Nobody is Safe From a Bigot: Donald Trump Goes 'Birther' on Ted Cruz - Suggest He's Not American

By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker
Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”

Trump added: “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”

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Donald Trump's Comments Has Deep Roots in a Long Legacy of Racism and State Violence

Donald Trump is the face of a political system mired in corruption, an economic system that is as ruthless as
it is authoritarian, and a culture that has lost its critical embrace of historical memory. (Photo by Gage
Skidmore)

Trumping America

Rather than viewing Trump’s comments as a political virus that has deep roots in nativist apoplexy and a long legacy of racism and state violence, his despicable remarks are reduced to an uncivil rant by a bullying member of the billionaire class with no reference to the unmarked status of white privilege and its underlying logic of white supremacy.

By Henry A. Giroux
Donald Trump lit up the mainstream media spectacle by stating in his presidential candidacy announcement, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." (1) The mainstream press could not let such an opportune racist outburst go unnoticed. After all, it was perfect fodder for fueling the corporate media's never-ending spectacle of entertainment. Mouthed from one of America’s favorite billionaire buffoons, his racist and xenophobic statements have been defended as brave, dismissed as uncivil, or set aside as the colorful discourse of a cantankerous, rich eccentric.

Such commentary collapses into the realm of the personal by privatizing racism. That is, it ignores the deep seated contours of systemic racism and xenophobia and the conditions that promote it, instead focusing on the individual who spouts such poisonous racist language. Rather than viewing Trump’s comments as a political virus that has deep roots in nativist apoplexy and a long legacy of racism and state violence, his despicable remarks are reduced to an uncivil rant by a bullying member of the billionaire class with no reference to the unmarked status of white privilege and its underlying logic of white supremacy. Such commentary at its core is superficial, duplicitous, and represents a flight from responsibility and a politics of denial.

Not only did mainstream media replay Trump's statements over and over again, without any serious criticism, but also they filled the 24/7 news cycle with endless interviews in which Trump defended his remarks, proving the obvious about his arrogance and stupidity. Treated more as an indication of Trump's no-holds-barred personality than as another example of the myth of the United States' claim to the comfortable status of an alleged postracial society, Trump's remarks were viewed as indiscrete and colorful rather than symptomatic of the racial hatred lying beneath the culture of dominant politics.


The real issue that needs to be examined is what kind of society produces a Donald Trump.



The racial cleansing machine was in full operating mode as the dominant media apparatuses rushed to interview a variety of faux commentators about how they felt about Trump's remarks with little attempt to take the high ground and challenge many of the remarks that were made. On the contrary, the only truth or sense of injustice displayed by CNN, NBC, CBS and other major news outlets lies in the assumption that the meaning of any issue rests with making sure that the public is exposed to a narrow array of views in the interest of balance and journalistic objectivity.

According to this logic, balance - not morality, justice or evidence - is the ultimate arbiter of truth. Hence, Trump's vicious, racist remarks enabled the mainstream media to let the American people hear from Sen. Ted Cruz who argued that he liked Donald Trump and was glad he was bringing attention to the issue of "illegal immigration." (2) Former Sen. Rick Santorum joined Cruz in praising Trump for focusing on "illegal immigration," absent of any serious criticism of his racist remarks. (3) Other conservative politicians such as Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Rick Perry condemned Trump's remarks but nothing was said in the press about how they had played a key role in supporting legislation that was both vicious and racist. (4)

A Long History of Racist Political Candidates

Liberals denounced Trump but said little about the history of both major parties in which policies were developed that undermined the welfare system, created the racist incarceration state and supported a tough-on-crime drug war that decimated Black communities. For instance, Jonathan Chait seems less concerned about a Republican Party that has promoted a number of racist policies such as trying to disable the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and militarizing the southern border than he is about "conservative thought leaders [who] feel compelled to defend Trump's nativist ramblings." (5) Chait's confusion is evident in the title of his article, "Why Are Conservatives Defending Donald Trump?" which should read "Should We Be Surprised That Conservatives Are Defending Donald Trump?"

The mainstream media, conservatives and a number of liberal commentators seem to have allowed Trump's ode to racial cleansing to cloud their sense of recent history. After all, it was only a few decades ago that Kirk Fordice, a right-wing Republican, ended his victorious campaign for governor - orchestrated largely as an attack on crime and welfare cheaters - with a still photograph of a Black woman and her baby. (6) Of course, this was just a few years after George H.W. Bush ran his famous Willie Horton ad and a year before Dan Quayle, in the 1992 presidential campaign, used the racially coded category of welfare to attack a sitcom character, Murphy Brown.

More recently, there is the incident in which the press revealed that then Texas Gov. Rick Perry was "hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family's secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance. 'N*****head,' it read." And, of course, the racist invectives aimed at President Obama by a number of Republicans are legion. (7) Bob Herbert in 2009 cited a number of racist incidents aimed at President Obama. He writes:

When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama's ancestors. Among the posters at [a] gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, 'The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin' African.' These are bits and pieces of an increasingly unrestrained manifestation of racism directed toward Mr. Obama that is being fed by hate-mongers on talk radio and is widely tolerated, if not encouraged, by Republican Party leaders. It's disgusting, and it's dangerous. But it's the same old filthy racism that has been there all along and that has been exploited by the G.O.P. since the 1960s.

Frank Rich, at a different time, responded to what can be called the ever-present historical amnesia by politicians and media pundits about the overt racism displayed by the Republican Party in terms that are as apt today as they were when first written. He writes:

Tell that to George W. Bush, who beat John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary after what Newsweek called "a smear campaign" of leaflets, emails and telephone calls calling attention to the McCains' "black child" (an adopted daughter from Bangladesh). Or to Sonny Perdue, the [former] Republican governor of Georgia, elected in part by demagoguing the sanctity of the Confederate flag. (8)

More insightful, liberal commentators such as Eugene Robinson called Trump a "farce to be reckoned with" while Juan Cole argued that Trump failed to use more discrete racial codes because "billionaires and fabulously wealthy people in general are surrounded by yes-men." (9) While Robinson and Cole may be right, their commentary appears to miss the mark. Adding to the chorus of liberal denunciations were the public announcements by a number of corporations that they were cutting their business ties with Trump because of the offensive nature of his remarks. Largely praised in the media, such corporations were applauded for taking the high moral ground as most commentators conveniently forgot that these were the same corporations battling unions, polluting the environment, underpaying their workers and exercising an economic chokehold over the commanding institutions of American life.

What Kind of Society Produces Donald Trump?

In response to all of this fanfare over Trump's remarks, I argue that the recent widespread public and media focus given to his display of racism, narcissism and arrogance misses the point. I think the real issue that needs to be examined is what kind of society produces a Donald Trump.

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Australian Government Contractors Will Now Go to Jail for Reporting Child Abuse in Detention Centers

Photo by Michael Coghlan.

By Lauren Gillin
Last month the Australian government, with the support of the opposition, passed the Border Force Protection Act through both houses of Parliament. It will come into effect on July 1.

If the act defines you as an "entrusted person," you might be facing jail for up to two years if you reveal anything about what happens in Australia's immigration detention centers to anybody else.

An "entrusted person" is anyone working directly or indirectly for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, so that's doctors, nurses, psychologists, teachers, counsellors, security staff, maintenance workers, or anyone who has signed a government contract. This puts medical professionals and those who work with children on Nauru or Manus Island in bizarre circumstances. Outside of detention centers, they're legally obligated to report child abuse. As of July 1, they can't do the same with abuse witnessed on the inside.

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Go Home or Go To Jail: Israel Pressures African Migrants to Leave

By RT
Israel is offering illegal immigrants $3,500 and a one-way ticket home as it begins to crack down on refugees, who face prison if they don’t take up the deal. Rights groups are appalled at the move, saying Israel should be doing more to protect them.

Israel says the tough move is necessary to send a message to migrants that making the journey is not worthwhile in the first place. As deterrents it has built a steel fence along the border with Egypt, houses migrants in a detention camp in the middle of a desert, and has stopped issuing work permits to deter would-be migrants

Israel was founded by refugees and continues to welcome Jews from around the world who wish to relocate there. During the 1990s over a million Jews from the former Soviet Union crossed the welcome mat.

Jews from Ethiopia have also looked to settle in Israel, however, they have not had an easy time of things in trying to start a new life.

[...]

Approximately 135,500 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, and more than a third of them – over 50,000 – were born there.

However, it would seem they are fortunate in comparison to their African neighbors who are not of the Jewish faith. Over the last six years, Israel has a dismal rate of accepting refugees from Eritrea. Despite the fact 300,000 asylum seekers from the country in the horn of Africa have been offered refugee status around the world, Israel has accepted only four people.

Aside from making it hard for potential refugees to get to Israel, the country is also giving those already there incentives to leave.

A government program has offered those without legal papers the chance to return home with $3,500 in cash, the option of going to a third country, or spend an indefinite time in an Israeli prison.

Over the past two years, over 9,000 Africans have taken up Israel’s offer and left. Before the crackdown began African workers could regularly be found around Tel Aviv doing menial jobs, such as washing dishes and cleaning hotel rooms which Israeli’s would not touch.

“It is a form of coercion, but it is not forced deportation,” said Sigal Rozen, who works as the public policy director for an Israeli human rights group called Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. However, Rozen was adamant, “Israel should do more,” the Washington Post reported.

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Race, Migration and Neoliberalism

Cheap labor is vital to the neoliberal project. The left must stop competing with UKIP for unpleasantness and start building a popular narrative of diversity and pluralism.

Photograph by flamouroux.

By Sally Davison and George Shire
Over the past two years the Kilburn Manifesto has been at the centre of a wide-ranging public debate initiated by the journal Soundings and its founding editors Doreen Massey, Michael Rustin and Stuart Hall. In the penultimate instalment of the Manifesto, Sally Davison and George Shire consider the historical links between race, migration and neoliberalism and argue for a Gramscian approach to challenging the common sense about race in the UK towards a pluralist, inclusive and multi-cultural concept of citizenship.

Gramsci’s concept of ‘common sense’ is useful in helping to understand the complex articulations between race, migration and nation and the way they are mobilised within neoliberal ideology. In an early instalment of the Kilburn Manifesto Stuart Hall and Alan O’Shea argued that common sense is a form of everyday thinking that offers us frameworks of meaning with which to make sense of the world:

It is a form of popular, easily-available knowledge which contains no complicated ideas, requires no sophisticated argument and does not depend on deep thought or wide reading. It works intuitively, without forethought or reflection. It is pragmatic and empirical, giving the illusion of arising directly from experience, reflecting only the realities of daily life and answering the needs of ‘the common people’ for practical guidance and advice.

For Gramsci, the common sense of a society contains within its mix of ideas ‘stone age elements’ and ‘prejudices from all past phases of history’: previous ways of understanding the world leave their mark on popular ways of thinking. Each political formation draws on a repertoire of elements to create its own forms of hierarchy and patterns of exclusion and inclusion.

In Britain especially, common sense on race is suffused with relics from its past imperial history, though it also draws on other elements, such as feudal beliefs about the divine right to rule, or a Shakespearean celebration of the happy few at Agincourt. These and other accretions have left what Gramsci describes as ‘stratified deposits’ in our ideas about Britishness, Englishness, ethnicity and difference.

House GOP Votes To Dump Millions of Undocumented Immigrants: Merely Trolling for Right-Wing Voters — Since Obama Would Veto Bill

Photo by takomabibelot.

By Jeremy W. Peters
The House on Wednesday voted to undo major provisions of President Obama’s immigration policy, approving legislation that would revoke legal protections for millions of undocumented immigrants. The vote drew outrage from Democrats and led more than two dozen Republicans, many worried about the perception that their party is hostile to immigrants, to break away.

The most contentious measures in the bill will most likely die in the Senate, where Democrats have said they will wage a filibuster and some Republicans are likely to join in opposition. The White House has said President Obama will not sign any bill that blocks his executive actions on immigration.

But the action in the House on Wednesday was a glimpse into how the new Republican-led Congress will navigate the divisive debate over the president’s immigration actions as lawmakers struggle to reach a compromise on funding the Department of Homeland Security. The department will run out of money at the end of February, and Republicans have said they will use the appropriations process as their vehicle for dismantling Mr. Obama’s directives.

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Is There a War on White People? — White Supremacists Use Psychological Jiu jitsu: When All Else Has Failed — Play the Victim

Right-Winger whines that the immigration issue is being used to make whites look racist

Ku Klux Klan Ceremony.

By Samantha Cowan
Allegations of abusing the race card have been thrown across party lines since before President Barack Obama became America’s first black president, but one Southern Republican is saying that Democrats have launched a race war, and their target is white people.

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks brought up the alleged war on a conservative radio show hosted by Laura Ingraham, in response to questions about immigration reform and border security.

“This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party, and the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else,” said Brooks.

Brooks was responding in part to an interview National Journal editor Ron Fournier gave Fox News Sunday about the Republican Party’s immigration policies. In the interview he said the GOP is seen as a party of white people.

“The fastest-growing bloc in this country thinks the Republican Party hates them. This party, your party, cannot be the party of the future beyond November if you're seen as the party of white people,” Fournier said.

In response to those comments, Brooks proposed that Democrats are attempting to turn immigration into a racial issue, when illegal immigration affects groups in every demographic. He cited loss of jobs and wages.

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The Republican Party — It Must Be 'That Black Guy' Thing: After Years of Demanding More Security on Border — GOP Obstructs Obama's Request for More Border Security

Border fence. (Photo by Josh Denmark)

Republicans have whined about "border security" for many years.  But when President Obama makes a request for more money to increase border security, the Republicans claim Obama is "asking for too much money for border security."

Republicans and right-wing pundits claim border
 security is their 'top priority'

In Order of Appearance: Rick Perry (governor of Texas), Steve King (representative), right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin (Fox News), billionaire knucklehead Donald Trump, Rand Paul (senator).

U.S. House Appropriations Chair: Obama Border Security Request Too High

By David Lawder
The Obama administration's $3.7 billion request for emergency funds to bolster U.S. border security and deal with a massive influx of migrant children from Central America is too high and will be reduced, an influential Republican lawmaker said on Friday.

House of Representatives Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers said the amount was "too much money" and a large portion of the funds needed to deal with the problems could be handled through the normal spending bills for the 2015 fiscal year starting on Oct. 1.

He declined to say what he believed was a more appropriate amount and said the committee will produce an estimate soon.

"We're crunching the numbers carefully, I'll hopefully be able to give you a better answer next week," Rogers said.

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Secret Plan for Israel to 'Export Jews' to Ukraine — Leaked Report: Ukraine Reportedly Will Receive Jews in Exchange for Military Assistance Against Russia

(Click to see full-sized image)

Map of the Khazar Khaganate and surrounding states, c. 820 CE. Area of direct
Khazar control shown in dark blue, sphere of influence in purple. (Map from
Wikimedia Commons)

Israel acknowledges that 'Jews are in fact Khazars' - The Secret plan for reverse migration to Ukraine

By Jim Wald, Times of Israel
Followers of Middle Eastern affairs know two things: always expect the unexpected, and never write off Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has more political lives than the proverbial cat.

Only yesterday came news that Syrian rebels plan to give Israel the Golan Heights in exchange for creation of a no-fly zone against the Assad regime. In an even bolder move, it is now revealed, Israel will withdraw its settlers from communities beyond the settlement blocs—and relocate them at least temporarily to Ukraine. Ukraine made this arrangement on the basis of historic ties and in exchange for desperately needed military assistance against Russia. This surprising turn of events had an even more surprising origin: genetics, a field in which Israeli scholars have long excelled.

A Warlike Turkic People—and a Mystery

It is well known that, sometime in the eighth to ninth centuries, the Khazars, a warlike Turkic people, converted to Judaism and ruled over a vast domain in what became southern Russia and Ukraine. What happened to them after the Russians destroyed that empire around the eleventh century has been a mystery. Many have speculated that the Khazars became the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews.

Arabs have long cited the Khazar hypothesis in attempts to deny a Jewish historical claim to the land of Israel. During the UN debate over Palestine Partition, Chaim Weizmann responded, sarcastically: “lt is very strange. All my life I have been a Jew, felt like a Jew, and I now learn that I am a Khazar.” In a more folksy vein, Prime Minister Golda Meir famously said:  “Khazar, Schmazar. There is no Khazar people. I knew no Khazars In Kiev. Or Milwaukee. Show me these Khazars of whom you speak.”

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The UK's Fastest Growing Far Right Group: Meet 'Britain First'

A child of the BNP and the EDL, Britain First has shifted the glare of bigots from race war to faith war. Meet the man behind the fastest growing far right movement in Britain, and find out what makes him tick.


By Matthew Collins
Last week, HOPE not hate released our report into the activities of the far right group Britain First (BF). It was timely; as the report was being put together - three years of margin notes and emails among colleagues detailing their growth and modus operandi, pasted together along with testimony from people close to the organisation - Britain was waking up to the news that there was a new far-right act in town, invading Mosques and running booze laden vigilante patrols in the name of Jesus in East London. The general consensus seemed to be that people viewed them as a part comedy, part evolving horror story.

A number of snap reports in the media took up the growth of this new group, the “phenomena” that is Britain First, with nearly half a million “supporters” on Facebook. It was the same old faces, mainly, with former senior figures in the diminishing British National Party (BNP) and the vanishing English Defence League (EDL), it perfectly filled the void where the panicked affliction people felt about the far right had been.

On the Streets with Far-Right Extremists Britain First

But Britain First is very, very different to the BNP and the EDL. Yes, it could be called a hybrid of the two; it’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam, it’s angry and confrontational and like the former and latter groups, a lot of what it says doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. However, it’s leader, it’s real leader, Jim Dowson, is, as we revealed, more than just some right-wing almost comic book “crackpot”, even though he’s pint-sized and seems to be forever wearing a tweed jacket and a look that desperately begs for the lend of a monocle. He is the person we dubbed in 2008 as “the man who owns the BNP.”

Britain First is this former apprentice Calvinist Minister’s true baby. The hardline anti-abortionist had previously sat like a cuckoo in the BNP for three and a half years, amassing them enormous wealth, before attempting a crude abortion of his own by evicting the group from his office in Belfast, dumping the party with mounting and almost unfathomable debts.

Dowson was never driven by racial hatred, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism like the BNP. He’s simply driven by fundamental extremism. We’d been inside and out of the Dowson empire for nearly seven years. We’ve traced his career through churches, courts, marching bands, tribunals, scuffles, family planning clinics, gay weddings and paramilitaries dating back some thirty years. We kept monitoring him because we knew he’d never go away.

For thirty years, the 49 year old has been attracted to anything controversial, confrontational and distasteful. As a young man in Airdrie, Scotland, in the early 1980’s he packed a bag and a bible and headed for Northern Ireland to join the protestant loyalist paramilitaries. Although not shy of violence, Dowson shied away from action in their murderous nom de plumes. Instead, he agitated and fundraised and preached the gospel from the shadows. On a fact-finding visit to Belfast in 2008, when Dowson and the BNP were just setting up shop there together, one of the most senior loyalist paramilitaries in the province politely warned us that Dowson (at the time still a relatively unconfirmed quantity to us) had “a lot of friends” in the province.

We found that his religious activities had brought Dowson considerable wealth and even a slice of “peace funding” from the European Union. He had a series of properties across Europe with various purposes and guises, from post-conflict resolution getaways for young people, to a sanctuary for young women. It was his wealth and influence that convinced the easily impressed Nick Griffin to hand over the entire running of the BNP to Dowson within a year of their meeting.

When Dowson dumped the BNP in 2010, they foolishly attempted to go to war with him. As the party was collapsing, they invented sex smears about their former fundraiser and owner. People were kidnapped, driven off the road and even went to prison as things turned bitterly nasty between the two parties. BNP leader Nick Griffin even went to court to claim, incorrectly, that the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a murderous paramilitary group from Northern Ireland, was trying to intimidate his family over money on behalf of people linked to Dowson.

But Dowson was not after Griffin’s money, he was after his supporters. Despite all the wealth and trappings he had amassed over the years, Dowson had never had his own army. He’d flitted for years and years in search of a willing ear to listen to his prophecies, he’d nested like a cuckoo. He’d travelled to the United States to work with evangelical Christians, black and white, who shared his world view. He’d found comfort and purpose in the bitter hatred and theology of the Irish conflict, but it was in the BNP that he believed he’d realised his true potential.

One million people had voted BNP in the 2009 Euro elections and donated millions of pounds to the party and its “cause”. They weren’t neo-Nazis, they were people driven by fear and cultural insecurity, living in moral panic every time something beyond their control or comprehension broke on their television screens. Social media was in its infancy, so Dowson had driven the BNP machine forward by the use of the telephone, pressing nightly from his call centre into the homes of BNP members and supporters an evangelical message that only by donating money could the BNP save theirs and Britain’s mortal soul.

The predictable headlines our report into Britain First garnished tended to be about “race hate thugs”, though our report in reality says very little about the racism that is already obvious in Britain First. Dowson’s group is not of the simple thuggery and racism of the BNP and the EDL, though those are inherent characteristics of the organisation and they will not subside. When Dowson left the BNP he recruited a few noticeable individuals who had over time in the party, conversed with him about God. He recruited four regional organisers who had over time, converted to Christianity. He also took Paul Golding, at the time an elected councillor but a fading star in the BNP, back with him to Northern Ireland. Golding converted from a racist bigot to a religious zealot. It is no surprise to hear he attended the controversial church in Belfast of Pastor James McConnell, who two months ago sparked controversy by telling his two thousand strong congregation that Muslims were the “spawn of the devil”.

Whilst the BNP believe that a race war is imminent, Britain First believes that it is a religious war that is coming. In our report we spell this out and also expose how Dowson and Golding have upped the ante in anti-Muslim hate rhetoric, not just by invading Mosques and antagonising radical Jihadists on their doorsteps, but by building, training and drilling a uniformed mob of “Crusaders” who believe they are preparing for a civil war between Christians and Muslims of biblical proportions. Driving around in armoured cars, wearing face masks and chanting the name of “Jesus Christ”, they exhibit the very fundamentalist behaviour that they accuse sections of the Muslim community of. More than the BNP and even worse than the EDL, Britain First are likely to drive more and more people into the arms of extremists and out of the clutches of civilised society. Arrested four times this year already, Golding says nothing will stop him in his mission to “expose” Islam.

His response to our report was to issue a threat to any journalist who printed its “lies”. That, was not very Christian, at all.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Koch Brothers Spending $300 Million Targeting Latinos and Young People Via Music Concerts, Etc. — Trying To Convince Youth and Latinos That Right-Wingers Are 'Good for Them'

Photo by codepinkphoenix.

The Secret Life of B’s: And by “B’s” we mean Billionaires.

By Kathy Malloy
The billionaire brothers Koch are on the receiving end (finally) of some serious media attention and political outrage as the result of a recent spate of anti-American activities.

In addition, a group of reporters recently infiltrated one of their super-secret top “one-percenters” summits and the results were, let’s say, illuminating.

The dynastic duo has formed a Super PAC (aren’t they one already?) aimed at securing the coming midterm elections for their pet Republican candidates. Their latest scheme involves targeting Hispanics and Latinos to urge them to vote for the same cadre of pasty white men that will, in turn, propose immigration legislation to have them deported, pay them unfair wages, prevent their family members from immigrating, and deny them government benefits. Sadly, they have the deep pockets required to blur the lines and place these candidates in office, as The Daily Beast explains:

The Koch Brothers are on a mission to make people other than older white men vote for Republicans. Although they’ve already spent tens of millions on political races this year, they are devoting $300 million to target specific groups, including Latinos and the young. The programs they’ve backed include Concerned Veterans for America, which is currently running the “Defend Freedom Summer Tour” rock concert series. The Koch Brothers are also supporting the Libre Initiative, a group devoted to convincing Latinos that Obama’s healthcare reform will harm them, and Generation Opportunity, which targets 18-to-34-year-olds through college campuses and social media campaigns.

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Why Some Minorities in France Voted for the Far-Right, Anti Immigraiton Political Party, Front National

“The right and the left broke everything!” Front National 2007 election campaign poster
trying to appeal to minority voters. Public domain.

By Abdoulaye Bah, Translated by Lucia Wheller
When France's Eurosceptic right-wing Front National (FN) party topped the country's polls in last month's European elections, it had its hardline immigration stance to thank. A whopping 91 percent of people who voted for Marine Le Pen-led FN said immigration was the most decisive factor, according to an opinion poll carried out by the French Institute of Public Opinion.

It may come as a surprise then, that some of their 25 percent of votes came from minorities, the very target of some of their proposed policies.

France prohibits any public statistics based on race or ethnicity, so a definite report on voting according to ethnicity isn't available. But for instance, in the French West Indies where the majority of the population is black, the Front National came third in Guadeloupe and second in Saint-Martin/Saint-Bathélemy. In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, they came fourth. 

Many members of minorities voted for a party whose founder, Jean-
Marie Le Pen, suggested the ebola virus was the 'final solution' to over
population and migrants. Did They Know? (Photo by Blandine Le Cain)

Christophe, who lives in Poitiers, France, wrote in Le Plus Nouvel Obs blog that he used to vote for the left-wing party, but voted for the FN this time around:

About 10 years ago I went through a period when I just rejected everything to do with politics. I did not vote because I did not see the use of it anymore. I no longer trusted any politicians or their actions. With Marine Le Pen, I started to believe again [..] I'm fed up of FN voters being pegged as fascist or racist [..] I'm not racist, I am a nationalist.

The rise of the FN seems to stem from continued disenchantment with the declining economic status of France and the increasingly precarious situation of its lower class. An interactive infographic via Le Nouvel Observateur on the results of the 2014 European elections in France shows that FN came out on top for people earning less than 3,000 euros (about 4,500 US dollars) per month.
On seneweb.com, “Diop” expressed gratitude for the opportunities given to his father in France and warned about the country's economy:

My father first arrived from Senegal without a franc in his pocket. As the euro didn't exist in those days, the currency was the French franc and there was work, he was able to make a life for himself, buy a house and prices were much lower. The shit we're in right now is Europe's fault. France was one of the top three global powers for 600 years until they joined the European Union and adopted the euro. Today we've been relegated to fifth place and according to predictions we'll be eighth in 50 years time. We have to know when to say “stop” while we still can.

Nadir, who was born outside France, added in the Observatory of the Extremes in the Europe blog that he voted for the Front National because he felt they were more “real” :

The FN is made up of people like us. They are close to us. They understand us. They have not attended elite universities.

‘Why are they voting against themselves?’
This isn't the first time the FN has drawn votes from people of migrant origins. In this article taken from Egalité et reconciliation (Equality and reconciliation, via the Swiss newspaper Le Matin), a group of girlfriends of North African origin explain why they became members of FN in 2011 prior to the 2012 presidential elections. Zoubida, about 50, wears a veil; she and Kheira share the same outlook on FN:

They've had enough of this type of immigration which, according to them, “capitalises” on state benefits and which applies the following modus operandi: “women have babies, the streets bring up the children and state benefits bring in the paycheck.”

Zoubida, a nursery assistant, earns 1,500 euros per month. Her rent has increased to 505 euros although she only pays 200 thanks to housing aid. “I'm fed up of seeing foreigners getting subsidized housing only three or four years after arriving in France,” she protests.

If the FN got its way, the country would have much tougher immigration policies. The blog mediapart.fr summarised the key features of FN's manifesto:

Amongst their most extreme measures, they want to review the right to asylum, put a stop to free movement within the European Union, ban the regularisation of illegal immigrants, deport them “systematically” and stop “their demonstrations or demonstrations in support of them”. They also want to restore a double penalty system for immigrants, stop their state medical assistance, reduce the duration of residency permits, reverse jus soli laws and reform the Nationality Act. Furthermore, anti-French racism as the motivation of a crime would be considered an aggravating circumstance and therefore the crime would carry a higher sentence. The FN would also like to make development aid to North Africa conditional on reducing or putting a cap on immigration to France. According to an IFOP opinion poll for the French media, 80-82% of FN voters justified their choice based on their feelings towards immigration.

What explanation is behind these unlikely voters? Writer Maloud Akkouche explains this phenomenon on the blog blogs.rue89.nouvelobs.com by suggesting that voting for a party like the FN lets people feel like they are rejecting their association with undesirable populations, which in the minds of many French people fit the classic profile of Arab, African or Muslim immigrants:

Citizens of migrant origin are just as prone to radicalism as certain ‘born and bred French people'. More and more North and Sub-Saharan Africans are voting for the FN. So why are they voting against themselves?

Perhaps because their reflection in the mirror resembles those shady characters responsible for the decay of low-income suburbs, or the profile of certain bearded fundamentalists who gnaw away at French secularism; a kind of secularism that the French will never give up. It's not easy to shave or put makeup on every morning when your face is the constant victim of negative finger-pointing.

How can they escape this sense of blame? By proving that despite their physical appearance, they don't burn cars, deal drugs, stone women, strap bombs to themselves or piss in the lift… In other words, they don't bother their neighbours; a daily struggle which exhausts even the most well-educated people. 

There are other reasons for voting for the FN, particularly for voters originating from countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. Ousmane was persuaded to vote for the FN during the 2014 European elections to express his rejection of homosexuality and globalisation. He claimed that:

I voted for Marine! Congratulations! All these pro-Europe, pro-gay lobbyists and internationalists lost big time!

Commenting on a post on Alexandre Thomas blog dealing with why sons and daughters of immigrants would vote for the FN, Narcisse, who was born in Senegal, wrote:

Whatever the reasons for their votes were, the key is most importantly to make second-generation immigrants aware that the FN does not want them in France and by voting for them, they're giving power to those who have built their reputation on rejecting difference.

Pape Diouf was born in Chad, grew up in Dakar in Senegal, and has lived in the southern French city of Marseille since he was 18. He was the president of a first division football club and was in charge of the club of his adoptive city for many years. He explains why he can understand the voting decision of members of the African diaspora and Arab and Muslim communities during the municipal elections in Marseille in March 2014 (in which he was a candidate). He proposed a solution:

During my visits to the community, I found admirable people who voluntarily take care of young people and women who have been cut off. Without these volunteers, discontent in society would reach its limit. For them, party politics is the cause and reason for their radical support for FN. Paradoxically, many FN voters are of North- or Sub-Saharan African descent; a desperate act that is difficult to understand. To halt the growing support for FN, my own strategy would be to help people who are struggling to get out of poor housing, provide better education for their children and better training for present and future jobs, establish a real public health service or improve access to public transport, etc.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

The Rogue General and the Migrant ‘Massacre’ on the Mediterranean: Asylum-Seekers in Libya Risk Everything to Reach Safety in Italy — EU Looks the Other Way.

Africans face intimidation and violence in Libya. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Hans Lucht
In the migrant ghetto of Abu Salim in Tripoli, Libya, a group of about 80 Eritrean asylum-seekers live in the ground floor of an uncompleted house. It’s a hostile and dangerous environment, and everybody wants to escape to Europe.

One man has an open wound from scabies that has developed into heavy damage to the skin. He’s holding his arm in pain; blood is running on to the floor of the dark and musty room where they sleep 10 people on the ground. Like his friends, he has fled military service in Eritrea and is now a wanted man in his home country. He is only waiting for the weather to improve so that he can leave for Europe.

“We can’t stay here, not even for five minutes – it’s a dog’s life”, his friend told me during recent ethnographic fieldwork among African migrants and asylum-seekers in Tripoli.

It’s summer in Libya and high season for one of the most dramatic and dangerous expressions of the deepening inequality between lives in Europe and lives in Africa, as the boats from Africa and Asia arrive in Italy. A few weeks ago yet another boat went down off the Libyan coast with 40 people drowning and 40 people still missing, and the day after another boat capsized south of Lampedusa claiming at least 17 dead in a recurring tragedy condemned by Pope Francis as a ‘shameful massacre’.

The numbers arriving in Italy are 10 times higher than last year in what the Italian government has called a ‘biblical exodus’ from north Africa. The numbers Italy has rescued at sea are now above 40,000 people, and could surpass the numbers recorded during the Arab Spring in 2011 when 62,000 reached Italy.

Unfortunately, the pressure on Italy’s sea borders is not likely to decrease. Ex-general Khalifa Hifter – the renegade general disowned and humiliated by colonel Gaddafi and then given political asylum and backing in the US – threatens to throw Libya further into anarchy with his all-out war against the Islamists in Benghazi and Derna.

The EU and the US more or less publicly support the general and fight against ‘the foreign terrorists’. It appears that the west has grown disillusioned with the messiness of the Arab Spring and now longs for another military dictator that can guarantee stability and business as usual in one of Africa’s biggest oil producers. The question is if the EU and the US are ready to help the thousands of refugees that may have to escape the escalating conflict or whether that will be left, again, to Egypt and Tunisia and to a much lesser extent, Italy.

The worsening conditions in Libya leave asylum-seekers with little choice but to risk their lives, a young Eritrean woman explained. As security in Libya is falling apart and attacks on African migrants happen daily, they are too afraid even to sleep at night.

“They can come in at any time and steal from us; they just break in the door and take phones and money. Every night there’s shooting and bombs. We fear for our lives here”.

Though the Libyan navy is in better condition than the Libyan army, it does not have enough ships, equipment or training to stop the asylum-seekers even if it patrolled the 1,800 kilometers long coastline around the clock. Currently the navy has no radar monitoring or other means of surveillance at its disposal. But instead of looking to Libya to police its borders, navy spokesperson colonel Ayob Ghassem told me, Europe should remember its own moral and historical responsibility in the countries where the migrants come from, and help develop them.

“Libya is paying the price for illegal immigration – more than we can afford,“ he said, “But Europe should ask itself: Why are we even arresting them? As long as they are going to Europe, and not coming back, is it still in our interest to stop them?”

Let’s not jump to the conclusion that Libya’s more than one million migrants all want to come to Europe, as some Italian officials claim. That is not the case and never has been the case. To most Asian and African migrants, Libya is a labour destination, and they are not willing to risk their lives to reach a crisis-stricken Europe.

But there are people here – Eritreans, Somalis, Syrians – that have no choice but to leave their homes, and Europe cannot afford to let them perish on the Mediterranean. As the first article of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union states: “Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.”

The surge in arrivals is putting pressure on the Italian government, and the centre-right parties are calling for a revision of Italy’s expensive but life-saving Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) operation, set up in the wake of the Lampedusa disaster in October of last year when more than 350 people died. The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, has accused Europe of hypocrisy in the face of human suffering. The EU “can’t save governments and banks and then let mothers and children die,” he said.

Yet, Mr. Renzi may find it hard to convince Germany and France, who received respectively 127,000 and 65,000 asylum-seekers in 2013, that Italy should have special treatment. As the recent European elections showed, anti-immigrant agendas have strong public backing and there appears to be a worrying acceptance that migrant deaths are a necessary evil, even a warrant of our continued prosperity.

Upon a visit to a Libyan migrant prison, I came across a young woman from Eritrea with a three-weeks-old baby boy in her arms. She was two months pregnant when she fled Eritrea, but was apprehended at sea and sent back to Libya. The boy, her first child, was born in the centre. As she went in to labour the prison guards, much to their dismay, had to drive her around in their private cars in the middle of the night in order to find a hospital that would receive her, because in Libya a pregnant woman without a husband will often be refused medical assistance.

The boy is healthy and smiling, but the overcrowded prison is not a place to raise a child, she says. Therefore she has decided to try for Europe again. “The conditions here are driving us back into the boats”, she says, as she rocks the baby in her arms.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Jews in America — A Conflicted Heritage

Two young girls wearing banners that read "Abolish child slavery" in English and
Yiddish. Credit: Creative Commons

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
On the one hand, Jews are deeply grateful that America provided us with a safe haven when so many other Christianity-dominated cultures had represented us as demon Christ-killers and created the preconditions for the rise of both secular and religious anti-Semitism.

American Jews rejoiced in the promise of freedom and equality before the law, and played a major role in organizing, shaping, and leading social movements that could extend that promise to all of America’s citizens.

The role of the United States in defeating Nazism at the expense of so many American lives remains an enduring source of pride even for the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those who fought in World War II, and an enduring source of appreciation for this amazing country. And the generosity of the American people toward Jews has made it possible for us to thrive and feel the kind of safety we haven’t felt for two thousand years of exile and diaspora.

On the other hand, Jewish well-being in America came not because this society didn’t seek scapegoats, but rather because it already had a scapegoat long before most Jews arrived on these shores – African Americans, Native Americans, and other targets (most recently, feminists, homosexuals, and “illegal” immigrants).

While other immigrant groups from Europe found their safety in part by identifying with the dominant culture and becoming “white” (a social construct for all light-skinned people who bought into the existing systems of privilege and power), a significant section of the Jewish people in the past 150 years of presence in the United States chose instead to identify with the oppressed – most significantly with African Americans, but also with the poor (of which we were a significant part in the years 1880-1940), the oppressed, the homeless, and the hungry.

Was this simply a matter of self-interest from a new immigrant group seeking to find a way to integrate into the society? If so, why wasn’t it chosen with equal energy by the Irish, the Polish, the Italians, etc.? In my view, Jews chose this path because of two radical messages in the Torah:

1. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, that you were “the Other” (ha’ger), so when you come into your own power, do not oppress the stranger, but instead, Love the Other.

2. Do not accept reality as it is currently constructed – there is a force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from “that which is” (reality as given) to “that which ought to be” (the utopian possibilities of a world based on love, generosity, social justice, peace and joyous celebration of the universe). We called it YHVH – mistranslated as Jehovah, but actually a concept rather than a name, calling our attention to the reality that the world could be fully transformed and that we humans were created in the image of that force and with the responsibility to do tikkun (the healing and transformation of the world). It was this heritage that seeped into the collective unconscious of the Jewish people and that made us flock to social change movements in numbers not only out of proportion to our percentage of the population, but also more frequently than many other immigrant groups.

Unfortunately, the allure of fitting in and becoming like everyone else had a particularly strong effect on the distinctively American kind of Judaism that emerged in the temples and synagogues of American life. Seeking to imitate the decorum and respectability that WASPS had shaped for themselves, Jews in America created a Judaism that became increasingly like the other conformist religions of American society, embracing capitalist values and embracing patriotism even when it led to supporting American imperialist assumptions about the rest of the world.

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'Neither Criminals, Nor Animals!': A Week of Unrest in Britain's Migrant Jails

Words of a detainee at Campsfield IRC (screenshot @GeorgeEvansDoc)

Lack of legal representation. Poor medical care. Threat of solitary confinement. Immigration detainees in England and Scotland protest against what they claim is routine inhumanity by the state and its commercial contractors.

By Jasmine Sallis
The UK immigration authorities and their commercial partners are trying to suppress a wave of protests sweeping British detention centres. In the past week hundreds of asylum-seekers detained at four high-security facilities have started hunger-strikes against draconian Home Office policies.

Last Friday (2 May) about 150 detainees at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, near Heathrow Airport, occupied the main courtyard in a sit-down protest against the so-called fast-track asylum system, in which individuals claiming asylum are placed immediately in detention and held whilst their asylum cases are processed.

Harmondsworth hit headlines around the world earlier this year after prisons inspectors discovered that guards had handcuffed a frail and demented 84 year old Canadian for 5 hours until he died. The centre, run for the government by the Geo Group, American's second biggest contractor and an offshoot of the sinister old Wackenhut Corporation, holds about 660 men.

On Friday the protesting detainees demanded to be taken off the fast-track system, they demanded access to adequate legal representation, and respect for their communication with their lawyers.

"There is no time to prepare a case and we have to find all our own evidence," one man told me by phone. "80 per cent of people in here have no solicitor. . . They consider everyone the same, there is no proper time to make a claim, if someone needs evidence from their country it is not possible in one or two days to get this."

Another said:

"We are expecting letters from lawyers but don't receive letters. We send letters and they don't go out."

In a hand-written petition given to GEO guards, the men said: "We are respectful and peaceful people, we are not criminals and we do not want to be treated like criminals, nor animals."

Home Office representatives apparently met with selected detainees last Friday and agreed to take their concerns back to the department and meet again after the Bank Holiday weekend. By Wednesday (7 May) that hadn't happened, according to detainees who spoke to me. Instead, dozens of the detainees who had protested were issued with deportation orders.

The unrest spread to neighbouring Colnbrook detention centre where guards broke up a meeting of 40 detainees on Wednesday before sending five individuals identified as leaders into isolation. Most of these men have been removed to other detention facilities and supporters have been unable to contact them.

Fifty migrants detained at Campsfield in Oxfordshire joined the wave of protest on Wednesday morning, declaring a hunger-strike.

In a recording posted on YouTube (with a video by @GeorgeEvansDoc) a spokesman for the Campsfield detainees said they were “being pushed against a wall”, and that their hunger-strike was a “last resort”.

He said the detainees were not criminals and had not come to the UK for benefits.

The spokesman said detainees at Campsfield were unable to see doctors, and blamed “security industry giants” for these types of detention centres. (Camspfield is run for the government by a company called Mitie whose chief executive is paid £1.4 million a year).

Words of a detainee at Campsfield IRC (screenshot @GeorgeEvansDoc)

He claimed that on Bank Holiday Monday an immigration officer had threatened a detainee with solitary confinement unless he signed a voluntary departure disclaimer: "He doesn't read or write English, that form wasn't being explained to him in his own language."

Most of the detainees had fled killings in their own countries and had come to Britain to save their lives or be with close relatives, he said.

“Our demand is quite simple. We want our freedom. We want our life with dignity. We do not want to be treated in an inhumane way. So that's why we're demanding for the closure of all detention centres for immigrants in the UK.”

On Tuesday, 20 men detained at Brook House near Gatwick Airport staged an all-night protest in the centre's exercise yard. The detainees refused to return to their cells and slept outside.

At 11am on Wednesday, the guards placed 16 of the men in solitary confinement. They remain in isolation and out of contact, fellow detainees told me.

John McDonnell, the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, has posted an Early Day Motion expressing

"concern at the reports of a major demonstration undertaken by detainees at Harmondsworth detention centre to highlight their plight on the Government's fast track procedure for asylum seekers and the lack of facilities to assist in pursuing their appeals, including access to legal advice and means of communication with their legal representatives; and urges the Home Secretary to commission an independent review of the grievances raised by the detainees with the aim of resolving this dispute."

Last Friday, just ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend, at the Unity Centre in Glasgow, where I work as a volunteer, we took phone calls from distressed detainees at Harmondsworth, asking us to publicise their protest. Working alongside the Anti-Raids Network we started organising.

On Bank Holiday Monday we held simultaneous demonstrations outside the barbed wire fences of Harmondsworth and at Dungavel immigration removal centre, a former hunting lodge an hour outside Glasgow among Scotland's green farmlands and surrounded by forest.

We travelled by train from London to Harmondsworth, and by cars and the Unity van from Glasgow to Dungavel. We wanted to assure detainees that their calls were being heard, that awareness surrounding serious issues relating to justice and dignity in detention was spreading and, most importantly, that they were not along in their fight.

We took pots and pans, guitars, maracas, whistles, baking trays. We made a lot of noise.

Protestors at Harmondsworth IRC May Day 2014 (screenshot @GeorgeEvansDoc)

Contact was maintained during the protests. We learned that inside Dungavel, visiting was suspended throughout the day and detainees were locked in their rooms. Harmondsworth detainees said that their identity cards were being checked more than usual and long phone conversations were being treated with suspicion.

On two wings at Harmondsworth, men were able to look out and see the protestors. (You can see George Evans's video here). Detainees cheered and clapped and waved at the group of 25 protestors. One detainee called one of the supporters and saw him pick up his phone. "I just don't have the words, I don't know what to say," said the detainee. This connection, putting a face to a name and voice, made the day.


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Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Muslims Flee After Separatists Kill 32 in India

The northeastern state of Assam, India is severely gripped in ethnic violence. The
tensions between the Bodo ethnic group and migrant Muslim religious minorities
over control of land and settlements have been simmering for a long time. Image
by Reporter#21795. Copyright Demotix (25/7/2012)

By Rezwan
Ethnic violence erupted in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, leaving 32 Muslim villagers dead and prompting an exodus of the area's Muslims.

Armed Bodo separatists fired indiscriminately at Muslim settlers in three different attacks over Thursday, May 1 and Friday, May 2, 2014 in the Kokrajhar and Baska districts. The victims included children.

In one of the attacks, dozens of homes were torched before the gunmen opened fire.

Unconfirmed reports say the victims were targeted because of their voting choice in the recently concluded general elections. Police have arrested 22 people in connection with the violence.

Hundreds of Muslim villagers were seen fleeing with their belonging to nearby villages. The authorities tried to control the situation by calling in the army and imposing a curfew.

The Bodo tribe, which speaks the Bodo language, has long accused Muslims of sneaking into India from neighboring Bangladesh. The rebels belong to faction of the outlawed armed separatists group National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which wants a sovereign Bodoland for the Bodo people, who represent 10 percent of the population in the state of Assam.

Not only Muslim migrants, but also Hindi-speaking migrants from other states of India have also been targeted. In January 2014, seven civilians were killed by suspected National Democratic Front of Bodoland militants. They stopped four night buses coming from different parts of North Bengal, dragged out 13 passengers, lined them up and opened fire.

Militant Bodo groups have vowed not to let migrants live in villages that fall under the jurisdiction of the Bodoland Territorial Council, an autonomous body.

Journalist and blogger Habib Siddiqui provides some background on the conflict:

The Muslims that live in Assam are not immigrants from Bangladesh. Like many others, they have been living there for centuries, and at least before the time of Indian partition into Pakistan and India. Simply because of their Muslim identity and Bengali root, they are perceived as outsiders or new settlers in hateful Assam, which had her bloody history of pogroms against Muslims.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah suggested there was a connection between Prime Minister candidate for the Bharatya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance Narendra Modi’s recent speech criticizing Bangladeshi immigrants in India and the unprovoked killing of Muslims in Assam.

On Twitter, U.S.-based nuclear engineer Tanvir Salim explained the possible political motivation behind the attacks:

User Dipankar questioned the Bodo tribe's tactics:

Rohit Vats argued the violence had nothing to do with religion: