by Oui
Tue Aug 29th, 2023 at 12:16:38 PM EST
Fascism is once again roaming the globe and Europe has no immunity of this scourge ... history repeating itself. SHAME
Jack London's Racial Lives -- A Critical Biography
Although he promoted white superiority in novels and nonfiction, London sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others--most often as protagonists--in his short fiction.
Why the disparity? For London, racial and class identity were intertwined: his formation as an artist began with the mixed "heritage" of his family. His mother taught him racism, but he learned something different from his African American foster mother, Virginia Prentiss. Childhood poverty, shifting racial allegiances, and a "psychology of want" helped construct the many "houses" of race and identity he imagined. Reesman also examines London's socialism, his study of Darwin and Jung, and the illnesses he suffered in the South Seas.
With new readings of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and many other works, such as the explosive Pacific stories, Reesman reveals that London employed many of the same literary tropes of race used by African American writers of his period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic mulatto, and ethnic diaspora. Hawaii seemed to inspire his most memorable visions of a common humanity.
Greek government under fire after video shows 'pushback' of asylum seekers | The Guardian - May 2023 |
Days before general election, footage emerges showing `illegal' deportation of refugees out of country's border
The Greek government is facing fresh condemnation of its migration policies, days before general elections, after the release of video footage depicting the forcible expulsion of asylum seekers who had sought sanctuary in the country.
Barely 48 hours before polls open, the prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' centre-right administration has been put on the defensive by extraordinary documentation of the illegal "pushback". The footage, taken by an Austrian activist on Lesbos last month, was brought to light by the New York Times, which published the material on Friday, after being "verified and corroborated" by the US outlet.
"For years, activists and journalists have dug into claims that the Greek authorities are illegally pushing migrants out of Greece's borders, but hard evidence has been fragmentary," the paper said in a statement. "The Greek government has consistently denied the mistreatment of migrants. The video may be the most damning evidence yet of its violations of international laws and EU rules governing how asylum seekers must be treated," it added.
The footage amounts to a shocking indictment of policies the Mitsotakis government has long denied. In evidence that is likely to ignite an excoriating response in other EU capitals, a group of 12 asylum seekers, including children and a six-month-old baby, are filmed being summarily expelled by Hellenic coast guard officers from Lesbos, where they had arrived from Turkey.
The refugees, described as Somalis, Eritreans and Ethiopians, are shown being driven in an "unmarked" white van to a remote spot on the Aegean island before being forced into a high-speed inflatable boat by men whose facial features are concealed by balaclavas.
The 24 hours News cycle limits events sinking in to make archangel for the better ...
Image of dead 3-year-old boy on Turkish beach haunts, frustrates the world | Sept. 3, 2015 |
The photo of the dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach is haunting.
It captures everything we don't want to see when we tap our phones or open our newspapers: a vicious civil war, a refugee crisis, the death of an innocent.
Largely because of social media, the image of little Aylan Kurdi is hammering home the Syrian migrant crisis to the world. Aylan died along with his 5-year-old brother and their mother when their small rubber boat capsized as it headed for Greece.
The same month, at the request of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, ally Russia would enter the civil conflict entertained by the U.S. and NATO allies to end the slaughter. At the time the damage had been done with millions of displaced Syrians in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon and Turkey with 400,000 people dead. From the consequences of America's Iraq War, Abu Ghraib torture and detention of tens of thousands, the Islamic State terror was born and would enter Syria through the Euphrates valley and settle its HQ in Raqqa. NATO aerial bombardement would last a decade.
Dutch supported terror groups in Syria ... as did Israel and Western allies
Dutch Prosecution Service cases against individuals
In the spring of 2011, sparked by the Arab Spring, the Syrian people revolted against the regime of its President, Bashar al-Asad. The protests were violently crushed by the government, and in the fall of 2011 the Free Syrian Army was created to provide armed support to the uprising. From 2012 onward, the conflict developed into a long-running sectarian civil war, with the international community providing military support to both parties. Gradually, terrorist organizations like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra became involved in the armed conflict as well. From the start of the conflict, a total number of approximately 280 Dutch nationals have travelled to Syria.
Pushback Greece coastguard refugees boat capsized hundreds drowned
A Closer Look At the Migrant Boat Disaster Off Greece | July 2023 |
NATO Policy: Countering terrorism
Terrorism is the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of the citizens of NATO countries, and to international stability and prosperity. A persistent global issue that knows no border, nationality or religion, terrorism is a challenge that the international community must tackle together. NATO will continue to fight this threat with determination and in full solidarity. NATO's work on counter-terrorism focuses on improving awareness of the threat, developing capabilities to prepare and respond, and enhancing engagement with partner countries and other international actors.
America's War on Terror initiated by the George W. Bush administration filled with Neocons had exponentially multiplied the number of terrorists across the globe. Further it has opened Pandora's Box for an extreme tight wing backlash across Red States and fascist individuals and groups across the Western hemisphere. Enduring Wars with no end in sight for the coming decades. Pax American in the 21st Century.
CONSEQUENCES EUROPEAN POLICY AND POLITICS
Italy election: Giorgia Meloni's far-right party Brothers of Italy has won
Will Europe's centre-right parties accept defeat or sell their souls to the hard right? | The Guardian Opinion- Aug. 28, 2023 |
Progressive policies are at stake as conservatives attempt to forge alliances in the European parliament with extreme nationalists
There was a time when clear blue water separated Europe's mainstream centre-right from the Eurosceptic populists and xenophobes of the hard right. A Christian Democrat such as Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel would have had nothing in common with - and nothing to do with - a nativist such as Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders.
No longer. In the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, once-sharp lines between pro-European conservative parties and the nationalist far right are blurring as both seek to tap into public anger or anxiety over migration, the cost of living, the green transition and gender diversity.
The longstanding "cordon sanitaire" against cooperation with the hard right is fast crumbling, first at local and national level and now potentially in Brussels too. That matters because the European parliament must approve all the EU's net zero climate and energy legislation, and the right is already trying to water it down.
In recent weeks, Spain's conservative People's party has fallen just short of victory in a general election despite declaring its readiness to govern with the anti-immigration Vox party, which has intellectual roots in Franco's fascist ideology.
The leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, Friedrich Merz, suggested his party should work locally - though not at national or European level - with the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has soared to second place in national opinion polls. However, Merz had to row back after protests from within his party.
And the successor to Dutch prime minister Marc Rutte as leader of the centre-right liberal VVD party, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, (Rutte resigned in July triggering a snap election that will be held in November) has ditched a longstanding refusal to work with Wilders' anti-immigrant [biased pro-Israel] PVV party.
Mainstream conservative governments in Sweden and Finland meanwhile have taken office thanks to the support of hard-right nationalists in, respectively, the Sweden Democrats and the Finns party.
In France, the conservative Gaullists of Les Républicains are vying to outdo Le Pen and her extreme-right rival Éric Zemmour in demonising Islam and proposing new ways to stop asylum seekers. Party leader Éric Ciotti wants to officially declare that the French constitution has primacy over European law in order to impose quotas of asylum seekers.
Above some links added are from my diaries and earlier writing.
Islamophobia and Scourge Rightwing Fascist Terror
Hitler arms manufacturing 1930s
Lessons Learned: Hitler's Rearmament of Germany | CFR - video |
Fu*kers ... Russia didn't want NATO at its borders ... existential threat ... 4Ever Wars #JoeBiden&Co ... people suffer ... way beyond point of no return ... 4Ever division.
The only priority of true global leaders should be sustainability of human life on our Blue Planet Earth. Not cutting funds for Third World countries in half. Tackle extreme poverty and hunger.
IMF must abandon demands for austerity as cost-of-living crisis drives up hunger and poverty worldwide
Ukraine Is Crowding Out the World's Foreign Aid | Foreign Policy |
Europe is diverting much of the money it used to send abroad to care for refugees at home.
CRAZY WEATHER
'Off-the-charts records': has humanity finally broken the climate? | The Guardian |
Extreme weather is 'smacking us in the face' with worse to come, but a 'tiny window' of hope remains, say leading climate scientists
'Living the predictions'
While the scientists were clear that overall global heating was playing out as predicted, their views on whether the extreme weather impacts were hitting faster and harder than expected were more varied as they encompassed a wider range of factors.
"The impacts are frighteningly more impactful than I - and many climate scientists I know - expected," said Prof Krishna AchutaRao, of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Prof Francisco Eliseu Aquino, of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, said: "I have also been scared by these extreme events in the last weeks and months. They are more intense and going beyond what we expected for this decade."
"My expertise is in heatwaves, and I'm not surprised most of the northern hemisphere has had heatwaves this summer, but the intensity is greater than I expected," said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, an associate professor at UNSW. "We are hitting record-breaking extremes much sooner than I expected. That's frightening, scary and concerning, and it really suggests that we're not as aware of what's coming as we thought we were."
Chinese farmers hit by floods and drought say extreme weather is getting worse | NBC News |
