simply-war:

Well you’ve probably been introduced to him by now, but this is Giorgos Katidis. He is a 20-year-old Greek soccer player who is now banned for life from the Greek national team for making a Nazi salute after scoring a goal.

Many people fail to understand what neo-Naziism is in Greece. Those who I’ve spoken to cannot understand how Greeks, who were categorized as a lesser race by Hitler, are now becoming neo-Nazis.

Well, Golden Dawn (the most extreme right-wing party in Greece) sees Hitler as an admirable historical figure because of how he raised up a fallen country through fascism. The people of Greece are humiliated by the country’s terrible financial situation- it’s the perfect time for fascism to grow.

For Golden Dawn, it’s less about following all of Hitler’s Ayran doctrines and more about taking Hitler’s methods and applying them to Greeks. Golden Dawn has an anti-immigrant message, and they lead attacks against immigrant groups. They preach that Greeks are the greatest race.

Even while Giorgios Katidis denies that he knew what he was doing when he made a Nazi salute, I do find it surprising that a Greek of the Black Sea region would support neo-Nazism. Greeks from Anatolia (Turkey), the southern islands, Cyprus, and even Alexandria will commonly face racism from northern/mainland Greeks who view themselves as more “pure”. The neo-Nazi movement/Golden Dawn consists of mainland Greeks. 

If you guys have any questions about fascism in Greece, I will be happy to answer…Race especially in Greece is a pretty complicated thing. 

fuckyeahanarchistbanners:

This is NOT an anarchist banner. This is a fascist banner, being hung by organizers from the Golden Dawn neo-fascist party. They are violent, antisocial racists.(1) It is being hung at the Stathakion Cultural Center.

In Greece, while Golden Dawn does better and better in the polls, their offices are being repeatedly smashed(2). Now they’re looking to expand into the US(3). Time has shown that bastards like these can be pushed back against successfully using a three-pronged approach. First, their ideological agenda must be countered ideologically. Wherever they speak, an opposition voice must speak also, speaking firmly and honestly. Second, their physical agenda must be met physically. You are left to your own devices to infer what this means. Third, their affiliations and ties to support must be severed, so they are left to recover from said aggressions on their own, and without the aid of others.

This post is being made because we know of Stathakion Cultural Center in Astoria, NY as one of their first US alliances. We don’t know whether the leadership of the Cultural Center supports them ideologically, is ignorant, or most likely, a mixture of both. We do know that Golden Dawn held a food and clothing drive to ‘be distributed to Hellenes, and only to Hellenes’ at Stathakion. You can read about it here: http://xanyc.org/?p=1

This post is being made for two reasons: first, to inform you comrades in the NE that you have some nasty neighbors moving in, and you should be aware of that and take whatever measures are necessary to stay safe with these violent xenophobes on the loose. The second relates to the third prong of the plan to dismantled fascist organizations. Call Stathakion Cultural Center and tell them what violent ultra-right fanatics they’ve been hosting. Tell them how important it is to you that they don’t host them again. Ask them what they’re doing to prevent this group from unleashing the same kind of violent terror they’ve been responsible for in Athens. Their number is (718) 204-6500. Please call them and then reblog this.

(1) http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shocking-video-greek-neo-nazis-attack-immigrant-vendors-outside-athens-onlookers-simply-watch/
(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/greece-golden-dawn-firebombed_n_1773505.html
(3) http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/333341

Note: This post is informational only and in no way advocates violence or property destruction against fascist organizers. Such acts would be illegal and thus, inherently wrong, regardless of how little harm it caused and how much good it caused. One must never be tempted to stand up against racist terror using anything other than kind words.

RT - No shooting at protest? Police may block mobile devices via Apple

Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem “sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.”

­In other words, these powers will have control over what can and cannot be documented on wireless devices during any public event.

And while the company says the affected sites are to be mostly cinemas, theaters, concert grounds and similar locations, Apple Inc. also says “covert police or government operations may require complete ‘blackout’ conditions.”

“Additionally,” Apple says,” the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote source is one example of a threat to security. This sensitive information could be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to an examination administered in an academic setting.”

The statement led many to believe that authorities and police could now use the patented feature during protests or rallies to block the transmission of video footage and photographs from the scene, including those of police brutality, which at times of major events immediately flood news networks and video websites.

Apple patented the means to transmit an encoded signal to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.

Those policies would be activated by GPS, and WiFi or mobile base-stations, which would ring-fence (“geofence”) around a building or a “sensitive area” to prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.

Apple may implement the technology, but it would not be Apple’s decision to activate the “feature” – it would be down governments, businesses and network owners to set such policies, analyzes ZDNet technology website.

Having invented one of the most sophisticated mobile devices, Apple now appears to be looking for ways to restrict its use.

“As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings,” it explains in the patent. “The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues.”

The company’s listed “sensitive” venues so far include mostly meetings, the presentation of movies, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, academic lectures, and test-taking environments.

girljanitor:

Today in What The Entire Fuck: Mississippi Schools Sending Kids To Prison For Misbehaving In The Classroom

The Department of Justice on Friday uncovered a so-called “School-to-Prison pipeline” in Mississippi, where teachers and principals are shipping off children into the criminal justice system for infractions as small as a dress code violation.

Schools in the city of Meridian, MS, have an established practice of sending students, particularly black and disabled students, to prison for minor disciplinary problems — in clear violation of the Constitution. As ABC reports, that DOJ is claiming that the schools, which protect against “abuse of government authority in legal proceedings and fairness of due process rights,” are violating the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

from ABC:

Also in the findings letter the Civil Rights Division alleges that “Lauderdale County and the Youth Court Judges violate the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide children procedural due process in the youth court. Lauderdale County, the Youth Court judges, and the Mississippi Division of Youth Services violate the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide children procedural due process rights in the probationary process.”

(via other-stuff)

The Business Plot

1933: Smedley Butler, author of the classic antiwar booklet War is a Racket, blows the whistle on a plot by America’s wealthiest industrialists and bankers to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictatorship. An investigation was never pursued, no one was ever prosecuted, and the media swept it under the rug.

Many of these same people funded the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe. Their families continue to influence our country. George W’s grandfather was part of the plot.

Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.

And the ambitious techno-fascists behind Trapwire seem to be quite disappointed that word is getting out so swiftly; the Wikileaks web site is reportedly sustaining 10GB worth of DDoS attacks each second, which is massive.

Anyway, here’s what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing “foreign media”… if we had a free press, I’d be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): “Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

“Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community.

“The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.”

So: those spooky new “circular” dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city—they aren’t just passively monitoring. They’re plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition.

In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA’s indefinite detention provisions—and anyone else—without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.

So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone. I don’t see how that could possibly go wrong. Nope, not at all. We all know the government, and algorithmic computer programs, never make mistakes.

thepeoplesrecord:

NDAA on trial: White House refuses to abide with ban against indefinite detention of Americans
August 10, 2012

Not only is the White House fighting in court for the power to jail Americans indefinitely without trial, but the Obama administration is refusing to tell a federal judge if they’ve abided by an injunction that prohibits them from such.

Attorneys for the White House have been in-and-out of court in Manhattan this week to argue that the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, or NDAA, are necessary for the safety and security of the nation. When President Barack Obama signed the bill on December 31, he granted the government the power to put any American away in jail over even suspected terrorist ties, but federal court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in May that this particular part of the NDAA, Section 1021, failed to “pass constitutional muster” and ordered a temporary injunction.

On Monday, White House attorneys asked for an appeal for that injunction so that they’d be once more legally permitted to indefinitely detain anyone over mere accusations. When specifically asked to answer whether or not they’ve adhered by Judge Forrest’s injunction so far, though, administration attorneys refused to cooperate with the questioning.

Activist and reporter Tangerine Bolen is a plaintiff in the case against the NDAA, and in an op-ed published Thursday in the Daily Cloudt, she writes that the federal attorneys asking for an appeal have declined to reveal whether or not they’ve cooperated with the judge’s May 2012 injunction. If the government has arrested anyone over alleged“belligerent ties” since Judge Forrest ordered a temporary stay, the government could be in contempt of court.

“Obama’s attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA’s section 1021 – the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial – has not been applied by the US government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest’s injunction,” Tangerine tells Daily Cloudt. “In other words, they were telling a US federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama’s government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them.”

In its original form, the NDAA allows the military hold anyone accused of having “substantially supported” al-Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” until “the end of hostilities” and indefinitely imprison anyone who commits a“belligerent act” against the United States, yet fails to explicitly define what is constituted as such. In her injunction, Judge Forrest said, “In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more.”

“An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so,” the judge ruled.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges is also a plaintiff in the case and along with Tangerine warns that his own investigative work could be construed by the government to put him away in prison for life.

“I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists,” Hedges wrote earlier this year, “but that does not make me one.”

Carl Mayer, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case, told RT that he expected the White House to appeal the judge’s injunction, but that he considered it a lost cause.

“[W]e are suggesting that it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law that they ought to just say, ‘We’re not going to appeal,’” Mayer said.

Mayer stated that, because of the injunction, “The NDAA cannot be used to pick up Americans in a proverbial black van or in any other way that the administration might decide to try to get people into the military justice system. It means that the government is foreclosed now from engaging in this type of action against the civil liberties of Americans.” Now, however, the White House wants the power to be once more restored.

Outside of federal court on Thursday, Hedges appeared pleased, Courthouse News reports.

“It didn’t appear to me by the end that [the government] had any argument to stand on,” Hedges said. “The judge eviscerated them.”

Even with the injunction still standing, though, the government has yet to admit if it’s adhering to Judge Forrest’s ruling.

Source

Racist pigs in Arizona lock up Latina woman born in the USA for 4 1/2 months — one cop lies to a grand jury saying she forged her documents and was here illegally. She was unable to care for her 14 year old daughter, and she lost her home and her car.

americanfascism:

anarcho-queer:

Handcuffed Man Shot in Back of Police Car

A 21-year-old man was found shot in the head while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car Saturday night. Now police have launched an investigation to determine what happened.

Chavis Carter was a passenger in a pickup truck that was stopped by police in Jonesboro, Ark., Saturday night, according to KAIT, an ABC-affiliated television station. An officer reportedly found some marijuana, and ran Carter’s information. He was wanted on a warrant out of Mississippi, so officers placed him in a patrol car.

“As protocol, he was handcuffed behind his back, double-locked and searched,” said Jonesboro Police Department Sgt. Lyle Waterworth in an interview with WREG-TV.

Just minutes later, police said they heard a thumping noise, turned around and found Carter shot in the head.

Waterworth said he thinks Carter pulled out a hidden gun and shot himself. “Any given officer has missed something on a search, you know, be it drugs, be it knives, be it razor blades,” he said. “This instance, it happened to be a gun.”

His mother, Teresa Carter, disagrees. “I think they killed him,” she said. “My son wasn’t suicidal.”

Carter said she was also told her son was shot in the right temple, although he was left-handed. “I mean, I just want to know what really happened,” she told WREG-TV. “That’s all I want to know.”

The two officers who were present when Carter was found shot were placed on administrative leave.

Aha, “found”.

Meanwhile, in Nazi Germany

“A Jewish man was found shot in the head in the back of a Gestapo Cruiser.”

Remember when, in the wake of the 9/11 attack, the Patriot Act was controversial, held up as the symbolic face of Bush/Cheney radicalism and widely lamented as a threat to core American liberties and restraints on federal surveillance and detention powers? Yet now, the Patriot Act is quietly renewed every four years by overwhelming majorities in both parties (despite substantial evidence of serious abuse), and almost nobody is bothered by it any longer. That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point:

After Dick Cheney criticized John McCain this weekend for having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, this was McCain’s retort:

Look, I respect the vice president. He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don’t think we should have.

Isn’t it amazing that the first sentence there (“I respect the vice president”) can precede the next one (“He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not”) without any notice or controversy? I realize insincere expressions of respect are rote ritualism among American political elites, but still, McCain’s statement amounts to this pronouncement: Dick Cheney authorized torture — he is a torturer — and I respect him. How can that be an acceptable sentiment to express? Of course, it’s even more notable that political officials whom everyone knows authorized torture are walking around free, respected and prosperous, completely shielded from all criminal accountability. “Torture” has been permanently transformed from an unspeakable taboo into a garden-variety political controversy, where it shall long remain. [more examples]

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

myadolescenceispersonified:

Quick Facts about Guantánamo Bay:

• Approximate number of prisoners detained at Guantánamo since January 11,2002: 779
• Number of detainees released due to insufficient reason to keep them: 600
• Number of detainees who remain at Guantánamo as of February 2012: 171
• Number of trials completed since it’s opening: 3
• Age of the youngest Guantánamo prisoner: 13
• Age of the oldest Guantánamo prisoner: 98
• Number of suicide attempts in Guantánamo Bay since 2002: 23
• Number of alleged suicides amongst Guantánamo prisoners since 2002: 6
• Interrogation methods in Guantánamo include, but are not limited to: water-boarding, physical abuse, forced injections, sexual assault, sexual humiliation,  sleep deprivation, environmental manipulation, violent dogs, forced nudity, using phobias, extreme cold, cultural humiliation, sensory bombardment, stress positions, sensory deprivation, isolation, ect.

In 2010, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell) stated that top U.S. officials, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, had known that the majority of the detainees initially sent to Guantánamo were innocent, but that the detainees had been kept there for reasons of “political expedience”, meaning their reasons were inclined towards domination rather than being fair or just.

(via thepeoplesrecord)

(via trotscare-deactivated20121010)

occupyallstreets:

WikiLeaks War Log: Americans Handed Over Captives To Iraq Torture Squads

The documents appear to show that US commanders passed detainees over to the “Wolf Brigade”, a feared unit controlled by the ministry of the interior.

In files seen by The New York Times, a US interrogator told the prisoner that: “He would be subject to all the pain and agony that the Wolf battalion is known to exact upon its detainees.”

In Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad, log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US soldiers, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for “further questioning”.

New York Times writer Peter Maass, who was in Samarra at the time, told The Guardian that “US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing,” while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners.

Mr Maass interviewed the Wolf Brigade’s American military adviser, Col James Steele, at the unit’s improvised detention centre in Samarra, housed inside an old library.

The reporter claims that the 2005 interview was interupted by screams from a prisoner.

Wikileaks files showed that the US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture by Iraqi authorities.

But Sunday’s disclosure that the US forces actively handed over captives to known Iraqi torturers will increase calls for a full investigation.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, backed calls for a possible investigation into the claims.

“I think anything that suggests that basic rules of war, conflict and engagement have been broken or that torture has been in any way condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked at,” he said.

(via americanfascism)

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf of the Denver Nuggets making du’a during “The Star-Spangled Banner”

Abdul-Rauf, born Chris Jackson, initially refused to come out of the locker room at all during the national anthem, saying it’s “a symbol of oppression, of tyranny, so it depends on how you look at it. I think this country has a long history of that. If you look at history, I don’t think you can argue the facts.”

With the help of Denver talk show hosts, fans who were unhappy with Abdul-Rauf’s decision turned the issue into a nationwide commotion, forcing the NBA –- who originally had no problem with the player –- to take action, suspending him indefinitely. The suspension lasted one game; Abdul-Rauf agreed to remain on the floor as long as he could look down at his hands and pray. 

The Denver Nuggets sold the player after the season ended, despite Mahmoud being their highest scorer for the past four seasons.

His house was burnt down in 2001, reduced to just its brick frame. A sign nearby was spray painted with the letters “KKK” and the contractor received calls threatening his life.

(via the-frequency-is-courage-deacti)