunday, December 29, 2019



ICE, Border Patrol had access to NY's DMV database. With a new license law, now they don't

Another Leftist contribution to the destruction of America as we have known it.  The Left intend that.  They hate America as it is.  But they have no ideas that could realistically improve it. See the mindless proposals of the Democrat presidential contenders.  All they have is a primitive talent for destruction

Federal immigration and border officials have been blocked from New York's DMV database, a move that keeps them from accessing data that can be used to help determine whether a vehicle owner has a criminal history or a warrant for their arrest.

New York's Green Light Law took effect Saturday, allowing those without legal immigration status to apply for driver's licenses in New York.

But the law also included a provision prohibiting state DMV officials from providing any of its data to entities that enforce immigration law unless a judge orders them to, leading the state to cut off database access to at least three federal agencies last week.

Among them were U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP — which patrols the U.S.-Canada border in New York — and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

More HERE 

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Payback time in India

After centuries of oppression by Muslims against Hindus, the Hindus are finally hitting back

Several hundred mostly Muslim men face having their property confiscated after being given “unpayable” fines for allegedly vandalising police batons, motorbikes and loudspeakers during protests against a new Indian citizenship law.

Residents described the unprecedented fines as being part of a clampdown involving arbitary arrests and intimidation by the Hindu nationalist government in the state of Uttar Pradesh against the Muslim community over the demonstrations.

Paramilitary and police forces were deployed in Uttar Pradesh today and the internet was shut down in an attempt to curb violence. Security drones were spotted flying over western regions of the state, where protests turned violent after last week’s Friday prayers.

The fines come after Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister, pledged to exact “revenge” on those suspected of having been violent in demonstrations against proposals that will mean Muslims must prove their right to reside in the country, while exempting people from most other religions from the same requirement. There are more than 200 million Muslims in the majority Hindu country, all of whom will be required to prove their right to stay.

About 700 men in Uttar Pradesh have a week to prove their innocence or pay a hefty fine. If they refuse to pay, the state will confiscate their property.

Other men in Muslim-dominated areas are on the run, fearing detention. In the town of Nagina in Bijnor district, 80 men have been detained and their families have no idea what crimes they are accused of.

“When lawyers tried to meet them, they themselves were manhandled by the police and threatened with being treated as violent protesters,” the uncle of one detained man, who was too scared to give his name, said.

Families in the cities of Rampur, Muzaffarnagar and Meerut, where many Muslims live, have accused the police of storming into homes, smashing belongings and taking men away.

The families of the fined men said that many of those accused had not taken part in the unrest and could not afford to pay the penalties. Some of those fined had not been arrested but appeared to have been penalised on the basis of CCTV footage watched by police.

“I don’t even have milk to make a cup of tea. Let the police keep my son in jail and I will starve. There’s nothing else I can do,” the mother of a 26-year-old man who has been arrested on suspicion of arson said.

The woman, a widow who relies on her son’s income from selling spices and bangles on a street cart that is likely to be confiscated, said that he had no role in the protests. She was wearing a torn acrylic sweater against the cold and their home is a rented shack.

More than 20 people have been killed in nationwide demonstrations that broke out on December 15 against a law allowing anyone who is in India illegally to become a citizen unless they are Muslim.

It has brought Indians of all religions, young and old, rich and illiterate, on to the streets against the government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister. Although most of the protests have been peaceful, the state of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had some of the worst clashes, which left 17 Muslims dead, including at least 14 from bullet injuries.

Others to have received the penalty notices are poor daily wage labourers, electricians, street vendors, tailors and embroiderers. Most cannot afford a lawyer, much less pay fines.

Chotte Mian, 63, a spice seller, said that the notice accused his son of rioting. “He was working that day and had nothing to do with it. I am a poor man and can’t afford to hire a lawyer so there is no question of paying,” he said.

One legal expert, Awadesh Singh, said that despite numerous violent riots over the years, he had never seen such punitive action to recover damages.

Colin Gonsalves, a human rights lawyer, said that the attempt to recover money from protesters was “utterly arbitrary and vicious”.

“It is the police who were the aggressors, not the protesters, who were running away. We have videos of the police damaging cars and scooters,” he said.

In Delhi, the capital, a group of Muslim women have been on a non-stop protest since the first day of mass unrest. “It’s better to die early than live like a slave all your life,” said Mariam Khan, who has been sitting, eating and sleeping on the ground, going home in turns with other women only to wash and change clothes and enduring night-time temperatures of 5C during the coldest spell in the city for 22 years.

The women took over the main road in Shaheen Bagh and have refused to move until “Modi relents” over the law and a planned national register of citizens. It is feared that Muslims who have been in India for generations may be regarded as illegal immigrants if they do not provide the right documents.

Wearing shawls and accompanied by crying infants and little children, the housewives, students, maids and cleaners vented their indignation. For the majority, it is the first time that they have participated in a protest. They are incensed at having to prove their citizenship and at Mr Modi “spitting on us”.

“We are not a cancer,” Shagufta Shahnawaz, a housewife, said. “We are ordinary people who want our rights. I wasn’t born in Pakistan. I was born here in my homeland and I refuse to prove this to Modi.”

The government has created a national population register that many think is the first step towards creating a national register of citizens. It will list everyone who has been a resident of India for more than six months and will not require any documents, only voluntary disclosure.

Amit Shah, the home minister, said on Tuesday that the data would not be used for the citizens’ register. “I assure all people, especially from the minorities, that the population register is not going to be used for the citizens’ register. It is a rumour.”

His critics have pointed out that ministers have told parliament many times that it will be used as a basis for compiling the register of citizens.

Irfan Qureshi of the Jamia Teachers Association, which is at the forefront of the protests in Delhi, said that no one could trust anything they said any more. “On the face of it, right now, the population register is very suspicious but we have to study it in detail before deciding how to act,” he said.

SOURCE 

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New York Times '1619 Project' Is Revisionist History

The Times says that slaves arriving in 1619 is the date of our "true founding," not 1776.

These days it’s hard to find any mention of Donald Trump and Russia in The New York Times. Of course, after the train wreck of Robert Mueller’s testimony, it’s no wonder they dropped that hot potato. But don’t underestimate the leftist zealots at the Times, nor their creativity in trying to ensure that a “racist” Trump doesn’t win a second term.

Or, as the paper’s executive director, Dean Baquet, said to his staff in a leaked transcript: “Now we have to regroup … and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story.”

The intrepid journalists’ latest plan seems to be, If you can’t get rid of the president, then rip apart the very foundation of the nation that he leads. Hence “The 1619 Project,” launched on the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves to land on our shores. (For what it’s worth, the Times is wrong about the basic fact of 1619; African slaves were brought here a century earlier by the Spanish, who also enslaved Native Americans. And Native Americans enslaved each other long before “the white man” arrived. But the Times wished to attribute this evil to Anglo Americans.) The Times pushes the idea that 1619 is the date of our “true founding,” not 1776.

“This country was founded on ideals that were’t true at the time," insists Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of the journalist hacks heading the project. Of making hay over pointing that out, Hannah Jones asks, "What could be more patriotic than that?”

We could think of a few things…

Assuming that The 1619 Project and its associated school curriculum is merely an innocent — much less “patriotic” — program designed to teach us about the evils of slavery and America’s connection to the institution would be a dangerous assumption.

As Byron York writes at The Washington Examiner, “The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history. The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine.”

According to the project, every single aspect of American society is tainted by slavery and racism: our institutions, capitalism, politics, prisons, food habits, sports, highways, education, and (if you can believe it) traffic patterns. You name it, and it’s illegitimate. The Times plans to spread these ideas through every section of its paper leading up to the 2020 presidential election and to push for schools across the country to (further) change the way American history is taught.

York adds, “The Times has two big plans. One would be big enough: to focus on the universe of racism accusations that increasingly surround the president at a time when he just happens to be running for reelection. But the other is even bigger: to ‘reframe’ American history in accordance with the values of Times editors.”

It’s the paper’s hope that by framing everything about America in racial terms, and portraying President Trump as a racist, they’ll get rid of Trump and the country in one fell swoop by electing a socialist in 2020 and finishing Barack Obama’s dream of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Claiming that our nation was founded on slavery is leftist revisionism of the worst sort. America was founded on the ideals within the Declaration of Independence, a document that freed current and future generations from oppression and slavery. Failing to live up to those ideals at times is simply a product of the human condition.

Inspired by the Declaration, states began abolishing slavery in the early years of the republic, not to mention the fact that the Founders set in a place mechanisms that would lead to the Slave Trade Act of 1794 and the 1818 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, supported by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson may have been inconsistent on the issue of slavery, but he makes it clear in his writings and speeches that slavery had to go. And every single freedom and equality movement since 1776 has been ignited by the tenets set down in the Declaration.

Clearly, the Founding Fathers (even those who were conflicted over the issue) knew that slavery was inconsistent with a nation founded upon God-given rights such as equality and Liberty. And don’t doubt for a second that the phrase “all men are created equal” opened up the floodgates of human freedom.

Slavery is a human evil, not a uniquely American one. Our nation is certainly not innocent of its connection to slavery, but to teach the next generation that every part of American society is irredeemably stained by it would radically and permanently alter our very civilization. Unfortunately, millions of American schoolchildren are already taught that our nation alone is responsible for slavery. They’d be shocked to learn that Africans didn’t come to our shores from societies that were free and prosperous, but were instead sold into slavery by their own brothers. Indeed, slavery still hasn’t been entirely eradicated from the African continent.

Or, as Erick Erickson writes, “The 1619 Project … seeks to divide, not heal. It seeks to give power and primacy to those who think the nation’s founding was premised on evil and demands that those who disagree be silent.”

Erickson offers a foreboding conclusion, suggesting, “If the nation is founded on slavery and slavery is woven into the very fabric of our society, then our society is illegitimate. The only way to overcome it is to overturn it. That would take revolution. This is the path The New York Times goes down. Once it lights this fire, it will not be able to control it. But it wants to strike the match anyway.”

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCHPOLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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