Category Archives: human rights

After ‘Brexit’ Vote, Immigrants Feel a Town Turn Against Them – The New York Times

“Something is broken in this town,” said Paul Gleeson, a Labour Party councilor in Boston, where 76 percent of voters supported leaving the European Union, the highest pro-“Brexit” proportion in the country. “This veneer of propriety has suddenly disappeared.’’In this new environment, some immigrants say they have stopped speaking their native tongue in public. Nervous mothers say they worry about their children being bullied at school. Young immigrants say they fear discrimination over jobs and university admissions.Gregory Pacho, who is Polish-Italian, runs a thriving taxi company. For the first time in the 16 years he has lived in Boston, he said, he has given serious thought to moving out, prompted by a leaflet on his car’s windshield that read, “Did you pack your bags yet?”Some of his English clients, with whom he joked over the years, no longer talk to him. “In one week, you experience that some people you’ve known for three years change their attitudes 180 degrees,” he said.PhotoPolish and Chinese shops sharing a neighborhood in Boston, where 76 percent of voters supported leaving the European Union. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMagdalena Korzeb, 34, said she had long considered herself half-Bostonian, having worked, paid taxes and lived here for 11 years with her husband and 5-year-old daughter. Not anymore.Continue reading the main storyADVERTISEMENT‘Brexit’: Britain’s Decision to Leave the E.U.Updates on Britain’s exit from the European Union.Obama Tells NATO That ‘Europe Can Count On’ the U.S.JUL 9Why the E.U. Had It ComingJUL 9Contest for British Premier Flares Over Claims on MotherhoodJUL 9NATO Unity, Tested by Russia, Shows Some CracksJUL 8New British Premier Will Be: A WomanJUL 8See More »RELATED COVERAGEIN DEBTEconomic Uncertainty Remains Even After ‘Brexit’ JULY 8, 2016‘Brexit’: Explaining Britain’s Vote on European Union Membership APRIL 5, 2016Overwhelmed by ‘Brexit’? Here Are the Basics JUNE 24, 2016“I feel used. Eleven years wasted. Eleven years ago, they were so happy to invite us here,” she said at the Delight Pub, a Polish bar that she owns on West Street. (English locals call it “East Street” because of the number of Eastern European shops.) “I could now close my shop, pack my bags and say, ‘Bye-bye.’”

Source: After ‘Brexit’ Vote, Immigrants Feel a Town Turn Against Them – The New York Times

His name is Philando Castile. He was murdered by the police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota | 3CHICSPOLITICO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486KsA193EE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlZVCyJoz0o

 

Philando Castile was stopped for a “routine ” traffic stop. AND NOW IS DEAD!! Asked for his information,  he volunteered to his murderer that he had a weapon, because he had a  permit. …

Source: His name is Philando Castile. He was murdered by the police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Can We Handle the Truth?

We are a nation obsessed with fake news sites and conspiracy theories—which may very well be paving the way to victory for a president for whom fiction always trumps the facts.

Source: Can We Handle the Truth?

The explosion of fake news websites giving way to memes perpetuating untruths does more than just exploit readers for monetized clicks; it fosters a socially toxic mistrust of all media reports as politically biased fantasy, irrespective of the legitimacy (“professionalism”) of the outlets. One of the strangest examples of our current post-truth condition was a viral tweet claiming to show a female Trump supporter who’d been beaten up by “liberals.” There had indeed been violence at anti-Trump protests, but this image was not evidence of those altercations. In fact, it was Ash vs. Evil Dead actress Samara Weaving doing a makeup test. On-screen, the special-effects fakery is acceptable and even necessary to advance plotlines, etc. Remove the context, though, and what do you have? An illusion out-of-the-box becomes a corrupt political narrative.

How Israel is turning anti-occupation activists into dissidents | +972 Magazine

“If you are not for the government, you are anti-Israel, scum, a mole, an outsider who should be made not a citizen

On another front, Culture Minister Miri Regev has been working for several years to curtail political dissent in the arts. Last month Regev sent questionnaires to artists asking them whether they perform in West Bank settlements, the first step in cutting funding on the basis of political conscious. A year earlier she warned, “institutions that delegitimize the State of Israel will not receive funding.”Combined with a range of other pieces of legislation, policies and actions by government officials and extra-parliamentary groups, the cumulative effect of the NGO Law is to portray those working to end the occupation, fighting for equality and liberal democratic values as dissidents subverting the State of Israel itself.Speaking at the Herzliya Conference last month, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced a new legislative initiative to install legal — perhaps criminal — sanctions against Israelis who actively oppose government policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.“There’s no real price for somebody or an organization working against his country in order to isolate it in the world,” explained Erdan, whose ministerial responsibilities include Israel’s law enforcement agencies. “I’ve already established a legal team together with the Justice Ministry to create government-sponsored legislation in that context.”“We understand that there is a need to draw a line between freedom of expression and democratic values, in which we believe and want to safeguard,” Erdan continued, “but if we want to convince the world that delegitimzation is unacceptable and for which a price must be paid, then it needs to start here in Israel.”In the same speech, Erdan discussed the need to use Israel’s intelligence capabilities against individuals and organizations working to end the occupation, drawing direct parallels to the methods Israel has used to fight terrorism, including searching for tangential and indirect ties to terrorist organizations, finding financial improprieties, smearing individuals, and shutting down bank accounts.

Source: How Israel is turning anti-occupation activists into dissidents | +972 Magazine

Victims, Not Threats: The Massacred In Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Yemen Are Not Terrorists For Hateful Rhetoric

Meet Adel Al-Jaf. He also calls himself Adel Euro, so you might know him by that. He was a rapper, a dancer and a man who tried to do the best that he could with what he had in his country. Last ye…

Source: Victims, Not Threats: The Massacred In Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Yemen Are Not Terrorists For Hateful Rhetoric

Sarah Sadaka, an Arab living in the United States, was going to a Best Buy store today. She went into that store speaking on her phone in Arabic, only to be circled by a woman who made it clear that her presence, her skin, her language made her uncomfortable. No one came to Sarah’s defense: she was just another sand nigger, breathing that free American air on the fourth of July. She did not deserve to have her right as a human being not to be violated that way taken away, she is, after all, only Arab.

Sarah, today, is the living embodiment of what it is to be the victim of terrorism in the United States, except this time it’s the brand championed by the likes of Donald Trump and the people with whom his rhetoric resonates.

When Omar Mateen went to a gay night club in Orlando and killed 49 people, mainstream American media only saw his name Omar as enough reason to justify his actions. He was just another Muslim. He was just another Middle Eastern offended by “our” way of life. Except Omar Mateen did not do so in the name of Islam, he did it in the name of his own insecurities, the insecurities of a man who is afraid of his own sexuality and who is so deluded in his own belief that he’d support two politically opposed factions in Hezbollah and ISIS as vindications for his action.

Omar Mateen’s characterization, and the repercussions that follow it, are a direct result of the kind of terrorism that Arabs and Muslims have to endure at the hands of people like Donald Trump, the Far Right across the world, and the minds that listen to them.

My mother tongue has become synonymous in people’s minds with death. If I speak it on a plane, I become an automatic threat, forced to undergo security checks, apprehended by officials because the words I utter from lips only resonate with fear, even if it’s to say: peace be upon you.

Victims, not threats. The more we are silent towards our murder, our decimation, and our characterization as people who do not deserve to live, the more we perpetuate the notion that people who think of Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners and those that live in the area are worth nothing is true. The more we are subdued in not demanding our deaths be remembered, be proclaimed, be cared for, the more our inherent value slips even further, even less than it already is, down an abyss in which the least valuable lives on this planet are Arab lives.

I should not be living in a world where I need to convince a friend of mine not to name his son Abdul Rahman because the name is “too Muslim.” I should not be living in a world where I have to defend myself at my own funeral. I should not be living in a world where the deaths of two hundred Iraqis is considered as just another bleb on the evening news, as they are just a waste of space.

We are people too, and we are worthy of life, one in which two hundred of us do not die at a mall buying new clothes for their children. We are victims, not threats.

Islamic extremists attack Christian village in Egypt, burn 80 homes

“Under Sisi the Coptic communities get protection from the military which then fuels sectarian attacks against Copts,” he said, adding that Egypt’s Christians have also been blamed for Sisi’s military coup because of their close ties with the army.Just last month, Egypt’s Christians were victim to a similar attack condemned by President Sisi in which 300 Muslims looted and torched Christian homes in the south, and stripped a 70-year-old Christian woman naked after accusing her son of having an affair with a Muslim woman, according to Reuters.President Sisi and other Muslim leaders have also spoken out about combating religious extremist ideology leading to incitement and sectarian violence.“Under (President Hosni) Mubarak we didn’t have as many cases against Copts as we have under Sisi,” Abdelmalak said.“I don’t think Sisi is personally pushing to marginalize Copts, but he’s not helping the situation either. He is living in denial about there even being a sectarian problem.”

Source: Islamic extremists attack Christian village in Egypt, burn 80 homes

Racist graffiti scrawled outside Spanish school in London | In English | EL PAÍS

A photograph of the scrawl soon appeared on a number of parent and student WhatsApp groups, prompting Fran Pereira, whose children attend the school, to report it. “I went to the police with the photo. The next day they went to the school, but it had been covered up,” he says, adding: “The Brexit campaign has been very heavy about rejecting anything foreign. Their win has emboldened them and we are now a bit fearful: we don’t feel safe.”The head of the school said security cameras would now be installed, while cautioning: “We shouldn’t give this any more attention than it deserves.” Police patrols in the area are to be stepped up, while local residents sent a bouquet of flowers to the school expressing their solidarity.“The mood has changed, and this is just another example,” says Patricia Rodríguez of the school’s parent-teacher association. Next year the school intends to change its uniform to incorporate a Spanish flag, a move that has worried some parents.“It will make it easier to identify our children as foreigners, and we’re afraid they may be attacked as a result,” says Juan Miguel Garrido, and who believes the school has not taken the matter seriously enough.

Source: Racist graffiti scrawled outside Spanish school in London | In English | EL PAÍS

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Netanyahu asks to expel Arab MK, Hanin Zoabi, from Knesset – PNN

Earlier on Wednesday Zoabi caused an uproar on the Knesset floor when she strongly condemned the Israeli forces’ videotaped attack on Turkish activists who were killed during their participation in Freedom Flotilla in 2010. The murderer has to pay compensation for the families of Turkish victims, she said during a debate discussing the newly-signed deal between Israel and Turkey. Zoabi considered the deal as a “murder confession.”Zoabi demanded the Israeli government issue an apology both to the “political activists” aboard the Mavi Marmara, on which she sailed in solidarity, and to herself, from those who “incited against [her] for six years.”During the debate, Israeli MKs tried to physically attack Zoabi following her address. Several MKs began shouting and moved toward the podium to complain. “Come hit me! Come hit me!” Zoabi shouted to the MKs who were pointing and yelling at her.As MKs mobbed the stage, Zoabi shouted “they murdered” and “shut up” repeatedly.When Deputy Knesset Speaker Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beytenu) asked her to apologize, Zoabi said: “The Israeli soldiers who murdered are the ones who need to apologize! You need to apologize!” The Joint List strongly denounced the attack, considering it a “fascist assault.” It added, “The racist and bloody attack against Joint List MKs has notably escalated, calling for an end to the continued incitement against Arab MKs and Hanan Zoabi in particular”.

Source: Netanyahu asks to expel Arab MK, Hanin Zoabi, from Knesset – PNN

Fifty Stockholm heart patients hit by superbug – The Local

Four of the 52 patients affected have died, and the hospital believes an antibiotic-resistant strain of the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria was the cause of death in at least one case. The outbreak was discovered this spring but is believed to have begun in the autumn. All of the patients affected had undergone open heart surgery at the Thorax Clinic in Solna. “We have put in place a range of measures and hope now to have stopped the spread, since we haven’t seen any new cases for two to three weeks,” chief physician Elda Sparrelid told news agency TT. The hospital has not yet fully ascertained whether the patients died as a result of the outbreak. “It’s not so easy to conclude as these are patients who were very sick for different reasons, but we do have strong suspicions in at least one case,” she said. The strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae at Karolinska contains ESBL, an enzyme that can break down antibiotics. Most of the patients affected have carried the bacteria without suffering unduly, since the bacteria itself does not generally make people sick. If however they need any treatment requiring antibiotics doctors could find that these no longer work.

Source: Fifty Stockholm heart patients hit by superbug – The Local

Nieto 120: “The support of Grandmothers energizes me to witness my ownership” – Red Harvest

José Luis’s mother did not suffer a kidnapping in the strict sense of the term. They applied another type of ordeal. After the operation where they took her husband (who was later imprisoned politician in Coronda and regained his freedom in 1982) and her mother, Ana Elena Schoesting; Luisa’s sister, Griselda Pratto, 15, arrived from Buenos Aires to help. She was also kidnapped. When Luisa entered the hospital to have her baby, in March 1977, she was forced to surrender the child threatened to kill her husband. Then followed the gang visiting at home to torture and abuse her. And released, her mother accompanied her on claims by her husband and son.In the 80s, a neighbor brought clues to the whereabouts of the child, who sought for years. But appropriators threatened the family Ratto Maulin, while providing the child stolen explanations did not close it. The cause Airbase, in 2006, collected several testimonies of what had been state terrorism in the area. In 2008, Luisa and her sister Griselda said to justice. And that left the note on the radio that caught the ear of José Luis. Today the grandson 120 declared for the first time before the court in the cause of its appropriation, and so will his parents and aunt Griselda. “This support gives me energy Grandmothers to testify, is a great incentive. I’m hopeful , “said Red Harvest shortly before returning to his province. He recalled that saw many times the press conferences of other grandchildren, “When Estela found hers, was so happy that sent me a good roast”. Lucila Puyol and Guillermo Munnué (lawyers) and Valeria Silva are part of the team accompanying CHILDREN Jose Luis at trial and that he also accompanied Grandmothers in Buenos Aires. “This case was not registered between allegations of missing children Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, nor in new cases that, thanks to research from the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI), are incorporated into the Bank “I read the statement Grandmothers that spread after the press conference. “This is another case of abduction, concealment and falsification of identity of a baby in the framework of state terrorism, like all of our grandsons and granddaughters appropriate. Thanks to his courage and family were able to reconstruct the events genocide tried to erase and distort. After in-depth know its history and the sufferings of their parents recover, the Association decided to incorporate appropriate to list of restituted grandchildren, as an act of reparation and historical truth. ”

Source: Nieto 120: “The support of Grandmothers energizes me to witness my ownership” – Red Harvest