Category Archives: Fascism

Denmark faces backlash over ‘despicable’ ‘jewellery law’ – The Local

Legislation agreed in Denmark to seize the valuables of refugees in the hope of limiting the flow of migrants is “despicable”, US-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday. “I think it’s despicable that Denmark and also in a sense Switzerland are moving to seize the last remaining assets of people, who by virtue of their movement and vulnerability tend to be impoverished and have very little on them,” the executive director of HRW, Kenneth Roth, told a news conference in Istanbul, referring to a Swiss law that since the 1990s has required asylum seekers to contribute to the costs of hosting them in the wealthy Alpine country. “Does a rich country like Denmark really need to strip the very assets of these desperate asylum seekers before providing them basic services?” asked Roth, who was presenting HRW’s annual report in Istanbul.

Source: Denmark faces backlash over ‘despicable’ ‘jewellery law’ – The Local

Netanyahu: We will allow settlers to return to Hebron houses – PNN

The Israeli prime minister,  Benjamin Netanyahu during cabinet meeting on Sunday said that “Israel will allow the settlers evicted from two houses in Hebron to return once the proper paperwork is in order,” Haaretz reported.Haaretz cited Netanyahu saying that “The government supports the settlements, especially in days like these, when they are under terror attacks,” adding that “at the same time, we are a lawful country and must respect the rule of the law. The moment that the purchase process is authorized, we will allow the population of the two houses in Hebron.”

Source: Netanyahu: We will allow settlers to return to Hebron houses – PNN

Viewpoint: The Flint Water Crisis from the Ground Up | Labor Notes

It would be one thing if those responsible for this crisis were democratically elected officials. We could just vote the bums out, right? Well, that isn’t the case in my hometown.Through a bill called P.A. 436, better known as the Emergency Manager law, Governor Rick Snyder appoints an “emergency manager” who answers to the governor and the governor alone.The emergency manager has the power to dismantle everything from local laws to public sector union contracts. All the local officials who were voted in, and all the public sector workers, are under the control of this state-appointed dictator.It was the Snyder-appointed emergency manager, Darnell Early, who initially switched Flint over from the long trusted-source of Lake Huron water, provided by Detroit, to the more corrosive water of the Flint River. It was the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, also answerable solely to Snyder, that deemed the move safe.This was only intended to be a temporary measure, but it didn’t take long for the damage to be done. The aging pipes in Flint were leaching lead into the city’s drinking water and into people’s homes. An entire community was poisoned, just like that.There is no safe level of lead; lead damage is permanent and irreversible. It can cause a staggering array of physical and behavioral problems, from lower IQ to miscarriages.To add insult to injury, the emergency manager in his infinite wisdom raised water rates to astronomical levels. So we’re paying $100-plus per person, per month, for water that is basically poison and practically useless.

Source: Viewpoint: The Flint Water Crisis from the Ground Up | Labor Notes

Former Political Prisoner Wai Wai Nu on Discrimination, the Rohingya People, and the Future of Myanmar | wnn interviews global

I am hopeful. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is very much eager to promote rule of law, so I believe she has a plan to do this. We want to see less discrimination, less arbitrary arrests, less killings. I think she can revoke some of these repressive and unnecessary laws. In terms of what she can do immediately in Rakhine State, I think she could work to return IDPs and work for proper resettlement, as well as remove the restrictions faced by the Rohingya in regards to education, movement and both general and reproductive healthcare. Those are some of the easier jobs for her to do, but even then I could see it taking two to three years.

Source: Former Political Prisoner Wai Wai Nu on Discrimination, the Rohingya People, and the Future of Myanmar | wnn interviews global

Mossad proxy faked violent Facebook anti-Semitism | The Electronic Intifada

An Israeli legal group with intimate ties to the state’s intelligence agencies has admitted to faking an ostensibly pro-Palestinian Facebook page and using it to post anti-Semitic statements including “Death to all the Jews.”The Israeli group has also filed a lawsuit against Facebook, for allegedly permitting Palestinian “incitement.”Shurat HaDin claims to be a “civil rights organization.” Various media reports have described it as an “Israeli non-governmental organization,” an “advocacy group,” or even a neutral-sounding “law center” – the group’s self-description also adopted by The Guardian and PBS.But US embassy cables leaked by Chelsea Manning and published by WikiLeaks tell a very different story.Shurat HaDin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner privately told a US embassy official that her group “took direction” on which court cases to pursue. She claimed that she “receives evidence” from Israel’s international espionage and assassination agency Mossad and from Israel’s National Security Council.Mossad anti-SemitismIn a video published to YouTube last week, Shurat HaDin claimed responsibility for the creation of a Facebook page titled “Stop Israelis” on 29 December.

Source: Mossad proxy faked violent Facebook anti-Semitism | The Electronic Intifada

Fervor in Oregon Compound and Fear Outside It – The New York Times

Unfamiliar people have been stalking refuge employees, idling outside their homes and questioning them at some of the few grocery stores in Burns, said the sheriff, Dave Ward. “While not direct physical threats,” he said in a statement recently, “these activities are clearly designed to try to intimidate.”Tensions escalated over the weekend when another band of outsiders arrived at the refuge’s entrance, toting long guns and promising to act as liaisons between law enforcement officials and the occupiers at Malheur. When the occupiers rebuffed the group, the newcomers headed to the county courthouse, surrounded it and demanded to meet with the sheriff. He acquiesced, but nothing came of the meeting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyInside the occupied compound, life has settled into a sort of giddy war-room-style routine, one that mixes the mundane — laundry, snowball fights, nap time for the children — with bellicose talk of facing down federal agents and heading off what some people holed up in the compound say is a government plan to force all Americans to move to cities by 2040.“We expect the federal government to voluntarily step back, observe the Constitution and back off,” Ryan Bundy, who is leading the occupation with his brother Ammon, said in an interview at the compound. “They better back off,” Mr. Bundy continued. “If they don’t, then this is going to continue to happen.”PhotoZoey Justus, 9, came with her parents to meet the occupiers at the wildlife refuge. Credit Julie Turkewitz/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, the occupiers emerged once again at the entrance to the refuge, and a spokesman for the group, LaVoy Finicum, a rancher in his mid-50s from Arizona, stood before the microphone to announce that the protesters would travel to town on Friday evening “to explain to the community why we are here and when we will be leaving.”The refuge sits about 30 miles from Burns, in a remote area past snow-covered ranches and a single restaurant labeled “saloon.” The Bundy brothers, sons of a Nevada rancher named Cliven Bundy who made national news in 2014 for facing down the federal government over grazing fees on public lands, say they came here to support Dwight L. Hammond and his son Steven D. Hammond, who have been jailed for arson for setting fires that burned federal lands. However, the Hammond family and other local ranchers have said they do not welcome the gesture.The protesters, most of them from outside Oregon, have blocked off the entrance road with a conscripted government vehicle, and each morning they haul out a photo-ready horse named Hellboy for a quick news conference with reporters. The landscape is surveyed 24 hours a day by a rotating cast of armed watchmen who climb into a fire tower with broken windows.Each morning at 4, a man named Duane Ehmer takes Hellboy on a pre-dawn inspection of the refuge, an 1860 cavalry pistol clipped to his hip. “I’m looking for anybody that ain’t supposed to be there,” he said.PhotoAmmon Bundy, left, one of the occupation leaders, and one of his sons at the wildlife refuge on Saturday night. Credit Julie Turkewitz/The New York TimesDeeper inside, down an icy, tree-lined road, the group has seized about a dozen buildings, and the Bundy brothers have commandeered the cluttered office of Linda Sue Beck, a government biologist who had been leading a war on invasive carp before the occupiers took over.The heart of the protest, however, is a quarter-mile from the biologist’s office, at a bunkhouse with bedrooms and a large kitchen where women marinate chicken, grill salmon, bake brownies and organize a stockroom that swelling with donations from around the nation. To slip in, a reporter just has to ask.“We are here because we are needed. We were asked to come,” said Debra Bass, 61, a Nevadan who is running the kitchen. Speaking of Harney County ranchers, she said, “Our hope is to lift them up and give them the courage to fight back.”On any given day, there appeared to be about 25 people on the compound, though the number varies with visitors. The Justus family was visiting from Baker City, Ore., where they say they have been frustrated by management coming from Washington, D.C., including a plan they said would close hundreds of miles of roads in their area. “It’s like New York asking me to run a subway,” Mr. Justus said. “It doesn’t make sense.”Other visitors included Matt Wandersee, 26, a barber from Texas; Kristi Jernigan, 44, who described herself as a Christian missionary from Tennessee; and Paul Nelson O’Leary, an Idahoan who came dressed as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Source: Fervor in Oregon Compound and Fear Outside It – The New York Times

Marseille anti-Semitic attacks spark debate over wearing skull caps | News | DW.COM | 12.01.2016

A string of anti-Semitic attacks in Marseille has raised questions over whether Jewish men and boys should wear their skullcaps. The city’s Jewish leader Zvi Ammar has urged Jews not to wear a kippa “until better days.”

Source: Marseille anti-Semitic attacks spark debate over wearing skull caps | News | DW.COM | 12.01.2016

Police: Cologne gangs attack foreigners | News | DW.COM | 11.01.2016

Cologne tabloid “Express” reported on Monday that a group of “bikers, hooligans and bouncers” had used Facebook to plan a “human hunt” to “clean up” Cologne’s city center. Early on Monday, a police spokesperson was unable to confirm the reports.On Sunday afternoon, police had received tipoffs about “groups,” which were “specifically looking for provocation,” police said. Officers were deployed in the city center and Cologne’s “Altstadt” quarter in large numbers. As the result of several identity checks, four people were briefly detained, reported a police spokesman. Whether they were among the attackers is yet to be determined. Two people also faced criminal charges.

Source: Police: Cologne gangs attack foreigners | News | DW.COM | 11.01.2016

Who benefits when the police allow white German and “immigrant” thugs to take charge of law and justice? Anyone buying brown shirts in bulk?

Attacks on Women in Germany – The New York Times

“For the chancellor, it is important that first of all the whole truth is laid on the table, that nothing is held back, or prettified,” said Georg Streiter, a spokesman for Ms. Merkel. Anything else would undermine Germany’s rule of law and also hurt the overwhelming majority of innocent refugees who seek shelter, he added.Regarding the assaults in Cologne, “this is a matter not of refugees, but above all of criminality,” Mr. Streiter said.

Source: 18 Asylum Seekers Tied to Attacks on Women in Germany – The New York Times

Fear Factor Rising for Federal Workers as Refuge Occupation Goes Unchallenged – The New York Times

So, the notion that these yahoos can take over federal buildings and go on national TV while facing no consequences – and no prospect of future consequences, a la Cliven – means that you are encouraging even more of these incidents.I am not urging a Waco-like mechanized assault.  I am suggesting that Cliven be prosecuted and imprisoned. Moreover, the Department of Justice should begin now preparing federal charges against the Malheur occupiers.The model should be how the feds handled the Recapture Canyon incident. There a Utah county commissioner, some local activists and even a Bundy son defied a federal order to close a trail to protect archaeological and natural resources. The demonstration of driving a parade of all-terrain vehicles through the closed area went off without any law enforcement resistance.Shortly afterward, however, the organizers were all prosecuted— with the leader sentenced to jail with a hefty fine.The utter absence of an appropriate, proximate response tacitly concedes the legitimacy of this utter craziness.  And, we can only expect more of these dangerous incidents.

Source: Fear Factor Rising for Federal Workers as Refuge Occupation Goes Unchallenged – The New York Times