Category Archives: human rights

Britain sees spike in hate crimes after Brexit vote | Europe | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

On Sunday morning, staff at the Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in Hammersmith, west London, woke up to an unpleasant surprise: racist graffiti daubed over the entrance of the building. This was not an isolated incident. In Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, cards saying “Leave the EU” and “No more Polish vermin” were found outside St Peter’s School. An 11-year-old Polish child told reporters that the leaflets had made him feel “really sad.” Similar leaflets were put through people’s doors in the area. “As an eastern European, I feel worried,” says Ana Petrov, a Bulgarian national who has lived in southern England for three years. “I have built my home here but now I wonder if I speak in Bulgarian on the phone in public, will someone shout at me that I should leave? Or worse?” According to initial police figures, there has been a sharp spike in hate crimes since last week’s referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU: an increase of 57 percent in reported incidents between Thursday and Sunday, compared with the same days four weeks earlier. In addition to the incidents reported to police, accounts of verbal abuse have proliferated on social media. “I suddenly feel a lot further away from home,” German national Karoline Weber, who works in London, told DW. While much of the aggression has been targeted at EU nationals, non-white Britons have also been affected. BBC journalist Sima Kotecha was called a “Paki” while reporting on the responses to the Brexit vote in her home town of Basingstoke. Channel 4 News correspondent Ciaran Jenkins heard three people shout “send them home” in the space of five minutes as he reported on the referendum in Barnsley in northern England. “The attacks are mostly on eastern European migrants – but not all,” says Liz Fekete, director of the Institute for Race Relations. “What we’re observing is Muslim women are a prime target and a lot of children as well. A lot of damage has been done to social and community cohesion. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done to repair that.”

Source: Britain sees spike in hate crimes after Brexit vote | Europe | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

A Brexit for English as EU language? | News | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

Danuta Hubner, a Polish politician and chair of the European Parliament’s constutitional affairs committee, has come out with a warning that a British exit from the European Union could also delete English from the EU’s list of 24 official languages. That possibility reverberated Tuesday far beyond the administrative levels of Article 50 – the provision allowing a member state to leave the bloc under EU treaty rules. Addressing the European Parliament on Tuesday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke only in French and German, clearly avoiding the use of English. During past crises, on the euro zone, for example, he had used English prominently as well. “We have a regulation … where every EU country has the right to notify one official language,” Hübner had told a press conference late on Monday. “If we don’t have the UK, we don’t have English (as an official language),” she warned, adding that keeping it would require assent by all remaining member states.

Source: A Brexit for English as EU language? | News | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

Researchers welcome discovery of rare helium gas in Tanzania | News | DW.COM | “Spin, hot air, destroy the earth for profit.”

Researchers say the discovery of as much as 54 billion cubic feet of the gas in southern Tanzania could satisfy total world demand for almost seven years at current rates.

Source: Researchers welcome discovery of rare helium gas in Tanzania | News | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

Brexit: Nigel Farage tells European Parliament ‘Britain won’t be the last country to leave the EU’ – Brexit: UK EU Referendum – ABC News Beneath contempt for his support of racism!

“What the little people did, what the ordinary people did, what the people who have been oppressed over the last few years and seen their living standards go down … they rejected big politics, and they said ‘actually, we want our country back’. “I make one prediction this morning: The United Kingdom will not be the last member state to leave the European Union. The UK Independence Party leader, who was a key supporter of the Leave campaign, was booed as he told Parliament: “I know virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives or worked, worked in a business or worked in a trade.” After Brexit roadmap The British have spoken in their EU membership referendum and they want out. What happens to Europe now? Earlier, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker asked the UKIP leader why he had attended the session. The UKIP representatives had applauded after Mr Juncker had told Parliament: “We must respect British democracy and the way it has expressed its view.” “That’s the last time you are applauding here … and to some extent I’m really surprised you are here. You are fighting for the exit. The British people voted in favour of the exit. Why are you here?” Juncker said, breaking from his speech text.

Source: Brexit: Nigel Farage tells European Parliament ‘Britain won’t be the last country to leave the EU’ – Brexit: UK EU Referendum – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Zika Bill Is Blocked by Senate Democrats Upset Over Provisions – The New York Times

Democrats blocked the bill because they said Republicans were using the must-pass legislation to score political points, jam through unpalatable policy changes, or cut money from other programs. Among the provisions, they said, were efforts to hinder access to contraception for women, and to weaken environmental restrictions on pesticide use.

Source: Zika Bill Is Blocked by Senate Democrats Upset Over Provisions – The New York Times

Democrats charged that Republicans had booby-trapped the legislation by adding provisions that included a ban on any direct government financing for Planned Parenthood, the women’s health organization, to provide contraceptive services related to fighting the Zika virus, which is also transmitted sexually.

The Democrats also said that Republicans had inserted a provision cutting $500 million in financing for the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health care law, and that they had stripped a House provision that would ban the flying of the Confederate battle flag in federal cemeteries.

Brexit and the New Axis? Germany, France and Italy? Cameron becomes the deja vu – oops – Chamberlin?

The New Directorate

Beyond such long-term agreements, Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited France’s President, François Hollande, Italy’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi and EU Council President Donald Tusk to Berlin, Monday to discuss the EU’s future, after Great Britain’s withdrawal. The objective is to agree upon important stipulations prior to the EU’s Tuesday summit – which is similar to the 2010 – 2011 meetings she had held with the French president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy (“Merkozy”), to set the guidelines for the EU’s handling of the Euro crisis. Observes point to the fact that Merkel’s inviting Renzi along with Hollande has ostentatiously demoted France’s status. Simultaneously, German media are speaking in terms of the EU’s “new directorate.” Of course, there is no doubt that “Germany remains the most important EU nation, both politically as well as economically.”[11] In practice, the “directorate” serves the function – as in the previous cases of Merkel’s Sarkozy meetings – primarily of transmission of German specifications to the EU’s other member countries.

The Central Role – Berlin’s predominance within the EU is being, more or less, officially confirmed by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. Also in the future, Germany will “continue to play a central role, if not an even more significant role, in the European Union,” Juncker declared.[12]

Supranational Repression

Parallel to preparations for the transformation of the European Union, leading German Social Democrats are calling for supplementary steps for the political-economic streamlining the EU or its core.[13] For example, in their position paper entitled “Re-Found Europe,” Germany’s Minister of the Economy, Sigmar Gabriel, and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, are calling for an expansion of the EU’s single market, under the topic an “economic Schengen.” In the process, across the board “central” job market reforms must be implemented. The masses in the French population are currently up in arms fighting the imposition of these job market reforms.[14] In addition, Gabriel and Schulz are calling on the EU to “more than ever” “act as a unified governing force,” which would signify that the “communitarization” of the EU’s foreign policy. The implementation of this communitarization, would mean Germany’s global interests being pursued via institutions in Brussels due, to a large extent, to Berlin’s predominance within the EU. Finally, the German social democrats are calling for the systematic creation and expansion of supra-national structures of repression. For example, institutions warding off refugees from the EU must be systematically reinforced (“effectively securing European external borders”) and cooperation between domestic repressive authorities intensified. The creation, for example, of a “European FBI” should be an objective.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

From Julia Gillard to Hillary Clinton: online abuse of politicians around the world | Technology | The Guardian

Hillary Clinton received almost twice as much abuse as Bernie Sanders on Twitter this year, according to a wide-ranging analysis provided to the Guardian that compared the treatment of politicians in the US, UK and Australia.The abuse of politicians online, particularly women, is perceived by some to come with the territory. But as high-profile cases flag the urgent need to clean up the web, the scope of the problem is now revealed in greater detail in work by a Brisbane-based social data company, Max Kelsen.

Source: From Julia Gillard to Hillary Clinton: online abuse of politicians around the world | Technology | The Guardian

Pope says Church should ask forgiveness from gays for past treatment | Reuters

Pope Francis said on Sunday that Christians and the Roman Catholic Church should seek forgiveness from homosexuals for the way they had treated them.Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome from Armenia, he also said the Church should ask forgiveness for the way it has treated women, for turning a blind eye to child labor and for “blessing so many weapons” in the past.

Source: Pope says Church should ask forgiveness from gays for past treatment | Reuters

This rapper rallied to stop violence on Baltimore streets. An hour later, he was shot and killed. – The Washington Post

RIP – He was a rapper trying to stop violence in Baltimore. Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, had just finished hosting a charity basketball game. The fliers advertising the event had said, “Pray for peace in these streets.” Music artists and important faces from around the city had come together to prove they could get along. Lor Scoota got in his car and left the arena. Bringing peace to Baltimore was a message he had been trying to spread — on panels, in classrooms and in his music. “How I’m supposed to live with all this death in my sight?” the 23-year-old had once sang. Lor Scoota was about a mile away from the arena when he was shot and killed Saturday night.

Source: This rapper rallied to stop violence on Baltimore streets. An hour later, he was shot and killed. – The Washington Post

Tribute to Judith, to nine years of femicide in the villa 31 – Red Harvest

Paul Zapulla, head of the National Campaign Against Institutional Violence in Villa 31, told Red Harvest that one of the objectives of the campaign is “to organize the families of the victims of trigger within neighborhoods so they can seek justice” and avoid other cases. For them, “Gumer is a pride to have lost value representing a daughter and keep fighting every day.” She is always the first to “get to meetings and the last to leave.” Judith Gimenez’s mother encourages young people to continue fighting. Does not give up not only by the memory of her daughter, but her two grandchildren “villera pure strain” Nicholas Valentina four years and two. “I fight so that they can grow and live freely, enjoy your neighborhood and walk to the time it is,” said Red Harvest. He added: “where there is an injustice, murder or police doing a bad job there will be present, always.”

Source: Tribute to Judith, to nine years of femicide in the villa 31 – Red Harvest