Europe and nationalism: A country-by-country guide
Across Europe, nationalist and far-right parties have made significant electoral gains.
Some have taken office, others have become the main opposition voice, and even those yet to gain a political foothold have forced centrist leaders to adapt.
In part, this can be seen as a backlash against the political establishment in the wake of the financial and migrant crises, but the wave of discontent also taps into long-standing fears about globalisation and a dilution of national identity.
Although the parties involved span a broad political spectrum, there are some common themes, such as hostility to immigration, anti-Islamic rhetoric and Euroscepticism.
So where does this leave Europe’s political landscape?
MOSCOW — Russian news reports say a member of Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot has been hospitalized in grave condition for what could be a possible poisoning.
Ekho Moskvy radio and online news portal Meduza reported Wednesday that Pyotr Verzilov has been in emergency care since late Tuesday. They quoted a fellow Pussy Riot member, Veronika Nikulshina, as saying Verzilov’s symptoms included losing his eyesight and ability to speak.
Nikulshina said Verzilov was being treated in the toxicology unit of a Moscow hospital, indicating a suspected poisoning.
Verzilov, Nikulshina and two other activists served 15-day jail sentences for disrupting July’s World Cup final.
They ran onto the field wearing police uniforms, briefly interrupting the match between France and Croatia. Pussy Riot said they were protesting excessive police powers in Russia.
Pharma chief defends 400% drug price rise as a ‘moral requirement’
Nostrum Laboratories’ Nirmal Mulye says he is right to charge as much as possible and slams FDA
Nirmal Mulye: ‘This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business’
David Crow in New York SEPTEMBER 11, 2018 220
A pharma executive has defended his decision to raise the price of an antibiotic mixture to more than $2,000 a bottle, arguing there was a “moral requirement to sell the product at the highest price”.
Last month, Nostrum Laboratories, a small Missouri-based drugmaker, more than quadrupled the price of a bottle of nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392, according to Elsevier’s Gold Standard drug database.
Nitrofurantoin is an antibiotic used to treat bladder infections that was first marketed in 1953, which appears on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines.
On a less related note, I really, really wish that people would actually read articles before getting worked up about headlines. We have this great aggregate that makes it so much easier to know what kind of source you’re following, and people just don’t bother so much as skimming the piece itself.
I just had this argument with my roommate who is now blaring Green Day at me because an article with a clickbait headline said that someone he doesn’t like in reality did something that wasn’t terrible.
An interesting and engaging interview! It was good to get to know your Prime Minister – and so refreshing to listen to a leader who combines strength with a personable good nature and is focused on unifying her country rather than dividing it. I’m wishing that some day we can have such a leader here in the U.S. again. Welcome to Prime Minister Ardern and her family – hope she enjoys her stay here and is able to accomplish her goals during her time at the U.N.
To anyone else visiting this thread: highly recommended!
I like that Craig Newmark really supports journalists, and a free press.
Mr. Newmark is trying to stop the bleeding — although not here. He is among a gaggle of West Coast technology moguls who are riding to the rescue of the beleaguered East Coast media.
On Wednesday, New York Public Radio announced a $2.5 million gift from Mr. Newmark to expand its newsroom. That brings his total philanthropic efforts involving media in the last year to $50 million, much of it centered on New York.
A month earlier, Marc Benioff, another San Francisco tech mogul, bought Time magazine for $190 million. Mr. Benioff characterized his purchase as an investment. For Mr. Newmark, the situation is more political and more urgent.
“A trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy,” Mr. Newmark said. “Like we say in Jersey” — he hails from Morristown, N.J. — “you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.”
Breitbart wants to sue Sleeping Giants over a long standing twitter war.
“Sleeping Giants is a highly-orchestrated, partisan campaign whose organizers have proven willing to use deception and harassment to achieve their goals,” the letter reads.
Anyone could literally say the same about Breitbart.
The letter claims that Sleeping Giants unfairly labeled Breitbart as anti-Semitic. Former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon has described the site as a “platform for the alt-right.”
In a statement, Sleeping Giants’ founder Matt Rivitz, a freelance copywriter, said the campaign was merely pointing out to advertisers that their ads were running on Breitbart.
“Sleeping Giants lets advertisers know that their ads are appearing on a website that publishes articles with titles like, ‘There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck At Interviews,’” Rivitz said. “Breitbart can say whatever they want, and that’s what makes this country great, but it doesn’t mean they need to get paid for it by an advertiser who didn’t know their ads were on the site.”
Click tweet below to see Sleeping Giants whole Twitter campaign.
This July Trump began pushing his agenda to keep deadly asbestos products pouring into our country. As a result, there has been a huge surge in asbestos imports. Right now it’s all coming from Brazil, but they have wisely banned the mining and use of asbestos (along with 60 other nations). As that ban takes hold, the slack will be taken up by Russia. What a coincidence that a Trump policy which harms the health of our citizens will, at the same time, benefit Russian oligarchs within Putin’s inner circle.
Asbestos imports to the U.S. soared by nearly 2,000 percent between July and August, according to federal import data analyzed by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and Environmental Working Group. . . .
Although the EPA has not yet made a decision about the safety of asbestos under the new [Toxic Substances Control Act], recent actions by the Trump administration lay the groundwork for the agency to find that asbestos is safe and should remain legal. . . .
Analysis of federal data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that asbestos-triggered diseases kill an estimated 15,000 Americans a year. A recent study led by Jukka Takala, president of the International Commission on Occupational Health, found that the death toll from asbestos exposure may be much higher, at nearly 40,000 Americans a year and more than 255,000 a year worldwide. . . .
Earlier this year, [Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization and Environmental Working Group] discovered that Russia’s largest asbestos producer, with close ties to Vladimir Putin, is wrapping its products in packaging adorned with President Trump’s image. The company posted on Facebook a photo of pallets of asbestos with this caption:
Donald is on our side! … He supported the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who stated that his agency would no longer deal with negative effects potentially derived from products containing asbestos. Donald Trump supported a specialist and called asbestos “100% safe after application.”
. . . Brazil joined more than 60 other nations and banned asbestos. Brazil’s ban, which will be in full effect soon, leaves Russia, Kazakhstan and China as the world’s dominant asbestos producers. With Brazil poised to no longer provide the vast majority of asbestos to the U.S., Russia and Kazakhstan could fill the void.
Below is an article from July that goes into more detail regarding the Putin connection.
“Vladimir Putin and Russia’s asbestos industry stand to prosper mightily as a result of the Trump Administration’s failure to ban asbestos in the U.S.,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Helping Putin and Russian oligarchs amass fortunes by selling a product that kills thousands each year should never be the role of a U.S. president or the EPA, but this is the Trump administration. Russia’s interests are Trump’s interests, and any clear-eyed American knows it.”
Further reading: This is my post from August which includes a New York Times article describing how Trump-appointed officials pushed the new policy through the EPA over the objections of the agency’s in-house scientists and lawyers.
Had an awesome night at the Rally to Protect the Mueller Investigation at the U.S. District Court in San Diego. There was a big, enthusiastic crowd – it was very impressive that so many people made it, especially considering the short notice. There was a real feeling of hope and community, mixed with a fighting spirit.
Here’s something that really impressed me. As you might have picked up from some of my other posts, I’ve been doing some work for Mike Levin’s campaign and was struck by his remarkable stamina – he and his wife have been going non-stop for months. And I was so proud that he won his seat, thus flipping California’s 49th district from Red to Blue for the first time in just about forever. Well, I couldn’t believe that he was there tonight! I was sure he would take a few days off, but no, he battled the rush hour traffic all the way down from San Clemente to San Diego which is two districts away from ours! He was there expressly to support this rally. That’s dedication. He fired up the crowd with a rousing speech and that was the highlight of the evening for me.
So Fox News, Wikileaks and Matt Drudge have all stopped tweeting. It’s been about three days. Kinda weird. I fact checked it on Twitter and it’s true. No one knows why but there’s been a lot of speculation. Maybe there is a more of a story here but for now, it’s only worth mentioning.
Here’s a community story from Daily Kos that sums it up pretty well.
Every Thanksgiving we celebrate the generosity of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. This year, instead of honoring the sovereignty these fine people, the Trump Administration took their land away. So yesterday they marched on Washington. Why isn’t this a bigger story?
A week before Thanksgiving, members of the same tribe who helped the pilgrims survive 400 years ago stood before the nation’s Capitol Building. But instead of celebrating, they spoke out against the Trump administration’s decision to take their reservation away.
Yesterday morning over 200 members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, their allies, and supporters marched from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Capitol. They sang traditional songs, chanted slogans and held signs speaking out against the Department of the Interior’s September 7 announcement revoking the trust status of 321 acres of Mashpee land.
“What we’re seeing is a direct assault and attack on Indigenous people’s sovereignty,” Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell said. “And sovereignty’s a powerful word.”
For Alexey Navalny who is a political opponent of Putin’s, international justice was rendered.
This morning, the European Court of Human Rights has announced its verdict on the case of Alexey Navalny v. Russia. The judges have ruled unanimously that the seven arrests of Navalny between 2012 and 2014 caused severe violations of his rights and freedoms and were politically motivated. This is the first time in 14 years that the ECHR finds Russia guilty of political persecution.
Between 2012 and 2014, Navalny has been arrested a total of seven times at various protest rallies. On two occasions, he was arrested twice during the same day. Each time, Alexey was charged with either breaching the established procedure for conducting public events or disobeying a lawful police order. He was five times given a fine and was twice sentenced to administrative detention. All of his appeals were dismissed.
Navalny complained that all these arrests violated his right to liberty and right to freedom of assembly (Articles 5 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights). He then claimed that these arrests were politically motivated, which, in conjunction with the aforementioned violations, should be considered as a violation of Article 18 (limitation on use of restriction of rights).
The court has ruled that there has indeed been a violation of Article 18 in conjunction with Articles 5 and 11, as well as violations of Article 6 (right to a fair trial) during six out of seven administrative proceedings against Navalny. This established a very important precedent that will hopefully make it easier for future complainants from Russia to prove that they are also subject to political persecution.
The court has decided that Russia is to pay Alexey a total of €51,024 in respect of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage, as well as €12,653 for costs and expenses. There is no guarantee, however, that Navalny will actually receive this money. A recently introduced law states that Russia can ignore the decisions of the ECHR if it is ruled that they contradict the country’s constitution.
Finally, it has to be noted that Russian authorities anticipated such a decision and desperately tried to come up with something to prevent it. Their brilliant idea was to prevent Navalny from attending the court hearing in Strasbourg. Two days ago, he was denied exit from Russia at the airport border control. He was shown a crudely forged letter from the Federal Bailiff Service that stated that he is not allowed to leave the country for an undisclosed reason. At the same time, the FBS database was urgently updated to include the unpaid 2.2 million rubles of compensatory damages on the “Kirovles case”. For some reason, the authorities completely ignored the fact that the debtor needs to be notified about the impending restriction of travel by letter and given 5 days to settle the debt. Nevertheless, the 2.2 million rubles were paid immediately, and Alexey was allowed to fly to Strasbourg on the very next day, making all the efforts of the Russian authorities completely pointless.
The election of Kim Jong-yang, a South Korean as head of Interpol is considered a win, instead of the proposed Russian candidate Alexander Prokopchuk.
Alot of dissent shown on Twiiter towards the potential picking of Prokopchuk, including Bill Browder, the American who instigated the start of the Magnitsky Act, after Russia murdered his accountant, Magnitsky.
Interpol has elected South Korean Kim Jong-yang as its president, rejecting the controversial Russian frontrunner.
Mr Kim was chosen by Interpol’s 194 member states at a meeting of its annual congress in Dubai.
He beat Russia’s Alexander Prokopchuk, who has been accused of using Interpol’s arrest warrant system to target critics of the Kremlin.
Russia blamed the outcome of the voting on “unprecedented pressure and interference”.
The election follows the disappearance of Interpol’s former president Meng Hongwei, who vanished on a trip to China in September. Beijing has since confirmed he has been detained and is being investigated for allegedly taking bribes. Interpol presidency vote: Russia in surprise loss to South Korea - BBC News
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s record will not change even with T’s pardon…always stuck with his priors.
A federal judge on Thursday shot down former sheriff Joe Arpaio’s bid to sweep his criminal record clean.
Arpaio, the controversial former lawman in Arizona’s Maricopa County, was granted a pardon by President Trump on Aug. 25. He had been found guilty of criminal contempt of a federal court order after a five-day bench trial earlier this year and faced the possibility of up to six months in jail. After the pardon, the 85-year-old Arpaio petitioned the court to clear his record and prevent the ruling from being used in future litigation.
The case raised the novel question of how far a presidential pardon actually reaches.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton said the pardon only freed Arpaio from possible punishment. In a four-page order offering a check on the president’s executive power, Bolton wrote that a pardon could not erase the facts of the case.
