Category Archives: Just strange

AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local German Far-Right learning from American Far Right in Accusing those who oppose them as being racists!?!

After media reported that the Worker’s Welfare Institution (AWO) said it would not hire members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or similar groups, one branch of the hard right party took to Facebook to respond. AWO is a non-statutory welfare organization that assists, in particular, socially disadvantaged people with workers’ rights issues. AWO said that AfD’s ideas were not compatible with its own principles, according Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the Rheinische Post, the Krefeld branch of the AfD in North-Rhine Westphalia wrote in a post that soon members of the party would have to wear “blue stars” – a reference to the yellow star of David that Jewish people were forced to wear to identify themselves under Nazi Germany. “And there continue to be more bans on AFD members working. Are you excited to already be wearing the blue star? We know: We will have to wear the star as a mark of honour! To the bitter end!”

Source: AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local

Cologne police ‘fail to act’ as anarchy breaks out at school – The Local

The pupils also accuse the police of being slow to react. “When we asked you for ambulances and help you replied by saying ‘we need to make a judgement on the situation’, even though it was clear to everyone that the situation had descended into anarchy.” A parent of one of the pupils told Spiegel that “the police only intervened after my son and the other boy were injured. Before that they stood to the side and spoke through a megaphone even though it was clear that their mere presence was doing nothing to stop the attacks.”

Source: Cologne police ‘fail to act’ as anarchy breaks out at school – The Local

Donald Trump: I love this country. We’re going to make our country great again.It’s payback time! It’s payback time! | 3CHICSPOLITICO

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

Donald Trump is a dangerous racist sob. How can he be allowed to continue his campaign? It’s payback time? Who is he going to pay back? And for what? The country electing a black Potus? This is scary. It will not end well.

Source: Donald Trump: I love this country. We’re going to make our country great again.It’s payback time! It’s payback time! | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Video: Donald Trump Encourages Violent Supporters & Vows To Ruin Protesters’ Lives: Gothamist

And because doubling down is something Trump is good at, he further encouraged the violent rhetoric with a tweet threat directed at Bernie Sanders this morning (see below). Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” he denied it was a threat, and instead deployed double-speak to argue that he “should get credit, not be scorned” for how he’s handled these “disruptions” from his enemies. In response to all that, Sanders told Tapper that his campaign “had nothing to do” with what happened in Chicago. “Even his Republican colleagues make this point: His language, his intonation, when he talks about carrying people out in stretchers…this is a man who keeps implying violence, and then you end up getting what you seek,” he said.

Source: Video: Donald Trump Encourages Violent Supporters & Vows To Ruin Protesters’ Lives: Gothamist

McGraw-Hill destroys textbook to placate pro-Israel bloggers | The Electronic Intifada

Given the highly politicized nature of all discussion related to Palestine in the United States, the definition of who is an “independent academic” would vary widely depending on the perspective of who is making the assessment. And if the “experts” are indeed independent, they should be willing to provide an explanation of how and why they deemed the maps to be inaccurate. The only way that McGraw-Hill’s credibility can be assessed is with some transparency about the groups or “experts” who made this recommendation. Otherwise, we are left to assume that McGraw-Hill is effectively burning books to placate the censorship demands of right-wing anti-Palestinian bigots.

Source: McGraw-Hill destroys textbook to placate pro-Israel bloggers | The Electronic Intifada

A Texas Candidate Pushes the Boundary of the Far Right – The New York Times

Ms. Bruner’s anti-Obama, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-gay Facebook posts have generated national headlines and turned an obscure school board election into a glimpse of the outer limits of Texas politics. In a part of the state dominated by conservative Christians and Tea Party activists, Ms. Bruner’s candidacy has posed a question no one can answer with any certainty — how far to the fringe is too far for Texas Republicans? Ms. Bruner was a relative political newcomer when she started her campaign to represent a 31-county section of northern East Texas on the 15-member board that sets curriculum standards, reviews and adopts textbooks, and establishes graduation requirements in Texas public schools. Because of the board’s clout in selecting textbooks for all of the state’s schools, it can influence the content of textbooks produced nationwide. Here in Ms. Bruner’s hometown, Mineola, and elsewhere in intensely conservative East Texas, her views fit a widely accepted anti-Obama and conspiracy friendly antigovernment mind-set. Inside Kitchens Hardware and Deli, the combination hardware store and diner where Mr. Clark was eating, a sign on a shelf read, “Hillary for Prison 2016.” A woman in a nearby store who declined to give her name said she would not hold Ms. Bruner’s Facebook posts against her, and spoke at length about her belief that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was a government-staged hoax.

Source: A Texas Candidate Pushes the Boundary of the Far Right – The New York Times

Bahraini government strips WhatsApp groups of any privacy – IFEX

On Sunday 6 March, the Education Ministry – specifically the department responsible for secondary education – sent a message to all secondary school heads demanding that the contents of messages sent by teachers and students in WhatsApp groups be examined. The Ministry threatened to take legal action against anyone found to have sent messages that “insult authorities.” These are the kind of bombastic expressions the authorities have used over recent years to target political activists, opponents and critics. This announcement came just days after a landmark speech by Hayat Abdel Majid, the head of the sector targeting electronic crime at the Ministry of Interior’s Department for anti-corruption and economic and electronic security. In this speech, Abdel Majid said that the administrator of any WhatsApp group would be responsible and legally culpable for any defamatory news, rumours or inaccurate information circulated in that group. She also stated that members of a group could be held responsible for its content. She announced that the punishment could extend to a period of two years in prison and a fine of 200 Bahraini dinars, or one of these, in accordance with Article 168 of the law governing the spreading of defamatory information. The Ministry of Interior had previously announced, on 7 February 2016, the arrest of a group of people who had participated in the “al-Busta” WhatsApp group. The Ministry confirmed that they were supported by foreign powers in connection with terrorist activities within Bahrain. A number of people were also arrested over allegedly insulting statements about the authorities that they shared on WhatsApp. AbdAli Khair is still serving a 10-year prison sentence for forwarding a WhatsApp message.

Source: Bahraini government strips WhatsApp groups of any privacy – IFEX

Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

{Dehumanization Plus!}

But as if there is a curse following the Palestinian being, she sent me an hour later a photo with her new residency written on it: “A Jordanian refugee in Israel”. She tried at the beginning or rationalize with them saying that this was wrong. She is not a Jordanian refugee in Israel. They insisted she was. She was trying to explain to them that she was Jerusalemite. She tried or explains her status and they insisted she was lying and that she was a refugee. Somehow, apparently, together with the crisis of refugees she was a cause of threat as an assumed refugee. Actually a confirmed refugee after that new residency that gave the employee a reason to panic and consider her a potential threat, to a level where she forced her to leave, and when my daughter refused insisting that this was a mistake, they called the police or get her out. The woman was telling her: You are a liar. You are a refugee. This is not even a passport that you are carrying “. My daughter called me crying, trying to get out the whole feeling of humiliation she got experienced being dragged out of a place by the police in front of people watching her in what felt like a public humiliation act. She was questioning something else: “ Am I a Jordanian refugee?” the whole thing made her question her own identity. What she knows as basic rights. All those laws that define her special status as a person living under occupation with a special status. A status that the international law, with a country likes France that secures the status quo of Jerusalem that secures the status of Jerusalemites. While we spend our lives carrying a nationality that is not ours. Living in our country as “immigrants”, moving around with a document that is not a passport that calls on a state of panic each time we check through borders. And then an employee who decided to carry on the Zionist vision of Israel with Jerusalem as the unified capital with the no dignified, some day extinct people, also forces us on new definitions. Did this woman decide a law? Or was it her own idea? This is a question that the French government should answer .

Source: Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

Millionaire Chinese investors are funding Trump tower in exchange for visas: Shanghaiist

Noted China lover/hater Donald Trump is finding himself at the center of yet another controversy after it was revealed yesterday that a new 50-story luxury rental complex in Jersey City with his name on it is being made great with the help of millionaire Chinese investor/immigrants. Bloomberg reports that Trump Bay Street, currently being built by a company owned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is financed by tens of millions of dollars from a controversial program that provides big foreign investors with US visas and a path to residence. The EB-5 visa program calls for an investor to provide a minimum of $500,000 before he is granted a two-year visa, along with a chance at permanent residency in the US for himself and his family. Each year, the program attracts about 10,000 foreign millionaires to the US — 85% of them Chinese. It has recently come under criticism for its rather loose vetting process that doesn’t require applicants to submit proof of education, work qualifications or even the source of their money. While Trump Bay Street has his name on it and is being built by his son-in-law, it’s unclear how closely Trump is working on the project. The tower is yet another case of Trump, who labels himself as the “BEST builder,” merely selling his trusted last name to a project, while his assistant says that he has no hand in managing its finances.

Source: Millionaire Chinese investors are funding Trump tower in exchange for visas: Shanghaiist

Trump Laces Into Japan With a Trade Tirade From the ’80s – The New York Times Lost in the 80s Tonight – Deja vu! Lol

“Trump’s comments on Japan remind me of the period from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, when Japan was considered a serious rival to American economic pre-eminence,” said Glen S. Fukushima, a former United States trade official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group. “It’s interesting that despite the two-decade stagnation of the Japanese economy, Trump is now reviving the idea of Japan as an economic rival robbing America of jobs.”

Source: Trump Laces Into Japan With a Trade Tirade From the ’80s – The New York Times