Social Europe: The Attacks On Poles In Britain Is Part Of A Rise Of Nationalism And Racism In Europe. Including Poland

These attacks have occurred in the context of a rise in racism and hate attacks after the Brexit vote in Britain. In the week before and after the referendum, over 3,000 hate crimes were reported to the police, an annual increase of more than 42%. The Leave campaign had focussed on the issue of immigration and in particular on the eastern European migrants who have arrived since EU enlargement in 2004. Pro-Brexit politicians fuelled the fears and prejudices of the British citizenry, spreading the populist idea that the country’s economic and social problems could be solved by ‘taking back control’ of its borders. And now, in the post-referendum reality of uncertainty and disappointment, these prejudices are spilling over into increased outright racism and hatred.

The Polish community is an established part of British society. A large section of the hundreds of thousands of Poles who moved to Britain have now settled long-term in the country. Poles are the largest immigrant group in Britain and Polish is the second most commonly spoken language in the country. Despite talk of immigrants coming to claim social benefits, Poles living in the UK are significantly more likely to work and pay taxes than their British counterparts are. One may have thought that all of this, coupled with the fact that the vast majority are also white and Christian, would have shielded them from such racism. But the Poles and other eastern Europeans living in Britain are now coming to realise that such xenophobia is not confined to those with a different skin colour or religion. [...]

Poland has also experienced its own surge in racist attacks, which grew by around 40% in 2015. This has been accompanied by the growing activity of far right organisations, such as the National Racial Camp (ONR), that lays claim to the traditions of the pre-war far right organisation under the same name. In recent months, the ONR has organised demonstrations against refugees and immigrants, attacked pro-democracy demonstrators, and even spoken in schools and Churches. The government’s attack on the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal, the closure of open debate on historical issues and the formation of a National Guard which is open to members of the far-right are all worrying political trends in Poland.

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The Guardian: MPs accused of walkout ploy to stop vote on Saudi arms sales

The alleged ploy, revealed by a frustrated Labour MP opposed to the sales, suggests that high-stakes political manoeuvring is under way. Some MPs are seeking to water down the committees on arms export controls draft report and so preserve the current strong diplomatic UK relations with Saudi Arabia.

A strong call from the committee to suspend arms export licences pending an independent UN-led investigation of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen could not be readily ignored by the government, and would infuriate the defence industry. [...]

More than 130 amendments had been tabled by the pro-defence industry Labour MP John Spellar and Blunt, broadly designed to water down the original draft, and exclude any call for a UK suspension of arms sales. Both MPs, along with ministers, felt that the draft was one-sided in its criticism of Saudi Arabia, and did not take account of the conduct of Houthi militias in a bloody 18-month civil war.

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Time: How Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Is Being Used to Defend Child Abuse and Other Crimes

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act—signed into law in 2015 by Republican Gov. Mike Pence—was initially viewed by some as a counterweight to the legalization of same-sex marriage across the U.S. because it would’ve allowed businesses in the state to deny goods and services to same-sex couples based on employees’ religious objections. That is no longer an issue since the law was amended to bar discriminatory behavior—but the act has since taken on an unexpected new life: as a defense for criminal conduct like child abuse and drug use. So far, at least four people in Indiana have used the law to argue that their religion excuses them from actions that would otherwise be considered crimes—and legal experts expect more cases to follow. [...]

“Ms. Thaing believed in the teachers of the Bible that state, ‘Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol,’” a Hebrew word loosely translated as hell, Bowes said in court documents. [...]

Curry says his office has seen three cases involving the RFRA as a defense, including one challenging Indiana’s marijuana law by the First Church of Cannabis, which argues that its church members—”Cannaterians”—should be able to smoke marijuana as a religious sacrament. Indianapolis police have told churchgoers that they would be arrested if they did so. The lawsuit is pending. An additional case involving Curry’s office includes an Indiana resident who is arguing that his religious beliefs compel him to avoid paying income taxes.

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Salon: The rising cost of Islamophobia: Muslims and immigrants increasingly targeted in U.S.

The rising costs of Islamophobia can now be measured in the number of dead. Three Bangladeshi Muslims in New York and a Lebanese man in Oklahoma were murdered in a recent spate of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Christian immigrant from Lebanon, was shot and killed on the evening of Aug. 12 by his neighbor, 61-year-old Stanley Majors. His murder was the culmination of years of epithets (“dirty Arabs” and “Moo-slems”) and malevolence by Majors, who had an “unusual fixation” with the Jabara family. [...]

And while the macabre details of these killings is horrifying, the context in which they occurred remains the most disturbing and consequential part.

The rhetoric employed by Trump in his effort to “Make America Great Again” has transcended rallies, television studios and Twitter. And we have learned that those words can sometimes be worse than sticks and stones.

The Republican Party’s 2015-to-2016 Islamophobia sound track is teeming with great hits. Each candidate has taken the opportunity to burnish his credentials as an Islamophobe for the electorate. And fans are still clamoring for more. [...]

More hate crimes occurred against Muslims in 2015 than in any year since 9/11. Murders undergirded by incendiary rhetoric and white supremacy have added Muslim blood to 2016.

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The Telegraph: Masturbating in public is not illegal, Italy's highest court rules

But his lawyers took the case to a final appeal in front of the Supreme Court in Rome, which over-turned the conviction, citing a law introduced last year which decriminalised the offence of masturbating in public in front of women. “The act is no longer regarded as a crime by the law,” the Supreme Court ruled.

It decided that rather than a custodial sentence, the man should be fined between €5,000 and 30,000.  The exact amount will be determined by a court in Catania.

Opposition politicians said that it was outrageous that the law had been changed and accused the centre-Left government of Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, of going soft on perverts.

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Bloomberg: Snowden Is Turning Into a Liability for Putin

Snowden arrived in Moscow in June 2013. That was almost a year before the Crimea annexation, and Russia could still try to sell itself to radical leftists who admired Snowden as the lesser evil, compared with the Big Brother U.S. Putin talked a lot about Snowden showing obvious delight for thumbing his nose at the U.S., which had tried to intercept the whistle-blower. He described Snowden as a "weird guy," an idealist, who was safe in Russia even though he had no secrets to pass on.  [...]

Snowden appeared to play along. In 2014, he took part in Putin's carefully stage-managed and scripted annual call-in show, asking the Russian leader whether Russia intercepted, stored and analyzed its citizens' electronic communications. Putin said Russia used advanced technology to fight terrorism. "But we do not allow ourselves to use it on a mass scale, in an uncontrolled way," he added. "I hope, I very much hope, that we never will."

Snowden defended what appeared to be a softball question in a column for The Guardian, saying that he had "sworn no allegiance" to Russia and that he would fight total surveillance everywhere. The Guardian article helped him maintain credibility among Western radicals.  [...]

The Yarovaya package is harsher than any electronic surveillance legislation in the U.S., because the Russian measures openly tell citizens that their communications will be monitored pretty much at the discretion of the intelligence services. It embodies all the abuses that Snowden has opposed.

Three years is enough time to understand Russian politics a little better, and Snowden appears to be interested in more than his professional area. On Wednesday, he tweeted about the recent news that Russia's last remaining big independent pollster, the Levada Center, has been designated a "foreign agent," along with some of Russia's strongest human rights organizations, for accepting foreign research grants.

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Quartz: A US state’s school system is so bad, a judge has declared the whole thing unconstitutional

Connecticut got a weird shock this week. A judge, ruling on an 11-year-old lawsuit, declared the entire state’s public education system abysmal—enough so that it’s actually violating the US constitution.

In his decision, superior court judge Thomas Moukawsher agreed with the original argument made by the nonprofit organization Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding in 2005, which is that the state hasn’t been adequately distributing funds across the state to ensure every student’s success.

He pointed to data that showed while kids in the state’s richest towns are faring well, their counterparts in poorer areas are falling dramatically behind. Standardized tests show that roughly 70% of the state’s wealthiest students met third-grade reading goals; pretty much the same percentage of students in the state’s least wealthy areas did not.

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Jakub Marian: Suicide rates by country in Europe

People from Nordic countries have a reputation for being suicidal, but the data by WHO (World Health Organization) from 2012 show that this is more of an urban legend than an actual fact (although there is a little bit of truth in it in the case of Finland). As the following map shows, if any part of Europe should have a reputation for being suicidal, it should be Eastern Europe.

Note that the data by WHO are age-adjusted, which makes comparisons among countries more reliable. This means that the figures shown are not the real suicide rates but rather theoretical suicide rates if every country had the same age composition. The reason to do that is, roughly speaking, that the likelihood of committing suicide increases with age, so the crude suicide rate would would be lower in countries with lower average life expectancy.

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Business Insider: Putin failed to achieve his main goal at the G20 summit

It was in this context that Putin pushed for a joint meeting on the sidelines of the G20 with Merkel and Hollande -- but without Poroshenko -- aimed at resolving the Ukraine conflict behind Kyiv's back.

"Putin appeared to be willing to offer certain compromises on Syria, expecting the West to reciprocate on Ukraine, decreasing their support to the Kyiv government," Aleksandr Kokcharov, Russia defense analyst at IHS Jane’s 360, told Newsweek recently.

It's a classic Kremlin tactic. Create a fake crisis and then offer to help resolve it on Moscow's terms. [...]

But while Putin may have suffered a tactical diplomatic defeat in Hangzhou, he clearly hasn't given up on his strategic goal of dominating Ukraine, even as Kyiv makes impressive strides in reforming and modernizing its once-ramshackle armed forces. 

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