Category Archives: Fascism

AG Sessions: Justice Dept. to “pull back” on suing police depts. over violating civil rights of minorities | 3CHICSPOLITICO “Sick racist now in charge of Department of Justice!”

“We need, so far as we can, to help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness. And I’m afraid we’ve done some of that,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.“So we’re going to try to pull back on this,” he told a meeting of the nation’s state attorneys general in Washington.Sessions said such a move would not be “wrong or insensitive to civil rights or human rights.” Instead, he said people in poor and minority communities must feel free from the threat of violent crime, which will require more effective policing with help from the federal government.While crime rates are half of what they were a few decades ago, recent increases in violent crimes do not appear to be “an aberration, a one-time blip. I’m afraid it represents the beginning of a trend.”Sessions said he will encourage federal prosecutors to bring charges when crimes are committed using guns. Referring local drug violations that involve the use of a firearm, for example, to federal court can result is often a stiffer sentence than would be imposed by state courts.“We need to return to the ideas that got us here, the ideas that reduce crime and stay on it. Maybe we got a bit overconfident when we’ve seen the crime rate decline so steadily for so long,” he said.Under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department opened 25 investigations into police departments and sheriff’s offices and was enforcing 19 agreements at the end of 2016, resolving civil rights lawsuits filed against police departments in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, New Orleans, Cleveland and 15 other cities.

Source: AG Sessions: Justice Dept. to “pull back” on suing police depts. over violating civil rights of minorities | 3CHICSPOLITICO

ADL demands Trump advisor disavow ‘anti-Semitic hate groups’ | +972 Magazine

Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka has had a rough two weeks. It began with LobeLog’s report that he wore the medal of Vitezi Rend, an anti-Semitic Hungarian organization that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, at an inaugural ball.

Source: ADL demands Trump advisor disavow ‘anti-Semitic hate groups’ | +972 Magazine

Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History – The New York Times

“The formula ‘enemy of the people,’” Mr. Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.It is difficult to know if President Trump is aware of the historic resonance of the term, a label generally associated with despotic communist governments rather than democracies. But his decision to unleash the terminology has left some historians scratching their heads. Why would the elected leader of a democratic nation embrace a label that, after the death of Stalin, even the Soviet Union found to be too freighted with sinister connotations?Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Mr. Khrushchev and a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, said the phrase was “shocking to hear in a non-Soviet, moreover non-Stalinist setting.” Her great-grandfather, she said, “of course also used Soviet slogans and ideological idioms but still tried to stay away from sweeping denunciations of whole segments of the Soviet population.”

Ohio clergy first to recognize proposed ‘Pastor Protection Act’ is bogus: the Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess (Opinion) | cleveland.com

Three times this month, the Ohio House has held committee hearings on the so-called “Pastor Protection Act” (HB 36), a bill purportedly designed to protect clergy and places of worship from performing marriages against their wishes. This is bogus legislation, designed to confront a non-existent problem, and a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. Clergy already exercise unfettered discretion over marriage decisions.So what’s this legislation really about? There’s no other answer: It’s about protecting the falsehood, and perpetuating the stereotype, that LGBTQ Ohioans and our relationships are inherently secular, unholy, anti-faith, anti-church and, thus, anti-pastor, under the dual guise of exclusive religion and bad public policy. It’s about casting another net of shame over an already vulnerable group of citizens that still lack any statewide protections in housing, employment and public accommodations. This is Ohio masquerading itself as regressive North Carolina or Indiana, and it’s bad for business.  The God I worship is about loosening the bonds of oppression, not piling on. I serve the One whose burden is light, not made excessively heavy. But most importantly, as a citizen of this state, I smell rotten legislation when it’s foisted upon us.My clergy colleagues widely agree: we don’t need these protections; we already have them. Instead, as concerned Ohioans, let’s turn our legislative energies toward those who really do need our watchful love and compassion.

Source: Ohio clergy first to recognize proposed ‘Pastor Protection Act’ is bogus: the Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess (Opinion) | cleveland.com

Two years after Boris Nemtsov’s assassination, repeated protest is illegal and ‘no-one is safe’ – Inside Putin’s Russia – ABC News

“No-one is safe, of course we understand that. No-one is safe,” he told the ABC at the Solidarnost meeting in a hotel on the outskirts of Moscow.”After Nemtsov’s murder many people were really scared, many people left the country, many people stopped their political activities.”Because they thought if authority can kill a famous person, a celebrity like Nemtsov, the authority can do everything with a person like me.”Russia’s various opposition groups are seen as weak and disparate.”Oppositions look weak in every dictatorship because of pressure, because of police state, because of propaganda,” Mr Yashin said.

Source: Two years after Boris Nemtsov’s assassination, repeated protest is illegal and ‘no-one is safe’ – Inside Putin’s Russia – ABC News

U.S. detains and nearly deports French Holocaust historian – The Washington Post “When you really don’t know what you are doing but trying to please the boss – crap like this is inevitable!”

It remains unclear what about Rousso was identified as suspect by immigration authorities.Egypt — from which Rousso and his family, as Jews, were exiled in 1956, after a slew of anti-Semitic measures imposed by the administration of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz — was not among the seven nations in the travel ban, which had been suspended by the time he arrived in the United States.[Who is affected by the travel ban?]Furthermore, France is a beneficiary of the U.S. visa waiver program, which permits French citizens to enter the United States without a visa. All that is required is an online ESTA application before departure.For Marouf, Rousso’s ordeal was indicative of a strict new U.S. border control regime: “It seems like there’s much more rigidity and rigor in enforcing these immigration requirements and technicalities of every visa,” she told the Eagle.

Source: U.S. detains and nearly deports French Holocaust historian – The Washington Post

Leading German politician calls AfD′s Höcke a ′Nazi′ | News | DW.COM | 25.02.2017 AfD are yuuge Trump fans.

“For me, Björn Höcke is a Nazi,” Oppermann said at Saturday’s meeting of the SPD’s state delegates in Thuringia. “Someone who wants to resuscitate the ethnic ideology of the National Socialists has no place in a democratic society.”Oppermann said Germany could no longer tolerate discrimination based on gender, religion, national origin or heritage. “Someone who does not observe this ground rule of democracy has no business in the Bundestag,” he said.’A 180-degree reversal'”These stupid politics of coming to grips with the past cripple us,” Höcke told the AfD’s youth wing in January. “We need nothing other than a 180-degree reversal on the politics of remembrance.” Referring to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, he added: “We Germans, that is to say, our people, are the only people in the world who have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.”

Source: Leading German politician calls AfD′s Höcke a ′Nazi′ | News | DW.COM | 25.02.2017

The story of the week is Trump, Russia and the FBI. The rest is a distraction | Opinion | The Guardian – High and low Treason

‘Any investigation involving Trump advisers and Russian intelligence is serious stuff. If born out, it has the potential to become the greatest political scandal in American history.’ Photograph: Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

Narrative switching. That is what the Trump administration is desperately trying to do around Russia right now. The White House reportedly interfered with the FBI in the middle of an active investigation involving counter-intelligence. This was not only foolhardy but also suspicious, as it directly undermined their apparent objective: distracting us.

Source: The story of the week is Trump, Russia and the FBI. The rest is a distraction | Opinion | The Guardian

Mem Fox, Australian author, gets apology after being wrongfully detained at LA airport – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Fox, who was questioned by Customs and Border Protection officers for two hours earlier this month as she was on her way to Milwaukee to address a conference, said she collapsed and sobbed at her hotel after she was released.She said the border agents appeared to have been given “turbocharged power” by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to “humiliate and insult” a room full of people they detained to check visas.That executive order was eventually halted by Federal Courts and it was expected a new order would be signed this week, designed to avoid the confusion caused by the original.

Source: Mem Fox, Australian author, gets apology after being wrongfully detained at LA airport – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)