Category Archives: Viva!

Yemen Civilians Keep Dying, but U.S. Says Saudis Are Doing Enough

Because current US leadership does not care about deaths it supports. The United States can continue aiding a military campaign in Yemen after the State Department said a Saudi-led coalition is doing enough to minimize deaths.

Centre-right Alliance makes power play in hung parliament

Says lots about them being willing to sleep with Nazis.

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Annie Lööf of the Centre party, Ulf Kristersson of the Moderates, Ebba Busch Thor of the Christian Democrats and Jan Björklund of the Liberals.

Lyssna: Alliance invites Social democrats

The leaders of the centre-right opposition Alliance on Wednesday called on the ruling Social Democrats to step aside and help them form a stable government and end the political uncertainty following Sunday’s election.

Christian Democrat party leader, Ebba Busch Thor, one of the four parties in the Alliance, said they have a proper mandate to form a government.

“I think it’s very clear, with the results that we seemed to get from the Swedish electorate, that the Alliance is clearly much larger than the Social Democrats. It’s quite natural that we seek opportunities to form a new government but that we also invite the Social Democrats for talks on very important issues,” Ebba Busch Thor tells Radio Sweden.

Social Democrats leader and prime minister Stefan Löfven later gave his response. He told a press conference that they would not help the Alliance form a government and added that his party, taken together with the Greens and the Left party, had a larger share of support from the electorate than the four centre-right parties.

Radio Sweden
english@radiosweden.se

Actor wearing anti-fascist scarf stopped by police in Venice

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Incident involving Ottavia Piccolo at film festival prompts fears of crackdown

An Italian actor was stopped by police at the Venice film festival for wearing a neck scarf associated with the anti-fascism group Anpi, raising questions in parliament over whether the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, had issued orders against the group.

Ottavia Piccolo was stopped by officers checking bags at an access gate as she headed towards the red carpet area of the Venice Lido at the close of the festival on Saturday.

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Merkel condemns far-right outbreak in passionate address

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German chancellor tells Bundestag that violence and Nazi slogans are inexcusable

Angela Merkel has condemned the outbreak of far-right protests in eastern Germany, telling the Bundestag in an unusually passionate address that shouting Nazi slogans and committing acts of violence are inexcusable.

The German chancellor was heckled during a lively Bundestag debate by the head of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Alexander Gauland, who accused her of dividing Germany with her immigration policy, endangering peace and spreading fake news by supporting controversial evidence that far-right protesters were hounding foreigners through the streets.

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Trump calls Puerto Rico hurricane effort an ‘unsung success’ – here’s the reality

LOSER Trump!

The president’s comment, made as Hurricane Florence nears the US, ignored the government’s slow response and crisis that lingers

Donald Trump’s definition of an “unsung success” was immediately questioned on Tuesday when he used those words to describe the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria.

His comments, made as Hurricane Florence churns toward the US, ignored the stark reality that the US government was slow to respond when the devastating storm hit Puerto Rico, and a crisis still lingers on the island nearly a year after the category 4 hurricane made landfall on 20 Sep 2017.

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Why do the cops keep protecting white supremacists?

Racism runs deep and so does protecting those who keep the POC and poor people of all colors down.

This past weekend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, dozens of police assaulted and arrested community members holding an anti-racist canned food drive and potluck on the campus of the University of North Carolina.

The community potluck was a response to the wave of right-wing backlash since a racist Jim Crow-era confederate statue on the campus was finally toppled three weeks ago. In response, white supremacists have gathered at the pedestal of the former “Silent Sam” statue with heavy police protection – while police have pepper-sprayed, beaten and arrested UNC students and community who came out to oppose them.

Police providing special protection to Nazis, the KKK, and other right-wing groups is far from a new trend. But the pattern feels especially stark this summer given the way police have responded to a series of rallies meant to continue the racist terror spree of Charlottesville. At a Portland alt-right rally in August, police attacked anti-fascist protesters with flash grenades, giving one protestor third-degree chemical burns and nearly killing another. At the main Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C., police provided an escort and private train to a group that included Charlottesville architect and “white civil rights activist” Jason Kessler.

I saw this firsthand at a rally hosted by Nazi front group Resist Marxism in Boston last month. Police were laughing and palling around with Nazis while they shoved and harassed anti-fascist protesters. Boston police provided a barricade of protection and private escort to the train station for the white supremacists once it became clear that the hundreds of us counterprotesting were not going away.

“Cops and Klan go hand in hand” is more than just a protest chant. U.S. police departments have assisted white supremacists in doxxing leftist activists and arrested the people of color that Nazis and KKK members attack. Whether or not individual cops are members of white supremacist groups (although there are many who are), the institution of police serves the same  goal: protect white property and white power by violently suppressing and controlling black people. The police’s job is to crush protests using the full might of the state to assault, imprison, and murder—and they do so based not on whether protests are peaceful or legal, but on how threatening the state finds them.

The violent police response to the anti-racist activism in Charlotte is evidence that the police’s allegiance is first and foremost to white supremacy. As UNC activist Maya Little said, “The symbols we put in our public square reflects what happens on the ground. They reflect our law, our politics and our culture.”

Like the statues they protect, the police are a symbol and a tool of a white supremacist society.

Image credit: Jonathan Drake via The San Diego Union-Tribune