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Joined 11 months ago
Cake day: August 5th, 2023
  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion profile quietly removed from Stanford extremist group list
    64·
    5 days ago

    MMP’s removal of Azov is significant in that it could be used to guide U.S. foreign policy. Though MMP was created and has operated with funding from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the papers written by its researchers are cited in academic research, reports and testimony to Congress, government–funded institutions and initiatives, and federal agencies. The website functions as an authoritative source for information on militant and extremist groups, and their interactions and connections over time. At the very least, Azov’s removal means MMP’s list no longer contradicts the State Department’s decision allowing U.S. military assistance to the group, and therefore cannot be used to criticize it.

    Founded in March 2014 as a volunteer unit to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region, Azov was subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and gained international attention for its role in re-taking the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol from separatist forces in June 2014. During this engagement, Azov also received scrutiny for its neo-Nazi iconography, in particular an inverted Wolfsangel superimposed over a Black Sun (the former an ancient runic symbol appropriated by the Nazis, per the ADL, the latter “based on a design commissioned by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and overwhelmingly used by neo-Nazi and esoteric National Socialist movements,” according to the MMP’s now-removed Azov Battalion profile).

    Azov came to renewed prominence following Russia’s February 2022 invasion due to its high-profile defense of Mariupol that spring. The destructive battle, during which large swaths of Mariupol’s residential infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, ended in a drawn-out siege of the Azovstal steel plant, beneath which surviving Azov and Ukrainian servicemembers retreated until their May 2022 surrender. The battle for Azovstal garnered substantial international media attention due in part to Azov’s use of Starlink terminals to publish videos about the conditions of the Ukrainian defenders.

    This is false. As reported by The Nation, many of Azov’s current leaders, including Commander Denys Prokopenko and Deputy Commander Sviatoslav Palamar, have years-old ties to far-right groups, and the brigade continues to don Nazi symbols on the battlefield and social media. Indeed, Azov has never stopped using the Wolfsangel symbol, which is still part of its official logo and featured on its X/Twitter page. Azov’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, a blatant white supremacist who reportedly said Ukraine’s national mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans],” remains closely connected to the unit despite his supposed departure in fall 2014. In his 2022 book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right, author and journalist Michael Colborne argues Azov has not divorced itself from the far right, writing that “[d]espite unconvincing efforts to separate the two, it’s clear that the Azov Regiment is part of the broader Azov movement and should not be treated as something distinct from it.”

    MMP’s removal of Azov’s profile came a little over a month before the State Department’s decision to lift the longstanding ban on the provision of American weapons to the brigade. The State Department, which originally banned arming Azov due to concerns over its far-right extremism, rescinded this policy because the brigade recently “passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State,” as reported by the Washington Post on June 10. While a Congressional ban on military assistance to the “Azov Battalion” remains in place under appropriations laws, the State Department said it didn’t believe the congressional ban applied to the group as it exists today, per the Post.

    “Leahy vetting” is in reference to the Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States from funding “foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,” per a State Department fact sheet. In reality, not only is the State Department’s original concern around Azov’s ideological extremism still germane, but the force’s human rights record has remained checkered since its founding as a non-state volunteer militia in 2014. Indeed, Azov has been credibly accused of torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killing, all of which are “gross violations of human rights” that would disqualify a military unit from receiving U.S. military aid, according to the State Department’s interpretation of the Leahy Law. Many of Azov’s alleged human rights abuses, which also include the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes and looting of civilian homes, occurred after the unit was formally integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard in late 2014.

    Stanford launched MMP in 2009 and operated the project until 2012 using funding from the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, MMP received funding from the Department of Homeland Security, per the project’s website. The academics behind MMP also have deep ties to American defense.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•If You Already Hated Presidential Debates, Wait Til Next Week!
    47·
    17 days ago

    Edit: forgot thanks, added []

    [Forgot to say, thanks for sharing!]

    It semes to just list Donald’s many faults, but it seems to dismiss the republican-lites many faults as well.

    Article seems to be pretty mild, similar to a fake out, where no sytematic problems with the Republican and Republican-lite candidates were talked about.

    I am for 3rd party, so I would have way more to say about the major systematic problems we have with the duopoly.

    To restate a known saying, Donald and Joe are the results of the system we have, they are not an anomaly; IMO we will continue to get more people like them if we continue to prop up the duopoly, some furture candidates may even be smarter than them and hide their real intentions more well until they get elected.

    Talking Points Memo (TPM) is an independent news organization that publishes reporting and analysis about American politics, public policy and political culture.

    None of what I’m describing was any less true in 2020 or 2016 or 2008 or 2000. But it comes around again in 2024 with a particularly jarring level of discordance. We know so much about each candidate. No one is really in an information vacuum. The terms of the debate are so vastly different not just from past years but between the candidates themselves. This isn’t about Social Security lock boxes or tax cuts or health care policy.

    Will you promise to abide by the results of the election or will you unleash violence against election workers to try to tilt the election your way? If you win in 2024, will you relinquish office at the end of your second term in accordance with the Constitution? These are legit questions, but they’re not likely to be asked, and, frankly, even if they are, I’m not sure the world’s best moderator can pivot from the “Trump, let’s explore the extent of your authoritarianism” questions to the more normal policy-specific questions for Biden without the whole artificial edifice constructed for the debate tumbling down — or at least giving the moderator a migraine.

    All of which is to say that this year’s debates, more than in any other cycle, are not up to the task. Trump in word and deed undermines the entire premise of having open, transparent, public debates. The man incited a coup attempt against his own government to remain in power. He’s vowed if re-elected to abuse the powers of his office and leverage the criminal justice system to go after his enemies and reward his friends. How do you debate that?

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•China’s population declines for second straight year
    202·
    6 months ago

    “My husband and I do want to have a kid but we can’t afford it for now,” said Wang Chengyi, a 31-year-old woman in Beijing.

    She told the BBC she and her partner needed to save money for another three years to provide for the costs of having a child - taking into account school expenses in particular.

    “I do want to get pregnant while I’m young as it’s better for my health. However, I just don’t have enough money for now so I have to postpone. It’s a shame and I feel panic over it sometimes,” she said.

    “China is no different to other countries that have deindustrialised and moved into the service sector. The population becomes more educated and skilled and healthier, and they want to do other jobs rather than work in factories or construction,” said Prof Gietel-Basten.

    “The government is aware of this and has planned for this over the past decade and so it’s expected to continue with this kind of direction.”

    China records population decline for second straight year [Jan 17 2024 | Frances Mao | BBC News]

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-68002803

    Many people are delaying marriage or choosing not to have children. Even those who do often have only one child because of the high cost of educating children in cities in a highly competitive academic environment. The population of women of child-bearing age has also fallen.

    Local governments are offering incentives for new children. A municipality in China’s Inner Mongolia region has started offering payments of 2,000 yuan ($280) for a second child and 5,000 yuan ($700) for a third, as well as requiring that employers give an extra 60 and 90 days of paid maternity leave for the second and third child respectively, according to an online report by state-owned China National Radio.

    But Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University and vice-president of the China Population Association, added that “the downward trend in China’s total population is bound to be long-term and become an inherent characteristic.”

    China’s population falls for a 2nd straight year as births drop even after end of one-child policy [Jan 17 2024 | Ken Moritsugu | Associated Press News]

    https://apnews.com/article/china-population-births-deaths-covid-b0ec148b3f8db6b2863aeca02078bd7a

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•Younger Americans are friendlier to ChinaEnglish
    92·
    6 months ago

    Recent polling from The Economist and YouGov shows the startling difference in Americans’ views of China by age group. Roughly 25% of Americans aged 18 to 44 said they view China as an enemy, compared with about 52% of those 45 and over (see chart). Almost as many young Americans said they view China as “friendly” as those who said the country was an “enemy”. Just 4% of older Americans see China as friendly.

    Meanwhile, views of China among partisans are shifting. Republicans have long been more likely than Democrats to view China as an adversary. But both parties have become more hawkish. When Donald Trump took office in 2017, just 10% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans said they believed China to be an enemy. As of last week, 34% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans took this view.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettosEnglish
    642·
    7 months ago

    According to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which broke the story, the prize will still be presented to Gessen, though “in a different setting”, and on Saturday instead of Friday. It remains unclear who will present it, what they will be presenting and whether Gessen and other invited guests still plan to attend.

    In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

    On X/Twitter, they wrote that no German media representative had tried to contact them, despite the story being widely reported in German media on Thursday.

    Supporters of Gessen, who is Jewish, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were among family members murdered by the Nazis, have been quick to point out the irony of suspending a prize awarded in memory of Arendt, the German-born Jewish-American historian, philosopher and antitotalitarian political theorist who coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, in connection with the trial of leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which she covered as a journalist for the New Yorker.

    In an open letter written with Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals in 1948, Arendt had, Gessen pointed out, even compared the Israeli Freedom party to the Nazis after they used racially motivated violence against civilians.

    “I am aware that this type of comparison, especially in Germany, is quickly seen as relativising the Holocaust. That’s why it’s so important to me that such a differentiated and intelligent thinker like Arendt didn’t shy away from this comparison,” Gessen told the newspaper.

    Referring to people in Germany being wary of challenging “the logic of German memory policy” for fear of being accused of antisemitism, they added: “The problem is that criticism of Israel is often seen as antisemitic, which I think is the real antisemitic scandal. This overlooks the actual antisemitism.”

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•57% Gaza and 82% Wedt Bank residents agree with Oct Hamas attack
    42·
    7 months ago

    Washington has called for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, currently led by Abbas, to eventually assume control of Gaza and run both territories as a precursor to statehood. U.S. officials have said the PA must be revitalized, without letting on whether this would mean leadership changes.

    Arab allies of the U.S. have said they’ll only get involved in post-war reconstruction if there’s a credible push toward a two-state solution, which is unlikely under the Netanyahu government dominated by opponents of Palestinian statehood.

    Shikaki said that Gaza residents are more critical of Hamas than those in the West Bank, that support for Hamas typically spikes during periods of armed conflict before leveling out, and that even now most Palestinians do not back the militant group.

    Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching the October attack, the poll indicated. A large majority believed Hamas’ claims that it acted to defend a major Islamic shrine in Jerusalem against Jewish extremists and win the release of Palestinian prisoners. Only 10% said they believed Hamas has committed war crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the militants committing atrocities.

    Shikaki said the most popular politician remains Marwan Barghouti, a prominent figure in Abbas’ Fatah movement who is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison for his alleged role in several deadly attacks during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. In a two-way presidential race, Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled political leader of Hamas, would trounce Abbas while in a three-way race, Barghouti would be ahead just slightly, the pollster said.

    Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% called for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and ineffective.