Antifa – jd in .hu

2018.10.18 Link Blog

And remember, this happened during the Obama Admin. /jd

Investigation: As U.S.-Backed War in Yemen Raged, UAE Hired U.S. Mercenaries to Kill Yemeni Leaders

‘A shocking new investigation has revealed that the United Arab Emirates hired U.S. mercenaries to carry out assassinations of political and clerical leaders in Yemen. The former elite U.S. special operations fighters were paid to take part in missions to kill those deemed to be “terrorists” by the UAE. The UAE worked with the U.S. company Spear Operations Group, founded by an Israeli-American man named Abraham Golan, who told BuzzFeed, “There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen. I was running it.” The group’s first target in Yemen was a local leader of al-Islah, a political party whose members include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman. We speak with journalist Aram Roston of BuzzFeed News, who broke the story. His new piece is titled “A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers to Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be the Future of War.”’

‘…ARAM ROSTON: Indeed, it did happen under Obama, yes. The period of time was after the war—I mean, an interesting point was, after the war started in March, the U.S. pulled its forces directly out of Yemen, during the chaos of that war, when the war first started. The UAE, of course, still stayed there. They were the ones on the ground. And the Yemen war is a very complex war. People see that the UAE and the Saudis are in the same coalition, but the UAE and the Saudis have kind of different aims there, or traditionally had different aims there. The Saudis were bombing the Houthis, fighting the Houthis, which they believed are proxies for Iran, and the UAE, most experts will confirm, was really trying to consolidate control over the south. They want the south to separate, to secede. They want control of the ports in the south. And they want to control the political space there, because the UAE and Yemen are very close.

AMY GOODMAN: So they were trying to get the head of the al-Islah party. This is the party of Tawakkul Karman, who was sitting here a few years ago, right at the time the Nobel Peace Prize—the Nobel committee announced she was winning the Nobel Peace Prize. UAE can call them terrorists. UAE can hire a mercenary firm, the State Department would approve, to attack anyone they consider unfriendly to them?…’

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/17/investigation_as_us_backed_war_in

original Buzzfeed article…: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-assassination-us-yemen-uae-spear-golan-dahlan

No, the US didn't create ISIS – but it did help to create the circumstances from which it emerged. The conspiritorial Left fails and fails again to understand the difference between intent and unintended consequences, and also of taking advantage of a situations that which the US is not fully in control of.

That said, the US does tend to support the worst of the worst because it thinks it can with with them and rarely the people who want democracy and human rights - because how could the US ever control people with that agenda?? /jd

The ISIS Conspiracy That Ate the Web

‘…The intelligence report about Syria is just that — a report, It’s not a policy directive and there’s no proof that any action was taken based on its analysis. Nevertheless, people across the political spectrum are taking it as if it were a presidential order. Anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller thinks it’s a scandal because it proves President Obama knew about ISIS and chose to do nothing. Geller’s outrage is the inverse of the indignation expressed by far-leftists like the Guardian’s Seumas Milne who takes the report as proof that the U.S. abetted ISIS to sow discord in the Middle East, part of a grand divide and conquer strategy. Neither one seems to understand what they’re actually looking at.

Milne’s Guardian piece is subtler than its headline. It grants that the DIA report, “doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course,” and adds caveats likes, “the report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language.” But it assumes, ambiguities aside, that the report reveals some level of collusion with ISIS as a tenet of U.S. policy seeking to inflame sectarianism…’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-isis-conspiracy-that-ate-the-web

The Empire gets fucked back /jd

Moldova Grudge Could Cost U.K. Access to $1.7 Trillion Projects

‘…The U.K.’s post-Brexit access to $1.7 trillion in public projects relies on the good will of its European neighbors. Too bad Moldova holds a grudge.

The tiny country wedged between Romania and Ukraine is joining half a dozen nations in blocking the U.K.’s re-entry to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement, an accord that smooths the bidding process on public contracts, including in the $837 billion U.S. market.

Why the hold-up? Corina Cojocaru, Moldova’s economic counselor to the WTO, and her team were denied entry to the U.K. last year when they wanted to discuss their future relationship with Britain after it leaves the European Union.

And Cojocaru has a good memory.

“I couldn’t get a visa and a diplomatic passport to go to London to negotiate on government procurement,” Cojocaru said in a telephone interview. “Nobody listened to us for six to seven months.”…’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/how-tiny-moldova-s-brexit-grudge-could-cost-u-k-1-7-trillion

‘…On 27 September, the administrative court of the northwestern German city of Oldenburg ruled that the municipality’s decision to cancel a 2016 BDS event had been unlawful.

It determined that the city council had “undermined the fundamental right of the applicant’s freedom of assembly” as well as freedom of expression, which, it added, “was (and is) severely interfered with.”

“The fundamental right to freedom of expression is, as the most direct expression of the human personality in society, one of the most distinguished human rights of all.”

The ruling, the first of its kind in Germany, could have broader political implications for BDS activism, said Ahmed Abed, the lawyer who represented event organizers in court. “This ruling could have a great impact because it is the first time an administrative court has said it is unlawful to disallow a BDS event.”…’

https://electronicintifada.net/content/big-bds-legal-win-germany/25741

Nationalist rabbi: European Right no longer anti-Semitic

‘…Rabbi Melamed – who heads the Har Bracha Yeshiva in Samaria – explained that for many years, Israel’s Foreign Ministry was wary of the European right wing parties, because they harbored Nazi supporters and Holocaust deniers.

“But in recent years, the extreme right wing movements have been undergoing a process of change,” he added. “Leaders have emerged who want nothing to do with the racist Nazi heritage, and who openly support the state of Israel.”

These leaders “have distilled the movements’ nationalist positions, and now they express a proper position, which demands maintaining the European people’s national, religious and cultural identity,” the rabbi insisted.

Rabbi Melamed went on to say that “[j]ust as it is forbidden to steal the property of a private individual, as the communists did in the countries that they took over, so it is forbidden to steal from people their national and religious identity, as the communists’ successors – the extreme liberals on the Left, like the British Labor party – seek to do.”…’

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/253164

If he wins, his brother Jack can take his place. /jd

everything wrong and surreal about today’s #Murica Republican Party contained in one screenshot ????

source: https://www.facebook.com/TheHill/posts/10156481355824087

everything wrong and surreal about today's #Murica Republican Party contained in one screenshot ????

How restrictive voting requirements is the USA target minorities

Carol Anderson: ‘…And that’s one of the great ways the way voter suppression works, is that it sounds reasonable, until you see how it’s operationalized, and when you also understand, for instance, that the issue of voter I.D. is based on the lie of voter fraud.

And what I mean by that is that Justin Levitt, a professor out of California, did a study. And from 2000 to 2014, he counted up all of the votes in all of the elections and came to one billion votes. Out of that, he identified 31 cases of voter fraud, 31 cases out of one billion votes…’

transcript: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-restrictive-voting-requirements-target-minorities

There are so few refugees left in #Hungary these days that PM Viktor Orbán has selected a new scapegoat,,,,, the danger posed by Gender Studies ???? /jd

‘…On October 12, 2018, without any public statement or explanation, gender studies Master degrees were removed from the list of accredited subjects in Hungary. Students currently enrolled can finish their course of studies as usual and with both Hungarian and US accreditation, but no new students enrolled from September 2019 will be able to earn a Hungarian accredited degree in the field of Gender Studies…’

https://gender.ceu.edu/statement-annulment-gender-studies-ma-degree-accredited-hungary

music starts at 1:10 /jd

2018.10.15 LinkBlog – a lazy Monday

At last the Feminist agenda can be completed! and I am not even saying that's such a bad idea. Would the world really be worse off if women ran things the way men do today? Serious question. /jd

Same-sex mice have babies

‘…Baby mice have been made with two mums and no dad, say researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It took a substantial feat of genetic engineering to break the rules of reproduction.The scientists said the “bimaternal” (two mammas) animals were healthy and went on to have pups of their own.

But there was bad news on the all-male front. Mice with double-dads were attempted, but died within days of being born.

[….] It was easier with double mums. The researchers took an egg from one mouse and a special type of cell – a haploid embryonic stem cell – from another. Both contained only half the required genetic instructions or DNA, but just bringing them together wasn’t enough…’

Language framing: The left is losing the language game

‘…The elephant continues to win. Whoever controls the words controls the ways in which ideas are framed. Anyone can disagree with your beliefs, but so long as they use the same framework of words you use to describe your beliefs, even in adamant opposition to them, you win…’

http://beloitcollegeroundtable.com/2018/10/02/language-framing-the-left-is-losing-the-language-game/

The Antifascists (2017) Documentary (full length)

‘A low-intensity war is being fought on the streets of Europe and the aim is on fascism. This critically acclaimed documentary takes us behind the masks of the militants called antifascists.

In 2013 a group of armed nazis attacks a peaceful demonstration in Stockholm where several people are injured. In Greece the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn becomes the third largest in the election and in Malmö the activist Showan Shattak and his friends are attacked by a group of nazis with knives and he ends up in a coma.

In this portrait of the antifascists in Greece and Sweden we get to meet key figures that explain their view on their radical politics but also to question the level their own violence and militancy.’

Why Real Change Won’t Come From Billionaire Philanthropists

‘When wealthy elites embrace issues such as inequality, poverty, climate change, women’s empowerment, and LGBTQ rights, are they spurring change—or reinforcing the status quo? In his new book Winners Take All, the writer Anand Giridharadas says it’s the latter. Giridharadas persuasively argues that when they adopt pressing social and economic issues as causes, plutocrats simply reinforce their position atop the hierarchy…’

Question: Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, George Soros, and Mike Bloomberg (who is allegedly considering running for president) position themselves as the antidote to Trump. But you see them and Trump more as flip sides of the same coin. Why is that?

Anand Giridharadas: ‘One of the things that became very clear to me as I reported this is: It’s not about billionaires we like versus billionaires we don’t like. This is not about rich people who do the right thing versus rich people who do the wrong thing. This is a fundamental question of, why do rich people have so much power over public life in America?…’

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/09/why-real-change-wont-come-billionaire-philanthropists/571354/

DNA Tests Prove Aboriginal Australians Are the World’s Oldest Culture
The genetic study helps show that the ancestors of today’s Aboriginals came here about 58,000 years ago.

‘…Prior to this study being published, some scientists had debated whether or not modern Aboriginal people are the descendants of ancient tribes who first populated Australia. This research, the most comprehensive genomic study of Indigenous Australians to date, also helps to confirm that all humans share the same common ancestors from a single African migration event.

That event occurred when both Papuan and Aboriginal ancestors left Africa as part of a larger group of migrants around 72,000 years ago, then split with that main group of early humans about 58,000 years ago. Probably the first group of humans to cross an ocean, they reached “Sahul”—the supercontinent that was made up of modern day Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea together—and then split apart about 37,000 years ago. The supercontinent only split up around 8,000 years ago.

“Australia has one of the longest histories of continuous human occupation outside Africa, raising questions of origins, relatedness to other populations, differentiation and adaptation,” the study concludes. “We find that Aboriginal Australians and Eurasians share genomic signatures… a common African ancestor.”…’

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/5gq3vd/dna-shows-aboriginal-australians-are-the-most-ancient-culture-in-the-world

I always said #Murica elected an Internet Troll, now we must also count his wife... /jd

‘…”I want to show them that I don’t care,” Melania Trump continued. “You could criticize whatever you want to say, but it will not stop me to do what I feel is right.”

She said her point was proven because by the time she put the jacket back on for her return flight, she could see “how the media got obsessed by it.”

First ladies and other political figures are often watched closely for what they wear, given the potential for sending messages and signals with fashion choices.

Trump’s choices, if anything, have prompted even more speculation than past first ladies.

Trump has criticized her husband’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that separated families, and in the interview she said she was blindsided by it.

Her comments about the jacket in the ABC interview were in contrast with those of her spokeswoman, who at the time said the jacket had “no hidden message”.

President Trump, however, said the jacket was meant to be a hit at the media.

The president eventually halted the policy following widespread criticism from both parties, but The Washington Post reported on Friday that new options are being considered that could again separate families as officials deal with a new surge of immigrants at the border…’

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/411247-melania-trump-responds-to-jacket-controversy-it-was-kind-of-a-message

I suspect this is Left-wing vapourware /jd

Kurds in Syria Will Use Crypto to Power an Anarchist State

‘…Because its primary currency is the Syrian lira, the main currency of the Syrian state (which Rojava has just spent years fighting), there’s a growing belief in some quarters that cryptocurrency could provide a better alternative, Erselan Serdem, a leader of Rojava’s technological development program, told CoinDesk.

Alongside a system of self-governing communes, Rojava plans to implement new technological academies, with a particular emphasis on cryptography and cryptocurrency, Serdem said.

Assisting the change is Amir Taaki, an early bitcoin developer who fought alongside Rojava in the war. As detailed by CoinDesk, Taaki is also in the process of setting up a European-based technological academy in Barcelona.

“[Rojava is] a revolutionary project that wants to build a new society based on anarchist principles, and that means law, defense, society and culture,” Taaki told CoinDesk.

The new academies follow the philosophy of Kurdish political theorist Abdullah Ocalan, who is promoting a form of governance called “democratic confederalism.” Advocating for direct democracy, feminism and ecology, Serdem said that blockchain and cryptocurrency are crucial for achieving this vision…’

https://www.coindesk.com/a-war-torn-country-in-syria-will-use-crypto-to-power-an-anarchist-state/

In the history of Catholicism it will be remembered that America's CIA crucified one of its martyred saints. /jd

The killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero was one of the most notorious crimes of the cold war. Was the CIA to blame?

‘…The men received orders from a National Police detective, Oscar Perez Linares, who came to the house. A man of few words, he was treated by the others with the respect reserved for those not afraid to kill. Several times, Jorge heard the others laughing at how Linares had shot Romero. Linares sat with a half-smile. “You should have seen the blood that came from that priest!” was his only comment.

At the time, Jorge’s story was impossible to check – although the rest of what he said turned out to be true. After the war, I looked in declassified CIA files. Sure enough, in mid-1983, an unusually detailed CIA report, quoting a senior Salvadoran police source, named Linares as a member of a four-man National Police squad which murdered Romero. Other Salvadoran officers said the same thing. And the man who drove the car which took the killer to the church also picked out a photo-fit of Linares. So why, if the CIA had such evidence, and solving the murder was such a priority, was nothing done?…’

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/23/features11.g21

2018.09.13 LinkBlog

Earliest known drawing found on rock in South African cave
Researchers believe the pattern on the fragment of rock is 73,000 years old, but are perplexed as to what it might represent

‘…It lacks the grace of Da Vinci and has none of the warmth of Rubens, but the criss-crossed pattern on the chunk of rock is remarkable all the same. According to researchers who unearthed the piece, it is the earliest known drawing in the world.

Archaeologists found the marked stone fragment as they sifted through spear points and other material excavated at Blombos cave in South Africa. It has taken seven years of tests to conclude that a human made the lines with an ochre crayon 73,000 years ago.

The simple red marks adorn a flake the size of two thumbnails which appears to have broken off a grindstone cobble used to turn lumps of ochre into paint powder. The lines end so abruptly at the fragment’s edges that researchers believe the cross-hatches were originally part of a larger design drawn on the cobble.

“This is first known drawing in human history,” said Francesco d’Errico, a researcher on the team at the University of Bordeaux. “What does it mean? I don’t know. What I do know is that what can look very abstract to us could mean something to the people in the traditional society who produced it.”…’

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/12/earliest-known-drawing-found-on-rock-in-south-african-cave

How Viktor Orban Bends Hungarian Society to His Will (March 27, 2018)

‘…Even school textbooks.

On Page 155 of the latest eighth-grade history textbook, students are told that Mr. Orban thinks refugees are a threat to Hungary — and then encouraged to believe he is right. “It can be problematic,” the book concludes, “for different cultures to coexist.”

It is a testament to the scope of Mr. Orban’s program for remaking Hungary that part of the far-right leader’s message is now woven into the school curriculum…’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary.html

The refugee Dalai Lama who escaped to India from Chinese troops says refugees in Europe should go home (eventually) – this is actually consistent with what he and his movement has said for a long time. But do not expect any kind of advocacy of multiculturalism or universalist humanist principled from him. I wonder if he is even aware how this statement will be interpreted by Euro-Nazis who regularly threaten and attack refugees in Europe? /jd

‘…The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said Wednesday that “Europe belongs to the Europeans” and that refugees should return to their native countries to rebuild them.

Speaking at a conference in Sweden’s third-largest city of Malmo, home to a large immigrant population, the Dalai Lama — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 — said Europe was “morally responsible” for helping “a refugee really facing danger against their life”.

“Receive them, help them, educate them… but ultimately they should develop their own country,” said the 83-year-old Tibetan who fled the capital Lhasa in fear of his life after China poured troops into the region to crush an uprising.

“I think Europe belongs to the Europeans,” he said, adding they should make clear to refugees that “they ultimately should rebuild their own country”…’

https://www.france24.com/en/20180912-dalai-lama-says-europe-belongs-europeans

Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to Speak Along Side Far-Right Parties Linked to Current Neo-Nazi Rallies In Germany

‘…While the [USA] Centrist and DNC aligned media has by and large pronounced the various neo-Nazi and white nationalist factions within the Alt-Right to be dead in the water, at the same time, in just the past month a member of DHS, a writer at the Daily Caller, and a Trump speech writer were all fired for their connections to white nationalists and the Alt-Right…’

https://itsgoingdown.org/turning-point-usa-and-michael-flynn-to-speak-along-side-far-right-parties-linked-to-current-neo-nazi-rallies-in-germany/

The Big Hole in Germany’s Nazi Reckoning? Its Colonial History

‘…Running from 1884 to 1918, that colonial history was relatively short, compared with that of other European countries, but still scarring. German colonizers killed tens of thousands during their reign over all or part of modern-day Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Namibia.

Street signs and other memorials honoring German colonizers still remain scattered throughout the country. Only a smattering of colonial history is taught in German schools. The government has not apologized for the nation’s colonial crimes, and it only recently started referring to the killings as genocide.

[….] Berlin officials agreed a couple of months ago to rename Petersallee and two other streets honoring German colonizers, much to the delight of activists who have spent years lobbying for the changes. The streets will be named after African resistance fighters…’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/world/europe/germany-colonial-history-africa-nazi.html

Are your memes Article 13 compliant?

Never forget that he was a born-again christian conservative Dem when he ran in 1976 – it was right wing media that morphed him into a liberal in the propagandized American mind. /jd

Jimmy Carter warns Democrats: Don’t veer too far left, scare off moderates

‘…”Independents need to know they can invest their vote in the Democratic Party,” Carter said Tuesday during his annual report at his post-presidential center and library in Atlanta, where he offered caution about the political consequences should Democrats “move to a very liberal program, like universal health care.”

That’s delicate — and, Carter acknowledged, even contradictory — advice coming from the 93-year-old former president, and it underscores the complicated political calculations for Democrats as they prepare for the November midterms and look ahead to the 2020 presidential election.

“Rosie and I voted for Bernie Sanders in the past,” Carter noted…’

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/jimmy-carter-warns-democrats-don-t-veer-too-far-left-n908771

Taking away American passports and citizenship is a precursor to genocide.

‘…It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border. [….]

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another…’

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a23010174/stripping-american-citizens-passports-genocide/

America doesn’t know how to escalate itself – and then thinks the solution is more guns and more cops, which then leads to more guns and more cops…
/jd

‘…According to the ACLU, schools nationally reported 27,000 sworn law enforcement officers, but only 23,000 social workers…’

https://gritpost.com/schools-guards-social-workers/

Oh FFS #Murica, WTF /jd

‘North Carolina is bracing for the climate change-supercharged storm six years after passing legislation prohibiting state and local agencies from making planning decisions based on the latest climate science about sea level rise. Now the state is facing the threat of a life-threatening storm surge, which could cause billions of dollars in damage.’

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/12/headlines/6_years_before_florence_north_carolina_passed_law_banning_studies_of_sea_level_rise

‘The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) today ruled that the UK’s mass interception programmes have breached the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Court found that the UK’s mass surveillance programmes, revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, did ‘not meet the “quality of law” requirement’ and were ‘incapable of keeping the “interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society”’…’

https://www.englishpen.org/campaigns/press-release-uk-mass-surveillance-ruled-unlawful-in-landmark-judgment/

2018.09.04 LinkBlog

If you follow the Youtube star Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints, then you should read this article in its entirety. Natalie is the only 'Youtube' that I watch consistently and have watched most (but not all) of her videos. Always both entertaining and educational and makes you think days after watching. I cannot say this for any other youtube channel. /jd

Little more can be said than this: ‘ContraPoints is an elegant, whip-smart middle finger to the putrefying swamps of the internet’

please read: The Oscar Wilde Of Youtube Fights The Alt-Right With Decadence And Seduction

‘…Irony is a means rather than an end for ContraPoints. In an era saturated by Dadaist humor on every social media platform, where memes become news, this can seem to be a meaningless distinction. But it makes all the difference. For all of her racy humor, Wynn is no edgelord. Throughout her interview, she was nothing if not deeply sincere.

She decries what she calls the “South Park” sensibility, which, as she sees it, holds that “the problem with the world is that some people take it seriously.” It’s a centrist viewpoint, she says, which “the fascists latched right onto and did a great job with, because who cares more than the social justice warriors? ‘Look at them with their signs, their protests, their complaints. Look at these poor, naive, uncool fools caring about a thing and trying to make the world better unironically.’”

But at the same time, she observed that irony could be a powerful tool to make people care…’

‘…Her views have been influenced by the characters she has created, too. The wildly popular character of Tabby — an anarcho-communist trans cat-girl who sports an ANTIFA patch and wields a baseball bat to smash capitalism — began life as a caricature of radicals that Wynn felt weren’t strategically minded enough. But her audience “resonated with the character,” finding her a “cute and sort of cathartic” presence and, thus, she says, “I’ve switched to portraying her in a more sympathetic light.” Increasingly, Tabby feels like a part of Wynn’s own psyche as she herself has radicalized.

In a recent video, when Contra and Tabby were arguing about revolution versus electoral reform, Tabby broached the unsettling possibility that the 2020 presidential election might be “delayed” or canceled outright. “Well,” Contra said, “then I’ll transition into you and become you unironically.” It feels like she’s getting there, certainly…’

ok, enough pull quotes from an article a lot of quotes to pull! just read it...
The Oscar Wilde Of Youtube Fights The Alt-Right With Decadence And Seduction

Stephanie McMillan’s commentary on USA Labor Day and the 8-hour day…

Billy Bragg: There Is Power in a Union
‘Labor Day music: Billy Bragg performs “There Is Power in a Union” in the Democracy Now! studio in 2011’

Billy Bragg: There Is Power in a Union

Labor Day music: Billy Bragg performs "There Is Power in a Union" in the Democracy Now! studio in 2011

Publiée par Democracy Now! sur Lundi 3 septembre 2018

Israeli forces begin demolition campaign in al-Walaja

TODAY: Heartbreaking video of Palestinian families trying to save their homes from being demolished in al-Walaja (west of the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem). Palestinians organized sit-ins and stood on roofs and stayed in their homes. They were met with terrible violence and injury by Israeli forces.

The homes are being demolished under the pretext of not having permits which are virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain.

More: http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780916
Video via twitter Nasser Atta @nasseratta5

Israeli forces begin demolition campaign in al-Walaja

TODAY: Heartbreaking video of Palestinian families trying to save their homes from being demolished in al-Walaja (west of the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem). Palestinians organized sit-ins and stood on roofs and stayed in their homes. They were met with terrible violence and injury by Israeli forces. The homes are being demolished under the pretext of not having permits which are virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain. More: http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780916Video via twitter Nasser Atta @nasseratta5

Publiée par Jewish Voice for Peace sur Lundi 3 septembre 2018

When I started on Mastodon (around the first 8 months, or so, I think) there were no, or almost no, Hungarians on it. I tried to convince some of my Hungarian Geek friends to start a Mastodon instance, but there was no interest. I am happy to see today that there are many (but still not a lot) Hungarians on this new social media 'platform' – https://MSTDN.hu

mstdn.hu Mastodon instancia Magyar Mastodon közösség — mstdn.hu Mastodon instancia
– Magyar Mastodon közösség

Every 'instance' (server, basically) of Mastodon has it's own rules, and that is a feature of Mastodon, not a bug. So, the following is ok in the Masto-verse.

‘…the use of Nazi and / or Communist symbols and the criminalization of any criminal law perpetrated by violent dictatorships. Certifying abusive anti-communist activity…’ [Bad google translation]

Considering that I am on the https://soc.ialis.me instance I find this a bit shocking, even if I do understand the Hungarian mentality and historical experience behind it.

But still, the Red Star and communist symbols have been legal in Hungary since 2008, thanks to the European Court of Human Rights, read: http://echrblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/red-star-judgment.html. The essence of this court ruling was that the Red Star means many things to many people, whereas the Swastika (especially in the European context) pretty much only means one thing – therefore the Swastika should remain illegal while the Red Star should be legal in Hungary, and elsewhere in Europe. /jd

Stalin, Zapatistas and Heineken, all use the red star, but the meanings are different for each.

‘… In the Court’s view, a legal system which applies restrictions on human rights in order to satisfy the dictates of public feeling – real or imaginary – cannot be regarded as meeting the pressing social needs recognised in a democratic society, since that society must remain reasonable in its judgement. To hold otherwise would mean that freedom of speech and opinion is subjected to the heckler’s veto…’

– European Court of Human Rights, ‘Vajnai v. Hungary’, 2008

WIR SIND MEHR Anti-NeoNazi protest, Chemnitz, Germany – 2018.09.03

Also see:

http://www.forbiddensymbols.com/