Category Archives: News

White nationalist group will go to GOP convention to ‘defend’ Trump supporters

McClatchy reports: A group of white nationalists and skinheads who held a rally in Sacramento over the weekend where at least five people were stabbed plans to show up at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month to “make sure that the Donald Trump supporters are defended.”

The violent clash at the California state Capitol accentuates concerns about the Republican National Convention, with political tensions high and thousands of pro- and anti-Trump protesters expected to descend on Cleveland.

“I think everybody is concerned about the potential for violence at the convention,” said Ryan Lenz, senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups. [Continue reading…]

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Brexit ‘most important moment since Berlin Wall’ says France’s far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen

 

BBC News reports: France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen has called the UK’s Brexit vote “the most important moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, the far-right leader said her party has been given a boost by the result.

Ms Le Pen – one of the contenders for the French presidency in 2017 – said she would call a referendum if elected.

A number of other far-right leaders in Europe say they would like to hold their own referendums on EU membership.

In her first broadcast interview since the UK’s Leave vote in the referendum, Ms Le Pen commended “the courage of the British people who didn’t allow themselves to be intimidated by the threats, blackmail, and lies of the European elites”. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Emboldened by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, nationalists across the continent are daring to dream big, saying they, too, should have the chance for an up-or-down vote on the unloved bureaucracy in Brussels.

From Finland to Denmark to the Netherlands to Austria, far-right politicians are salivating at the idea of exiting a club they blame for unwanted immigrants, economic squalor and a loss of sovereignty.

And nowhere could the possibility pose a greater threat to the E.U.’s future than in France, where the far-right National Front party is surging in polls a year ahead of presidential elections.

That is part of the challenge facing E.U. leaders as they gather Tuesday for an unprecedented summit to start divorce talks with one of their own.

Allowing Britain to walk away with generous terms could energize anti-E.U. forces elsewhere. But too harsh a response could also blow back on Europe, fueling a continent-wide recession that would drive angry voters into the embrace of populists. [Continue reading…]

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‘Why are you here?’: Juncker and MEPs mock Nigel Farage at the European Parliament

New Statesman reports: oday’s European Parliament session, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, tried his best to keep things cordial during a debate on Brexit. He asked MEPs to “respect British democracy and the way it voiced its view”.

Unfortunately, Nigel Farage, UKIP leader and MEP, felt it necessary to voice his view a little more by applauding – the last straw even for Juncker, who turned and spat: “That’s the last time you are applauding here.”

MEPs laughed and clapped, and he continued: “I am surprised you are here. You are fighting for the exit. The British people voted in f avour of the exit. Why are you here?” [Continue reading…]

 

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Cameron condemns xenophobic and racist abuse after Brexit vote

The Guardian reports: David Cameron has condemned “despicable” xenophobic abuse after the EU referendum as figures suggested a 57% increase in reported incidents.

The country would not stand for hate crime, the prime minister told MPs.

“In the past few days we have seen despicable graffiti daubed on a Polish community centre, we’ve seen verbal abuse hurled against individuals because they are members of ethnic minorities,” Cameron said.

“Let’s remember these people have come here and made a wonderful contribution to our country. We will not stand for hate crime or these kinds of attacks, they must be stamped out.”

Police believe there has been an increase in hate crimes and community tensions since last week’s referendum. Initial figures show an increase of 57% in reported incidents between Thursday and Sunday compared with the same days four weeks earlier, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said – 85 incidents were reported compared with 54 during the earlier period.

“It’s no coincidence this has come off the back of the EU vote,” said a police source. [Continue reading…]

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Sturgeon calls for unity in Scotland and tells UK government: ‘Get a grip’

The Guardian reports: Nicola Sturgeon called on Scotland to move forward “in a spirit of unity and national purpose” as she condemned the leadership vacuum in Westminster.

She called on the UK government to “get a grip” in her first statement to the Holyrood parliament since last week’s referendum result.

Scotland’s first minster told the Holyrood chamber: “These are times that call for principles, purpose and clarity – in short, for leadership. That is why the vacuum that has developed at Westminster is so unacceptable.”

Speaking in advance of an emergency debate in which she urged MSPs to back her efforts to protect Scotland’s place in Europe, Sturgeon warned: “One thing is clear: there cannot be three months of drift while both the government and main opposition parties at Westminster immerse themselves in internal elections. That would compound the difficult situation we are already facing and risk even more damage to our economy.”

The SNP leader went on: “We have heard that – almost incredibly – there was no plan for this outcome. It is my view that the UK government must now get a grip on this: first, to restore stability and confidence, then, to set out its plan for the way forward. It must involve the Scottish government in that work at every step of the way.” [Continue reading…]

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British government minister calls for second referendum on terms of EU exit

The Telegraph reports: Britain should have a second referendum on the terms of leaving the European Union if it can secure a new deal to control its borders, a Conservative Cabinet minister says.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, becomes the first minister to suggest that Britain could hold another vote on Brexit despite the Leave victory last week.

He says the new Prime Minister must be allowed to “negotiate a deal” with Brussels and “put it to the British people” by either calling a general election or having another referendum.

He says that Britain must remain in the single market and reach a “sensible compromise” with the EU of freedom of movement rules to allow the UK to control migration.

Mr Hunt says: “We must not invoke Article 50 straight away because that puts a time limit of two years on negotiations after which we could be thrown out with no deal at all. So before setting the clock ticking, we need to negotiate a deal and put it to the British people, either in a referendum or through the Conservative manifesto at a fresh General Election.” [Continue reading…]

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Inside a prison in Fallujah where the ISIS tortured and killed

The Washington Post reports: From the outside, there’s not a lot that stands out about the three neighboring houses on this residential street in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

One is grander than most, with two tall columns straddling its entrance. The others are unassuming and beige, like much of this city, which had been under the control of the Islamic State for the past ­2 1/2 years.

But behind their front doors is a makeshift prison used by the militants to mete out their archaic punishments. It provides a harrowing window into the brutal rule of law that governed here before the city was retaken, a glimpse of its regime of executions, floggings and torture.

Home to many of the Islamic State’s leaders, Fallujah was the first city to fall into the hands of the organization and was a hub for its operations in Iraq. The prison is just one of the remnants of their self-proclaimed caliphate that were left behind by the militants as they died or fled the city and that are now slowly being discovered, allowing Iraqi forces firsthand insight into the group’s inner workings. [Continue reading…]

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They survived ISIS, then disappeared

The Daily Beast reports: The way Rasool Abdullah remembers it, he was in a hall with dozens of other men in an abandoned house outside Fallujah.

He was thirsty, as he had barely any water to drink for the past two days. The heat from the summer sun made the cramped quarters unlivable. His hands were tied tightly with zip ties, and from the rooms off the hallway, where he says people were being tortured, all he could hear was screaming.

“Ahmed is dead!” someone cried.

Rasool added Ahmed to his mental count. By the time he left 11 hours later, he says he’d lost the exact number of those who had fallen around him.

“Twelve or 13 people in the hall I was in died. I’m not including the people in the rooms,” he told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know their [full] names, only the number of people who are dead.”

While the recent liberation of Fallujah is being celebrated by governments from Washington to Baghdad, hundreds of civilians like those who were arrested with Rasool remain missing. The problem is that, unlike those taken by the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS, these civilians were arrested by Shiite pro-government militant groups operating as representatives of the Iraqi government. [Continue reading…]

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When you dial 911 and Wall Street answers

The New York Times reports: A Tennessee woman slipped into a coma and died after an ambulance company took so long to assemble a crew that one worker had time for a cigarette break.

Paramedics in New York had to covertly swipe medical supplies from a hospital to restock their depleted ambulances after emergency runs.

A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay.

In each of these cases, someone dialed 911 and Wall Street answered.

The business of driving ambulances and operating fire brigades represents just one facet of a profound shift on Wall Street and Main Street alike, a New York Times investigation has found. Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms, the “corporate raiders” of an earlier era, have increasingly taken over a wide array of civic and financial services that are central to American life. [Continue reading…]

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What Brexit? If Britain treats the referendum as a non-event, the EU will do likewise

The Guardian reports: Germany has ruled out any possibility of informal talks on Britain leaving the EU before it files formal notice of its intention to go, dealing a major blow to the Brexit campaign’s leaders.

As the US secretary of state, John Kerry, flew into Brussels for urgent talks at the start of a crunch week for Europe, chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said only Britain could start the exit process and “if the government needs a reasonable amount of time to do that, we respect that”.

But Steffen Seibert added: “One thing is clear – before Great Britain has sent this notification, there will be no informal preliminary talks about the exit modalities.”

Eager to avoid a domino effect in other Eurosceptic member states, European leaders have said they want the UK to make a swift start on the marathon task of extricating itself from the bloc by triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the untested procedure governing how a member state leaves, as soon as possible.

But London has so far shown no sign of wanting to launch formal exit proceedings, with the prime minister, David Cameron, who resigned on Friday, leaving the task to his successor, and leading Brexit campaigners including Boris Johnson demanding informal withdrawal talks before locking Britain into the strict two-year timeframe laid down in the article 50 process.

Brussels has also emphatically ruled out informal talks on a possible trade deal before the UK triggers article 50. “No notification, no negotiation,” one official said on Sunday. A diplomat added: “If they treat their referendum as a non-event, we will also treat their referendum as a non-event.” [Continue reading…]

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Under Seumas Milne’s direction, Jeremy Corbyn engaged in ‘deliberate sabotage’ of the Remain campaign, sources say

Jonathan Freedland writes: The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and others have seen the documents which prove that Corbyn and his top team were guilty of much worse than a lack of enthusiasm. They engaged in “deliberate sabotage” of the remain campaign. They pulled out of critical media appearances at the last minute, or else passed up media opportunities to make the case against Brexit; they removed pro-EU lines from speeches; they repeatedly diluted the official Labour position of support for in.

My own reporting, speaking to those involved with the in campaign, confirms this account, as does Phil Wilson MP, parliamentary chair of Labour In For Britain. At those moments of the campaign when Labour was to be given the floor, the party had either prepared nothing or used its platform to attack the Tories fronting the remain campaign, rubbishing George Osborne’s warnings of the economic consequences of Brexit for example. There were plans for a dramatic intervention by all Labour’s leaders – past and present – to stand together and call for remain, designed to ram home to Labour supporters where their party stood. But that was scuppered by Corbyn’s refusal to be associated, even indirectly, with Tony Blair. One idea would have seen Blair in Belfast, Gordon Brown in Glasgow, Neil Kinnock in Cardiff and Jeremy Corbyn in England – but Team Corbyn said no to that and every other version of the plan.

Accompanying Labour canvassers in Yorkshire 10 days before the vote, I saw the effect for myself: Labour voters were still unclear whether their party was for remain or leave, and they were certainly not getting the unmistakable message that a vote to leave would be catastrophic for them in particular. [Continue reading…]

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Post-Brexit global equity loss of over $2 trillion — worst ever

Reuters reports: The $2.08 trillion wiped off global equity markets on Friday after Britain voted to leave the European Union was the biggest daily loss ever, trumping the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy during the 2008 financial crisis and the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987, according to Standard & Poor’s Dow Jones Indices.

Global markets skidded following the unexpected result from the June 23 referendum, in which Britons voted to withdraw from the EU by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin.

Markets in mainland Europe were hit the worst, with Milan .FTMIB and Madrid .IBEX each down more than 12 percent for their biggest losses ever. Britain’s benchmark FTSE 100 .FTSE was down nearly 9 percent at one point on Friday, but rallied to close down 3.15 percent.

The route started in Asia, with the Nikkei .N225 down 7.9 percent, and carried over into Wall Street as the S&P 500 fell 3.6 percent.

Mohit Bajaj, director of ETF trading solutions at WallachBeth Capital LLC in New York, said the severity of the sell-off was partly due to investors misreading the outcome and betting the wrong way. [Continue reading…]

Before Thursday’s vote, George Soros wrote: avid Cameron, along with the Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and others have been attacked by the leave campaign for exaggerating the economic risks of Brexit. This criticism has been widely accepted by the British media and many financial analysts. As a result, British voters are now grossly underestimating the true costs of leaving.

Too many believe that a vote to leave the EU will have no effect on their personal financial position. This is wishful thinking. It would have at least one very clear and immediate effect that will touch every household: the value of the pound would decline precipitously. It would also have an immediate and dramatic impact on financial markets, investment, prices and jobs.

As opinion polls on the referendum result fluctuate, I want to offer a clear set of facts, based on my six decades of experience in financial markets, to help voters understand the very real consequences of a vote to leave the EU.

The Bank of England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the IMF have assessed the long-term economic consequences of Brexit. They suggest an income loss of £3,000 to £5,000 annually per household – once the British economy settles down to its new steady-state five years or so after Brexit. But there are some more immediate financial consequences that have hardly been mentioned in the referendum debate. [Continue reading…]

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Nicola Sturgeon: Scottish parliament could block Brexit

The Guardian reports: Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that the Scottish parliament could block the passage of legislation necessary for the UK to leave the EU.

In an interview with the Sunday Politics Scotland, she said that “of course” she would consider asking the Scottish parliament to vote down the legislative consent motions required for the legislation.

In her fifth major political interview of the morning, Scotland’s first minister told the show’s host, Gordon Brewer: “If the Scottish parliament is judging this on the basis of what’s right for Scotland, then the option of saying we’re not going to vote for something that’s against Scotland’s interests, that’s got to be on the table. You’re not going to vote for something that is not in Scotland’s interests.” [Continue reading…]

Mark Elliott, Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, writes: The devolved politics of Brexit are immensely complex and may turn out to be crucially important to what actually happens… But as a matter of law, neither Scotland nor any of the UK’s other constituent nations can stop Brexit from happening. [Continue reading…]

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Pope warns against ‘Balkanisation’ of Europe after Brexit vote

AFP reports: Pope Francis on Sunday warned of the “Balkanisation” of Europe in the wake of Britain’s shock vote to quit the EU and urged the bloc to chart a new way forward by giving member states greater freedoms.

“We have to come up with a new kind of Union,” the pontiff told reporters on a plane heading back to Rome after a controversial visit to Armenia, as the European Union grappled with the unprecedented task of having to negotiate a divorce from a member state.

“There is something that’s not working in this massive, heavy Union. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water,” Francis said.

He warned that places like Scotland and the Spanish region of Catalonia could push for “secession” following the seismic Brexit vote, which he said could lead to “the Balkanisation” of Europe. [Continue reading…]

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Liberal Democrats pledge to keep Britain in the EU after next election

The Independent reports: The Liberal Democrats will stand at the next general election on a platform of derailing Brexit and keeping Britain in the European Union, the party has announced.

Leader Tim Farron said on Saturday night that he would be “clear and unequivocal” with voters that if elected it would set aside the referendum result and keep Britain in the EU.

He said the referendum result amounted to a “howl of anger” at politicians and that the election of a liberal government would be a way of registering a change of heart by the electorate

Though the next general election is scheduled for 2020 under the Fixed Term Parliament Act (FTPA), David Cameron’s resignation and major loopholes in the legislation mean it could come as early as the autumn or early next year. [Continue reading…]

In the 2015 general election, the Liberal Democrats got hammered — down from 57 seats in parliament to just 8. If staying in the EU depends on the Liberal Democrats winning an election, it’s not going to happen.

Still, why shouldn’t all those MPs in the current parliament who supported Remain — which is to say, the majority — also renew that commitment in the next election? Anyone who gets elected on a “pledged to stay” slogan can’t be accused of deceiving the voters if they then act on that pledge in parliament.

Instead of there being any need for another referendum, the election of an even more vocally pro-EU parliament, would surely send a strong enough signal that Britain, having been led up to the edge of a chasm, looked down and made the judicious decision not to jump.

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Britain’s young: Betrayed by their elders — and by themselves

The decision to exit the EU will impact the UK’s younger generation most of all and among 18-24 year-olds who voted, 75% voted Remain.

Yet that preponderance of support for Remain turned out to be of little consequence — 64% didn’t bother voting.

If the turnout among the young had been as high as it was among the old, Remain would have won.

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In new poll, support for Trump has plunged, giving Clinton a double-digit lead

The Washington Post reports: Support for Donald Trump has plunged as he has alienated fellow Republicans and large majorities of voters overall in the course of a month of self-inflicted controversies, propelling Democrat Hillary Clinton to a double-digit lead nationally in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey finds sweeping unease with the presumptive Republican nominee’s candidacy — from his incendiary rhetoric and values to his handling of both terrorism and his own business — foreshadowing that the November election could be a referendum on Trump more than anything else. [Continue reading…]

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