Right wing nuts worldwide.

BERLIN (AP) — Eleven German men have been charged with belonging to a far-right terror organization on allegations they were planning deadly attacks on Muslims to create unrest and eventually overthrow the German government, prosecutors said Friday.

Federal prosecutors said eight of the men, led by Werner S. and Tony E., formed the “Group S” organization during a meeting in September 2019. Three others were accused of joining later, and a twelfth suspect was charged with supporting the group.

Seven of the suspects also face weapons violation charges in Stuttgart state court.

No last names were given for the suspects in line with German privacy laws.

According to prosecutors, to “shake the state and the social order” of Germany to eventually overthrow the government, the group plotted to bring about “conditions similar to civil war” by attacking mosques and killing or injuring the largest number of Muslims possible.

The group also considered using force against political opponents, prosecutors said.

Officials allege the group met multiple times in private locations to discuss their plans, and that Werner S. trained others to shoot a pistol. Meetings were coordinated over chat apps and by telephone.

In an effort to raise 50,000 euros ($59,000) for more firearms, all group members but one, who couldn’t for financial reasons, agreed to contribute four-figure sums to the cause. It was not clear how much money was eventually raised.

The men were all detained during raids on Feb. 14 and all except for one are still in custody.

Another suspect detained that day died while in detention, prosecutors said.

Click to expand...

hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/international-news-civil-wars-germany-0ff7428694469210965e4e8e26715107
View attachment 4741376

Click to expand...

Demonstrations in support of President Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the presidential election will descend on downtown Washington this weekend.

The events have been promoted by far-right media personalities, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists — several of whom announced plans to attend. Counterdemonstrations organized by anti-fascist and anti-racism groups are being planned nearby.

Follow the latest on Election 2020

The rallies, which include a Women for Trump event, a “Million MAGA March” and a “Stop the Steal” demonstration — which falsely asserts that voter fraud cost Trump the election — will begin Saturday morning in and around Freedom Plaza.

The pro-Trump rallies have garnered support from Fox News host Sean Hannity as well as more fringe figures, including Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys; self-described “American Nationalist” and social media agitator Nicholas Fuentes; conservative provocateur Jack Posobiec, who promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory tied to the 2016 shooting at D.C. pizzeria Comet Ping Pong; Scott Presler, a pro-Trump activist who works with anti-Muslim group ACT for America; and Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Jones has said he is leading a “Stop the Steal” caravan from Texas that is expected to arrive Friday night in the nation’s capital.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller responded to a tweet Thursday in support of the rally, saying, “Love the outpouring of support for @realDonaldTrump!”

A handful of anti-Trump rallies have also been announced, including one near Union Station organized by local activists and a protest involving Refuse Fascism D.C., which has said it intends to stand against “the Trump regime's attempts to steal the election.”

Live updates: Biden forges ahead with transition; Trump aides say he has no endgame

Neither D.C. police nor the National Park Service have issued permits for the demonstrations, although the Park Service is processing a permit application from Women for America First, a pro-Trump group that has advertised “Stop the Steal” rallies on its social media pages. It estimated in a permit application that about 50 people would attend its event.

The Park Service regularly works with groups that do not obtain permits before an event to register for one on-site and, if necessary, to move to a safer location. It was not clear whether the Park Police or Park Service had plans to approach demonstrators Saturday.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said city officials have been monitoring social media chatter around the planned events.

“We continue to follow those activities and be prepared,” Bowser said at a news conference this week. “Our police chief will have a similar posture this weekend as he did last week. We will be there to support peaceful First Amendment demonstrations.”

Bowser warned out-of-town visitors against bringing firearms to the city, noting D.C. has more strict firearm laws than other parts of the country. Gun owners are allowed to carry a concealed weapon with the proper license but carrying a gun openly is prohibited. It is also illegal to possess a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

D.C. police announced road closures and parking restrictions throughout downtown.

Beginning 6 a.m. Saturday, Constitution Avenue will be closed between 18th Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. On the other side of the Mall, Independence Avenue will be closed from 14th Street to Ohio Avenue SW. Several main thoroughfares, including New York Avenue and G, H, I and K streets, will be shut down from 9th Street NW to 18th Street NW.

Cautious hope and celebration mark rallies near White House as battleground votes are counted

D.C. police were put on high alert last week with fears of unrest and violent protests that many cities expected could follow Election Day. Although those fears didn’t materialize, many downtown D.C. businesses remained boarded up through the weekend — and the raucous celebrations that followed Biden’s victory.

The mayor said she is still urging businesses to remove the boards, even with the Saturday rallies in mind.

Local activists are taking precautions as they prepare for Saturday, including efforts to safeguard the living monument at Black Lives Matter Plaza that has grown on and around the tall chain-link fence encircling Lafayette Square.

Last month, a group of Trump supporters in D.C. for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings tore down a number of the signs. Activists rebuilt the memorial the next day, and several have been standing guard since.

How the Black Lives Matter memorial wall was resurrected after Trump supporters tore it down

Past protests in Washington that have featured white nationalists and far-right provocateurs have been dwarfed by counterdemonstrators.

A year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville turned deadly when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, a small handful of white supremacists came to D.C. for the “Unite the Right 2” rally. Organizers had hoped hundreds would join them, but about three dozen attended. They were drowned out by crowds of counterprotesters, who chanted and danced in the street.

Last year, hundreds of D.C. police officers kept far-right agitators, including members of the Proud Boys, and left-wing anti-fascist protesters clad in black from clashing during dueling rallies at Freedom Plaza and nearby Pershing Park. Though the groups interacted at times during the July 2019 demonstration, the protests did not turn violent. The crowd of counterprotesters far outnumbered the right-wing demonstrators.

Christopher Rodriguez, D.C.’s director of homeland security and emergency management, said in a news conference Thursday that officials are expecting a relatively small turnout at Saturday’s rally spread out among about a dozen groups.

Click to expand...

mysunnyboy said:

lol

Click to expand...

WHILE THE United States has been preoccupied with President Trump’s assault on the political system following the Nov. 3 election, another struggle of enormous import to the global cause of democracy has been underway in Europe. For years, the 27-member European Union has been confounded by its inability to rein in two members, Hungary and Poland, which under nationalist populist governments have been drifting steadily toward autocracy.

This fall, the European Parliament hit on the solution of linking funding in the bloc’s new $2.1 trillionbudget to respect for the rule of law. The two Central European countries have responded by blocking the budget’s adoption, which requires a unanimous vote — and thereby threatening critical funding not only for themselves but also for other nations hard-hit by the covid-19 pandemic.

A continued impasse could exacerbate what is already a serious economic crisis within the European Union. But if the blackmail by Hungary and Poland succeeds, Europe’s commitment to democracy will be fatally compromised. Whatever the cost, it is essential that E.U. leaders not give in.

The trouble in the two former Soviet-bloc countries centers on their governments’ efforts to strip the judiciary of its independence, eliminate opposition media and, in Hungary’s case, corruptly divert E.U. funds to relatives and cronies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Both governments also have refused to accept refugees from Muslim countries, targeted the LGBTQ community with discriminatory measures and flirted with anti-Semitism.

The European Commission, the E.U. governing body, launched investigations of both countries under a treaty article that allows for the suspension of their voting rights. But the commission has been unable to sanction them because of the requirement of a unanimous vote by member governments — the two proto-autocracies protect each other.

The budget blockade, however, will be harder for Poland and Hungary to sustain. Hungary receives E.U. aid equal to 5 percent of its economy, while the figure for Poland is 3.4 percent. The two are due to receive $213 billion in funding from the new seven-year budget and accompanying coronavirus recovery fund. And if the new budget is not approved, the previous one will be applied in January — with the rule-of-law conditions in effect.

That should give European states, led by Germany, the leverage to push through the provision in the new budget. Compromises are being floated, such as a pledge by Brussels not to use the rule-of-law provisions to target certain countries and to establish firm criteria for applying them. Mr. Orban is suggesting he is open to a deal. That’s fine, provided Brussels is left with a workable mechanism for sanctioning states that strip courts of independence and silence critical media.

A victory for Europe’s democrats would also be a win for the incoming Biden administration, which has pledged to rally allied governments in support for democracy and human rights around the world. The first step is to ensure that free elections and the rule of law are protected in the United States and Europe. Pro-democracy forces appear to be turning back Mr. Trump’s attack on U.S. democracy; the Europeans must now follow suit.

Click to expand...

hanimmal said:

link to Washington Post story
View attachment 4750525

Click to expand...

mysunnyboy said:

Yeah, bff in Germany, she’s been there for 25 years, has been speaking of it.

Idk why we’re just not calling them Soviets.

I had a class in college called Americanism VS Communism. Ahhh the good old days.

They’re still here and the next thing you know we’ll have missiles in Cuba again thanks to un jung dickhead and puttytin. Xi will take care of himself and release another plague.

Click to expand...

BERLIN (AP) — A leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party on Sunday defended a speech in which he denounced “provocateurs,” called for discipline and questioned talk of a “corona dictatorship.”

A bitter debate at a party convention over a motion to “condemn (co-leader Joerg) Meuthen’s divisive conduct” saw Alternative for Germany, or AfD, publicly air deep divisions before a national election expected next September. In the end, delegates decided by about 53% to 47% not to put it to a vote.

AfD won 12.6% of the vote and entered parliament in Germany’s 2017 election, helped by strident criticism of a large influx of migrants. Recent polls show its support sagging to between 7% and 11%.

In recent months, the party has opposed coronavirus restrictions that are supported by a majority of Germans, but opposed by a small though vocal minority. It also has seen persistent tension between its strong hard-right wing and more moderate figures such as Meuthen.

The party is under pressure to distance itself from extremists in its midst after facing growing scrutiny from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. It also has faced scrutiny over an incident this month in which anti-lockdown protesters were able to enter the parliament building and harangue lawmakers.

At a convention at Kalkar in western Germany — held in person, unlike other parties’ recent gatherings, but at authorities’ insistence with masks and distancing — Meuthen gave a speech Saturday in which he called for “internal discipline” and “impeccable behavior” from all members.

He questioned the wisdom of uncritical closeness to demonstrations against anti-virus restrictions that have drawn a wide variety of attendees, including conspiracy theorists. And he asked: “Is it really wise to speak of a ‘corona dictatorship?’” That phrase has been used by the influential leader of AfD’s parliamentary group, Alexander Gauland.

The speech angered many members. In Sunday’s debate, lawmaker Stephan Brandner described it as “a torpedo” that “did serious damage to our party and this convention.”

“You are dividing the party,” he told Meuthen. “You are only helping the old parties.”

Meuthen insisted that he hadn’t spoken out against anti-restriction demonstrations as a whole or called for division.

“I wholeheartedly want our party’s success ... but we will only achieve this success with serious appearances,” he said.

Click to expand...

MrMarshall said:

I guess Antifa will save everyone...

Click to expand...

MrMarshall said:

I guess Antifa will save everyone...

Click to expand...

BERLIN (AP) — Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old German man on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists that were signed with the acronym of a neo-Nazi group, as officials warned Tuesday that statistics show a disturbing rise in far-right extremism across Germany.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said far-right crime rose 5.65% in 2020, accounting for more than half of all criminality categorized as “politically motivated.”

“This shows again that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat for our country,” Seehofer told reporters Tuesday while announcing the annual statistics.

In carrying out Monday’s arrest in Berlin, police seized an unencrypted hard drive with data that might help with an ongoing probe, said Holger Muench, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office.

“There was a lot of data, but it needs to be evaluated,” he said.

The suspect, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, has previous convictions for “numerous crimes, including ones that were motivated by right-wing ideology,” said prosecutors in Frankfurt, who are handling the case.

The letters were signed “NSU 2.0.” A German group called the National Socialist Underground was responsible for a string of violent crimes between 1998 and 2011, including the racially motivated killings of nine men with immigrant backgrounds and a police officer. The group’s name was derived from the full name of the Nazi, or National Socialist, party.

Police think the suspect sent almost 100 letters to dozens of people and organizations across Germany and Austria since 2018. German news agency dpa reported that investigators think the suspect may have obtained personal data on the people he targeted from official records or Darknet forums.

German security agencies warned of the growing threat of violent far-right extremism. In July 2019, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was killed by a neo-Nazi; three months later, a gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing two people.

Seehofer said the new statistics reveal an ongoing increase in antisemitic crimes in Germany, which was up 15.7% in 2020 over 2019 with 2,351 total incidents — 94.6% of which were committed by a far-right suspect.

Of the total, 62 were acts of violence while the majority were antisemitic hate speech and other related crimes, frequently on the internet or over social media, Seehofer said.

“This development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful,” he said.

In 2020, Germany recorded a 72.4% increase in anti-immigrant crimes, up to 5,298 total cases over 3,073 in 2019, Seehofer said.

In the most deadly incident, nine people with immigrant backgrounds were shot dead in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in February by a gunman who had called for genocide.

Authorities have raised concerns about the role the Alternative for Germany party allegedly played in stoking a climate of resentment toward immigrants and the government. The party, which placed third in Germany’s 2017 election, has moved steadily to the right in recent years, drawing increasing scrutiny from the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

On Tuesday, Alternative for Germany’s section in Berlin condemned a member who appeared to lament the absence of attacks on Merkel.

The news website Business Insider reported that AfD’s former chairman in Berlin, Guenter Brinker, forwarded a message stating that “either that piece of dirt is so well protected that nobody can get at her, or don’t the Germans have any balls?”

Brinker said later that he had mistakenly forwarded the message and regretted doing so, and that he rejected “all forms of hatred and violence.”

Many in the AfD have expressed support for, and participated in, the regular protests in Germany against lockdown measures, organized by the so-called Querdenker movement.

The demonstrations have become increasingly violent, and the country’s domestic intelligence service late last month said it had put some members of the loose-knit Querdenker movement under observation.

The protests have brought together a broad range of demonstrators, including people opposing vaccinations, others who deny the existence of the coronavirus, mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and others.

Seehofer said the protests have also attracted neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, and have regularly become violent.

“At these gatherings organized by the so-called Querdenker movement, attacks are directed against police officers and the press,” Seehofer said.

“Of the 260 reported crimes against journalists, 112 were related to corona” protests, he said. “I want to say here very clearly: These acts of violence are no longer about exercising a constitutional right (to demonstrate), but are acts of violence of a criminal nature that I condemn in the strongest possible terms.”

Click to expand...

The 1930s offer the paradigmatic example of the dangers of allowing international norms to erode. In 1931, Japan invaded the Chinese region of Manchuria. In 1935, fascist Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia). In 1936, Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1937, Japan began a brutal invasion of China. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and occupied the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 became a foregone conclusion, because Western democracies allowed one norm after another to be violated with impunity.

Which brings us to the Ryanair incident Sunday. An Irish airliner flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was intercepted by a MiG-29 fighter aircraft over Belarusian airspace and forced to land in Minsk. The Belarusian regime claimed there was a bomb on board. But no bomb was discovered. This was a transparent ruse by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to arrest one of his most influential critics — opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, who was aboard the flight. Now Protasevich faces 12 years in prison on specious charges of terrorism.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is right: “[The] hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.” The need to hold Belarus to account is all the greater because we have been seeing the norms against international aggression steadily eroding in recent years.

In 2008, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and, after a short war, carved out puppet regimes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian troops still occupy a fifth of Georgian territory. In 2014, Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine and launched a proxy invasion by Russian separatists of eastern Ukraine that continues to this day. That same year, a Malaysian airliner was shot down by a Russian antiaircraft missile over Ukraine, killing all 298 on board. Just a few weeks ago, Putin was building up forces on Ukraine’s border, raising an implicit threat that Russian troops would expand their assault.

Meanwhile, Putin’s agents have been committing outrageous acts of aggression in the West. The Czech Republic has blamed a Russian military intelligence unit for a series of explosions at a Czech ammunition dump in 2014. This is the same unit that is accused of using a nerve agent to try to kill a Russian defector and his daughter in Britain in 2018. Lest we forget, Putin also attacked the U.S. elections in 2016 and 2020 — in the former case successfully helping to elect Donald Trump. Putin has also imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

China, too, has been getting away with flouting international law. Its leader, Xi Jinping, is acting as if an international court never ruled that it has no right to exercise sovereignty over much of the South China Sea — a body of water that carries one-third of global shipping.
First, China built and fortified artificial islands in the sea. Now it is swarming the waters with nominally independent fishing vessels. In March, 220 Chinese ships anchored around Whitsun Reef in the Spratly Islands, driving away Philippine vessels even though the area is part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. China has also been stepping up military flights near Taiwanese airspace, raising pressure on an embattled democracy. And then, of course, there are China’s heinous human rights violations against the Uyghurs, which have been described as “genocide” by the State Department, and its crackdown on Hong Kong in violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Iran is another country that is doing what it wants — international law be damned. Since Trump foolishly exited the nuclear deal, Iran has rapidly accelerated nuclear enrichment, drawing closer to a “breakout” capacity to build a nuclear weapon in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty. Tehran is also backing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime in Syria and the Houthis. It is believed to be responsible for a continuing series of Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince has in turn escaped accountability for the murder of U.S. resident and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Finally, don’t forget North Korea: Its dictator, Kim Jong Un, dispatched secret agents to murder his half brother with a nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia in 2017.

We are probably not marching toward World War III — although Chinese and Russian aggression raises that risk. (See Elliott Ackerman and James Stavridis’s “2034: A Novel of the Next War” for a chilling war scenario.) What we are definitely seeing, however, is a rapid erosion of international norms as rogue states find they can do what they want. That is making the world a more chaotic and dangerous place.

The force-down of the Ryanair flight must be seen in this perspective — not as an isolated incident but as part of a pattern of dictators testing the West with ever-greater brazenness. That makes it all the more imperative that the European Union and the United States do more than issue ritualistic denunciations of Lukashenko’s air piracy. Lukashenko must pay such a high price for this aggression that it will give pause to other tyrants and start to mend the tattered fabric of international law.

Click to expand...