A group of German rightwing extremists compiled a “death list” of leftwing and pro-refugee targets by accessing police records, then stockpiled weapons and ordered body bags and quicklime to kill and dispose of their victims, German media have reported, citing intelligence sources.
Germany’s general prosecutor had been investigating Nordkreuz (Northern Cross) since August 2017 on the suspicion the group was preparing a terrorist attack.
The 30-odd members of the group reportedly had close links to the police and military, and at least one member was still employed in the special commando unit of the state office of criminal investigations.
In the past, Nordkreuz was reported as being part of the “prepper” survivalist movement, whose followers prepare for doomsday scenarios such as the collapse of the prevailing social order.
However, a report by RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, a Hanover-based research agency with links to smaller regional newspapers, suggested the group was actively preparing the ground for a mass attack on political enemies.
Members communicated via the encrypted messenger service Telegram, and accessed police computers to collect almost 25,000 names and addresses of local politicians who had played an active part in civic efforts during the refugee crisis in 2015, the report said.
Party members from the SPD, the Greens, Die Linke and Angela Merkel’s CDU were reportedly on the list, which focused on local politics in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg.
The group had also allegedly ordered 200 body bags and quicklime, which can be used to speed up the decay of a corpse and cover up its smell.
Three members of Nordkreuz were being separately investigated by a prosecutor in Schwerin for illegal possession of more than 10,000 bullets as well as long- and short-range weapons.
The group is said to deny having planned the murder of the people on the lists.
Thursday’s annual BfV report noted a slight fall in the number of offences by extreme right groups registered in 2018, but also a rise in the number of violent crimes committed by these groups.
Overall numbers of sympathisers for extremist positions on the far right, the far left and in Islamism had all slightly increased over the last year, the report noted.
It made no mention of Nordkreuz, fuelling criticism that the agency had been turning a blind eye to the threat of neo-Nazi terrorism.
Two more men were arrested over the case on Thursday, one for selling the weapon allegedly used in the killing, the other on suspicion of setting up the contact between the gun-seller and Ernst.
Ernst reportedly admitted being incensed by Lübcke’s comments at a town hall meeting he had attended in October 2015. At the meeting, held to discuss a new asylum seeker shelter, Lübcke said: “One has to stand up for values here. And those who don’t do so can leave this country any time if they don’t like it. That’s the freedom of every German.”
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt claim the backstop problems can be fixed by 31 October. They are in for a rude awakening
Thu 27 Jun 2019 06.00 BST
As commentators line up to debate the character and personality traits of the two men running for the Tory leadership – and by default our prime minister – there is only one question on my mind: how credible are the details of how and when they can deliver or resolve Brexit?
This does not appear to be a question 84% of Conservative party membersare remotely bothered with, as they would prefer the fantasy of an immediate “clean Brexit”. They welcome their witching hour of 11pm on 31 October becoming Independence Day, as if it’s some sort of Hollywood blockbuster, with no deal.
If only will was reality. There is a raft of legislation required even in a no-deal scenario – for example bills on agriculture, fisheries, financial services, trade and immigration. So, too, the vexed question of the Irish border. Boris Johnson, like an overexcited puppy when interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg this week, grabbed this bone and enthused about “abundant, abundant technical fixes that can be introduced to make sure that you don’t have to have checks at the border”. Johnson is not one to worry about details, given the fact that in January Sabine Weyand, the EU’s deputy negotiator, said: “We’ve looked at every border on this Earth, every border the EU has with a third country – there’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls.”
Then there is the clause in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Section 10, on the subject of the Irish border, states that nothing in this act “authorises regulations which … diminish any form of North-South cooperation provided for by the Belfast agreement”. This is likely to mean that the Northern Ireland backstop will stay in place until MPs reach an agreement that honours the UK’s obligations under the Good Friday agreement.
I can hear the naysayers now – we are Great Britain, we can leave with a clean Brexit and a smooth transition to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms under which the rest of the world trades. Yes, Britain is a signatory to the WTO in its own right – but there are no WTO terms that apply specifically to the UK, as we have been operating under the EU’s umbrella for decades.
To deal directly under WTO terms will require us to have something called a schedule of tariffs, which applies tariffs to all imports into a country as well as quotas for a certain amount of tariff-free goods. Brexiteers such as Bernard Jenkin MP say we can simply rely on “default terms” or the EU’s schedule of tariffs. But that suggestion has already, understandably, been blocked by many of the 164 WTO members. Why would they allow the UK to take advantage of the negotiating position of a large global trading bloc such as the EU, when they themselves can’t? Unless Britain can set up emergency cover by using the EU schedule or our own schedule without formal approval, we will enter uncharted territory on the morning of 1 November, as no deal means no transition period. Again, Johnson thinks this is “tosh”. He can magic this, too – an implementation period not attached to a withdrawal agreement, but agreed by the EU anyway – even though he has not spoken to a single person on the EU side about this.
Q&A
What is Gatt XXIV or article 24?
Johnson will say we can be like Australia or New Zealand or Norway, conveniently forgetting that Australia has trade agreements in place with more than 17 countries, including the US, China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, and deals with another 20 countries signed and in the pipeline.
I do not doubt that there are many countries that will wish to trade with the UK post-Brexit, but understandably they will wait to see what the UK’s ultimate relationship with Europe will be. WTO members will be watching Britain’s diplomatic behaviour closely. How the new prime minister and his government conduct themselves, especially if they refuse to pay the £39bn bill, will have a serious impact – and possibly make us devoid of international goodwill.
Trade would not stop, but there will be legal uncertainty, tariffs and barriers, and protectionism from other countries. In some sectors, such as meat and dairy, tariffs as high as 97% would result in British farmers who export lamb and beef seeing their prices double to uncompetitive levels. Imports of animal feed and fertilisers could also face tariffs, so farmers’ costs will increase, squeezing margins in the face of falling sales and no subsidies. This would affect chemicals and machinery parts too, which operate on a “just in time” basis, and also labour. A similar story would unfold across other sectors, with everyday imports we depend on – life-saving drugs, radioactive isotopes for MRI scans, medical equipment, epilepsy drugs, contact lenses, electricity, petrol, even milk – being hit.
Most politicians stay quiet on the fact that we are an 80% service economy. The WTO/Gatt regime into which this would fall would mean other countries being able to impose barriers, such as requiring doctors, accountants or architects to requalify. The financial services sector, which has been world-leading, and the UK aviation services sector, the third largest in the world, would be hugely affected: the EU has a competitive single market for air transport.
Meanwhile, though the prime minister will change, the arithmetic in parliament won’t. And there will be just 20 sitting days to the end of October to resolve the hornets’ nest of issues – and no one on the EU side of the table to renegotiate with until mid-November at the earliest.
But let’s not be bothered with mere details. Who needs policies and practical solutions – sheer force of personality will win the day. Why worry that we would be poorer and less safe than we are today?
• Gina Miller is a businesswoman and transparency activist
1. Before our brave Gina Miller went all the way to the courts to prepare the road for the UK elected representatives to have a substantial say in the Brexit process, the common opinion had been, that the referendum had given the UK executive the prerogative power on delivering Brexit.
2. Although this fact is almost too obvious to be overlooked at this point in time, still many people seem to have forgotten, that at the time of the referendum and in the direct aftermath of the referendum, the overriding assumption was, that the new government could practically do as it might wish in this respect.
3. The total change of perspective, once parliament had been introduced into the entire decision and legislative trajectories, has lead to high levels of frustration and belligerent language under the ruling establishment, and much of the anxiety of today can be explained by the sudden interference of the power of the elected.
4. A highly complicating factor as well has been the fact, that a substantial part of the Brexit movement had been (and still is been) inspired by a white-supremacist ideology.
5. A strong white supremacist movement has been reappearing - not just in the UK, but - all over the western world recently and its fanatic members are afraid that "the white race" will lose out on its historic hegemony, and eventually will be wiped out.
6. Within that concept, the white supremacists want a return of the national state, complete with national borders and legislation determined by white politicians, so the survival of "the white race" will be "guaranteed".
7. This geo-political perspective can only be substantiated when non-white people will be deterred from entering the gated community of white supremacists and non-white people that has already been allowed to enter into that gated community, will somehow have to be encouraged to leave the white community.
8. In the UK this agenda has lead to the introduction of the much read and debated about "hostile environment" policy, in the UK designed and delivered by then home secretary Theresa May, who after all does not exactly seem to differ that much from the Boris Johnsons, Rees_Moggs and Farages of this world.
9. International law, based on universal principles like the human rights charter, has been considered incompatible with the alleged superiority of "the white race", so that is the very reason, that the white supremacist part of the pro-Brexit community, does want to severe ties with the EU and wants to by-pass (and undermine) international institutions like the UN.
10. The white supremacist movement has been that much preoccupied with creating an exclusively white society, that it is even prepared, to sacrifice economical advantages, as long as it can preserve the independence of the neo-nationalist UK.
11. Much of the political rhetoric from the extreme-right does resonance the political rhetoric that prevailed in the European interbellum, and much of the rhetoric is about borders and strangers that have to be prevented from entering the sacred homeland.
12. Since White supremacism is all about (perceived) race superiority, racism does form an integral part of the white supremacist political agenda and the importance of national borders (and the subsequent dismantling of international institutions) will bring back border disputes.
13. Border disputes have been a rich source of warfare in the past and do have created wholesale genocidal calamities in our western world only a few decades ago and wholesale carnage in the (today mostly ex-) colonies of the western world.
14. So if one is contemplating to support the Steve Bannon acolytes like Johnson and Farage, one has to be totally aware, that Brexit might highly possibly mean - apart from serious economic decline - the outbreak of old-fashioned war in Europe.
15. Another dire disadvantage of following this ideology, is the fact, that the White supremacist movement has declared itself even independent from regular science and has engulfed itself into pseudo scientific arguments.
16. Pseudo-scientific arguments, that - among other implications - do permit its followers to deny the major human influence on climate change, which opinion only will accelerate the downgrading of our global habitat in general and the downgrading of the UK landscape and nature in particular.
17. Although the latter development seems to be heavily contradicting the ultimate objectives of the ultra-nationalists - such as the to be achieved conservation of the sacred homeland - the hard core ultra-nationalists does not seem to care too much about contradictions within their (mostly conspiracy) theories at all, as one can observe on a daily base when one does register the incoherent rhetoric of Boris Johnson and / or his hero, Donald Trump
18. Do be aware of the fact though, that Johnson and Trump are only useful idiots, that will be ruthlessly replaced by the powerful hyper-manipulative financiers of the global White supremacist movement once their sell-by date will be passed.
‘Climate apartheid’: UN expert says human rights may not survive
Right to life is likely to be undermined alongside the rule of law, special rapporteur says
International climate treaties have been ineffective, the report said. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Tue 25 Jun 2019 09.00 BST
Damian Carrington
Damian Carrington is the Guardian's Environment editor
The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.
Alston is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”. His report to the UN human rights council (HRC) concludes: “Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval.”
The report also condemns Donald Trump for “actively silencing” climate science, and criticises the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for promising to open up the Amazon rainforest to mining. But Alston said there were also some positive developments, including legal cases against states and fossil fuel companies, the activism of Greta Thunberg and the worldwide school strikes, and Extinction Rebellion.
Alston’s report on climate change and poverty will be formally presented to the HRC in Geneva on Friday. It said the greatest impact of the climate crisis would be on those living in poverty, with many losing access to adequate food and water.
“Climate change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction,” Alston said. Developing countries will bear an estimated 75% of the costs of the climate crisis, the report said, despite the poorest half of the world’s population causing just 10% of carbon dioxide emissions.
“Yet democracy and the rule of law, as well as a wide range of civil and political rights are every bit at risk,” Alston’s report said. “The risk of community discontent, of growing inequality, and of even greater levels of deprivation among some groups, will likely stimulate nationalist, xenophobic, racist and other responses. Maintaining a balanced approach to civil and political rights will be extremely complex.”
The impacts of the climate crisis could increase divisions, Alston said. “We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer,” he said.
“When Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York in 2012, stranding low-income and vulnerable New Yorkers without access to power and healthcare, the Goldman Sachs headquarters was protected by tens of thousands of its own sandbags and power from its generator.”
Alston strongly criticises all those working to uphold human rights, including his own previous work, for not making the climate crisis a central issue. He said the most recent HRC resolution on the climate crisis did not recognise “that the enjoyment of all human rights by vast numbers of people is gravely threatened” or “the need for the deep social and economic transformation, which almost all observers agree is urgent if climate catastrophe is to be averted
International climate treaties have been ineffective, the report said, with even the 2015 Paris accord still leaving the world on course for a catastrophic 3C (equivalent to an increase of 5.4F) of heating without further action. “States have marched past every scientific warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic warming now seems like a best-case scenario,” the report said.
The US president is one of the few individuals named in the report. “He has placed former lobbyists in oversight roles, adopted industry talking points, presided over an aggressive rollback of environmental regulations, and is actively silencing and obfuscating climate science.”
However, the required changes to societies and economies could be an opportunity to improve poor people’s lives, Alston said. “This crisis should be a catalyst for states to fulfil long ignored economic and social rights, including to social security and access to food, healthcare, shelter, and decent work,” the report said.
Ashfaq Khalfan at Amnesty International said: “Climate change is a human rights issue precisely because of the impact it’s having on people. The primary obligation to protect people from human rights harms lies with states. A state that fails to take any feasible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is violating their human rights obligations.”
He said Amnesty planned to target governments and fossil fuel companies. “We need everybody to live up to their responsibilities to act on climate change and protect human rights,” he said.
Why the man who drafted the IHRA definition condemns its use
Kenneth S. Stern, giving evidence to the US Congress on the IHRA defintion. November 2017
The man who drafted the IHRA definition of antisemitism condemns its use to curb freedom of speech
George Wilmers,
1st August 2018, updated 4 August
According to the latest hysterical criteria of the Israel lobby* and their camp followers, the original drafter of the so-called IHRA definition of antisemitism, an avowed Zionist, should himself be categorised as an antisemite, or perhaps a “kapo”. For that is the conclusion one must reach if one accepts the assertion that anyone who challenges any aspect of the holy writ that the IHRA definition has become is an antisemite – see here and here.
The drafter of what later became popularly known as the EUMC or IHRA definition of antisemitism,including its associated examples, was the U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern. However, in written evidence submitted to the US Congress last year, Stern charged that his original definition had been used for an entirely different purpose to that for which it had been designed.
According to Stern it had originally been designed as a ”working definition” for the purpose of trying to standardise data collection about the incidence of antisemitic hate crime in different countries. It had never been intended that it be used as legal or regulatory device to curb academic or political free speech.
Yet that is how it has now come to be used. In the same document Stern specifically condemns as inappropriate the use of the definition for such purposes, mentioning in particular the curbing of free speech in UK universities, and referencing Manchester and Bristol universities as examples. Here is what he writes:
The EUMC “working definition” was recently adopted in the United Kingdom, and applied to campus. An “Israel Apartheid Week” event was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the university [Manchester] mandated it be recorded, after an Israeli diplomat [ambassador Regev] complained that the title violated the definition.[See here]. Perhaps most egregious, an off-campus group citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor (who received her PhD from Columbia) for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. The university [Bristol] then conducted the inquiry. And while it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like. [square brackets added – GW]
Of course the groups which were behind this “McCarthy-like” repression of free speech condemned by Stern are the very same ones which are now engaged in the current vendetta against Corbyn. For example in the case of the Bristol University lecturer who was subjected to an inquiry into false accusations of antisemitism, it was the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism, in reality an aggressively pro-Israel lobby group, which had called for her to be sacked unless she recanted.
Tellingly Stern clearly recognises the intrinsic logical absurdity and threat to free speech which arises where consistent attempts are made to ban political speech regarding states or governments:
Imagine a definition designed for Palestinians. If “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist” is antisemitism, then shouldn’t “Denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination, and denying Palestine the right to exist” be anti-Palestinianism? Would they then ask administrators to police and possibly punish campus events by pro-Israel groups who oppose the two state solution, or claim the Palestinian people are a myth?
Kenneth Stern is a Zionist and certainly no leftist. Nevertheless to his credit the original author of the IHRA definition is a consistent defender of free speech who condemns the current McCarthyite usage of the IHRA definition.
So is the Zionist author of the IHRA definition of antisemitism a closet antisemite who has now outed himself? Was he perhaps a longstanding mole for a secret international conspiracy of antisemites led by Jeremy Corbyn? Perhaps Nick Cohen will tell us the answer?
As for all texts of holy writ the political process by which the IHRA definition acquired both its current interpretation and its sacred status amongst its fanatical devotees is still shrouded in mystery, despite some interesting attempts – here, here and here – to investigate its short 14-year history. It is a tribute to the abandonment of rational reasoning in official public discourse that the details of the definition and its obvious inadequacies as a legal or quasi-legal text are a taboo subject in the mainstream media.†
Despite a general belief to the contrary and its “adoption” by the UK government, the IHRA definition has no legal status in the UK, and for very good reason: as has been highlighted by leading legal authorities such as Hugh Tomlinsonand Stephen Sedley, not only is it not a proper definition for legal purposes, but its legal adoption by any public authority would conflict with existing protected rights of free expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Nevertheless such is the power of the propaganda campaign for the IHRA cult that, abandoning rational considerations, the leadership of the Labour party have felt obliged to make obeisance to the IHRA’s holy status, even while discretely seeking to modify the text in order to mitigate some of its draconian effects.
Unfortunately however, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. So whatever our beliefs may be concerning the functionality of the sow’s ear in its original setting, we must be grateful to the man who fashioned it for pointing out its obvious limitations with such clarity.
Notes
* I use the term “Israel Lobby” as a shorthand for those who use false or wildly exaggerated charges of antisemitism against the Labour party as a cover for their real goals which are (a) to make pro-Palestinian activism impossible within the Labour Party, and (b) to ensure that Corbyn is removed as leader of the Labour party. In reality, as Moshe Machover has repeatedly pointed out, this is a loose coalition of rather different political groups from the centre-right to the far right, some of which are connected to pro-Israel and rightwing Jewish organisations, but some of which have no particular connection or interest in either Judaism or the Israel-Palestine conflict, but are simply using the antisemitism hysteria as a means to attack the Corbyn political project. Some have suggested that the term “anti-Palestinian Lobby” might be a more appropriate terminology.
† The BBC may be taken as the paradigm example of this complete abandonment of rational argument, where news presenters and commentators almost always attempt to shut down any discussion of the detail or history of the IHRA definition or its legal inadequacy, concentrating exclusively on the supposed “perception of the Jewish community”, a concept which itself bears all the hallmarks of a racist stereotype. A very unusual exception to this shameful behaviour is the excellent recent BBC News interview on 23 July 2018 by Norman Smith of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, where the latter is respectfully allowed to present her case without bullying or partisan interruption by the interviewer.
The author thanks Richard Kuper and Murray Glickman for their substantial help and advice in preparing this article.
In written evidence submitted to the US Congress last year, Stern charged that his original definition had been used for an entirely different purpose to that for which it had been designed
(use the link below, to read the full Stern PDF statement on IHRA) :
Party members from the SPD, Greens, Die Linke and Angela Merkel’s CDU were reportedly on the lists. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters
