Tag: European union

Facebook Bans Politicalite, Wages Censorship War on Populist Platforms

The populist media outlet Politicalite has been banned from Facebook, for publishing an article reporting the launch of a legitimate electoral campaign ahead of the European elections in May.

Politicalite has come under repeated attack from the social media platform in recent weeks, seeing its reach on the website drop considerably. But last week Facebook sent a message to Editor-In-Chief Jordan James informing him that his website’s page had been unpublished.

This means that Politicalite’s 40,000 followers will no longer receive updates from the alternative news outlet.

The ban followed James’s posting of a livestream of the launch of a legitimate democratic bid by an independent candidate in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections in the North West of England.

The well-known activist and Luton City supporter told livestream viewers: “Like many of you, I wasn’t born in a powerful or wealthy family. My mother was an Irish immigrant, and my father a plumber. They taught me that hard work and sacrifice lead to success. They taught me to stand up for myself, for others, and my beliefs.

“I have never voted, I never believe it would make a change, none of the politicians in our country could relate to me or even seem to care. I know what it feels like to be left behind.

“We are ruled by people who know we exist but they still don’t care. It doesn’t have to be this way, fairness is possible.”

The candidate, who cannot be named due to an ongoing censorship campaign against him, has pledged to donate his MEP salary to victims of child sexual exploitation if elected.

Politicalite’s Facebook ban came just a day after Breitbart reported an ongoing censorship campaign against the site by Facebook and Google, saying it was “under attack by a combination of algorithm changes and unfair suspensions by the big tech Masters of the Universe.”

Facebook has previously suspended the page, while last December, Google withdrew ads from the site in a bid to damage its ability to fund itself.

In addition, Facebook has recently introduced a new policy called ‘click-gap’ which aims to reduce the reach of all alternative media outlets, favouring mainstream media instead.

In a blog post, Facebook explained the policy as “look[ing] for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on News Feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.”

In other words, new sites which haven’t yet had time to build up their citations outside of Facebook will be unfairly penalised, making it impossible for them to break into the media market.

“Facebook’s new newsfeed changes related to so-called ‘fake news’ are totally killing us on FB – we’ve seen our reach, traffic and likes drop significantly in the past week,” said James.

Foreign Aid: what it is, some of the controversies surrounding it, and where the U.S sends aid the most

By Penny Hoffmann

Foreign aid is a controversial topic for many reasons. One objection to foreign aid is that it can be delivered to the wrong people on purpose or accidentally (for example, theft). However, giving aid can produce many benefits: it can improve the relations between nations and rebuild living standards.

What is Foreign Aid?

Foreign aid refers to humanitarian, international, and usually inter-governmental figures or groups that give economic, military, financial or technical resources, such as weapons, to a nation or nations. This aid can be in many forms, such as bilateral or multilateral.

Some examples of aid programs include George Marshall’s Marshall Plan that began in 1948, the Point Four Program, and the UK’s Commonwealth Development Fund.

This is how the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines Official Development Assistance (ODA):

“ODA consists of flows to developing countries and multilateral institutions provided by official agencies, including state and local governments, or by their executive agencies, each transaction of which meets the following test: a) it is administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective, and b) it is concessional in character and contains a grant element of at least 25% (calculated at a rate of discount of 10%).”

In order for foreign aid to work, it must cater to the climate of the receiver of the aid. This means that the hardships of the suffering location or the receiver of the aid must be analyzed to select the correct type of aid and to deliver it at the appropriate time. The objectives of the aid must be specified and the most suitable solutions must be chosen to ensure that the aid will not be given to the wrong people or area that needs improving.

Foreign aid can be used to improve the conduct of allies, to reward a nation for its conduct, or to eventually get a repayment of some sort from the nation receiving the aid.

Types of Foreign Aid

Bilateral Aid

Bilateral aid involves two nations where one government sends aid to another government.

Multilateral Aid

Multilateral is where funding is delivered by two or more nations to international organisations such as the World Bank (also called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) or the International Monetary Fund who have the role of improving suffering nations.

Tied Aid

Tied aid is a bilateral agreement where the donor nation delivers a loan or grant to the nation receiving it, but specify the nation in which the funding is spent.

Project Aid

Project aid is given to improve a certain project, such as a school.

Military Aid

Military aid is where a nation delivers weapons and the like to nations

Voluntary Aid

Voluntary aid usually refers to charity. One example of this is Doctors Without Borders, “an international humanitarian non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries affected by endemic diseases.”

Who Gives The Most Aid

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, these nations gave the most Official Development Assistance (ODA) in total in 2015:

Foreign aid: These countries are most generous

However, when considering it as a percentage of gross national income (GNI), the ranking order of the countries is different:

Foreign aid: These countries are most generous

The top ten recipients of U.S foreign aid in 2018 are as follows:

10. Iraq – $347.9 million

9. Nigeria – $419.1 million

8. Zambia – $428.9 million

7. Uganda – $436.4 million

6. Tanzania – $535.3 million

5. Kenya – $639.4 million

4. Afghanistan – $782.8 million

3. Jordan – $1 billion

2. Egypt – $1.39 billion

1. Israel – $3.1 billion

Current Foreign Aid Controversies

There are academic disagreements regarding the efficiency of giving foreign aid. These include; the factors that influence the economic efficiency of foreign aid; whether aid should be measured empirically; whether aid should be given to non-government organisations and groups, rather than governments, who then improve the economy from the bottom up; the opposite, top-down approach by delivering aid to governments, the World Bank, and the UN who rebuild suffering nations; and whether aid givers truly know what is needed by aid receivers.

FARAGE IS BACK: What will his return entail for the future of Brexit?

By Stefan M. Kløvning

Britain, Brexit – Nigel Farage announced his return to British politics on Friday in a Telegraph article entitled “The time has come to teach the political class a lesson: I’m back fighting for a real Brexit,” where he pledged “to give Leave Means Leave my absolute and total support. I will help them to raise funds and will go back on the road to campaign once again.” In the article, he also labelled the Chequers statement as a “betrayal”, a document delineating Conservative PM Theresa May’s suggestions for the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Farage is especially known for his Euroscepticism, having left the Conservative party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty, and becoming a founding member of the United Kingdom Independence Party. In 1999, he was elected as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) and was subsequently reelected in 2004, 2009 and 2014, causing countless controversies in the parliament through his numerous rants about the flaws of the EU. He summarized his views on the EU as follows:

Post-1949, there was some sensible ideas put together, namely, the Council of Europe. Let’s have a Europe where we sit down together, where we have a free-trade agreement, minimum standards on work, on the environment… We can do all of these things without a European Commission, without a European Parliament, and without a European Court of Justice. Yes, it’ll mean you’ll lose your job, Mr Barosso [11th President of the European Commission], but apart from that, why can’t we do things as mature democracies? Yes, I want you sacked Mr Schultz as well, I want you all fired. We can do those things, and that is a positive way forward. Taking away from people the ability to govern themselves, and transferring that power to the European Commission, we’re headed for a Europe of rebellion and violence. Let’s take the democratic route.

Nigel Farage
“I want you all fired,” he declared to the EP in 2011.

After 52% of Brits voted to leave the European Union in 2016, he spoke before the European Commission again, asserting “Isn’t it funny, that when I came here seventeen years ago, and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me! Well, I have to say, you’re not laughing now, are you?” Farage has thereby been perceived as having had a large impact on the results in 2016, ranked 2nd “most influential Right-winger” by the Telegraph in October 2013, and named “Briton of the Year” in 2014. After he resigned as leader of UKIP in 2016, he hasn’t been particularly influential in British politics, outside of his op-eds and podcast/radio show on London Broadcasting Corporation. In 2017, he also became a contributor on Fox News, where he additionally comments on American issues, promoting Trump and was in July one of the proponents of him earning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring better relations between North- and South Korea. Yesterday, he asserted he’s coming back to British politics:

Over the last few months, and particularly since the Chequers betrayal, scores of people have stopped me in the street to ask: “When are you coming back?”

Well now you have your answer: I’m back.

Back in the game of British politics, ready to make an influence on Britain to move it back in the right direction for a “real” Brexit. But whither does this direction lead? What will his return entail for the future of Brexit?

Farage describes the organizers of Leave Means Leave, Richard Tice and John Longworth to be “principled businessmen” who see “Brexit as the ultimate opportunity to regain some national self-confidence, to restore our democracy and to make us all richer and more successful by going global. They want to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that burns so brightly in millions of men and women.” On their website, they assert that “Unequivocally, Leave means leaving the Single Market, leaving the customs union and UK courts no longer being subservient to the European Court of Justice.” Chequers do not mean Brexit, they say, for its suggestions do not meet these criteria.

Richard Tice
Leave Means Leave logo
John Longworth

Leave Means Leave was established in July 2016 in the aftermath of the Brexit vote as a political pressure group campaigning and lobbying for “a clean Brexit.” “This week,” says Farage, “it declared plans to re-launch the referendum campaign up and down the country.” The founders explained on Thursday,

When we set up Leave Means Leave after the referendum, we thought it might be needed for six months. We hoped that we could trust the Government to do the job they had been instructed to do by the British people. People knew what they were voting for. They dismissed the ridiculous scaremongering of Project Fear and voted in the largest numbers ever to leave the EU.

None of us imagined that, two years on, we would have to refight the battle. We never dreamt that we would have to attack some desperate “Chequers” proposal from the Prime Minister, which led to the resignation of two of the most influential Brexit-supporting Cabinet ministers [David Davis and Boris Johnson]. None of us feared being let down by other Cabinet Brexiteers, who we thought we could trust. Today, they are trying to sell thin gruel to Brexit voters as if it were some sort of delicacy. It is a con, and must be exposed as such.

…

Crucially, this will be a nationwide effort, not an intellectual exercise from air-conditioned offices in London. We want to take our campaign to the people. So many ordinary voters feel let down by their MPs.

The next six months will determine the future direction of our country. It is nothing less than a Battle for Britain. Do we want to remain handcuffed to an outdated, protectionist bullying bureaucracy as a vassal state? Or do we want to be a bold, ambitious trading nation, retaking our rightful place on the global stage as a strong independent country, enjoying the significant economic benefits that flow from a proper Brexit?

With Farage’s “absolute and total support,” Leave Means Leave is sure to get a boost of influence considering his reach and reputation (for instance, he has 68 times as many followers on Twitter as them), but is the British public open to their message? According to the latest annual British Social Attitudes report by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen Social Research), the party most against “allowing free movement of people in return for free trade in the EU” is, unsurprisingly, UKIP, at 67%, but they also have a large minority of 40% in the Conservative Party to appeal to, though its leader was the architect of the Chequers Statement.

Leave Means Leave know their base, and what they stand for, but as they weren’t sufficient in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, is it reasonable to expect that things will now turn out differently? Is Farage the steroid they need to win the race for the future of Brexit, and can he make them sufficient for achieving this goal? Or will they again be overhauled by the political establishment they consider to be indifferent to the wishes of the British majority?

More by Goldfire Media:

Nigel Farage Threaten Return as UKIP Leader if Theresa May Continues “Brexit Betrayal”

Both Tories and EU Diplomats Skeptical to May’s Forced Soft Brexit Blueprint

Jeremy Corbyn Pictured Commemorating Palestinian Terrorists Responsible for Assassinating Jordanian PM and 11 Israeli Athletes

A Case for Leaving the Left-Right Axis as a Model for Political Analysis

Investigative Journalist Assaulted By Security and Banned from UN for Covering $6-Billion Budget Meeting

 

 

Italy: Salvini tells EU to “defend its border from African migrants”

By Nikos Tsinakis

Italy’s Matteo Salvini is under attack by the mainstream media once again for his anti-mass migration/refugee stance. The defacto Prime Minister of this major EU country finds himself landing in trouble with media again after making a public comment that has always been consistently aligned with his campaign: “Europe must defend its borders against migrants arriving from Africa”  He made the comment in a context to exert pressure on the European Union, pointing out that Italy may reconsider its financial commitment to the EU if not more was done to help Italy deal with the current migrant crisis.

This man just can’t seem to catch a break. Being labeled as “far right” simply to continue delivering on his promise to the majority of Italian people that voted for him in the first place.

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The face of optimism from the Italian Trump.

“The aim is to protect the external border, not to share the problem among European countries but to solve the problem at the source,” Salvini said. “If anyone in the EU thinks Italy should keep being a landing point and refugee camp, they have misunderstood.”

 

As a former radio show host, Salvini is no stranger to media sensationalism, has been under constant attack by the pro-EU mainstream media ever since the political coalition that his party is a part of came into power earlier this year, making him essentially the de-facto PM. Salvini wasted no time in using his public voice to attack the NGOs orchestrating the mass African migration into Europe, calling them out as  “Human traffickers and Do-gooders”
Making it as clear as ever that globalist human rights groups have no business in making Italy a landing group for unlimited amounts of African “migrants.”

This confronting move taken by Salvini gained approval from Luigi Di Maio, his major coalition partner from the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, who agrees with the upcoming permanent change in the Italian policy towards people arriving by boats from the other side of the Mediterranean. Di Maio added:
“We save the migrants with our navy, with our coastguard, but the NGOs [should] go elsewhere,” Di Maio said.

In a stance that’s deemed hardline by leftists, Salvini suggested the country would take its own drastic measures should the EU continue to do nothing during this crisis situation. Emphasising the mass migration problem must be solved at its roots in Africa instead of multiple European countries bordering the Mediterranean sharing the same problem and the same stance of inaction.

The issue is expected to be discussed by Salvini, Di Maio and Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister, at a meeting on Wednesday. Salvini, who is traveling to Libya in the coming days, said Italy was preparing a proposal that would strengthen the EU border and curtain migration but did not provide further details.

 ‘The air in Europe is changing and we are optimistic.’

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING: European Union vote yes on MEME BAN

By Nikos Tsinakis

The European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs just voted ‘yes’ on highly controversial segments of the EU’s new Copyright Reform laws, a topic that’s been hotly debated in the past week. The controversial articles — 11 and 13 — effectively establish web link tax, censorship machines, and a ban on memes. This is a brazen assault on the freedom of speech for continental Europeans, masked in a format of protecting “copyrighted content” a direct attack against the right-wing opposition voice on the internet that has been successfully implementing the use of memes for the past several years.

 

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The Anti-European hivemind at work

There was an incredible amount of resistance to the contested articles from internet activists, technocrats, and members of European Parliament (MEPs), but all the appeals were rendered to no avail and the articles passed with a 13:12 and 15:10 majority.

Article 11 forces all usage with portions of online journalistic content be required to obtain a license from the original publisher first. Possibly even affecting the act of hyperlinking articles, causing significant drops in audience reach of news posts.

A quick summary of the article 13 include demands made to “internet society service providers” such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Google to utilize content recognition tools to “prevent the availability” of copyrighted content from appearing online in the form of plagiarism and other forms of copyright violations. After a planned debate between the EU politicians today, both articles had its legitimacy acknowledged and endorsed by the European Union, much to the displeasure of all free thinkers around the world. If these laws come to affect, it would render all internet meme remixers out of their existence, the meme is a very powerful medium often directed at communicating complex political concepts at younger people.

The Creative Commons official twitter page fired back at EU’s decision to adopt article 11 and article 13, calling it:

“ – a dark day for the open web, but the fight will continue in the upcoming plenary vote in the European Parliament. #SaveYourInternet #SaveTheLink #FixCopyright”

Contact European Parliment members to voice your protest via this petition here 

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But we love our memes, right Mr Salvini?



Don’t lose hope just yet.

The European Parliament Committees’ decision today does not immediately put this copyright reform into action in the legal form, however. The controversial article laws would be effective in further solidifying the EU’s stance on the distribution of copyrighted content around the globe, holding massive sway in potential future actions addressing this issue.

“Article 13 has been adopted by European Parliament legal committee with a 15:10 majority. Again: We will take this fight to plenary and still hope to #SaveYourInternet”  – Julia Reda, MEP for the European Pirate Party called for continuous resistance after the articles were passed.

The people of Europe won’t give up their freedom to expressive themselves on the internet without a fight. The gun is on the table.

Salvini keeps his promise! Italy shuts down ports and turns back refugee ship

By Nikos Tsinakis

A humanitarian NGO ship carrying more than 630 refugees is being told by Italian authorities to reverse its course and “stay put” in the mediterranean sea.

The ship being asked to turn around is MV Aquarius, operated by Doctors without Borders, a French globalist humanitarian organization also known as MSF.  As of Monday the ship holding its position 27 nautical miles from Malta and 35 nautical miles from Italy, after the new Italian populist coalition government refused it docking rights on its territory. This is a show of force from the new Italian interior minister and the head of right-wing Northern  League party Matteo Salvini, delivering his promise made earlier last week during his trip to Sicily. As well as reaffirming the fact that Italy will no longer accept refugees ferried in by nongovernmental organizations with a shady track record of collaborating with human traffickers.

“From now also Italy begins to say NO to the traffic of human beings, NO to the business of illegal immigration,” said Salvini.

Italy proceeded to ask Malta, a fellow EU member state to host and disembark the refugees in their territory. Malta quickly rejected this proposal, potentially opening a diplomatic rift between the two EU nations, a friction force that Italy can afford since the new right wing government has expressed an openly anti-European Union stance.

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According to the twitter page of “Doctors without Borders,”  the ship being asked to be turned around is carrying 123 unaccompanied minors and 7 pregnant women. The humanitarian group also attacked the Italian government on Sunday for “Placing politics above people’s lives.”  

“The priority must be the importance of the well being [and] safety of the people on board,” it said.

The UN refugee agency also chimed in on this matter, advocating for politicians to help solve this matter on an urgent basis; “States and actors involved should rapidly find solutions to allow migrants and refugees on board the [Aquarius] to disembark safely and quickly,” it said in a tweet. Further stressing in another tweet that the focus should be docking and disembarking the refugees while dealing with “wider issues” later, again completely ignoring the national sovereignty of Italy as a whole.


The globalist United Nations clearly supports the rapid population replacement scheme to inflict pain and suffering on white European. Why else would they advocate for the continuation of sub-Saharan African countries to flood Europe through Sicily, at mass rates that’s statistically impossible to be hosted, settled and integrated quickly? As a note of reference, there are currently 170,000 asylum seekers already in refugee centers all around Italy.

Italian leftists destroy democracy: Right wing coalition with 60% of votes stopped from forming anti- EU government

By Nikos Tsinakis

Italy’s government change remains as an ongoing process following the good news earlier this week when Giuseppe Conte was given the mandate to become the prime minister of a coalition composed by only populist parties. It now seems like anti-Globalist patriots around the world have held celebrations too early.

In an unexpected turn of events, Italian president Sergio Mattarella( elected in 2015) interferes with the will of the people as he treacherously rejects the new Finance Minister appointed by winning political coalition that held more than 60% of the votes. His reasoning for rejecting the proposal involves his personal ‘bottom line’ of not risking an exit from the European Union/eurozone. Mattarella’s action clearly goes against the will of Italy’s public majority, a majority that’s fed up with the Tyranny of the European Union as they voted for the two populist parties: Lega Nord(held the most votes out of any party) and the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement.

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Italy’s Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte speaks to the media after a meeting with the Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace in Rome

Five Star Movement (M5S) was outraged with Mattarella’s decision as the M5S leader Luigi Di Maio calls it “an institutional clash without precedent” in a live video streamed from his facebook page.

RT: 



Italy’s PM-designate Giuseppe Conte said he’s given up on attempts to form a government after President Sergio Mattarella rejected his candidacy for economy minister. The country may now face a new election by the end of 2018.

Conte confirmed his failure to form “the government of change” in Italy, saying: “I can assure you that I did my utmost to try to fulfill this task.”

Mattarella told the media that he “agreed to all the ministers except the finance minister” proposed by the coalition. “I asked for a figure, who would mean not risking an exit from the euro,” he explained.



Such a brazen display from the acting Italian President to protect the interests of the EU is an insult to all europeans that believe in Democratic values and certainly a testament to the volatility within the Italian constitution. The elected President and Prime Minister having different motivations as well as opposing views will only stop the will of the people from being carried out.

Incoming ultimatum

Extremely upset coalition supporters are demanding the President’s impeachment and an immediate replacement. However, it seems like the leader of Lega Nord party don’t want to talk about impeachment just yet.

 “We need to keep cool. Some things cannot be done in the throes of anger… I don’t want to talk about impeachment,” Salvini said speaking in a radio interview with Radio Capital.

Leader of the Lega Nord Matteo Salvini also expressed interest in the alternative to work within the system by communicating with the Five Star party to change electoral laws. Time will soon tell whether or not Salvini optimism has paid off. If not, the adopting the hardline stance to advocate for impeachment will surely be the next most effective option.

The EU is on its deathbed.