The outbreak has now grown to 2,861 cases, including 1,913 deaths, as the UN announces more funding.
Category Archives: Viva!
New Trump Religious Exemption Rule Is Bad News For Those Who Are Pregnant and Unmarried

Something fun to worry about, amid our ongoing cavalcade of horrors: the prospect of the Trump administration making it easier to discriminate against those who are pregnant and also unmarried, under the guise of “religious freedom.”
Funny Timing: After a Trump Tweet, Israel Bars Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib From Entering the Country

Israel will block Muslim Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country, a decision made just hours after President Trump tweeted that Israel would show “great weakness” if they allowed the representatives to visit the Jewish state.
Will Israel’s treatment of Omar and Tlaib finally wake Democrats up?
Now that Israel has banned entry to Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, will Democrats affirm the right to boycott and hold Israel’s feet to the fire? Five takeaways.
U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. (Leopaltik1242/CC BY-SA 4.0)
1. Don’t let the headlines fool you: neither Ilhan Omar nor Rashida Tlaib had any intention of visiting Israel when they announced their trip to the region. They had hoped, instead, to visit the occupied West Bank, where Tlaib’s family hails from. The fact that Israel is the sole sovereign between the river and the sea and can decide who and what can enter or exit the West Bank is one of the most fundamental aspects of Israel’s 52-year military occupation.
2. One must also take stock of Israel’s priorities when it makes decisions about who is or isn’t welcome. While authoritarian leaders such Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, Hungar’s Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin are welcomed with open arms, these two Democratic congresswomen are turned into enemies of the state. Why? Because they believe in the right to hold Israel to account, including through boycotts.
3. BDS, one should recall, is a nonviolent and legitimate tool of resistance, especially when considering that Israel has for decades been crushing all other forms of Palestinian resistance, be it violent or nonviolent. Boycotts of and divestments from businesses that profit off human rights violations and war crimes are common in various struggles for social justice.
Meanwhile, even Israel supports the use of international sanctions when it serves its political goals. But only when applied to Israel’s decades’ long occupation and apartheid policies — with the express purpose of promoting freedom, equality, and democracy for Palestinians — are boycotts, divestment and sanctions demonized.
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4. This is where parts of the left, whether in Israel, the U.S., Europe or elsewhere, also share the blame. Large segments among both Democrats and the Zionist left have historically taken part in delegitimizing BDS as a political tool for Palestinian liberation. By isolating BDS supporters, those on the left have paved the way for Netanyahu and Trump to go after Tlaib and Omar.
This can and should be a decisive moment. We are already hearing Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and left-wing and liberal groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street denouncing Israel for the decision. Even AIPAC is demanding Israel backtrack and allow the congresswomen freedom of movement.
5. As long as these statements are not followed by real action, nothing will change. Israel has become immune to criticism, whether coming from friends or foes. If Democrats don’t turn their statements into full support for the right to boycott and actively try to stop institutional attempts to silence criticism of Israel in the U.S., nothing will change. As long as the international community sits back and the U.S. continues to offer Israel diplomatic immunity and a blank check, Israel will continue to deny Palestinians their basic human and civil rights.
The post Will Israel’s treatment of Omar and Tlaib finally wake Democrats up? appeared first on +972 Magazine.
Labor Dept. Moves to Expand Religion Exemption for Hiring and Firing
move to justify racism, and sexism via faux-religious biases! The policy director for a gay-rights group said the “proposed rule would permit taxpayer-funded discrimination.”
Red tape is being weaponised in India to declare millions stateless | Shoaib Daniyal
what happens when fascist are in power!

In Assam, a draconian exercise forces people to prove ‘genuine’ Indian heritage – or be branded illegal immigrants
Anti-immigrant hysteria is sweeping the world: it has powered Trump, enabled the Brexit vote and is roiling the politics of continental Europe. And while the damage done by this politics has been well documented in the west, one country rarely discussed in this regard is India. Yet millions are about to be declared stateless in the country on the grounds that either they or their ancestors came over as undocumented migrants from India’s eastern neighbour, Bangladesh.
Currently, the north-eastern state of Assam is updating its National Register of Citizens: a supposed listing of genuine Indian nationals. Anyone who does not find their name on this NRC will be branded an illegal migrant. The NRC released a draft list in 2018 that declared more then 4 million people to be foreigners. The final list is expected on 31 August.
Thursday Open Thread | 12 Black Elected Officials In Charlotte Receive Trump Inspired Racist Letters
At least 12 local elected officials, including black county commissioners, Charlotte City Council members who are people of color, and the black chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board, received similar letters in recent days, according to representatives of those bodies. The letter, which the Observer obtained a copy of from a City Council member, is also addressed to the local police and fire departments.
The letter to Leake invoked the name of President Donald Trump, said blacks need to “assimilate” to Charlotte and the United States and blamed “twisted media” for problems.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article233797097.html

“Nothing good will come to you if you don’t change,” the letter to Leake and other commissioners stated. “You need to go back to where you came from … Your freedom was born on the backs of great Americans, white Americans, who fought for you, so get over it. Assimilate.
“One of these days, someone … will round you up. All of you. And send you screaming to the concentration camps where you belong … Be very careful.”
A Mecklenburg County commissioner says she has asked the FBI to investigate who sent her and other black elected officials a racist, threatening letter that said “Black Democrats should be tarred and feathered and run out of town” and sent “screaming to the concentration camps.”
The letter, which Commissioner Vilma Leake read aloud at a recent public meeting, was received by mail at her county office address. It is a nearly two-page-long rant that threatens “someone” may “blow up” a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., and also says, “I would love it if they would blow you up.”
Trump ties China trade deal to ‘humane’ Hong Kong resolution after troop buildup worry
No strategy, thinking just from the hip deal making that results in failures like his many failed businesses! President Donald Trump on Wednesday tied a U.S. trade deal with China to humane resolution of the weeks of protests wracking Hong Kong, hours after the State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of movement of Chinese paramilitary forces along the Hong Kong border.
Arron Banks jokes about Greta Thunberg and ‘freak yachting accidents’
British brown shit nazi!

MPs, celebrities and academics criticise ‘disgraceful’ comment by Brexit backer
Arron Banks has been criticised after he appeared to wish harm upon Greta Thunberg as the 16-year-old activist set sail across the Atlantic in a solar-powered yacht on a zero-carbon two-week voyage.
The controversial Brexit backer warned the teenager that “freak yachting accidents do happen in August” as he responded to a tweet by Green party MP Caroline Lucas who said Thunberg was carrying “the vital message to the UN that time is running out to address the climate emergency”.
The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter’s Manifesto
On August 10, 2019, a 21-year-old man reportedly murdered his 17-year-old stepsister before attempted to attack a mosque just outside of Oslo, Norway; he managed to injure only one person in the attack.
The Norwegian claimed he had been inspired by another 21-year-old man in El Paso, TX, whose massacre on August 3 was driven by, according to a 2,000 word manifesto the American had written and published online, a hatred of immigrants and people from Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas, particularly Mexico.
Both of these 21-year-old men were inspired chiefly by what one 28-year-old Australian did on March 15, 2019, in Christchurch, New Zealand, when he undertook one of the most horrific mass murders in recent memory, one that he even livestreamed and recorded for posterity.
These two men in August (we have chosen not to name them) were inspired by what the Christchurch shooter published on the internet and emailed to dozens of people minutes before he began his massacre back in March. A rambling document that runs more than 70 pages, the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto outlines, both with dead-serious aplomb and in-the-know shitposting, why he chose to perpetrate one of the most vile acts of far-right terror possible. And, five months after the attacks, it’s still not hard to find the manifesto online.
But what if a budding far-right extremist wants to read it and doesn’t speak English? Unfortunately, a multilingual global community of violent far-right extremists has them covered.
In a testament to the increasingly transnational nature of violent far-right extremism and the global reach of far-right ideologies, Bellingcat found at least fifteen translations of the manifesto online. Whether French, German, Spanish, Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian or Russian, among others, the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto is available to read for hundreds of millions around the world who don’t speak English or would prefer to read the rambling screed in their native tongue.
It’s not a short document to translate; the manifesto, in its original English rendering, runs more than 70 pages. But it shows just how much effort some far-right extremists are willing to put into making their hateful ideas a reality. One 4chan user (where the original manifesto was posted before the March 15 attack) shared a translation they apparently made of the manifesto into Bulgarian; the user claimed it took them three straight days to do.
At the Bellingcat Monitoring Project we’ve chosen to take a look at two translations in particular: the Ukrainian-language and Russian-language translations of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, and how they are being promoted online, especially on the social media app Telegram. These two translations serve as unfortunate case studies of how the extreme far-right is truly becoming more and more transnational.
The Ukrainian translation: out in paperback
In Ukraine, one fan of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto has done far more than just share or promote a translation.
This fan is the administrator of a Ukrainian-language Telegram channel with nearly 1,000 subscribers (we have chosen not identify the channel) that features content openly praising and glorifying the Christchurch shooter as well as sharing uncensored neo-Nazi content that explicitly encourages violence. This administrator also shared a Ukrainian translation of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto only two days after the attacks.
This administrator of the Telegram channel claimed in a post that, on the urging of another member of the channel, he had made arrangements to produce bound paper copies of a Ukrainian translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. The administrator further claimed in the post they had found a publisher willing to print the translation; by June, according to posts in the channel, the administrator had in his possession the first box of bound copies of the translation.
Printed versions of the Ukrainian translation of the Christchurch’s shooter’s manifesto, posted by an individual claiming to be responsible for printing the translation (We have chosen to obscure the name of the Telegram channel watermarked onto the photos)
Since then, according to posts in the channel, the administrator has shipped copies of the Ukrainian translation of the manifesto to interested readers for a fee of 100 Ukrainian hryvnias, or around $4. One post even makes reference to an apparent “foreign reader” of the manifesto, who apparently sent back a photo which was published on the channel.
Bound and printed copies of the Ukrainian translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto (we have cropped the photo to remove references to the Telegram channel name)
Unidentified men in military fatigues holding copies of the Ukrainian translation of the manifesto while giving Hitler salutes
A copy of a Ukrainian translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto along with a semi-automatic rifle
Another interested reader in the manifesto, another post suggests, is a member of neo-Nazi movement Karpatska Sich (Карпатська Січ) — a group who, as the Bellingcat Monitoring Project documented, was involved in actions against KyivPride in June 2019. In a post on their own Telegram channel on August 14, Karpatska Sich openly urged its members to purchase a copy of the translation, encouraging its members to “get inspired” by it.
A bound and printed translation, in Ukrainian, of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, flanked by a sticker for Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Karpatska Sich, a group that took part in actions against KyivPride in June 2019. The promoter of the translated manifesto claimed they had just shipped several copies of the manifesto to interested readers, one of whom had messaged back this photo.
Another interested reader sent the administrator back a photo that, thanks to other books and paraphernalia visible in the photo, inadvertently gives a quick lesson into what at least some members of Ukraine’s far-right are into. Among the books the interested reader has in their collection are at least three books published by the literature club of the Azov movement, as well as a book about radical Ukrainian integral nationalist ideologue Dmytro Dontsov. Also visible is a knife featuring the SS motto and morale patches from two different Ukrainian brands popular with members of the far-right.
The Ukrainian translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. Other relevant items in the photo include: at least three books published by the literature club of the Azov movement; a “morale patch” (on the backpack, centre) sold by M-TAC, a company with a close relationship to the Azov movement; a second morale patch (on the backpack, right) sold by another Ukrainian far-right fashion brand; a knife with the SS motto engraved on it.
It’s not clear how many bound and printed copies of the Ukrainian translation have been shipped to interested readers in Ukraine and beyond; with a global population of 33 million Ukrainian speakers, according to Ethnologue, the ‘market’ for a Ukrainian-language version of an extremist’s manifesto is larger than it might be for languages like Hungarian, but smaller than for languages like Russian. Still, there are apparently enough interested readers in the Ukrainian language space to justify the channel administrator’s efforts, at least in their mind.
The Russian translation: promoted by literal Hitler worshippers
Russia, it seems, might hold a special place in the mind of the Christchurch shooter. As was reported August 14, the shooter sent a handwritten letter to an individual in Russia from his prison cell that was also posted on 4chan, a letter which reportedly mentioned a month-long trip the shooter himself took to Russia in 2015.
With Ethnologue estimating a global population of over 250 million Russian speakers, with over 150 million speaking it as a first language, there’s far more potential reach for a Russian-language translation of his manifesto than Ukrainian or other languages like Croatian, Hungarian or Bulgarian.
Ironically, however, the biggest online promoters of a Russian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto aren’t in Russia: they’re in Ukraine. A Kyiv-based neo-Nazi group with roots in Russia, Wotanjugend, is behind the promotion if not the translation itself of the manifesto.
According to the authors of Militant Right-Wing Extremism in Putin’s Russia: Legacies, Forms and Threats, Wotanjugend developed during the 2000s among the hardcore neo-Nazi music scene in Russia, with leaders and members who “styled themselves as an elite neo-Nazi avant-garde.” Many of Wotanjugend’s leaders, being anti-Kremlin and anti-Putin, were supporters of the protests on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv that mushroomed into a revolution in February 2014.
As Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine set off war in April 2014, some Wotanjugend members came to fight with far-right battalions, including the Azov Battalion. Later in 2014 two of Wotanjugend’s leaders, Alexey Levkin and Ivan Mikheev, moved to Ukraine where they remain today.
Since coming to Ukraine, Wotanjugend has been able to act openly and with clear connections to the Azov movement. Levkin, for example, has described himself as an “ideologist” with Azov’ National Militia. A group with himself and another Azov figure, Olena Semenyaka, have organized a neo-Nazi record label and shop that sells music with racist, anti-Semitic lyrics and paraphernalia with open Nazi symbolism at the Azov movement’s Cossack House, just off Maidan Nezalezhnosti in central Kyiv.
In May 2019, Wotanjugend hosted an event called “Fuhrernight” in Kyiv, which featured Nazi flags and photos of Adolf Hitler on an altar surrounded by candles.
Wotanjugend’s propagandizing, however, is largely online. It hosts a Russian-language Telegram channel of more than 7,000 subscribers, a channel which promotes open neo-Nazi content and valorizes violence; it’s where the primary author of this piece first saw the vile first-person video of the Christchurch attacks.
Over on Wotanjugend’s website there are articles praising a number of Nazi-era figures, including Adolf Hitler himself, and links to songs by neo-Nazi artists — including Levkin’s own band — that feature openly anti-Semitic, Nazi-praising lyrics. Their website also features articles about so-called “heroes”: far-right terrorists, including 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks.
It’s no surprise then to learn that, since March 20, 2019 — five days after the attacks — Wotanjugend has been promoting a Russian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. While it’s not clear who may have actually translated the manifesto and whether it was an individual(s) associated with Wotanjugend, it’s clear that the Kyiv-based, Russia-rooted neo-Nazi group has been at the forefront of promoting it online.
With more than 26,000 page views according to the site’s own counter, the Russian translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto is the third-most popular article on Wotanjugend’s website; the other two are now-unavailable music videos of a song (the same song) from Levkin’s band that feature lyrics including “preachers of Kabbalah, offspring thereof/labour in Death Camps, burn in furnace fire.”
On Wotanjugend’s Telegram channel, the post promoting the manifesto has more than 8,600 views, more than the channel’s number of subscribers. And anyone searching for the manifesto online in Russian will easily find Wotanjugend’s translation, as Bellingcat ourselves discovered using several different search terms that landed Wotanjugend’s translation at or near the top of search hits.
But who’s reading the manifesto on Wotanjugend’s website? While the movement is currently based in Ukraine, there’s little question that a large majority of the readers of the manifesto are in Russia. According to web traffic analysis site Alexa, 87% of Wotanjugend’s web traffic over the last 30 days is from Russia. Fortunately, however, Wotanjugend is not a popular enough website to provide much more in the way of usable web traffic data, as an additional look at web traffic analysis site SimilarWeb suggests. Still, with more than 26,000 views over barely six months, to say nothing of other means of sharing, like private sharing, it’s clear that there’s a committed Russian-language audience for the words of a terrorist.
Promote, radicalize, inspire
Most of the coverage from international media about the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto has, understandably so, focused on the influence and reach of the original English-language manifesto. In addition, most of those extremists who have admitted they’ve been inspired by the manifesto are in the United States or from countries with a generally high level of English language fluency (e.g., Norway, where the Oslo mosque attacker posted online in English before his attack).
But those who translate and promote these manifestos have stated exactly why they’re doing it. The individual on 4chan who claimed he translated the manifesto into Bulgarian made it clear why they had done so: to make it readable for a non-English-speaking public in the hopes of promoting a violent far-right extremist ideology, radicalizing readers and inspiring at least one of them to follow in the Christchurch shooter’s bloody footsteps.
The post The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter’s Manifesto appeared first on bellingcat.



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